tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11762940889593592662024-03-21T21:48:52.955-07:00Other IssuesBear Market Economics, News and IssuesNOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.comBlogger183125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-7410506583322776092016-10-28T07:04:00.000-07:002016-10-28T07:04:00.018-07:00BLACK LIVES MATTER IN BLACK JEOPARDY<img alt="NPR logo" src="http://media.npr.org/chrome/news/npr-home.png" /><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/10/26/499409086/-black-jeopardy-on-snl-is-compelling-political-analysis-slate-s-bouie-says" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">'Black Jeopardy' Sketch Is Compelling Analysis, 'Slate' Correspondent Says</a></span></h2>
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<time datetime="2016-10-26T05:06:00-04:00" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="date" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">October 26, 2016</span><span class="time" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">5:06 AM ET</span></time></div>
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Heard on <a href="http://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/2016/10/26/499395323" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5076b8; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Morning Edition</a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 17px;">Steve Inskeep talks to Jamelle Bouie of </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Slate</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 17px;">, about the</span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></em><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 17px;"> sketch on </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Saturday Night Live</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 17px;">. He says it had more to say about race than a thousand tenderly crafted portraits of the white working class.</span><br />
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<br />Transcript:</h3>
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(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE")</div>
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UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (As Johnny) This is "Black Jeopardy."</div>
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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:</div>
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Those words began a recent "Saturday Night Live" skit which has captured more attention from political writers than many a political speech. On "Black Jeopardy," the host, Kenan Thompson, offers answers and questions you would supposedly only get right if you were clued in to black culture.</div>
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(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE")</div>
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KENAN THOMPSON: (As Darnell Hayes) Let's see our categories. We got...</div>
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(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)</div>
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THOMPSON: (As Darnell Hayes) ...Big Girls.</div>
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(LAUGHTER, SOUNDBITE OF BELL)</div>
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THOMPSON: (As Darnell Hayes) I'm Gonna Pray On This.</div>
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(LAUGHTER, SOUNDBITE OF BELL)</div>
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THOMPSON: (As Darnell Hayes) They Out Here Saying.</div>
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(LAUGHTER, SOUNDBITE OF BELL)</div>
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THOMPSON: (As Darnell Hayes) And as always, White People.</div>
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INSKEEP: Yet, something happens in the skit after it's revealed that one of the three contestants is white, a blue collar guy in a Donald Trump make-America-great-again hat, played by Tom Hanks. Jamelle Bouie of Slate is one of many who wrote about this. And he's in our studios. Good morning, thanks for coming by.</div>
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JAMELLE BOUIE: Good morning, thank you for having me.</div>
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INSKEEP: OK. So let's listen to one of the exchanges involving Tom Hanks.</div>
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(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE")</div>
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THOMPSON: (As Darnell Hayes) They out here saying the new iPhone wants your thumbprint for your protection.</div>
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(SOUNDBITE OF BUZZER)</div>
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THOMPSON: (As Darnell Hayes) Oh, OK then. Doug.</div>
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TOM HANKS: (As Doug) Well, what is - I don't think so. That's how they get you.</div>
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THOMPSON: (As Darnell Hayes) Yes. Yes.</div>
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(APPLAUSE)</div>
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SASHEER ZAMATA: (As Keeley) I don't trust that.</div>
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LESLIE JONES: (As Shanice) Me, either.</div>
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HANKS: (As Doug) No, I read that goes straight to the government.</div>
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INSKEEP: So the African-American characters are saying, wait a minute. You're paranoid too.</div>
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BOUIE: (Laughter) Right. It's, you know, it's worth saying, right before this moment, they are very skeptical of Doug and whether or not he even belongs. But that answer and subsequent answers begins an interaction where the African-American characters - the two black contestants, Kenan Thompson and the audience, in a way - begins to see Doug as one of them, or at least someone who understands the world in similar ways as them.</div>
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INSKEEP: And why is that surprising?</div>
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BOUIE: I think it's surprising just as a viewer because when you see Doug's outfit or Tom Hanks' character, he's in this denim jacket. He is wearing the make-America-great-again hat.</div>
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INSKEEP: He's got the goatee.</div>
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BOUIE: Right, right. And you imagine that this is going to be a caricature and mainly poking fun at someone like Doug. But in fact, it is, I think, an attempt at building empathy, that Doug is blue-collar. African-American culture and especially the working culture of African-Americans is very much rooted in some kind of rural environment, as a lot of white-blue-collar culture is.</div>
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And both groups feel a kind of disenfranchisement, a kind of disempowerment that comes across how they understand the world. And so through this sketch - and it's very humorous and lighthearted - you begin to get inklings of that and evidence of that.</div>
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INSKEEP: You know, we had a conversation with President Obama in July. And he said something that I was reminded of when watching this skit. He was saying that historically in the South, you had African-Americans, and you had poor white people who were farmers, who were from similar economic backgrounds but kept apart by race. Is that the point of this skit here?</div>
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BOUIE: I think that is the point of this sketch, or at least one of the implications of the sketch up until the very end of the sketch. And so the last joke, the last - the last set-up is the Final Jeopardy! category, which is Lives That Matter.</div>
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INSKEEP: Let's listen to that. Let's listen to that last joke.</div>
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(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE")</div>
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THOMPSON: (As Darnell Hayes) Let's take a look at our Final Jeopardy! category - Lives That Matter.</div>
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(LAUGHTER)</div>
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THOMPSON: (As Darnell Hayes) Well, it was good while it lasted, Doug.</div>
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HANKS: (As Doug) I know. I got a lot to say about this.</div>
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THOMPSON: (As Darnell Hayes) Yeah, I'm sure you do.</div>
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(LAUGHTER)</div>
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THOMPSON: (As Darnell Hayes) When we come back...</div>
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INSKEEP: Everybody's looking at Doug. Everybody's looking at Doug to see if he wants to say which lives matter. He doesn't have anything to say at first.</div>
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BOUIE: Right, right. And I think the implication from Doug's answer or Doug's beginning of an answer - I have a lot of things to say about this - is that he isn't going to say what we as viewers know is the correct answer, Black Lives Matter. He might say, all lives matter or blue lives matter. Or he just might rant about the question in general. And I think that, that set-up and punchline recontextualizes the entire sketch. Before then, it is very much a sketch about common culture, about empathy.</div>
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But after that, it becomes a sketch about the chief obstacle, right? It becomes a sketch about the fact that black Americans have this core concern about their safety, about their status as equal citizens that is kind of overriding above all else. And if someone like Doug can't get behind it, then all that other common culture and common empathy sort of is irrelevant as far as politics goes. They can be friends. They can like each other. But they - if they're going to cooperate, they need to agree on this very core concern to black people.</div>
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INSKEEP: Is this sketch on "Saturday Night Live" saying something that a lot of political writing has not? There's been a lot of writing about Trump voters and other kinds of voters this year.</div>
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BOUIE: I think it is in sort of subtle ways. A lot of the writing on Trump voters this year has been very empathetic and very - you might even say sort of permissive about how voters are reacting. It sort of is - I wouldn't say it's denying them agency, but it kind of sidesteps the question of exactly who they are supporting and why - not why they are supporting, but the implications of their support. And it seems to suggest that there really aren't any consequences for other people from the support for Trump among some white working-class voters.</div>
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I think the sketch is push-back on that, which is that, yes, you know, if Trump voters are supporting a vision of America that does not have room for Black Lives Matter or for similar political movements - and that this is a real problem, that this is a real obstacle and that we shouldn't look past it just because people might really be suffering.</div>
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INSKEEP: OK. Well, Jamelle Bouie, thanks very much.</div>
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BOUIE: Thank you.</div>
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INSKEEP: He's chief political correspondent at Slate.</div>
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<br />NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-73288624663972618262016-07-14T19:11:00.000-07:002016-07-14T19:11:36.177-07:00Psychedelics and Systems Change<br />
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<a href="http://www.utne.com/politics/psychedelics-and-systems-change-zm0z16uzsel.aspx?PageId=1" target="_blank">Psychedelics and Systems Change</a></h2>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 16px;"></span><em style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">Prohibitionists are correct: The legalization of psychoactive drugs and psychedelics would indeed mean the end of society as we know it … and that’s a good thing.</em><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">By Charles Eisenstein, from </span><em style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">MAPS Bulletin</em><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">Summer 2016</span><br />
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“Mystical experiences often result in attitudes that threaten the authority not only of established churches, but also of secular society. Unafraid of death and deficient in worldly ambition, those who have undergone mystical experiences are impervious to threats and promises.”</div>
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Many arguments for the legalization of cannabis and psychedelics draw on their relative harmlessness. Countering the rationale of prohibition, we can point out that compared to legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco, psychedelics are extremely safe. Given statistics comparing the annual number of alcohol-related deaths in the U.S. (88,000) to the number of cannabis-related deaths (zero), the hysterical warnings of prohibitionists that legalization would destroy society as we know it seem ridiculous.</div>
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In fact, the prohibitionists are correct. The legalization of cannabis, LSD, MDMA, psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, and the other psychedelics would indeed mean the end of society <em>as we know it</em>. The threat that conservative political forces have identified is real. If these were just innocuous bourgeois playthings, “experiences” that one could consume on weekends to make life-as-usual a little more tolerable, then the guardians of the status quo would have little reason to prohibit them. They recognize, if only unconsciously, the revolutionary social and political potential these substances carry.</div>
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Psychedelics can bestow expanded consciousness, perceptions, and ways of being that are incompatible with those that undergird our society. Psychedelics have the power to subvert the alienation, competition, anthropocentrism, linear ordering of time and space, standardization of commodities and social roles, and reduction of reality to a collection of things that propel the world-destroying machine of modern civilization. They disrupt the defining mythology of our civilization, the Story of Separation.</div>
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The elements of the Story of Separation listed above also embed our economic system, which means that the spread of cannabis and psychedelics could have negative economic effects — that is, when we define economic benefit as the growth in monetized goods and services. They promise less consumption of goods and services, not more. The modern self, alienated from nature and community, has an endless craving to consume and possess, seeking to grow in compensation for the lost infinity of the interconnected, inter-existent, true self that psychedelics reveal.</div>
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Beware, then, of arguments that legalization is good for the economy. It won’t be, but it will accelerate a transition toward a different kind of economy. The psychedelic experience reveals its lineaments: less quantity and more quality, fewer “services” and more relationships, fewer “goods” and more beauty, less competition and more community, less accumulation and more sharing, less work and more play, less extraction and more healing. This is utterly at odds with the present economic system.</div>
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The present economic system compels and requires growth in order to function. Growth here means growth of goods and services exchanged for money; it means quantitative growth, growth in a measurable quantity. It is the external, collective correlate of the ever-expanding ego, the separate self. As we identify less with that self, conventional economic logic begins to break down. No longer does it make sense that we are fundamentally in competition with each other. No longer does it make sense for scarcity to be the foundational premise of economic life. No longer does it make sense that more for you should be less for me. No longer is security and control of resources the highest priority in making economic choices. Psychedelics thereby help reverse the centuries-old economic usurpation of human life, the mentality of the transaction that has encroached on human relations.</div>
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For the discrete and separate self in a universe of other, it is quite rational to treat everything outside oneself — animals, plants, water, minerals, and even other people — as instruments of one’s own utility. After all, if you are separate from me, then what happens to you need not affect me. What happens to the honeybees, to the frogs, to the coral reefs, to the rhinos and elephants, need not affect us. We just need to recruit sufficient energy and information to insulate ourselves from the blowback, to engineer new solutions to the problems caused by previous solutions. Nature becomes a collection of “resources,” and no longer a living intelligence. And that is just how our economy treats it.</div>
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Clearly, this strategy is a recipe for ecocide, blind to interdependency and ignorant of any intelligence in the workings of the world. Yet it pervades our systems of technology, industry, money, medicine, education, and politics. Psychedelics, then, promise to change all of these.</div>
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There is therefore something a little disingenuous in political arguments for legalization that seek to assure nervous politicians that nothing much will change besides savings on police, courts, and penitentiaries, and perhaps more effective psychiatric treatments. Come on folks, we all know better than that. Is any psychedelic activist devoting his or her precious time on earth to serve a slightly better version of the current regime of oppression and ecocide? For a long time, chastened by the counterreaction to the 60s awakening, we’ve hidden our hope and desire that “this could change everything” behind political delicacy and neutral academic language. The time for that is perhaps soon coming to an end. The risk of assurances like, “Don’t worry, no dramatic social changes will happen” is that we implicitly affirm that such social changes are to be avoided; that things as they are are acceptable.</div>
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The revolutionary potential of psychedelics lies first and foremost in their power to reveal the Story of Separation as nothing but that:, a story. When that happens, nothing built on that story makes sense any more. Yet there seems to be a problem translating that realization into systemic change. Fifty years after the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s, our systems of money, politics, imperialism, and ecological destruction seem more powerful than ever. The world that psychedelics vitiate trundles onward, despite declarations that they would change everything. Here’s Alan Watts, making a similar point to the one I’ve been making:</div>
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“Mystical experiences often result in attitudes that threaten the authority not only of established churches, but also of secular society. Unafraid of death and deficient in worldly ambition, those who have undergone mystical experiences are impervious to threats and promises….use of psychedelics in the United States by a literate bourgeoisie means that an important segment of the population is indifferent to society’s traditional rewards and sanctions.”</div>
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One can hardly read these words, written in 1968, without a twinge of cynicism. Superficially, at least, Watts’ proclamation seems to have been overly optimistic. Looking at the number of hippies who went on to become lawyers and accountants, it is clear that a mystical experience does not necessarily render one impervious to “society’s traditional rewards and sanctions.” The experience invites us out of the story-of-self and the story-of-the-world that we’d taken for reality itself, but there has been no firmly established new story to greet us. We emerge from the experience surrounded by the infrastructure of the old story. The apparatus of modernity shouts that story at us from every quarter. No wonder vivid mystical realizations gradually fade: into principles one must strive hard to remember and practice; into memories of another realm seemingly sundered from our own; finally into a formless ennui that mutes every ambition and punctuates every accomplishment with a question mark.</div>
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Why does this happen? One might cite a psychospiritual explanation: that we are flown to a place that eventually we must reach on foot; that we need to experience the territory in between, and thereby rework the habits and heal the wounds that maintain the inertia of who-we-were. Yes, but there is an equally important outer explanation that, we shall see, mirrors the inner: No experience can magically extricate anyone from the matrix of institutions that scaffold our society. We come back from the trip into the same economic system, the same physical surroundings, the same social pressures as before. The Story of Separation has enormous inertia. Its forms surround us and pull us relentlessly toward conformity, however unreal and unworthy of our wholehearted participation they may seem.</div>
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In other words, a mystical experience may invite you to quit your job, but even those who have the courage to do it usually face the reality that our economy does not reward the modes of creativity that draw them. I know I am generalizing here, but no one can deny that generally speaking, there is more money to be made by destroying wetlands to build ports than in striving to protect them; more money marketing product than rebuilding community. Leaving the old, there is not usually a “new story” to greet us with ready-made positions, livelihood, and social identity.</div>
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Yet Alan Watts was not wrong. It is just that in the psychedelic moment of the 1960s, we underestimated the robustness of the edifice of civilization and could not foresee the trajectory of the transition process. Perhaps there are mystical experiences that immediately and irrevocably change ones life and disintegrate its structures. More often though, the experience goes underground, working us from the inside, hollowing out the psychic infrastructure of the old normal. Its forms remain for a time, but they become more and more fragile.</div>
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The same hollowing out is happening on the collective level, as the attitudes that informed prohibition seem increasingly archaic. Listening to politicians, one gets the sense that a great majority of them personally disagree with the drug war, but must espouse the opposite opinion in public for fear of being devoured by the media and other politicians — who themselves privately oppose the drug war too but join in the feeding frenzy so as not to become victims themselves. Not a happy commentary on human nature, but we can take solace from the implication that the ideological core of drug prohibition is decaying. The outward structures of prohibition are a rapidly thinning shell.</div>
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And it’s not just the drug war. Our leaders seem to lack the deep, unquestioning faith in the project of civilization and all its accompanying narratives that was nearly universal a generation or two ago. The tropes of that era seem archaic today: the onward march of science, bringing democracy to the world, the conquest of nature, better living through chemistry, the wonders of atomic energy, higher, faster, better, new and improved. Even the boisterous flag-waving of the political right seems more an identity statement than an abiding patriotism. Without real conviction, no wonder politics has become largely a matter of image, spin, optics, and messaging.</div>
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Our leaders no longer believe their own ideology, if they have one. Their public statements and private convictions are irredeemably opposed; everyone is trapped in a drama in which few believe. That is another reason why the end of prohibition portends a much bigger shift: it is an admission that the emperor has no clothes. Because what political truism was more unquestionable than “drugs are bad”? The bugbear called “drugs” is now admitted to be a valid form of medicine, psychotherapeutic research, and even recreation. What other unmentionables will be next? After all, public confidence in the fairness and soundness of the economic system, political system, educational system, health care system, global police state, and so on is no less shaky than support for the War on Drugs.</div>
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Even as the psychic core of the old world hollows out (thanks in part to psychedelics), the external structures that hold us in that world are crumbling too. A mere generation ago, the pursuit of the “worldly ambitions” that Watts refers to reliably delivered at least the semblance of power, security, and control to the bulk of the world’s privileged. No longer. Today, even those who jump through all the hoops still have no guarantee of a place at the ever-shrinking table of normalcy. Play by all the rules, and still the institutions of marriage, healthcare, education, law, and economy fail us. The infrastructure of the old story that pulls us back from the world that psychedelics reveal as possible is losing its grip. As the hollowing-out from the inside meets the disintegration on the outside, cracks appear in the shell of our world. The impending ascendency of cannabis and psychedelics to legitimacy is one of them, and it will widen the others.</div>
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<em style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 16px;"><a href="http://www.charleseisenstein.net/" style="color: #527682; line-height: 24px;" target="_blank">Charles Eisenstein</a> is a speaker and writer focusing on themes of human culture and identity. He is the author of several books, most recently </em><em style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">and </em><em style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">. </em><em style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">Reprinted from </em><em style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">(Spring 2016), a publication of the<a href="http://www.maps.org/" style="color: #527682; line-height: 24px;" target="_blank">Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies</a>, which is a 501(c)(3) non-profit research and educational organization that develops medical, legal, and cultural contexts for people to benefit from the careful uses of psychedelics and marijuana.</em><br />
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<br />NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-27851246084867794062016-07-07T12:15:00.001-07:002016-07-07T12:15:49.160-07:00The Ultimate Double Standard: Washington Has Been Obsessed With Punishing Secrecy Violations — Until Hillary Clinton<br />
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<a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/07/05/washington-has-been-obsessed-with-punishing-secrecy-violations-until-hillary-clinton/" target="_blank"><br /></a>
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<a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/07/05/washington-has-been-obsessed-with-punishing-secrecy-violations-until-hillary-clinton/" target="_blank">Washington Has Been Obsessed With Punishing Secrecy Violations — Until Hillary Clinton</a></h1>
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Glenn Greenwald</div>
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<img alt="Image result for Hillary Images" height="425" 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<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01, Georgia, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 30px; margin-bottom: 1em;">
<span style="box-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 2px 0px, rgb(17, 17, 17) 0px 5px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: TIActuBeta-ExBold_web, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 0.1em; text-transform: uppercase;">SECRECY IS A VIRTUAL</span> religion in Washington. Those who violate its dogma have been punished in the harshest and most excessive manner — at least when they possess little political power or influence. As has been<a href="http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/10/jake-tapper/cnns-tapper-obama-has-used-espionage-act-more-all-/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">widely noted</a>, the Obama administration has prosecuted more leakers under the 1917 Espionage Act than <em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01-Italic, Georgia, serif;">all prior administrations combined</em>. Secrecy in D.C. is so revered that even the most banal documents are reflexively marked classified, making their disclosure or mishandling a felony. As former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden <a href="http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/DOC_0005393249.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">said back in 2000</a>, “Everything’s secret. I mean, I got an email saying, ‘Merry Christmas.’ It carried a top-secret NSA classification marking.”</div>
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People who leak to media outlets for the selfless purpose of informing the public — Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Drake, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden — face decades in prison. Those who leak for more ignoble and self-serving ends — such as enabling hagiography (<a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/leon-panetta-seal-leak-092263" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Leon Panetta</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com.br/search?q=david+petraeus+leak+mistress&oq=david+petraeus+leak+mistress&aqs=chrome..69i57.6188j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">David Petraeus</a>) or ingratiating oneself to one’s mistress (Petraeus) — face career destruction, though they are <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/21/politics/21CLIN.html?pagewanted=all" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">usually spared if they are sufficiently Important-in-D.C</a>. For low-level, powerless Nobodies-in-D.C., even <a href="http://www.navytimes.com/story/military/crime/2015/07/29/navy-engineer-sentenced-for-mishandling-classified-material/30862027/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">the mere mishandling of classified information</a> — <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/kristian-saucier-investigation-hillary-clinton-223646" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">without any intent to leak</a> but merely to, say, work from home — has <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/sacramento/press-releases/2015/folsom-naval-reservist-is-sentenced-after-pleading-guilty-to-unauthorized-removal-and-retention-of-classified-materials" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">resulted in criminal prosecution</a>, career destruction, and the permanent loss of security clearance.</div>
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This extreme, unforgiving, unreasonable, excessive posture toward classified information came to an instant halt in Washington today — just in time to save Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations. FBI Director James Comey, an Obama appointee who served in the Bush DOJ, held a press conference earlier this afternoon <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b.-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clintons-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">in which he condemned</a> Clinton on the ground that she and her colleagues were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” including top-secret material.</div>
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Comey also detailed that <a href="https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/750389987917508608" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">her key public statements defending her conduct</a>— i.e., that she never sent classified information over her personal email account and had turned over all “work-related” emails to the State Department — were utterly false; insisted “that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position … should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation”; and argued that she endangered national security because of the possibility “that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account.” Comey also noted that others who have done what Clinton did “are often subject to security or administrative sanctions” — such as demotion, career harm, or loss of security clearance.</div>
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Despite all of these highly incriminating findings, Comey explained, the FBI is recommending to the Justice Department that Clinton not be charged with any crime. “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information,” he said, “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” To justify this claim, Comey cited “the context of a person’s actions” and her “intent.” In other words, there is evidence that she did exactly what the criminal law prohibits, but it was more negligent and careless than malicious and deliberate.</div>
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Looked at in isolation, I have no particular objection to this decision. In fact, I agree with it: I don’t think what Clinton did rose to the level of criminality, and if I were in the Justice Department, I would not want to see her prosecuted for it. I do think there was malignant intent: Using a personal email account and installing a home server always seemed to be designed, at least in part, to control her communications and hide them from FOIA and similar disclosure obligations. As the<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01-Italic, Georgia, serif;"> New York Times</em> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/us/politics/state-department-hillary-clinton-emails.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">noted</a> in May about a highly incriminating report from the State Department’s own Auditor General: “Emails disclosed in the report made it clear that she worried that personal emails could be publicly released under the Freedom of Information Act.”</div>
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Moreover, Comey expressly found that — contrary <a href="https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/750389987917508608" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">to her repeated statements</a> — “the FBI also discovered several thousand work-related emails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014.” The Inspector General’s report similarly, in the words of the <em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01-Italic, Georgia, serif;">NYT</em>, “undermined some of Mrs. Clinton’s previous statements defending her use of the server.” Still, charging someone with a felony requires more than lying or unethical motives; it should require a clear intent to break the law along with substantial intended harm, none of which is sufficiently present here.</div>
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But this case does not exist in isolation. It exists in a political climate where secrecy is regarded as the highest end, where people have their lives destroyed for the most trivial — or, worse, the most well-intentioned — violations of secrecy laws, even in the absence of any evidence of harm or malignant intent. And these are injustices that Hillary Clinton and most of her stalwart Democratic followers have never once opposed — but rather enthusiastically cheered. In 2011, Army Private Chelsea Manning was charged with multiple felonies and faced decades in prison for leaking documents that she firmly believed the public had the right to see; unlike the documents Clinton recklessly mishandled, <em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01-Italic, Georgia, serif;">none of those was top secret</em>. Nonetheless, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/case-of-accused-army-leaker-carries-high-stakes/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">this</a> is what then-Secretary Clinton said in justifying her prosecution:</div>
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I think that in an age where so much information is flying through cyberspace, we all have to be aware of the fact that some information which is sensitive, which does affect the security of individuals and relationships, deserves to be protected and<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01-Italic, Georgia, serif;"> we will continue to take necessary steps to do so.</em></div>
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Comey’s announcement also takes place in a society that imprisons more of its citizens than any other in the world by far, for more trivial offenses than any Western nation — overwhelmingly when they are poor or otherwise marginalized due to their race or ethnicity. The sort of leniency and mercy and prosecutorial restraint Comey extended today to Hillary Clinton is simply unavailable for most Americans.</div>
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What happened here is glaringly obvious. It is the tawdry byproduct of a criminal justice mentality in which — as I documented in my 2011 book<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01-Italic, Georgia, serif;">With Liberty and Justice for Some</em> — those who wield the greatest political and economic power are virtually exempt from the rule of law even when they commit the most egregious crimes, while only those who are powerless and marginalized are harshly punished, often for the most trivial transgressions.</div>
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Had someone who was obscure and unimportant and powerless done what Hillary Clinton did — recklessly and secretly install a shoddy home server and work with top-secret information on it, then outright lie to the public about it when they were caught — they would have been criminally charged long ago, with little fuss or objection. But Hillary Clinton is the opposite of unimportant. She’s the multimillionaire former first lady, senator from New York, and secretary of state, supported by virtually the entire political, financial, and media establishment to be the next president, arguably the only person standing between Donald Trump and the White House.</div>
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Like the Wall Street tycoons whose systemic fraud triggered the 2008 global financial crisis, and like the military and political officials who instituted a worldwide regime of torture, Hillary Clinton is <em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01-Italic, Georgia, serif;">too important</em> to be treated the same as everyone else under the law. “Felony charges appear to be reserved for people of the lowest ranks. Everyone else who does it either doesn’t get charged or gets charged with a misdemeanor,” Virginia defense attorney Edward MacMahon <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/kristian-saucier-investigation-hillary-clinton-223646" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">told</a> <em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: SwiftNeueLTW01-Italic, Georgia, serif;">Politico</em> last year about secrecy prosecutions. Washington defense attorney Abbe Lowell has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/obama-double-standard-petraeus-leaks" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6653ff; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">similarly denounced</a> the “profound double standard” governing how the Obama DOJ prosecutes secrecy cases: “Lower-level employees are prosecuted … because they are easy targets and lack the resources and political connections to fight back.”</div>
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The fact that Clinton is who she is: that is undoubtedly what caused the FBI to accord her the massive benefit of the doubt when assessing her motives. Her identity, rather than her conduct, was clearly a major factor in his finding nothing that was — in the words of Comey — “clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice.”</div>
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But a system that accords treatment based on who someone is, rather than what they’ve done, is the opposite of one conducted under the rule of law. It is, instead, one of systemic privilege. As Thomas Jefferson put it in a 1784 letter to George Washington, the ultimate foundation of any constitutional order is “the denial of every preeminence.” Hillary Clinton has long been the beneficiary of this systemic privilege in so many ways, and today, she received her biggest gift from it yet.</div>
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The Obama-appointed FBI director gave a press conference showing that she recklessly handled top-secret information, engaged in conduct prohibited by law, and lied about it repeatedly to the public. But she won’t be prosecuted or imprisoned for any of that, so Democrats are celebrating. But if there is to be anything positive that can come from this lowly affair, perhaps Democrats might start demanding the same reasonable leniency and prosecutorial restraint for everyone else who isn’t Hillary Clinton.</div>
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NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-41009526826983698872016-06-28T18:08:00.000-07:002016-06-28T18:08:20.441-07:00The Brexit Raises a New Issue For Hillary Clinton: The Democracy Deficit<br />
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<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/06/28/brexit-raises-new-issue-hillary-clinton-democracy-deficit" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Brexit Raises a New Issue For Hillary Clinton: The Democracy Deficit</a></h1>
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<b>Focusing on immigration and trade fails to grasp the larger challenge posed by populist insurgencies worldwide.</b></div>
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What the UK's stunning decision to exit the European Union says about US politics should be read in terms of the larger question of democracy, not just immigration and trade. (Photo: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images)</div>
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How the (not so) United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union affects US politics is now a hot topic.</div>
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Some suggest that the “Brexit” is a sign that <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/brexit-eu/488597/?utm_source=atltw" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">an anti-immigration voter backlash</a> is coming to the US. Others, like CNN pundit Van Jones, go so far as to suggest that the UK <a href="http://www.triplepundit.com/2016/06/brexit-shows-trump-can-win-presidential-election-u-s/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">proved Donald Trump could win</a>.</div>
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Attempting to calm potential panic, Hillary Clinton’s campaign advisers <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/us/politics/brexit-revolt-casts-a-shadow-over-hillary-clintons-caution.html?_r=1" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">told <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The New York Times</em></a> there is little to fear from the Brexit campaign’s success, assuring supporters that the political circumstances of the two countries are “very different.” The advisers claim no need to alter communications strategy on topics such as immigration and trade — two of the central topics in the UK referendum campaign.</div>
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Clinton’s advisers are correct on the details but seem to be missing the bigger picture.</div>
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It’s true that in the US, immigration, for all the passion it arouses, is viewed far more favorably than in the UK. Recent polls show a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/most-us-voters-view-immigrants-positively-most-trump-voters-dont/2016/03/31/6f2dec5e-f766-11e5-a3ce-f06b5ba21f33_story.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">majority of Americans have a favorable view of immigrants</a> and <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">43 percent of US voters want less immigration</a>. This is drastically different than the <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/baml-eu-referendum-report-immigration-and-refugee-crisis-is-most-important-brexit-issue-2015-10" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">78 percent of UK voters</a> who wanted limits on the number of people moving to the UK from the EU.</div>
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There is another, larger and less-discussed lesson from the Brexit to which Clinton’s staff would be wise to pay attention: the democratic deficit.</div>
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Clinton must take rising xenophobia seriously, but immigration-related fear cannot alone make Trump president.</div>
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While it’s an open question whether Clinton’s economic platform will appeal to displaced workers (many of whom <a href="http://www.aflcio.org/Issues/Trade/NAFTA" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">feel they were displaced</a> by trade policies championed by her husband), there is another, larger and less-discussed lesson from the Brexit to which Clinton’s staff would be wise to pay attention: the “<a href="http://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/democratic_deficit.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">democratic deficit</a>.”</div>
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The democratic deficit — or unrepresentative aspects of political institutions — has long plagued the European Union. It leads many to call the institution <a href="https://www.clingendael.nl/publication/if-not-eu-who-will-britain-blame-its-democratic-deficit-0?lang=nl%20target=" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">“technocratic,” “elitist” and “unaccountable.”</a></div>
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In the case of the EU, the democratic deficit stems from elections limited to only one <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/05/europes-democratic-deficit-is-getting-worse/371297/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">branch of the institution</a>, perceived lack of transparency and overly complex governing structures.</div>
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Millions across Europe claim EU institutions do not <a href="http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/05/12/a-fragile-rebound-for-eu-image-on-eve-of-european-parliament-elections/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">sufficiently represent their will</a>. This sentiment is particularly strong in the UK, where a recent report showed that <a href="https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/sites/default/files/Tackling-Europes-democratic-deficit.pdf" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">74 percent of UK citizens</a> do not feel their voices are heard by the EU.</div>
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Perceived powerlessness in the face of a multinational institution inevitably leads to resentment and estrangement. Such institutional alienation likely served as a base off which other feelings, like anti-immigration and economic resentment, mobilized in the Brexit vote.</div>
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The democratic deficit is hardly an isolated phenomenon. The US suffers from it, too.</div>
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US voters increasingly feel their voices are not heard in the political process. </div>
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A <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/01/us/politics/100000003715181.mobile.html?_r=0" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">2015 <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times</em>/CBS poll showed</a> the supermajority of voters believe the wealthy have disproportional influence in American politics. This feeling is not misplaced; the vast majority of voters are indeed <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">politically powerless</a>.</div>
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Resentment resulting from this deficit is also apparent in the US. The 2016 insurgent campaigns of Trump and Bernie Sanders have proven democratic alienation is enough to disrupt and potentially fracture existing US political-party arrangements.</div>
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Both Sanders and Trump attracted disaffected voters by attacking the US political system as one bought by special interests. Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/627841345789558788?lang=en" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">attacked his GOP primary opponents</a> for courting Koch money and <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/donald-trumps-so-rich-i-cant-be-bought-120743" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">touted his self-financed campaign</a> as evidence that he could not be bought. Sanders accepted only small campaign contributions and decried <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/269441-sanders-wall-street-buying-influence-with-hillary" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">corporate influence in elections</a>.</div>
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Voters are angry and rightfully so. And despite claims by her advisers that everything is fine, Clinton has not yet done enough to address these concerns.</div>
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While her <a href="https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/campaign-finance-reform/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">policy platform</a> on democracy reform is strong — virtually identical to that of Sanders — she has failed to make the democratic deficit and her plan to fix it central to her campaign.</div>
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To avoid a Brexit-like backlash, Clinton must work significantly harder to convince the American people she stands with them, not above them. And she must reinvigorate the belief in collective <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">and</em> personal agency to shape the country’s future.</div>
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This means taking seriously the American public’s feelings of alienation and powerlessness — particularly concerning the wealthy buying political influence. Toward this end, she should continue to embrace reforms like publicly financed elections to present a concrete and realizable route to political empowerment.</div>
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Fortunately for Clinton, she is well-positioned to be a champion on this issue.</div>
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First, the Democratic Party finally seems to be warming to the idea of campaign-finance reform. All three of the party’s major candidates for president had strong, comprehensive plans to address the democracy deficit.</div>
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Second, Sanders proved focusing on money in politics mobilizes and expands the Democratic base. This alone should serve as enough of an incentive for the Clinton campaign.</div>
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Third, Clinton can afford to irk Wall Street: Her <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/20/politics/republicans-cash-crunch-donald-trump/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">unprecedented fundraising advantage</a> over Trump would be a sufficient buffer to counter any financial retribution. Moreover, as former Bush administration <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-it-comes-to-trump-a-republican-treasury-secretary-says-choose-country-over-party/2016/06/24/c7bdba34-3942-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson underscored over the weekend</a>, there are strong signals that Wall Street would prefer stability under Clinton than the unpredictability of Trump.</div>
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The burden of cleaning up the democratic mess — one created by generations of men — falls upon the nation’s first female presidential nominee.</div>
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Lastly, Trump is quickly losing his claim as a reformer. To date, he has not endorsed meaningful policy to fix the democratic deficit — making his claim as a reformer fallible. Trump also has <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/15/election-center-2016/ip-forecast-trump-fundraiser/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">started to court large donations for the general election</a> — completely destroying the moral high ground he claimed for not taking corporate donations during the nomination fight. That opens the door for Clinton to use the democracy deficit effectively in the upcoming debates.</div>
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In some respects, it may not be fair that the burden of cleaning up the democratic mess — one created by generations of men — falls upon the nation’s first female presidential nominee. Nevertheless, it’s gradually becoming clear the timing and circumstances may make it Clinton’s job.</div>
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The Brexit serves as a reminder, though: Should Clinton fully embrace fixing democracy, she must be ready to make good on any promises she makes. If not, the crisis of institutional legitimacy and potential for backlash will only grow larger — just as it did in the UK.</div>
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<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/author/adam-eichen" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="" class="caption-processed" height="65" src="http://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_bio_small/public/authors/eichen.jpg?itok=PfhK0qM2" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="65" /></a></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold;">Adam Eichen</strong> is a member of the Democracy Matters Board of Directors and a Maguire Fellow at the French research institute <a href="http://www.sciencespo.fr/%C3%A0-propos/qui-sommes-nous" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">Sciences Po</a>, doing research on comparative campaign finance policy. He served as the deputy communications director for Democracy Spring.</span></div>
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NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-41796899321920031762016-06-10T06:22:00.000-07:002016-06-10T07:20:07.499-07:00Beware of False Progressive Scams Taking Your Money and Shaping Your Opinions<b>Two articles --</b><br />
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<a href="http://www.downwithtyranny.com/" style="background-color: #112233; color: #779988; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.22px; line-height: 18.33px;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3W4jcz1rWREjAqrvB6vWONEmP2okDyAJrbET4w1TyOMy1O5hp5eODwclnHKaIaBn-MAdaeC4tW3UtohRMD4kqilrVhTCm_aEa702KZmWZGiO8sgkBNCPkmlUpKK2_8GPYV5QCPvQPPl0/s1600/dwtlogoBTRANSsrgb112.jpg" style="border-width: 0px;" /></a><br />
<span style="background-color: #112233; color: #aabbcc; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.22px; line-height: 18.33px;">"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." -- Sinclair Lewis</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2015/07/is-endcitizensunitedorg-scam.html" target="_blank">Beware The Emails From Political Scam Artists-- On Both Sides Of The Aisle</a></span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Are you ready for the frenzy? The end-of-the-year DCCC e-mail craziness has already begun-- and not just from the rancid organization itself, but from it's rancid candidates, its rancid allies and it's rancid front groups like the toxic twins, "Progressive Turnout Project" and "End Citizens United," self-enrichment schemes for <a href="https://shar.es/1GVmTb" style="color: #666666;">corrupt</a> ex-DCCC staff, particularly the crooked DCCC hacks at Mothership Strategies Greg Berlin, Jake Lipsett, and Charles Starnes. On <a href="http://www.mothershipstrategies.com/end-citizens-united" style="color: #666666;">their website</a> they boast of having made the <a href="https://shar.es/1GV0eF" style="color: #666666;">notorious online scam operation</a> for right-wing Democrats, End Citizens United "one of the most powerful voices in Democratic politics in 2016. What started as just an online presence is now poised to make a major impact in the 2016 Election."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">EndCitizensUnited alone has sucked over $5 million dollars out of grassroots progressives who are unaware that their money is going straight into the pockets of self-serving profiteers and-- if there's anything left over-- to anti-progressive candidates posing as real Democrats. One of the most successful and sought after Democratic political operatives, who knows Mothership well, told us this morning that the firm "is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with the Beltway. A few hacks who think their cozy relationships with equally lackluster staffers at the party institutions makes them political geniues, is how one would describe most any firm in DC. The good online firms-- like Revolution, which is doing Bernie's campaign-- actually use their intelligence and creativity to inspire people to donate and become engaged. The rest just use their relationships to cut corners so they don't have to do any hard work. All the while, they diminish the returns from grassroots campaign activities for actual progressive candidates."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Last April, just before Motherships' EndCitizenUnited scam was causing concern among progressives nationally, Michael Whitney, a reputable progressive strategist penned a related article about the DCCC and DSCC for <i>The Nation</i>, <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/why-are-political-groups-pretending-be-debt-collectors/" style="color: #666666;">Why Are Political Groups Pretending To Be Debt Collectors?</a>. He wrote that he "was in charge of e-mail advocacy for the blog Firedoglake, and it was part of my job to get people to open e-mails, sign petitions, and make donations to support our work. I thought using 'Final notice' would get more people to notice the pitch, which began 'This is your final notice to sign our emergency petition to progressive Members of Congress…' </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Unfortunately, it appears I was among the first in the political advocacy world to employ that deception, and today the tactic is increasingly common. Recently, I woke up to an e-mail from an address that began FINAL-NOTICE, and the subject line was “AUTO-CONFIRM: [M. Whitney (3/31/2015)].” It wasn’t from my bank, but rather the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The DCCC and the House Majority PAC (a group also working to elect Democrats to Congress) are probably the two biggest offenders when it comes to faux-debt collection fundraising pitches, but they are not alone. The National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee also sends similar e-mails, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Republican party, and the Prop 8 Legal Defense Fund have all tried it in the recent past.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">...I get that political e-mail fundraising has taken on an even more frenzied, gimmicky, and desperate approach than ever before, as the need for cash becomes increasingly important in politics, and as more and more campaigns are competing for inbox attention.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But these pitches are different, and dangerous. They bank on fear: that the recipient missed a payment; that they’re behind on bills; that their power will be cut.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Most e-mails in this genre follow a similar formula. They feature phrases like “NOTICE: [CANCELLATION]” and “FINAL NOTICE.” Some might use an official-sounding beginning of an e-mail address (like SECOND.NOTICE@, or accounting-dept@). In the body of the e-mail there is sometimes more deceptive language, like “you are officially on notice” or “imminent cancellation.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">...I have to wonder if even a moment of panic that something is wrong with your personal finances is irresponsible-- and even predatory-- especially in times of financial malaise.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">People struggling with debt are at least twice as likely to have mental health problems, including 29 percent of people with “high stress debt” who have severe anxiety, according to a study from the University of Nottingham. Seeing an e-mail screaming “on notice” or “imminent cancellation” could be an anxiety-provoking event for some people. Anyone who has struggled to pay the bills, even temporarily, knows the dread of opening the mail to find increasingly urgent notices from banks, utility companies, or student lenders.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">...This is something fundraising professionals ought to consider going forward. The increased volume of e-mail that people receive has dramatically grown a culture of “optimization,” in the industry, which means making tweaks and changes to e-mails that can see a lift in fundraising numbers even if by a few percentage points. These changes can include different color buttons, mobile-friendly e-mail wrappers, or bigger fonts. Debt-scare e-mails probably achieve a decent bump too, but at what cost?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Aside from potentially turning off recipients, there could be political consequences as well. The College Republicans caught heat in 2004 for a deceptive direct mail program that asked senior citizens to donate to “Republican Headquarters,” while failing to mention aside from a small font at the bottom of a letter that the college group wasn’t affiliated with the actual Republican party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There hasn’t yet been similar blowback to phony debt collection pitches-- not yet anyway. Maybe it’s coming. But for me, it’s a line that I crossed once, and that I will never cross again.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He wrote that 8 months ago. And there has been tremendous blowback, not just for organizations like the DCCC but also for the scam front groups they set up like "EndCitizensUnited" and "Progressive Turnout Project," which works-- as far as it works at all-- to elect Schumercrats like Patrick Murphy, Tammy Duckworth, Ann Kirkpatrick to the Senate-- and craven right-wing New Dems and Blue Dogs like Kyrsten Sinema, Ann Kuster, Brad Schneider, Cheri Bustos, Ami Bera, and Pete Aguilar. They sprinkle in a few names of recognizable progressives like Russ Feingold and Carol Shea-Porter to hoodwink into casual readers into thinking it's a progressive list. Almost all the incumbents on it are dreadful with excruciating records of supporting the Republican agenda.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So what should a good fundraising e-mail look like? Alan Grayson and Elizabeth Warren send them out all the time. They're rational, entertaining and informative and I'm always happy when I see first-time candidates-- like Alex Law in New Jersey-- using them as models, instead of the Steve Israel models that turn people off so badly and "burn the lists," very much Israel's intention. Today though, I received a fundraising e-mail from Milwaukee Congresswoman Gwen Moore, not for herself, but for her Maryland colleague, Donna Edwards. It was very effective, getting right to some salient points about <i>why</i> Edwards merits serious consideration: "It's been 23 years since the first and only African American woman was elected to the United States Senate... You're saying that it's time to have another woman in the Senate who understands what it's like to to fight for pay for equal work. Not because she read about it, but because she's lived it as a woman of color in the workplace. Donna's ready to take on the old boys' club, establishment, and special interests... I've worked closely with Donna to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, tackle income inequality, and stand up to the special interests that try to dismantle the middle class and hurt our most vulnerable. And now she's ready to take that fight to the Senate and continue the legacy of women's leadership and progressive spirit that Sen. Mikulski's built in Maryland." If you feel at all inspired and want your contribution to be meaningful, <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/senate2016?refcode=dwt&recurring=11&tandembox=show" style="color: #666666;">send it <i>directly</i> to Donna's campaign</a>, not the the scam artists and Schumercrats from the DSCC!</span><br />
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<a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/senate2016?refcode=thermometer" style="color: #666666;"><img alt="Goal Thermometer" src="https://secure.actblue.com/x/object/actblue-badges/page/senate2016/thermometer/dark.png" style="border: 1px solid rgb(85, 136, 102); margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 4px;" /></a><br />
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<b style="font-size: 12.61px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">UPDATE</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There probably are few campaigns as inherently dishonest and manipulative as "ex"-Republican Patrick Murphy's attempt to defeat Alan Grayson in the Florida Democratic primary. And, predictably, his barrage of e-mails has every bad trait that's ever been invented to deceive and cheat. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This morning a friend of mine, "Peter," forwarded me an e-mail he got from Schumercrat Patrick Murphy with his own note: "The old matching program bullshit. Tells you what kind of Senator he'd be if he deceives like this for money in the campaign." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We have a chance, Peter.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The National Journal ranked Marco Rubio’s Senate seat fourth as one of the most likely to flip parties in 2016.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That means we have a chance to grab it, but this race is competitive. We cannot afford to miss one fundraising goal and we have our last end-of-quarter goal in 24 hours.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This is our most important goal of the year-- and, right now-- we’re behind. We’ve started a matching program for our most active supporters.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Peter-- you’ve qualified for our matching program. But this offer won’t last for long. If you give before midnight on the 31st, your gift will be doubled and so will your impact.</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Can you give $5 or more before 12/31? Your gift will be matched.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I know the holidays aren’t over, and this is probably still a busy time for you. But we’ve already had a glimpse of what conservative special interest groups are plotting for next year, and it isn’t pretty.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Before the National Journal list even came out, a SuperPAC decided to attack me with a video distorting my record and cheaply attempting to play upon Americans’ fear of terrorism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">They’ll try anything to get ahead and make sure Democrats don’t regain majority control of the Senate.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The only way to silence them is with grassroots support like yours. I need you to maximize your impact by giving what you can today. We’ll double your donation to make sure we keep momentum on our side.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thank you,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Patrick</span></blockquote>
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<span style="display: block; float: left; text-align: left;">posted by DownWithTyranny @ <a href="http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2015/12/beware-emails-from-political-scam.html" style="color: #666666;" title="permanent link">10:00 AM</a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #112233; color: #aabbcc; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.22px; line-height: 18.33px;">"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." -- Sinclair Lewis</span><br />
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TUESDAY, JULY 07, 2015</h2>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2015/07/is-endcitizensunitedorg-scam.html" target="_blank">Is EndCitizensUnited.org A Scam?</a></span></h2>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Getting unlimited, barely regulated Big Money out of electoral politics-- overturning the Supreme Court's Citizens United corporate-personhood decision-- has become a holy grail of progressive politics. And rightfully, fundamentally so. Bernie Sanders, the only actual progressive running for president, said in May that "if elected I will have a litmus test of my nominee to be a Supreme Court justice. And that nominee will say, we are going to overturn this disastrous decision on <i>Citizens United</i> because that decision is undermining American democracy." In January he <a href="http://www.politicususa.com/2015/01/21/bernie-sanders-files-constitutional-amendment-overturn-citizens-united.html" style="color: #666666;">filed a constitutional amendment that would overturn the decision</a>. Even the corporate Democrat running for president, Hillary Clinton, says <a href="http://sign.citizens-against-citizens-united.com/" style="color: #666666;">she opposes <i>Citizens United</i></a>.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On March 1 an organization dedicated to overturning the decision was launched with claims of being a grassroots effort, EndCitizensUnited.org. They define their tactical mission as making</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">a big splash in 2016 election. We plan to support Democrats in key races who are in favor of meaningful reform to our campaign finance system and who will stand up against <i>Citizens United</i>. We also will stand up for candidates who are under attack by the Koch Brothers and related dark money groups. Why Democrats? Democrats are leading the fight against <i>Citizens United</i>, and we believe meaningful change can happen with their leadership. Even though many Republican and Independent voters agree that undisclosed political spending is out of control, Republican leadership in Congress is standing squarely in the way of overturning this disastrous Supreme Court decision. It has to stop. So we will do what we can to support candidates who are champions for meaningful campaign finance reform.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">They list both the DCCC and the DSCC as institutional supporters, and the organization is run by a former Obama operative from Texas, Jessica Adair. Over the 4th of July weekend, Adair sent out a fundraising e-mail to progressives, including people who had never signed up to get e-mails from the organization. The e-mail read suspiciously like the kind of garbage e-mails the DCCC and DSCC flood everyone's inboxes with. "Did you miss this, Howard?," it began. "On Thursday, we announced End Citizen United PAC's FIRST round of endorsements. Can you chip in $12 or more right now directly to their campaigns?" And then she thanked me for my supposed past support-- an assumption at best, but more likely a manipulative tactic. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>THANK YOU HOWARD!</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.61px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It’s hard to believe how big this organization has grown-- more than 8OO,OOO people dedicated to ending <i>Citizens United</i>.
Thanks to your incredible support, we’re now in a position to start making waves by supporting candidates who are champions of campaign finance reform. I’m proud to announce our first endorsements:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRdcfHmhf6PBGqgt2sIioOaJF1gslIoZW5VRWNehWiwoA2QH3YRmDlsNKJ55KT9xAKNRsZ3LP7CXdNnknBvqPuh3jiJFQBTwjK2K589ds22WZ_W8L5-NGW1qRBJQOtJ1Bw0e0zrUfwsEs/s1600/ECU_Endorsements_20150702.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #666666; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRdcfHmhf6PBGqgt2sIioOaJF1gslIoZW5VRWNehWiwoA2QH3YRmDlsNKJ55KT9xAKNRsZ3LP7CXdNnknBvqPuh3jiJFQBTwjK2K589ds22WZ_W8L5-NGW1qRBJQOtJ1Bw0e0zrUfwsEs/s400/ECU_Endorsements_20150702.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(85, 136, 102); margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 4px;" width="400" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.61px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">...Please consider a donation of $36 directly to these champions of campaign finance reform... Thank you for everything you’ve done to help this organization grow and thrive.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The e-mail smelled to high heaven, and the more I looked into the group, the less grassroots or progressive credibility I found. Its website looks like a phishing operation to collect e-mail addresses for partisan Democratic Party operations like the aforementioned DCCC and DSCC. The website's domain registration is hidden from the public-- very suspicious for a "grassroots organization." It smells like a scam, a New Dem/Blue Dog/DCCC scam using Russ Feingold as bait to lure naive, uninformed progressives into sending unaccountable cash.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I hit reply and sent them an e-mail about their list of endorsees, 9 out of 11 of whom are grotesque DINOs who have spent their time in Congress crossing the aisle and voting with the Republicans-- Blue Dog shitheads like Kyrsten Sinema and Cheri Bustos and utterly worthless New Dems like Pete Aguilar, Scott Peters, Ann Kuster and Ami Bera. And the only senator on the list is DSCC chair Michael Bennet, one of the worst Democrats in that body. Stinky!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The reply was an automated plea for money, typical of what one would expect from grifters. Beware.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[Note: the only candidates this outfit has endorsed who deserve progressive support are Russ Feingold, running to regain his old Wisconsin Senate seat, and Minnesota 8th District Congressman Rick Nolan, two of the only progressives supported by the DCCC and DSCC.] And now, predictably, these scammers have also endorsed "ex"-Republican-- and no friend of reform-- Patrick Murphy, a right-of-center and über-corrupt Florida New Dem.</span></div>
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Labels: <a href="http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/search/label/Citizens%20United" rel="tag" style="color: #666666;">Citizens United</a></div>
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<span style="display: block; float: left; text-align: left;">posted by DownWithTyranny @ <a href="http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2015/07/is-endcitizensunitedorg-scam.html" style="color: #666666;" title="permanent link">7:00 AM</a></span></div>
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NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-82844381607735062592016-05-31T09:40:00.000-07:002016-05-31T09:40:53.524-07:00Yes, Hillary's Server Was Criminal, And The DNC and Obama Could Use it to Totally Subvert Democracy<br />
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<span class="wwscontent" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000;">Exclusive to OpEdNews:</span> </b></span><br />
<span class="wwscontent" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b><br />OpEdNews Op Eds <time datetime="2016-05-30T23:38:17" pubdate="">5/30/2016 at 23:38:17</time></b></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span class="wwscontent" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b><time datetime="2016-05-30T23:38:17" pubdate=""><br /></time></b></span>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/Yes-Hillary-s-Server-Was-by-Rob-Kall-2016-Democratic-Convention_2016-Presidential-Primary-Candidates_2016-Presidential-Race_Federal-Agency-FBI-160530-511.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Yes, Hillary's Server Was Criminal, And The DNC and Obama Could Use it to Totally Subvert Democracy</a></span></h2>
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<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>By <a class="wwscontent" href="http://www.opednews.com/rob" rel="author" style="color: black;"><span itemprop="name">Rob Kall</span></a> </b></i><br />
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<span class="wwstagslist" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Related Topic(s): <a href="http://www.opednews.com/populum/showtags.php?tid=25463&tag=/2016+Democratic+Convention" rel="tag" style="font-size: 8pt;">2016 Democratic Convention</a>; <a href="http://www.opednews.com/populum/showtags.php?tid=23625&tag=/2016+Presidential+Primary+Candidates" rel="tag" style="font-size: 8pt;">2016 Presidential Primary Candidates</a>; <a href="http://www.opednews.com/populum/showtags.php?tid=23593&tag=/2016+Presidential+Race" rel="tag" style="font-size: 8pt;">2016 Presidential Race</a>; <a href="http://www.opednews.com/populum/showtags.php?tid=4412&tag=/Federal+Agency+FBI" rel="tag" style="font-size: 8pt;">Federal Agency FBI</a>; <a href="http://www.opednews.com/populum/showtags.php?tid=25462&tag=/Federal+Records+Act" rel="tag" style="font-size: 8pt;">Federal Records Act</a>;<a href="http://www.opednews.com/populum/showtags.php?tid=8828&tag=/HILLARY+CONCEDES" rel="tag" style="font-size: 8pt;">HILLARY CONCEDES</a>; <a href="http://www.opednews.com/populum/showtags.php?tid=11067&tag=/Hillary+Clinton" rel="tag" style="font-size: 8pt;">Hillary Clinton</a>; <a href="http://www.opednews.com/populum/showtags.php?tid=25460&tag=/Hillary+Server" rel="tag" style="font-size: 8pt;">Hillary Server</a>; <a href="http://www.opednews.com/populum/showtags.php?tid=25461&tag=/James+Comey" rel="tag" style="font-size: 8pt;">James Comey</a></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, </span><span class="wwstagslist" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;"><a href="http://www.opednews.com/populum/add_tags.php?t=a&i=202981" style="font-size: 8pt;"><b>Add</b> Tags</a></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.opednews.com/populum/group_add.php?t=a&i=202981&from=page"><b>Add</b> to My Group(s)</a></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are a lot of reports and claims, analyses and interpretations of the latest findings from on Hillary's private server and emails.</span><br />
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Attorney and Hillary supporter Dan Metcalfe has written, for the law blog, LawNewz.com, a particularly credible and persuasive article, <a href="http://lawnewz.com/politics/hillary-clintons-emails-now-might-finally-take-her-down/" target="_blank" title=""><b>Hillary Clinton's Emails Now Might Finally Take Her Down</b></a>, which suggests a nauseating, yet terrifying possibility. It all hinges on FBI Director Comey doing his job, and, most important, when.</div>
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<cite class="wwscontentsmaller" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9px; text-align: center;" title="FBI Director James Comey">FBI Director James Comey<br />(image by Wikipedia)</cite><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10.6667px; text-align: center;"> </span><a href="http://www.opednews.com/populum/dmca.php" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; text-align: center;" target="_blank" title="Report Copyright Violation">DMCA</a><br />
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Here's Metcalfe's bio:<blockquote style="background-color: #daebef; margin: 0px 12px 10px; padding: 4px;">
<i>Dan Metcalfe is a registered Democrat who has long said that he will vote for Hillary Clinton in November "if she escapes indictment and manages to become the Democratic presidential nominee." He served as Director of the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy for more than 25 years, during which time he handled information-disclosure policy issues on the dozens of Clinton Administration scandals that arose within public view, as well as two that did not. Since retiring in 2007, he has taught secrecy law at American University's Washington College of Law.</i></blockquote>
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Metcalfe first discusses the legality of Hillary's private server, which we'll get to in a minute, but he then goes on to speculate what the DNC and Obama, through the FBI and the DNC could do, which is enough to make you grind your teeth and puke-- no teasing here, but get your barf bag out-- they'll wait until after the Philly convention to bring charges against Hillary, offer her a deal to go light on her if she drops out, then replace her, with John Kerry or Joe Biden.</div>
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So, let's first look at what Metcalfe says about Hillary's criminality. His assessment is damning:</div>
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"...knowing that there are <a href="http://lawnewz.com/politics/hillary-clinton-absolutely-violated-the-federal-records-act-heres-why-she-cant-be-punished/">no applicable penalties </a><a href="http://lawnewz.com/politics/hillary-clinton-absolutely-violated-the-federal-records-act-heres-why-she-cant-be-punished/">within the FRA</a> (Federal Records Act) (or in the FOIA, for that matter, which Ms. Clinton also blatantly circumvented), the primary significance of the IG (State Department's Inspector General) report is that it so flatly and persuasively belies nearly every public "defense" that she has uttered on the matter...</blockquote>
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"No, her self-serving email set-up was not "allowed" under the State Department's rules. No, she was not "permitted" to use a personal email system exclusively as she did. No, what she did was hardly just a matter of her "personal convenience." No, there is no evidence that any State Department attorney (other than perhaps Secretary Clinton herself) ever gave "legal approval" to any part of her special email system.<b> </b>No, everything she did was not "fully above board" or in compliance with the "letter and spirit of the rules," far from it."</blockquote>
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Metcalfe says that Hillary was REQUIRED by the Federal Records Act to maintain all of her official emails in an official system so they could be properly reviewed delineated and retained when she left the State Department. He also says that her private server was subjected to multiple attempts at intrusion, in other words, hacker efforts, including ones by foreign nations.</div>
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Metcalfe offers an interesting exploration of how different players-- Sanders, Trump, the DNC, etc. would consider the risks of Hillary being indicted. Then he throws down the hammer that Hillary:<blockquote style="background-color: #daebef; margin: 0px 12px 10px; padding: 4px;">
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"...seriously wounded by this week's IG (inspector general) report, is manifestly vulnerable to a much greater wound in the form of a criminal indictment for misconduct that far transcends what the IG report dealt with.</div>
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"Former Secretary Clinton's intent (known in criminal law as mens rea), or lack of same, is not what matters in this case. Rather, the applicable legal standard is a mere "gross negligence" one, as specified in the standard national security non-disclosure agreement that she signed and its underlying criminal statutes.</div>
And when you marry that to the fact that (among other things) her admitted failure to use the State Department's special classified email system for classified (or <i>potentially</i> classified) information constituted a clear violation of a criminal prohibition" And this is especially so given that Ms. Clinton did not just violate such laws inadvertently or even only occasionally -- she did so <i>systemically</i>. In other words, her very email scheme itself appears to have been a walking violation of criminal law, one with the mens rea prosecution standard readily met.<br />
"....the ongoing investigation of Ms. Clinton's misconduct is being conducted by the FBI, under the leadership of FBI Director <strong>James Comey</strong>. Those of us who worked under him when he was the deputy attorney general during the George W. Bush Administration know him to be an exceptional man of utmost integrity, one who can be counted on to recommend a criminal prosecution when the facts and the law of a case warrant it, regardless of political circumstances. Given that the facts and law are so clear in Ms. Clinton's case, it is difficult to imagine her not being indicted, unless Jim Comey's expected recommendation for that is abruptly overruled at "Main Justice" (i.e., by Criminal Division Assistant Attorney General <strong>Leslie Caldwell</strong>, by Deputy Attorney General <strong>Sally Yates</strong>, or by Attorney General <strong>Loretta Lynch</strong>) or at the White House by President Obama (who customarily does not intervene in such things and would do so here either secretly or at no small political peril)."</blockquote>
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Metcalfe speculates how the prosecution will pan out. He suggests that</div>
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FBI director James Comey will do the right thing, but the question is When? He predicts it will happen shortly AFTER Hillary wins the nomination and has selected a VP who is confirmed, that Obama, as head of the Democratic party, will make it clear that Hillary is in serious trouble, declare an emergency and offer Hillary a lenient treatment, like Spiro Agnew was given, in exchange for stepping down. Joe Biden or John Kerry will be put in her place to run as President with the VP Hillary selected and the Convention approved running with Kerry or Biden.</div>
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I'm not sure Hillary would go willingly, but if Obama, who has not endorsed her this late in the campaign, sticks it to her, and makes a serious threat, this is possible.</div>
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Metcalfe thinks Bernie as candidate would be a disaster. Of course, I strongly disagree. I hope that Metcalfe is right about FBI director Comey, that he'll prosecute Hillary. But I hope he does the right thing for America, for democracy and justice and announces it before the Philly Convention. Anything less would be a betrayal of the American people.</div>
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<tr><td valign="top" width="70%"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an <a href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/Awakener--My-Occupation----by-Rob-Kall-080629-652.html">awakener</a> and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback,<a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A05E7D6153BF932A35753C1A962948260&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=print">inventing</a> products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- <a href="htttp://www.futurehealth.org">Futurehealth,</a> and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: <a href="http://brainmeeting.com/">Winter Brain</a>, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and <a href="http://www.storycon.org/">Storycon</a>Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded <a href="http://opednews.com/">Opednews.com</a>-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his <a href="http://www.opednews.com/podcasts">Bottom-up Radio show</a>, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to <a href="http://bit.ly/MH5SeR">bottom-up</a> (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project. </i></span><br />
<b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Kall"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Rob Kall Wikipedia Page</i></span></a></b><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Over 200 podcasts are archived for downloading <a href="http://www.opednews.com/podcasts" rel="nofollow">here</a>, or can be accessed from<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/rob-kall-bottom-up-radio-show/id359765013?mt=2" target="_blank" title=""><b> iTunes</b></a>. Rob is also published regularly on the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-kall" rel="nofollow">Huffingtonpost.com</a></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the (<a href="http://www.opednews.com/author/author1.html">more...</a>)</i></span></td></tr>
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<br />NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-27437759558159931612016-05-07T08:00:00.000-07:002016-05-07T08:00:18.069-07:00What is TTIP? And six reasons why the answer should scare you<h2>
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What is TTIP? And six reasons why the answer should scare you</h1>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Have you heard about TTIP? If your answer is no, don’t get too worried; you’re not meant to have</span></h3>
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The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is a series of trade negotiations being carried out mostly in secret between the EU and US. As a bi-lateral trade agreement, TTIP is about reducing the regulatory barriers to trade for big business, things like food safety law, environmental legislation, banking regulations and the sovereign powers of individual nations. It is, as John Hilary, <a href="http://www.waronwant.org/attachments/HILARY_LONDON_FINAL_WEB.pdf" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ec1a2e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Executive Director of campaign group War on Want</a>, said: “An assault on European and US societies by transnational corporations.”</div>
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Since before TTIP negotiations began last February, the process has been secretive and undemocratic. This secrecy is on-going, with nearly all information on negotiations coming from leaked documents and Freedom of Information requests.</div>
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But worryingly, the covert nature of the talks may well be the least of our problems. Here are six other reasons why we should be scared of TTIP, very scared indeed:</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">1 The NHS</span></div>
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Public services, especially the NHS, are in the firing line. One of the main aims of TTIP is to open up Europe’s public health, education and water services to US companies. This could essentially mean the privatisation of the NHS.</div>
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The European Commission has claimed that public services will be kept out of TTIP. However, according to the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/09/01/ttip-eu-us-trade-deal_n_5747088.html" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ec1a2e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Huffington Post</a>, the UK Trade Minister Lord Livingston has admitted that talks about the NHS were still on the table.</div>
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UK: Day of Dissent in London tackles TTIP</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">2 Food and environmental safety</span></div>
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TTIP’s ‘regulatory convergence’ agenda will seek to bring EU standards on food safety and the environment closer to those of the US. But US regulations are much less strict, with 70 per cent of all processed foods sold in US supermarkets now containing genetically modified ingredients. By contrast, the EU allows virtually no GM foods. The US also has far laxer restrictions on the use of pesticides. It also uses growth hormones in its beef which are restricted in Europe due to links to cancer. US farmers have tried to have these restrictions lifted repeatedly in the past through the World Trade Organisation and it is likely that they will use TTIP to do so again.</div>
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The same goes for the environment, where the EU’s REACH regulations are far tougher on potentially toxic substances. In Europe a company has to prove a substance is safe before it can be used; in the US the opposite is true: any substance can be used until it is proven unsafe. As an example, the EU currently bans 1,200 substances from use in cosmetics; the US just 12.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">3 Banking regulations</span></div>
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TTIP cuts both ways. The UK, under the influence of the all-powerful City of London, is thought to be seeking a loosening of US banking regulations. America’s financial rules are tougher than ours. They were put into place after the financial crisis to directly curb the powers of bankers and avoid a similar crisis happening again. TTIP, it is feared, will remove those restrictions, effectively handing all those powers back to the bankers.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">4 Privacy</span></div>
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Remember ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement)? It was thrown out by a massive majority in the European Parliament in 2012 after a huge public backlash against what was rightly seen as an attack on individual privacy where internet service providers would be required to monitor people’s online activity. Well, it’s feared that TTIP could be bringing back ACTA’s central elements, proving that if the democratic approach doesn’t work, there’s always the back door. An easing of data privacy laws and a restriction of public access to pharmaceutical companies’ clinical trials are also thought to be on the cards.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">5 Jobs</span></div>
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The EU has admitted that TTIP will probably cause unemployment as jobs switch to the US, where labour standards and trade union rights are lower. It has even advised EU members to draw on European support funds to compensate for the expected unemployment.</div>
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Examples from other similar bi-lateral trade agreements around the world support the case for job losses. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the US, Canada and Mexico caused the loss of one million US jobs over 12 years, instead of the hundreds of thousands of extra that were promised.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">6 Democracy</span></div>
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TTIP’s biggest threat to society is its inherent assault on democracy. One of the main aims of TTIP is the introduction of Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS), which allow companies to sue governments if those governments’ policies cause a loss of profits. In effect it means unelected transnational corporations can dictate the policies of democratically elected governments.</div>
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ISDSs are already in place in other bi-lateral trade agreements around the world and have led to such injustices as in Germany where Swedish energy company Vattenfall is suing the German government for billions of dollars over its decision to phase out nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Here we see a public health policy put into place by a democratically elected government being threatened by an energy giant because of a potential loss of profit. Nothing could be more cynically anti-democratic.</div>
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There are around 500 similar cases of businesses versus nations going on around the world at the moment and they are all taking place before ‘arbitration tribunals’ made up of corporate lawyers appointed on an ad hoc basis, which according to War on Want’s John Hilary, are “little more than kangaroo courts” with “a vested interest in ruling in favour of business.”</div>
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So I don’t know about you, but I’m scared. I would vote against TTIP, except… hang on a minute… I can’t. Like you, I have no say whatsoever in whether TTIP goes through or not. All I can do is tell as many people about it as possible, as I hope, will you. We may be forced to accept an attack on democracy but we can at least fight against the conspiracy of silence.</div>
NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-26370427955279145002016-05-07T07:26:00.002-07:002016-05-07T07:26:50.322-07:00Conceived While the Public Slept, Obama/Clinton's Monstrous Global Siamese Twins of TPP and TTIP Leaks <img alt="Dissident Voice: a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice" height="168" src="http://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/themes/dissident/images/header.jpg" width="640" /><br />
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<a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/05/the-ttip-leaks/#more-62569" target="_blank">The TTIP Leaks</a></h1>
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by Binoy Kampmark / May 6th, 2016</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The monstrous Siamese twin of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), has been in a growing puddle of dispute after 248 pages of its content were <a href="https://www.ttip-leaks.org/" style="color: #333333;">leaked</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The organisation behind the measure, Greenpeace Netherlands, had done its best to shed light on a document that remains obscured, clandestine and hidden. The TTIP leaks were initiated prior to the commencement of the 13th round of TTIP negotiations between the EU and the US held in New York (April 25-29). According to the organisation, the final document will consist of 25 to 30 chapters with extensive annexes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The leaked and hefty portion constitutes roughly half to two-thirds of the text under negotiation, providing more than a decent snifter as to what European and US diplomats are up to. They have met 13 times over three years in situations that were far from <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/03/french-president-says-non-to-ttip/" style="color: #333333;">transparent</a>. Topics <a href="https://www.ttip-leaks.org/" style="color: #333333;">traversed</a> are bound to worry any individuals with even the slightest leanings to democratic representativeness. “Whether you care about environmental issues, animal welfare, labour rights or internet privacy, you should be concerned about what is in these leaked documents.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A few pointers from the leaks are worth noting. None of the chapters in the released portions make reference to the principle of General Exceptions permitting states to regulate trade “to protect human, animal and plant life or health” for “the conservation of exhaustible natural resources”. The omission suggests who, and what the negotiators are really barracking for.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Similarly to the TPPA, matters of climate change get short shrift, notably in the chapter covering National Treatment and Market Access for Goods. Showing yet again that a privileged corporate interest is inherently hostile to the commonweal, trade is deemed a domain outside the impact of climate change.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Overwhelming floor room is given to corporate agents who are noted in the negotiations as important partners in the determination of foreign policy. While that position has been clearly articulated by US negotiators, the EU remains coy about industry influence. The strongmen and women of capitalism are never far away. Little wonder, then, that popularity for such an arrangement is as low as 39 per cent in Germany and 50 per cent in France.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Those at the European Commission, a body that has been historically indifferent to concepts of sovereignty, has taken the view that they were open all along, the true doyens of transparency. EU trade commissioner Cecelia Malmström seemed to <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-leak-trade-deal-greenpeace-eu-us-tpp-is-this-the-end-a7012976.html" style="color: #333333;">find the fuss</a> over the leaks amusing. “In the past year, the European Commission has opened up the negotiations to make our positions on all matters in the negotiations public. After each negotiation round, we publish round reports as well as our position papers and textual proposals. So the positions of the EU are well-known and nothing new.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Malmström is certainly right in so far as the Commission has been spouting fact sheets, making assumptions that these are perfect in conveying pictures of accuracy to constituents across Europe. As aspirational as they are, such publications only give a sense about some of the essential fault lines in the negotiations. For one, they show that Malmström’s stance that no “EU trade agreement will ever lower our level of protection of consumers, or food safety, or of the environment” seems unduly confident.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The leaks sent ripples through various parliaments in Europe. France’s François Hollande decided on Tuesday to make his opposition clear. “We will never accept questioning essential principles for our agriculture, our culture and for the reciprocity of access to public [procurement] markets.” France’s trade secretary, Matthias Fekl, even went so far as to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36191577" style="color: #333333;">suggest</a> that the agreement, in its current form “would be a bad deal,” one which needed to be suspended. Even prior to the release by Greenpeace, German Deputy Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel had suggested that negotiations had moved into a glacial state.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Such sentiments do little to deflate such ideologues as US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, who puts such suspicions down to matters of misunderstanding. “I think,” she <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ttip-interview-with-us-commerce-secretary-penny-pritzker-a-1089072.html" style="color: #333333;">explained</a> to the German magazine <i>Der Spiegel</i>, “we have to do a better job of educating our peoples about the importance of trade.” In this cosy universe of commercial dealing, trade is all, trade is good – why fight it?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The “TTIP,” pushes Pritzker, “is a geostrategic choice to strengthen the trans-Atlantic bonds between two regions that share the same values and standards.” She proves deaf to questions about concerns of re-enforcing corporate market power at the expense of accountability, insisting on altering “rules and regulations that are standing in the way of doing more business together.” US President Barack Obama similarly<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-leak-greenpeace-trade-deal-eu-us-tpp-ceta-health-environment-a7014731.html" style="color: #333333;">intoned</a> on his recent visit to the UK that the TTIP would eliminate “regulatory and bureaucratic irritants and blockages to trade”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To that end, the Commission has attempted to give the impression that pitfalls can, in time, be papered over with the good sense of compromise. As diversely opposed as the parties are, movement, of the negative sort, is possible. Positions can, as was all too evident in the TPPA negotiations, bend. In some cases, they can be abandoned altogether. That remains the greatest danger: the document continues to flicker, and it will take more than Gallic opposition, Germanic scepticism, and general European stubbornness, to sink it.</span></div>
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Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and can be reached at:<a href="mailto:bkampmark@gmail.com" style="color: #333333;">bkampmark@gmail.com</a>. <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/author/binoykampmark/" style="color: #333333;">Read other articles by Binoy</a>.</div>
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This article was posted on Friday, May 6th, 2016 at 7:50am and is filed under<a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/europe/eu/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">EU</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/europe/france/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">France</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/europe/germany/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Germany</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/economics/tpp/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">TPP</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/economics/trade-economics/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Trade</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/europe/united-kingdom/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">United Kingdom</a>.</div>
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NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-14576574386526630662016-05-06T07:22:00.002-07:002016-05-06T07:22:41.109-07:00Trump is the Least of Our Problems. We Could Have a President Clinton.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://armoryoftherevolution.wordpress.com/about/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Armory of the Revolution</a></span></h2>
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<a href="https://armoryoftherevolution.wordpress.com/2016/05/04/trump-is-the-least-of-our-problem/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Trump is the Least of Our Problems. We Could Have a President Clinton.</a></h1>
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<a class="author" href="https://armoryoftherevolution.wordpress.com/author/armoryoftherevolution/" rel="author" style="border: 0px; color: #3a3a3a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Roland Vincent</a> / <a class="entry-date" href="https://armoryoftherevolution.wordpress.com/2016/05/04/trump-is-the-least-of-our-problem/" style="border: 0px; color: #aaaaaa; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2 days ago</a></div>
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<a href="https://armoryoftherevolution.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/hillary-clinton11.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: #117bb8; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Hillary Clinton Awarded The 2013 Lantos Human Rights Prize" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4659" height="467" src="https://armoryoftherevolution.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/hillary-clinton11.jpg?w=700&h=467" style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin: 20px auto; max-width: 100%;" width="700" /></a></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Democrats hoping for a progressive president winning the White House this year will be sorely disappointed unless Bernie Sanders is nominated and elected.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If Hillary is nominated and elected we will not have anything close to a progressive president.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The differences between the progressive Sanders and Hillary Clinton are profound.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Merely donning the cloak of a Democrat in no way means one is a progressive.</span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hillary supports a belligerent foreign policy. Bernie does not.</span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hillary embraces trade agreements. Bernie does not.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hillary accepts bribes from Wall Street. Bernie does not.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hillary opposes universal healthcare. Bernie supports it.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hillary supports military interventionism. Bernie does not.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hillary supports regime change. Bernie does not.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hillary opposes raising the cap on Social Security contributions. Bernie does not.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hillary opposes banning corporate money from politics. Bernie does not.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hillary supports the revolving door between industry and government. Bernie opposes it.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Should Bernie be unsuccessful in winning the Democratic nomination, he has said he would support Hillary Clinton. But he has also said that she would have to earn the votes of his supporters.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Here are some of the problems she faces in winning our votes:</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Like the general public, Berners do not trust Hillary.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Berners are not persuaded that they must fall in line behind Hillary in order to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Most Berners do not like Trump, but he is actually closer to Bernie than is Hillary on trade, military adventurism, corporate control of government, the revolving door, and lobbyists.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If Hillary wins the White House, she will face a divided Congress and gridlock in government, just as Obama has in his second term. In all probability her negatives will continue to grow and she will be perceived as a failed president. As such, it is probable that the Republicans will sweep elections in 2018 and 2020, assuring that Democrats are unable to control reapportionment after the 2020 Census. Just as occurred in 2010, the Republicans will be able to gerrymander congressional districts in 2020, denying Democrats a majority in the House of Representatives until at least 2030.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If Trump is elected president, the exact opposite result occurs, as Democrats will be running against a failed and unpopular President Trump. They would sweep statehouse races in 2018 and win down ballot contests across the country in 2020. After the 2020 Census, Democrats would draw fair and representative districts, and would be assured of a Democratic majority in Congress for a decade.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">With Trump as the Republican nominee, the choice between him and Hillary isn’t even close. Trump is the overwhelmingly better choice, on policy issues alone.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When reapportionment is factored in, Trump looks positively attractive.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But the most important consideration is what a Hillary vs Trump outcome would mean for the political revolution we have started.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If Hillary is president, Bernie’s revolution will stall at best, unravel and fail at worst. Hillary and her cohorts at the DNC will do all they can to stop insurgent Democrats from challenging Wall Street Democrats in office. With the power of the presidency at her disposal, Hillary will block Bernie at every turn. Her allies in Congress will make life hell for Bernie Sanders. And for all us progressives hoping to change the system.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If Hillary is defeated, however, Bernie will be the most influential Democrat in the party. The revolution will continue at full speed. No pesky Hillary-bots to interfere with our progress or our agenda.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The establishment is terrified of Donald Trump because they cannot control him, and have no hold over him. That panic is driving the nationwide propaganda campaign against him by politicos, media talking heads, political pundits, and lobbyists.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hillary is using their propaganda to frighten voters. If she is not elected, that Big Bad Bogeyman Trump will win!</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If it comes to her and Trump, I hope he does win.</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-85668952517945142872016-04-30T18:25:00.000-07:002016-04-30T19:02:44.043-07:00Blurred Line Between Espionage and Truth: Compare and Contrast HRC and Thomas Drake for Having Classified Info.<br />
<br />
<img alt="The New York Times" border="0" height="26" src="https://a1.nyt.com/assets/article/20160428-190931/images/foundation/logos/nyt-logo-185x26.png" width="185" /><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/business/media/white-house-uses-espionage-act-to-pursue-leak-cases-media-equation.html?" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><br /></a>
<br />
<h1 class="headline" id="headline" itemprop="headline">
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/business/media/white-house-uses-espionage-act-to-pursue-leak-cases-media-equation.html?" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blurred Line Between Espionage and Truth</a></h1>
<br />
David Carr<br />
<br />
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="262" data-total-count="262">
Last
Wednesday in the White House briefing room, the administration’s press
secretary, Jay Carney, opened on a somber note, citing the deaths of
Marie Colvin and Anthony Shadid, two reporters who had died “in order to
bring truth” while reporting in Syria.</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="262" data-total-count="262">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="262" data-total-count="262">
<img alt="" class="media-viewer-candidate" data-mediaviewer-caption="Jake Tapper of ABC News questioned the Obama administration's efforts to prosecute officials." data-mediaviewer-credit="Randy Sager/ABC" data-mediaviewer-src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/02/27/business/carr-jump2/carr-jump2-jumbo.jpg" height="476" itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/02/27/business/carr-jump2/carr-jump2-jumbo.jpg" itemprop="url" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/02/27/business/carr-jump2/carr-jump2-jumbo.jpg" width="640" /> </div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="262" data-total-count="262">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="378" data-total-count="640">
Jake
Tapper, the White House correspondent for ABC News, pointed out that
the administration had lauded brave reporting in distant lands more than
once and then asked, “How does that square with the fact that this
administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive
journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take
whistle-blowers to court?”</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="378" data-total-count="640">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="134" data-total-count="774">
He then suggested that the administration seemed to believe that “the truth should come out abroad; it shouldn’t come out here.”</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="134" data-total-count="774">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="267" data-total-count="1041">
Fair
point. The Obama administration, which promised during its transition
to power that it would enhance “whistle-blower laws to protect federal
workers,” has been more prone than any administration in history in
trying to silence and prosecute federal workers.</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="267" data-total-count="1041">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="309" data-total-count="1350">
The
Espionage Act, enacted back in 1917 to punish those who gave aid to our
enemies, was used three times in all the prior administrations to bring
cases against government officials accused of providing classified
information to the media. It has been used six times since the current
president took office.</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="309" data-total-count="1350">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="278" data-total-count="1628" id="story-continues-1">
Setting aside the case of Pfc. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst who is <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/23/us-usa-manning-idUSTRE81M20M20120223" title="Article at Reuters.">accused of stealing thousands of secret documents</a>,
the majority of the recent prosecutions seem to have everything to do
with administrative secrecy and very little to do with national
security.</div>
<br />
In case after case, the Espionage Act has been deployed as a kind of ad
hoc Official Secrets Act, which is not a law that has ever found
traction in America, a place where the people’s right to know is viewed
as superseding the government’s right to hide its business.<br />
<br />
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="346" data-total-count="2247">
In
the most recent case, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who became
a Democratic staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/us/ex-cia-officer-john-kiriakou-accused-in-leak.html" title="NYT story.">charged under the Espionage Act</a>
with leaking information to journalists about other C.I.A. officers,
some of whom were involved in the agency’s interrogation program, which
included <a class="meta-classifier" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/torture/waterboarding/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about waterboarding.">waterboarding</a>.</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="346" data-total-count="2247">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="276" data-total-count="2523">
For
those of you keeping score, none of the individuals who engaged in or
authorized the waterboarding of terror suspects have been prosecuted,
but Mr. Kiriakou is in federal cross hairs, accused of talking to
journalists and news organizations, including The New York Times.</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="276" data-total-count="2523">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="179" data-total-count="2702">
Mr.
Tapper said that he had not planned on raising the issue, but hearing
Mr. Carney echo the praise for reporters who dug deep to bring out the
truth elsewhere got his attention.</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="179" data-total-count="2702">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="336" data-total-count="3038">
“I
have been following all of these case, and it’s not like they are
instances of government employees leaking the location of secret nuclear
sites,” Mr. Tapper said. “These are classic whistle-blower cases that
dealt with questionable behavior by government officials or its agents
acting in the name of protecting America.”</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="336" data-total-count="3038">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="312" data-total-count="3350">
Mr.
Carney said in the briefing that he felt it was appropriate “to honor
and praise the bravery” of Ms. Colvin and Mr. Shadid, but he did not
really engage Mr. Tapper’s broader question, saying he could not go into
information about specific cases. He did not respond to an e-mail
message seeking comment.</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="312" data-total-count="3350">
<br /></div>
In
one of the more remarkable examples of the administration’s aggressive
approach, Thomas A. Drake, a former employee of the National Security
Agency, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act last year and faced a
possible 35 years in prison<br />
<br />
<img alt="" class="media-viewer-candidate" data-mediaviewer-caption="Thomas A. Drake, a former employee of the National Security Agency, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act last year." data-mediaviewer-credit="Timothy Jacobsen/Associated Press" data-mediaviewer-src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/02/27/business/carr-jump1/carr-jump1-jumbo.jpg" itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/02/27/business/carr-jump1/carr-jump1-popup.jpg" itemprop="url" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/02/27/business/carr-jump1/carr-jump1-popup.jpg" />Thomas Drake <br />
<br />
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="420" data-total-count="4014" id="story-continues-2">
His
crime? When his agency was about to spend hundreds of millions of
dollars on a software program bought from the private sector intended to
monitor digital data, he spoke with a reporter at The Baltimore Sun. He
suggested an internally developed program that cost significantly less
would be more effective and not violate privacy in the way the product
from the vendor would. (He turned out to be right, by the way.)</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="420" data-total-count="4014" id="story-continues-2">
<br /></div>
He was charged with 10 felony counts that accused him of lying to investigators and obstructing justice. Last summer, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/us/10leak.html" title="NYT story.">case against him collapsed</a>, and he <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/16/us/16leak.html" title="NYT story.">pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor</a>, of misuse of a government computer. <br />
<br />
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="154" data-total-count="4400">
Jesselyn
Radack, the director for national security and human rights at the
Government Accountability Project, was one of the lawyers who
represented him.</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="154" data-total-count="4400">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="253" data-total-count="4653">
“The
Obama administration has been quite hypocritical about its promises of
openness, transparency and accountability,” she said. “All presidents
hate leaks, but pursuing whistle-blowers as spies is heavy-handed and
beyond the scope of the law.”</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="253" data-total-count="4653">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="291" data-total-count="4944">
Mark
Corallo, who served under Attorney General John D. Ashcroft during the
Bush administration, told Adam Liptak of The New York Times this month <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sunday-review/a-high-tech-war-on-leaks.html" title="The story.">that he was “sort of shocked”</a> by the number of leak prosecutions under <a class="meta-per" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Barack Obama.">President Obama</a>. “We would have gotten hammered for it,” he said.</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="291" data-total-count="4944">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="148" data-total-count="5092">
As
Mr. Liptak pointed out, it has become easier to ferret out leakers in a
digital age, but just because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be.</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="148" data-total-count="5092">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="280" data-total-count="5372">
These
kinds of prosecutions can have ripples well beyond the immediate
proceedings. Two reporters in Washington who work on national security
issues said that the rulings had created a chilly environment between
journalists and people who work at the various government agencies.</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="280" data-total-count="5372">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="323" data-total-count="5695">
During
a point in history when our government has been accused of sending
prisoners to secret locations where they were said to have been tortured
and the C.I.A. is conducting remote-controlled wars in far-flung
places, it’s not a good time to treat the people who aid in the
publication of critical information as spies.</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="323" data-total-count="5695">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="393" data-total-count="6088">
And
it’s worth pointing out that the administration’s emphasis on secrecy
comes and goes depending on the news. Reporters were immediately and
endlessly briefed on the “secret” operation that successfully found and
killed Osama bin Laden. And the drone program in Pakistan and
Afghanistan comes to light in a very organized and systematic way every
time there is a successful mission.</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="393" data-total-count="6088">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-node-uid="1" data-para-count="217" data-total-count="6305" id="story-continues-3">
There
is plenty of authorized leaking going on, but this particular boat
leaks from the top. Leaks from the decks below, especially ones that
might embarrass the administration, have been dealt with very
differently.</div>
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-node-uid="1" data-para-count="217" data-total-count="6305" id="story-continues-3">
<br /></div>
<div class="story-meta">
<div class="story-notes">
E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;<br />
Twitter.com/carr2n </div>
<div class="story-print-citation">
<br /></div>
A version of this article appears in print on February 27, 2012, on page B1 of the <span itemprop="printEdition">New York edition</span> with the headline: Blurred Line Between Espionage And Truth. <span class="story-footer-links"></span></div>
NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-67368902917365056632016-04-30T14:09:00.000-07:002016-04-30T14:27:59.400-07:00The Clintons, Not Bernie Sanders, Hijacked the Democratic Party<a href="https://medium.com/"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Medium</span></a><br />
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<span class="markup--strong markup--h3-strong"><a href="https://medium.com/@paulmart/how-the-clintons-hijacked-the-democratic-party-fd1327e53235#.nvjc4altc" target="_blank">The Clintons, Not Bernie Sanders, Hijacked the Democratic Party</a></span></h2>
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<span style="font-size: large;">
The heir is not Obama’s, it’s Roosevelt’s</span></h3>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: medium;">by</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a class="link link link--darken link--accent u-accentColor--textNormal u-accentColor--textDarken u-baseColor--link" data-action-type="hover" data-action="show-user-card" data-user-id="20b931ba3911" dir="auto" href="https://medium.com/@paulmart" style="color: #00ab6b; cursor: pointer; line-height: 22.4px; text-decoration: none;"><b>Paul Martinez</b></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.8); font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;">In the 1972 Democratic Primary, </span><em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;">Rolling Stone</em><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.8); font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;"> backed young voters who flocked to the grassroots-based campaign of Senator George McGovern who opposed the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, McGovern lost in a landslide and President Nixon was re-elected.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.8); font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;">Jann Wenner of the same </span><em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;">Rolling Stone </em><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.8); font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;">decides that we should look at that as a reason to ignore today’s youth who overwhelmingly, 80-85% overwhelmingly, support Sen. Bernie Sanders over Former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He cites young voters’ cravings for “idealism, integrity, and authenticity” as the reason we flock to him, as though that craving in itself is a bad thing. (The fact that there’s video of him </span><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bernie+sanders+predicts" href="https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bernie+sanders+predicts" rel="nofollow" style="background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; text-decoration: none;">predicting</a><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.8); font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;"> </span><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkr1UU8vV2w" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkr1UU8vV2w" rel="nofollow" style="background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; text-decoration: none;">almost</a><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.8); font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;"> every </span><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJaW32ZTyKE" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJaW32ZTyKE" rel="nofollow" style="background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; text-decoration: none;">policy</a><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.8); font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;"> </span><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRXXgFNcBY0" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRXXgFNcBY0" rel="nofollow" style="background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; text-decoration: none;">disaster</a><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.8); font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;"> </span><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh4i7kadbhA" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh4i7kadbhA" rel="nofollow" style="background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; text-decoration: none;">years</a><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.8); font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;"> </span><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdFw1btbkLM" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdFw1btbkLM" rel="nofollow" style="background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; text-decoration: none;">before</a><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.8); font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;"> it happened certainly doesn’t hurt, either.)</span><br />
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This is just one piece of a larger argument that <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/15/how-bernie-sanders-is-hijacking-the-democratic-party-to-be-elected-as-an-independent/" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/15/how-bernie-sanders-is-hijacking-the-democratic-party-to-be-elected-as-an-independent/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Bernie Sanders is hijacking the Democratic Party</a>. Wenner also couples the argument with what he found to be another “very clear lesson: America chooses its presidents from the middle, not from the ideological wings.” <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-better-agenda-for-democrats/2015/05/28/cfc1c50e-0531-11e5-8bda-c7b4e9a8f7ac_story.html" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-better-agenda-for-democrats/2015/05/28/cfc1c50e-0531-11e5-8bda-c7b4e9a8f7ac_story.html" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Rep. John Delaney of Maryland</a> also argues that we ought to unite at the political center. “I am worried about where some of the loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party,” he says, forgetting <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://medium.com/@paulmart/i-m-already-compromising-for-bernie-sanders-how-dare-you-ask-me-to-vote-for-hillary-clinton-c824db0fef69#.92ml0h6k2" href="https://medium.com/@paulmart/i-m-already-compromising-for-bernie-sanders-how-dare-you-ask-me-to-vote-for-hillary-clinton-c824db0fef69#.92ml0h6k2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">where the political center is</a> and that Bernie Sanders, in fact, represents the core of what the Democratic Party is — <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">was</em>.</div>
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Let us begin with Wenner’s active decision to ignore all evidence showing Bernie Sanders to be more electable, and wants us to instead support Hillary Clinton because George W. Bush, he argues, was so bad for America. Well then, let’s look at his assessment of the Bush Administration’s failings:</div>
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Bush brought us into a war that still plagues us today; he authorized massive tax cuts for the rich and the corporations; abandoned the Middle East peace process; ushered in the worst financial crisis since the Depression; and totally neglected the climate emergency.</blockquote>
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First, Hillary Clinton supported that war. In fact, just in <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://youtu.be/4o5WAhMsdtU?t=1m" href="https://youtu.be/4o5WAhMsdtU?t=1m" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">2011 she said</a>, “It’s time for the United States to start thinking of Iraq as a business opportunity.” Neoliberal meet Neoconservative. Bill Clinton did little to change tax rates overall and finished the deregulation of banks started by Reagan. Instead of prosecuting banks for gambling with people’s savings, illegal at the time, he repealed the <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">law</em>, Glass-Steagall, and deregulated the rest of the financial market. Hillary Clinton to this day does not support reinstating Glass-Steagall. Wenner brings us back to the Middle East: Based on her <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://time.com/4265947/hillary-clinton-aipac-speech-transcript/" href="http://time.com/4265947/hillary-clinton-aipac-speech-transcript/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">speech at AIPAC</a>, is Hillary Clinton in any position to be a neutral supporter of both Israeli and <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/will-palestinians-hit-hillarys-glass-ceiling/7836" href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/will-palestinians-hit-hillarys-glass-ceiling/7836" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Palestinian interests</a>? (For the record, <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jan/10/usa.israelandthepalestinians1" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jan/10/usa.israelandthepalestinians1" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">W. called on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian land in 2008</a>. <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">Also, for the record, this is not the writer taking a stance for or against Israel or Palestine.</em>) Okay, back to the Economy: worst financial crisis since the Great Depression — yes. Ushered in by President Bush — no. Not completely, at least. That was ushered in by Clintonomics, aka finishing what Reaganomics started.</div>
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Finally, the crisis that is our climate: Bernie Sanders has an undeniably <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/02/12/bernie_sanders_and_hillary_clinton_differ_on_climate_change.html" href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/02/12/bernie_sanders_and_hillary_clinton_differ_on_climate_change.html" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">more aggressive plan</a> to tackle climate change. We don’t have time to debate the extent to which Hillary Clinton’s opinions change based on her donations, which <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/hillary-clinton-rakes-in-money-from-fossil-fuel-interests/" href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/hillary-clinton-rakes-in-money-from-fossil-fuel-interests/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">she indeed takes</a> from <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/8-things-you-need-to-know-about-hillary-clinton-and-climate-change/" href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/8-things-you-need-to-know-about-hillary-clinton-and-climate-change/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">fossil fuel and oil</a>. The fact is that, regardless, she does not have a strong enough plan to stop and reverse the damage we have done over the years. <span class="markup--quote markup--p-quote is-other" data-creator-ids="20b931ba3911" name="ce5f4e6ffc6b" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(39, 243, 106, 0.0980392), rgba(39, 243, 106, 0.0980392)); cursor: pointer; transition: background-color 0.2s;">There is no <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">safe</em> fracking!</span> <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.thenation.com/article/the-problem-with-hillary-clinton-isnt-just-her-corporate-cash-its-her-corporate-worldview/" href="http://www.thenation.com/article/the-problem-with-hillary-clinton-isnt-just-her-corporate-cash-its-her-corporate-worldview/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Support for, or even lack of opposition to, oil pipelines</a> will not cut it for those of us who realize this pressing emergency. (I argue that <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/11/14/bernie_sanders_was_right_on_climate_change_and_terrorism_at_the_debate.html" href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/11/14/bernie_sanders_was_right_on_climate_change_and_terrorism_at_the_debate.html" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Bernie’s plan</a> may not even be strong enough — <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.jill2016.com/plan" href="http://www.jill2016.com/plan" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Jill Stein</a>’s <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/jillstein/pages/620/attachments/original/1344126365/Green_New_Deal_letter_size_printout.pdf?1344126365" href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/jillstein/pages/620/attachments/original/1344126365/Green_New_Deal_letter_size_printout.pdf?1344126365" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Green New Deal</a> would be <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKQXvKvuH94" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKQXvKvuH94" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">a crucial start</a>. <span class="markup--quote markup--p-quote is-other" data-creator-ids="20b931ba3911" name="4c58c5ae464c" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(39, 243, 106, 0.0980392), rgba(39, 243, 106, 0.0980392)); cursor: pointer; transition: background-color 0.2s;"><span class="markup--strong markup--p-strong" style="font-weight: 700;"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">Bernie, please read this and make Dr. Stein your Labor Secretary!</em></span></span><span class="markup--strong markup--p-strong" style="font-weight: 700;"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;"> </em></span><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/12/07/bernie_sanders_climate_plan_calls_for_end_to_nuclear_energy.html" href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/12/07/bernie_sanders_climate_plan_calls_for_end_to_nuclear_energy.html" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;"><span class="markup--strong markup--p-strong" style="font-weight: 700;"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">Martin O’Malley</em></span></a><span class="markup--strong markup--p-strong" style="font-weight: 700;"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;"> for EPA Administrator!</em></span>)</div>
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And cut the crap about donations coming from <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.factcheck.org/2016/04/clintons-fossil-fuel-money-revisited/" href="http://www.factcheck.org/2016/04/clintons-fossil-fuel-money-revisited/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">oil and gas industry employees</a>. For one, <span class="markup--strong markup--p-strong" style="font-weight: 700;">that’s still telling</span>. And two, we all know damn well that <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/apr/01/sorting-out-clintons-fossil-fuel-contributions/" href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/apr/01/sorting-out-clintons-fossil-fuel-contributions/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">if the money is not going directly to her campaign</a>, then it’s <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.npr.org/2016/04/06/473261522/fact-check-more-on-hillary-clinton-and-fossil-fuel-industry-contributions" href="http://www.npr.org/2016/04/06/473261522/fact-check-more-on-hillary-clinton-and-fossil-fuel-industry-contributions" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">going to her Super PACs</a> or to the Democratic National Committee’s <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.hillaryclinton.com/contribute/donate/go/" href="https://www.hillaryclinton.com/contribute/donate/go/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Hillary Victory Fund</a>, and the same person can funnel their cash through every single state DNC to that same Victory Fund. Double everything if the donor has a spouse who can pledge money in their name. <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaign-updates/hillary-clintons-connection-oil-gas-industry/" href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaign-updates/hillary-clintons-connection-oil-gas-industry/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">She is sure as hell seeing the benefits of that money</a>, whether you admit it to yourself or not.</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;">So, why such laissez-faire economics in the left wing party? We’ll have to briefly get into history to see where things went wrong. Just as conservatives, for some reason, worship Ronald Reagan, liberals have our own love affair with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He appointed the country’s first woman Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, and together they pulled us out of the Great Depression. The democratic socialist was so popular that Americans elected him four times, keeping </span><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Woman-Behind-New-Deal/dp/1400078563" href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Woman-Behind-New-Deal/dp/1400078563" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; text-decoration: none;">Secretary Perkins</a><span style="letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;"> in his cabinet throughout his tenure from 1933–1945. Their legacy includes Social Security, unemployment insurance, minimum wage, child labor laws, welfare, the whole New Deal. </span><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://medium.com/@memosalazar/the-one-piece-of-writing-every-hillary-supporter-should-read-6ded898f9613" href="https://medium.com/@memosalazar/the-one-piece-of-writing-every-hillary-supporter-should-read-6ded898f9613" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; text-decoration: none;">Lots of big government spending</a><span style="letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;"> and a robust social safety net, oh my! There were Democrats before FDR, many of them good, and a few after, but he receives the due credit of successfully getting the economy up and running after the stock market crash.</span><br />
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After FDR died, in office, his third Vice President Harry Truman succeeded him, followed by Republican war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower. (Keep in mind the 91% top tax rate during this Republican’s administration.) Democrat John F. Kennedy was then elected, succeeded by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. Then we had Republican Richard Nixon, succeeded by his Vice President Gerald Ford after impeachment. After that came Jimmy Carter, and then two terms of Ronald Reagan, followed by a term of George H. W. Bush. The lone Democrat Jimmy Carter had one term in the middle of four Republicans. Democrats were not winning presidential elections. Back up a little to find some internal restructuring of the Democratic nomination process, in particular decreasing the influence of party insiders. The first candidate to win this more democratically-held primary was anti-war, grassroots-based George McGovern. Shortly after his 1972 landslide loss to Nixon, Superdelegates were introduced. Twelve Republican-controlled years after Carter had Democrats eager to win back the White House. <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">Rolling Stone</em>’s Matt Taibbi explains how they did it:</div>
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That ’72 loss hovered like a raincloud over the Democrats until Bill Clinton came along. He took the White House using a formula engineered by a think tank, the Democratic Leadership Council, that was created in response to losses by McGovern and Walter Mondale.</blockquote>
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The new strategy was a party that was socially liberal but fiscally conservative. It counterattacked Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, a racially themed appeal to disaffected whites Nixon tabbed the “Silent Majority,” by subtly taking positions against the Democrats’ own left flank.</blockquote>
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In 1992 and in 1996, Clinton recaptured some of Nixon’s territory through a mix of populist positions (like a middle-class tax cut) and the “triangulating” technique of pushing back against the Democrats’ own liberal legacy on issues like welfare, crime and trade.</blockquote>
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And that was the point. No more McGoverns. The chief moral argument of the Clinton revolution was not about striving for an end to the war or poverty or racism or inequality, but keeping the far worse Republicans out of power.</blockquote>
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The definition of <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://medium.com/@paulmart/i-m-already-compromising-for-bernie-sanders-how-dare-you-ask-me-to-vote-for-hillary-clinton-c824db0fef69#.kszxiijtf" href="https://medium.com/@paulmart/i-m-already-compromising-for-bernie-sanders-how-dare-you-ask-me-to-vote-for-hillary-clinton-c824db0fef69#.kszxiijtf" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Lesser Evil politics</a>. During Clinton’s presidency, Taibbi says, “purity” came to be derogatory, pointing to <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://prospect.org/article/friends-bill-why-liberals-should-let-clinton#articlecont" href="http://prospect.org/article/friends-bill-why-liberals-should-let-clinton#articlecont" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Richard Rothstein’s 1995 piece</a> in <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">The American Prospect</em>:</div>
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In the relative complacency of 1993–94, Clinton’s progressive reforms could have prevailed only with enthusiastic majority support. When liberals indulge themselves with denunciations of Clinton’s compromises, centrists will not fill the void to support a liberal agenda. <span class="markup--quote markup--blockquote-quote is-other" data-creator-ids="20b931ba3911" name="a85742f09ef4" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(39, 243, 106, 0.0980392), rgba(39, 243, 106, 0.0980392)); cursor: pointer; transition: background-color 0.2s;">The balance scale conceit is particularly dangerous because it rationalizes political irresponsibility, justifying liberal opposition with hopes that, by grace of an invisible hand, purism contributes to progressive victory.</span> The conceit excuses unwillingness to share the burden of morally ambiguous compromise, of deciding which promises must be violated or which treasured goals must be sacrificed when confronted with opposing political force. These unpleasant decisions become the president’s alone to make, while liberal confederates flatter themselves that their hands are clean and that their refusal to share responsibility helps move the administration in a progressive direction.</blockquote>
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<a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://medium.com/@girlziplocked/appreciating-the-difference-between-what-s-rational-and-what-s-right-bb4728dc8480#.shuoar3u3" href="https://medium.com/@girlziplocked/appreciating-the-difference-between-what-s-rational-and-what-s-right-bb4728dc8480#.shuoar3u3" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Morally ambiguous</a> compromise — <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://time.com/3751227/hillary-clinton-george-bush/" href="http://time.com/3751227/hillary-clinton-george-bush/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">sound familiar</a>?</div>
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<a class="markup--anchor markup--mixtapeEmbed-anchor" data-href="https://medium.com/p/de7e9fe57dc9" href="https://medium.com/p/de7e9fe57dc9" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); display: table-cell; padding: 20px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: middle;" title="https://medium.com/p/de7e9fe57dc9"><span class="markup--strong markup--mixtapeEmbed-strong" style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.901961); display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: -8px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Rationalizing Hillary’s Compromise is Not the Moral High Ground</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="markup--em markup--mixtapeEmbed-em" style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.6); display: block; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: -1px; max-height: 120px; overflow: hidden;"><span style="font-size: large;">There’s a common flavor among Hillary Clinton supporters who want to have their vote seen as the moral high road…</span></span><span style="font-size: large;">medium.com</span></a><a class="js-mixtapeImage mixtapeImage u-ignoreBlock" data-media-id="af92af42bdddfd906da092955c6c469b" data-thumbnail-img-id="1*CrXDbJzLQS6cJaChX64gQg.jpeg" href="https://medium.com/p/de7e9fe57dc9" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; background-image: url("https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/fit/c/160/160/1*CrXDbJzLQS6cJaChX64gQg.jpeg"); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: cover; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0901961) 0px 0px 0px 1px inset; box-sizing: border-box; display: table-cell; height: 160px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: middle; width: 160px;"></a></div>
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Bill Clinton vowed not to be weaker than Republicans, so he attacked welfare, gutted our social safety net. He continued deregulating the financial industry like a firstborn heir to the Republicans before him. He introduced trade policies so corporations could manufacture their items in countries without minimum wage laws and import them back to cut costs, as well costing Americans jobs. Clinton unleashed his “tough on crime” platform, which we rightly point to not as the root cause of <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiz3Orv8P_LAhWHkoMKHZrtD60QFggdMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenation.com%2Farticle%2Fhillary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes%2F&usg=AFQjCNF7a5bGpq8DoC7ibEMuCVnu0aXYXQ" href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiz3Orv8P_LAhWHkoMKHZrtD60QFggdMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenation.com%2Farticle%2Fhillary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes%2F&usg=AFQjCNF7a5bGpq8DoC7ibEMuCVnu0aXYXQ" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">mass incarceration but for exacerbating</a> what had been done by Republicans. They did all the ground work, they loaded the gun; all Clinton had to do was pull the trigger. And pull the trigger, he did.<br />
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<span class="markup--quote markup--p-quote is-other" data-creator-ids="20b931ba3911" name="6e04437d52dc" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(39, 243, 106, 0.0980392), rgba(39, 243, 106, 0.0980392)); cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; transition: 0.2s;">Of course Hillary Clinton is not her husband, but if she wants to reminisce about the short-term economic boon of his administration, she cannot reject the failures that come with it.</span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;"> Indeed, she supported all of his policies at the time and most of them today. As Secretary of State she personally oversaw the writing and implementation of more trade deals! And people have the gall to feel offended when we suggest </span><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.theglobalist.com/the-causes-of-hillary-clinton-undoing/" href="http://www.theglobalist.com/the-causes-of-hillary-clinton-undoing/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; text-decoration: none;">Hillary Clinton is a Republican</a><span style="letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;">? Given her history, political tactics, and platform, </span><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.salon.com/2015/11/30/more_like_reagan_than_fdr_im_a_millennial_and_ill_never_vote_for_hillary_clinton/" href="http://www.salon.com/2015/11/30/more_like_reagan_than_fdr_im_a_millennial_and_ill_never_vote_for_hillary_clinton/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; text-decoration: none;">we might as well have the real thing</a><span style="letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;">.</span></div>
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<img height="412" src="https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*sFCCgzXAa1ipinvxfOvIww.png" width="640" /><br />
<span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.6); font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-align: center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.6); font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-align: center;">Thanks to Free Trade, corporations can manufacture in countries with no minimum wage and import it back for free</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;"><br /></span>
<span style="letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;">Oh, and where does economist Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary, fit into all of this? He has come out in </span><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.commoncause.org/press/press-releases/common-cause-chair-robert-reich-takes-leave-of-absence.html" href="http://www.commoncause.org/press/press-releases/common-cause-chair-robert-reich-takes-leave-of-absence.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; text-decoration: none;">support of Bernie</a><span style="letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58;">.</span><br />
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So where do we go from here? Can we bring the Democratic Party back to its roots, <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.salon.com/2014/11/12/bye_bye_blue_dog_democrats_what_the_end_of_conservative_dems_means_for_america/" href="http://www.salon.com/2014/11/12/bye_bye_blue_dog_democrats_what_the_end_of_conservative_dems_means_for_america/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">wave good riddance</a> to the Clintons’ Neoliberalism or is it too far gone? Some argue there is hope, for there is finally <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/12/politics/warren-senate-leadership-post/index.html" href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/12/politics/warren-senate-leadership-post/index.html" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">mainstream support</a> for the progressive ideals championed by <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.salon.com/2014/11/15/its_elizabeth_warrens_party_now_how_to_remake_it_in_the_liberal_heroines_image/" href="http://www.salon.com/2014/11/15/its_elizabeth_warrens_party_now_how_to_remake_it_in_the_liberal_heroines_image/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Elizabeth Warren</a>, Martin O’Malley, and Bernie Sanders. There are rising <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://gabbard.house.gov/" href="http://gabbard.house.gov/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">young Democrats</a> like <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://kyrstensinema.com/" href="http://kyrstensinema.com/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Kyrsten Sinema,</a><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.pahouse.com/Sims/About/Biography" href="http://www.pahouse.com/Sims/About/Biography" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Brian Sims</a>, and <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://elizabethwarren.com/blog/im-supporting-kamala" href="http://elizabethwarren.com/blog/im-supporting-kamala" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Kamala Harris</a> . Others say it is soiled by corruption, going as far as <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.vocativ.com/290724/berniecrats-capitalize-on-sanders-wave-of-support/" href="http://www.vocativ.com/290724/berniecrats-capitalize-on-sanders-wave-of-support/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">calling themselves</a> “<a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://berniecrats.net/" href="http://berniecrats.net/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Berniecrats</a>” and advocating a <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/03/31/bernie_sanders_what_this_country_needs_is_a_progressive_party_and_a_conservative_party.html" href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/03/31/bernie_sanders_what_this_country_needs_is_a_progressive_party_and_a_conservative_party.html" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">new Progressive Party</a>. Given that the Green Party has the social democratic ideals we seek with protections against big money and corruption built into its platform, I suspect <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.salon.com/2000/11/28/hightower/" href="http://www.salon.com/2000/11/28/hightower/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">misguided resentment</a> <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://greenpapers.net/debunked-the-myth-that-ralph-nader-cost-al-gore-the-2000-election/" href="http://greenpapers.net/debunked-the-myth-that-ralph-nader-cost-al-gore-the-2000-election/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">lingers</a> against the Green Party for <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.salon.com/2011/04/04/third_party_myth_easterbrook/" href="http://www.salon.com/2011/04/04/third_party_myth_easterbrook/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential bid</a>. It’s worth noting that Green candidate <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MMahrBteE8" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MMahrBteE8" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Jill Stein</a>’s plan to <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://medium.com/@paulmart/vice-president-bernard-sanders-110b06611cef" href="https://medium.com/@paulmart/vice-president-bernard-sanders-110b06611cef" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">revitalize the economy <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">and</em> combat the changing climate</a> is based off of FDR’s New Deal. Young voters feel no allegiance to <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/06/politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-democrat/" href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/06/politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-democrat/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">party labels</a>, especially one that has been trying to undermine the one honest candidate since the beginning. One thing is certain: we must oust the residual Neoliberals and Corporatists like <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://medium.com/@Tim_Canova" href="https://medium.com/@Tim_Canova" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">Debbie Wasserman Schultz</a> and learn not to repeat our mistakes. The <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://feelthebern.org/" href="http://feelthebern.org/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%); background-position: 0px 22px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 2px; text-decoration: none;">73-year old grandpa</a> is the future, and past, of the American left.</div>
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NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-72523484054711885772016-04-29T17:37:00.001-07:002016-04-29T19:31:08.896-07:00Does the Left Have a Smug Problem?<h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Two articles: 1. Vox and 2. Slate</span></h3>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Vox</span></h2>
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<a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The smug style in American liberalism</a></h1>
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by <a href="http://www.vox.com/authors/emmett-rensin" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">Emmett Rensin</a> on April 21, 2016</div>
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There is a smug style in American liberalism. It has been growing these past decades. It is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really — but by the failure of half the country to know what's good for them.</div>
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In 2016, the smug style has found expression in media and in policy, in the attitudes of liberals both visible and private, providing a foundational set of assumptions above which a great number of liberals comport their understanding of the world.</div>
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It has led an American ideology hitherto responsible for a great share of the good accomplished over the past century of our political life to a posture of reaction and disrespect: a condescending, defensive sneer toward any person or movement outside of its consensus, dressed up as a monopoly on reason.</div>
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The smug style is a psychological reaction to a profound shift in American political demography.</div>
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Beginning in the middle of the 20th century, the working class, once the core of the coalition, began abandoning the Democratic Party. In 1948, in the immediate wake of Franklin Roosevelt, 66 percent of manual laborers voted for Democrats, along with 60 percent of farmers. In 1964, <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2008/4/demographics-teixeira/04_demographics_teixeira.pdf" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">it was</a> 55 percent of working-class voters. By 1980, it was 35 percent.</div>
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The white working class in particular saw even <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2012/08/23/a-closer-look-at-the-parties-in-2012/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">sharper declines</a>. Despite historic advantages with both poor and middle-class white voters, by 2012 Democrats possessed only a 2-point advantage among poor white voters. Among white voters making between $30,000 and $75,000 per year, the GOP has taken a 17-point lead.</div>
<q style="-webkit-box-decoration-break: clone; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: #fff200; border: none; box-shadow: rgb(255, 242, 0) -0.4em 0px 0px, rgb(255, 242, 0) 0.4em 0px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4c4e4d; font-family: Balto, Helvetica, Arial, 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif; font-size: 2em; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.35; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0.2em 0px; quotes: none; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt</q><span style="background-color: #f1f3f2; color: #4c4e4d; font-family: "balto" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "nimbus sans l" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24.75px;"></span><br />
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The consequence was a shift in liberalism's intellectual center of gravity. A movement once fleshed out in union halls and little magazines shifted into universities and major press, from the center of the country to its cities and elite enclaves. Minority voters remained, but bereft of the material and social capital required to dominate elite decision-making, they were largely excluded from an agenda driven by the new Democratic core: the educated, the coastal, and the professional.</div>
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It is not that these forces captured the party so much as it fell to them. When the laborer left, they remained.</div>
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The origins of this shift are overdetermined. Richard Nixon bears a large part of the blame, but so does Bill Clinton. The evangelical revival, yes, but the destruction of labor unions, too. I have my own sympathies, but I do not propose to adjudicate that question here.</div>
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Suffice it to say, by the 1990s the better part of the working class wanted nothing to do with the word <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">liberal</i>. What remained of the American progressive elite was left to puzzle: What happened to our coalition?</div>
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Why did they abandon us?</div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">What's the matter with Kansas?</i><i style="box-sizing: border-box;"></i></div>
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The smug style arose to answer these questions. It provided an answer so simple and so emotionally satisfying that its success was perhaps inevitable: the theory that conservatism, and particularly the kind embraced by those <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">out there</i> in the country, was not a political ideology at all.</div>
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The trouble is that stupid hicks don't know what's good for them. They're getting conned by right-wingers and tent revivalists until they believe all the lies that've made them so wrong. They don't know any better. That's why they're <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">voting against their own self-interest</i>.</div>
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As anybody who has gone through a particularly nasty breakup knows, disdain cultivated in the aftermath of a divide quickly exceeds the original grievance. You lose somebody. You blame them. Soon, the blame is reason enough to keep them at a distance, the excuse to drive them even further away.</div>
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Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt. The rubes noticed and replied in kind. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy.</div>
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Financial incentive compounded this tendency — there is money, after all, in reassuring the bitter. Over 20 years, an industry arose to cater to the smug style. It began in humor, and culminated for a time in <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Daily Show</i>, a program that more than any other thing advanced the idea that liberal orthodoxy was a kind of educated savvy and that its opponents were, before anything else, stupid. The smug liberal found relief in ridiculing them.</div>
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The internet only made it worse. Today, a liberal who finds himself troubled by the currents of contemporary political life need look no further than his Facebook newsfeed to find the explanation:</div>
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<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/default/2007/04/16/11946/daily-show-fox-knowledge/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;"><i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;">Study finds Daily Show viewers more informed than viewers of Fox News.</i></a></div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">They're beating CNN <a href="http://www.city-data.com/forum/atlanta/1732984-study-daily-show-listeners-more-informed.html" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">watchers too</a>.</i></div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">NPR listeners are </i><a href="http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/174826/survey-nprs-listeners-best-informed-fox-news-viewers-worst-informed/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;"><i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;">best informed of all</i></a>.<i style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </i>He likes that.</div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">You're better </i><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/21/fox-news-viewers-less-informed-people-fairleigh-dickinson_n_1106305.html" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;"><i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;">off watching nothing</i></a><i style="box-sizing: border-box;"> than watching Fox</i>. He likes that even more.</div>
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The good news doesn't stop.</div>
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Liberals aren't just better informed. They're <a href="http://66.135.55.40/DaveSource.com/Fringe/Fringe/Politics/Conservatism-and-cognitive-ability.pdf" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">smarter</a>.</div>
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They've got better grammar. They <a href="http://www.politicususa.com/2015/10/06/study-finds-democrats-bigger-vocabularies-grammar-republicans.html" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">know more words</a>.</div>
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Smart kids <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201003/why-liberals-are-more-intelligent-conservatives" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">grow up</a> to be liberals, while conservatives <a href="http://www.mycotropic.com/img/sa/low%2520effort%2520thought%2520and%2520conservatism.pdf" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">reason like drunks</a>.</div>
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Liberals are <a href="http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v10/n10/abs/nn1979.html" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">better able</a> to process new information; they're less biased like that. They've got different brains. <a href="http://66.135.55.40/DaveSource.com/Fringe/Fringe/Politics/Conservatism-and-cognitive-ability.pdf" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">Better ones.</a> Why? Evolution. They've got better brains, top-notch amygdalae, science finds.</div>
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The smug style created a feedback loop. If the trouble with conservatives was ignorance, then the liberal impulse was to correct it. When such corrections failed, disdain followed after it.</div>
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Of course, there is a smug style in every political movement: elitism among every ideology believing itself in possession of the solutions to society's ills. But few movements have let the smug tendency so corrupt them, or make so tenuous its case against its enemies.</div>
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"Conservatives are always at a bit of a disadvantage in the theater of mass democracy," the conservative editorialist Kevin Williamson <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/427427/lets-not-do-again-kevin-d-williamson" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;" target="_blank">wrote in National Review</a><i style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </i>last October, "because people en masse aren't very bright or sophisticated, and they're vulnerable to cheap, hysterical emotional appeals."</div>
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The smug style thinks Williamson is wrong, of course, but <a href="http://www.forwardprogressives.com/republican-party-literally-become-party-stupid/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">not in principle</a>. It's only that he's <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/10/how-the-gop-rewards-stupid-candidates.html" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">confused</a> about who the hordes of <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gop-is-now-officially-the-party-of-dumb-white-people-20150904" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">stupid, hysterical people</a> are voting for. The smug style reads Williamson and says, "No! You!"</div>
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Elites, real elites, might recognize one another by their superior knowledge. The smug recognize one another by their mutual <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">knowing</i>.</div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Knowing, </i>for example, that the Founding Fathers were all secular deists. <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Knowing</i> that you're actually, like, 30 times more likely to shoot yourself than an intruder. <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Knowing </i>that those fools out in Kansas are voting against their own self-interest and that the trouble is Kansas doesn't know any better. <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Knowing</i> all the jokes that signal this knowledge.</div>
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The studies, about <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Daily Show</i> viewers and better-sized amygdalae, are <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">knowing</i>. It is the smug style's first premise: a politics defined by a command of the Correct Facts and signaled by an allegiance to the Correct Culture. A politics that is just the politics of smart people in command of Good Facts. A politics that insists it has no ideology at all, only facts. No moral convictions, only charts, the kind that keep them from "imposing their morals" like the bad guys do.</div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Knowing </i>is the shibboleth into the smug style's culture, a cultural that celebrates hip commitments and valorizes hip taste, that loves nothing more than hate-reading anyone who doesn't get them. A culture that has come to replace politics itself.</div>
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The <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">knowing </i>know that police reform, that abortion rights, that labor unions are important, but go no further: What is important, after all, is to signal that you <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">know</i> these things. What is important is to launch links and mockery at those who don't. The Good Facts are enough: Anybody who fails to capitulate to them is part of the Problem, is terminally uncool. No persuasion, only retweets.<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"> </span>Eye roll, crying emoji, forward to John Oliver for sick burns.</div>
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The smug style has always existed in American liberalism, but it wasn't always so totalizing. Lionel Trilling claimed, as far back as 1950, that liberalism "is not only the dominant, but even the sole intellectual tradition," that "the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse ... do not express themselves in ideas, but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas."</div>
<q style="-webkit-box-decoration-break: clone; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: #fff200; border: none; box-shadow: rgb(255, 242, 0) -0.4em 0px 0px, rgb(255, 242, 0) 0.4em 0px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4c4e4d; font-family: Balto, Helvetica, Arial, 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif; font-size: 2em; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.35; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0.2em 0px; quotes: none; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">The smug style has always existed in American liberalism, but it wasn't always so totalizing</q><span style="background-color: #f1f3f2; color: #4c4e4d; font-family: "balto" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "nimbus sans l" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24.75px;"></span><br />
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Richard Hofstadter, the historian whose most famous work, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Paranoid Style in American Politics, </i>this essay exists in some obvious reference to, advanced a similar line in writing not so well-remembered today. His then-influential history writing drips with disdain for rubes who regard themselves as victimized by economics and history, who have failed to maintain correct political attitudes.</div>
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But 60 years ago, American liberalism relied too much on the support of working people to let these ideas take too much hold. Even its elitists, its Schlesingers and Bells, were tempered by the power of the labor movement, by the role Marxism still played in even liberal politics — forces too powerful to allow non-elite concerns to entirely escape the liberal mental horizon.<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"> </span>Walter Reuther, and Bayard Rustin, and A. Philip Randolph were still in the room, and they mattered.</div>
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Sixty years ago, the ugliest tendencies were still private, too. The smug style belonged to real elites, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">knowing</i> in their cocktail parties, far from the ears of rubes. But today we have television, and the internet, and a liberalism worked out in universities and think tanks. Today, the better part of liberalism is Trillings — or those who'd like to be, at any rate — and everyone can hear them.</div>
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On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court found that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples constituted a violation of the 14th Amendment. After decades of protests, legislation, setbacks, and litigation, the 13 <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"></span>states still holding out against the inevitable were ordered to relent. Kim Davis, a clerk tasked with issuing marriage licenses to couples in her Kentucky county, refused.</div>
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At the distance of six months, it is surprising that she was, beyond a few short-lived and empty efforts, the only civil bureaucrat to do so. One imagines a hundred or a thousand Kim Davises in the country, small administrators with small power, outraged by the collapse of a moral fight that they were winning just a few years prior.</div>
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In the days between the June decision and the July 1 announcement that the American Civil Liberties Union would represent four couples who had been denied marriage licenses by the Rowan County<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"> </span>Clerk's office, many braced for resistance. Surely compliance would come hard in some places. Surely, some of the losers would refuse to give up. There was something giddy about it — at long last, the good guys would be the ones bearing down with the full force of the law.</div>
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It did not take long for the law to correct Davis. On August 12, a judge ordered a stay, preventing Davis from refusing any further under the protection of the law. The Sixth Circuit, and then the Supreme Court, refused to hear her appeal.</div>
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Despite further protest and Davis's ultimate jailing for contempt of court, normal service was restored in short order. The 23,000 people of Rowan Country suffered, all told, slightly less than seven weeks without a functioning civil licensure apparatus.</div>
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Davis remained a fixation. Dour, rural, thrice divorced but born again — Twitter could not have invented a better parody of the uncool. She was ridiculed for her politics but also for her looks — that she had been married so many times was inexplicable! That she thought she had the slightest grasp of the Constitution, doubly so.</div>
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When Davis was jailed for five<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"> </span>days following her refusal to comply with the court order, many who pride themselves on having a vastly more compassionate moral foundation than Davis <a href="http://wonkette.com/593703/kim-davis-is-free-everybody-go-to-kentucky-and-do-gayness-in-her-face" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">cheered</a> the imprisonment of a political foe.</div>
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The ridicule of Davis became so pronounced that even smug circles, always on the precipice of self-reproach, began eventually to <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/uncategorized/256014-the-many-unfair-shamings-of-kim-davis" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">rein in</a> the excess. <a href="https://justalittlered.wordpress.com/2015/09/09/men-are-stupid-and-women-are-ugly-kim-davis-a-case-study/kim-anti-gay/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">Mocking her appearance</a>, <a href="http://wonkette.com/593614/god-agrees-kentucky-clerk-kim-davis-is-a-hole-sends-her-to-jail" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">openly celebrating</a> the incarceration of an ideological opponent — these were not good looks.</div>
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Kim Davis at a rally in September 2015 (Ty Wright/Getty Images)</div>
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But a more fundamental element of smug disdain for Kim Davis went unchallenged: the contention, at bottom, that Davis was not merely wrong in her convictions, but that her convictions were, in themselves, an error and a fraud.</div>
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That is: Kim Davis was not only on the wrong side of the law. She was not even a subscriber to a religious ideology that had found itself at moral odds with American culture. Rather, she was a subscriber to nothing, a hateful bigot who did not even understand her own religion.</div>
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Christianity, as many hastened to point out, is about love. Christ commands us to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. If the Bible took any position on the issue at all, it was that divorce, <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/09/02/kim_davis_four_marriages_the_ugly_self_righteousness_of_the_saved_that_fuels_her_marriage_license_refusal/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">beloved by Davis</a>, was a sin, and that <a href="http://heavy.com/news/2015/09/kim-davis-kentucky-county-clerk-wont-issue-gay-marriage-licenses-facebook-supreme-court/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">she was a hypocrite</a> masquerading among the faithful.</div>
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How many of these critiques were issued by atheists?</div>
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This, more than anything I can recall in recent American life, is an example of the smug style. Many liberals do not believe that evangelical Christianity ought to guide public life; many believe, moreover, that the moral conceits of that Christianity are wrong, even harmful to society. But to the smug liberal, it isn't that Kim Davis is <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">wrong</i>. How can she be? She's only <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">mistaken</i>. She just doesn't know the Good Facts, even about her own religion. She's angry and confused, another hick who's not with it.</div>
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It was an odd thing to assert in the case of Christianity, a religion that until recently was taken to be another shibboleth of the uncool, not a loving faith misunderstood by bigots. But this is <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">knowing</i>: knowing that the new line on Jesus is that the homophobes just don't get their own faith.</div>
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Kim Davis was behind the times. Her beliefs did not represent a legitimate challenge to liberal consensus because they did not represent a challenge at all: They were incoherent, at odds with the Good Facts. Google makes every man a theologian.</div>
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This, I think, is fundamental to understanding the smug style<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">. </i>If good politics and good beliefs are just Good Facts and good tweets — that is, if there is no ideology beyond sensible conclusions drawn from a rational assessment of the world — then there are no moral fights, only lying liars and the stupid rubes who believe them.</div>
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When Davis was first released from county jail, Mike Huckabee went to meet her. But the smug style sees no true ideology there, no moral threat to contend with. Only a huckster and a hick: one to be ridiculed, and the other to be refuted. What more, the smug man posts, could there be to say about it? They're idiots! Look, look: This Onion<a href="http://www.theonion.com/article/who-kim-davis-51306" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;"><i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"> </i>article</a> nails it.</div>
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Popular story:</div>
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Adlai Stevenson, Democratic candidate for president, is on parade. A band is playing. Onlookers cheer. He waves to the crowd.</div>
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A woman shouts: "Gov. Stevenson, you have the vote of every thinking person in this country!"</div>
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Stevenson replies: "Thank you, ma'am, but we need a majority."</div>
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The smug style says to itself, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Yeah. I really am one of the few thinking people in this country, aren't I?</i></div>
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In November of last year, during the week when it became temporarily fashionable for American governors to declare that Syrian refugees would not be welcome in their state, Hamilton Nolan wrote <a href="http://gawker.com/dumb-hicks-are-americas-greatest-threat-1743373893" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">an essay</a> for Gawker called "Dumb Hicks Are America's Greatest Threat<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">.</i>"</div>
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If there has ever been a tirade so dedicated to the smug style, to the proposition that it is neither malice, nor capital, nor ideological difference, but rather the backward stupidity of poor people that has ruined the state of American policy, then it is hidden beyond our view, in some uncool place, far from the front page of Gawker.</div>
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"Many of America's political leaders are warning of the dangers posed by Syrian refugees. They are underestimating, though, the much greater danger: dumbass hicks, in charge of things," Nolan wrote. "...You, our elected officials, are embarrassing us. All of us, except your fellow dumb hicks, who voted for you in large numbers. You — our racist, xenophobic, knuckle-dragging ignorant leaders — are making us look bad in front of the guests (the whole world). You are the bad cousin in the family who always ruins Thanksgiving. Go in the back room and drink a can of beer alone please."</div>
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Among the dumb hicks Nolan identifies are "many Southern mayors" and "many lesser known state representatives." He cites the Ku Klux Klan — "exclusively dumbass hicks," he writes. "100%," he emphasizes — despite the fact that the New York Times, in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/opinion/sunday/seth-stephens-davidowitz-the-data-of-hate.html?_r=0" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">an investigation</a> of white supremacist members of Stormfront.org, found that "the top reported interest of Stormfront members is reading." That they are "news and political junkies." Despite the fact that if "you come compare Stormfront users to people who go to the Yahoo News site, it turns out that the Stormfront crowd is twice as likely to visit nytimes.com."</div>
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"They have long threads praising <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Breaking Bad</i> and discussing the comparative merits of online dating sites, like Plenty of Fish and OKCupid," the Times reports.<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"></span></div>
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In <a href="http://gawker.com/there-are-only-two-issues-1744172647" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">another piece</a>, published later the same month, Nolan wrote that "Inequality of wealth — or, if you like, the distribution of <a href="http://gawker.com/income-inequality-vs-wealth-inequality-1686329762" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">wealth</a> in our society in a way that results in poverty — is not just one issue among many. It is the root from which blooms nearly all major social problems."</div>
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He's right about that. But who does he imagine is responsible for this inequality? The poor? The dumb? The hicks?</div>
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Hamilton Nolan isn't stupid. He has even, lately, argued that even the worst of the rubes<a href="http://gawker.com/can-the-labor-movement-live-with-police-unions-1770261739" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">must be allies</a> in class struggle. Yet the trouble is still swallowing what "motherfuckers" those people are.</div>
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Nolan is perhaps the funniest and most articulate of those pointing fingers at the "dumbass hicks," but he isn't alone. It is evidently intolerable to a huge swath of liberalism to confess the obvious: that those responsible have homes in Brooklyn, too. That they buy the same smartphones. That they too are on Twitter. That the oligarchs are making fun of stupid poor people too. That they're better at it, and always will be.</div>
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No: The trouble must be out there, somewhere. In the country. Where the idiots are; where the hicks are too stupid to know where problems blossom.</div>
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"To the dumb hick leaders of America, I say: (nothing). You wouldn't listen anyhow," Nolan writes. "My words would go in one ear and right out the other. Like talking to an old block of wood."</div>
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It's a shame. They might be receptive to his concerns about poverty.</div>
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If there is a single person who exemplifies the dumbass hick in the smug imagination, it is former President George W. Bush. He's got the accent. He can't talk right. He seems stupefied by simple concepts, and his politics are all gee-whiz Texas ignorance. He is the ur-hick. He is the enemy.</div>
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He got all the way to White House, and he's still being taken for a ride by the scheming rightwing oligarchs around him — just like those poor rubes in Kansas. If only George knew Dick Cheney wasn't acting in his own best interests!</div>
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It is worth considering that Bush is the son of a president, a patrician born in Connecticut and educated at Andover and Harvard and Yale.</div>
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It is worth considering that he does not come from a family known for producing poor minds.<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"></span></div>
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It is worth considering that <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=120210" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">beginning</a> with his 1994 gubernatorial debate against Ann Richards, and at every juncture thereafter, opponents have been defeated after days of media outlets openly speculating whether George was up to the mental challenge of a one-on-one debate.</div>
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"Throughout his short political career," ABC's Katy Textor wrote on the eve of the 2000 debates against Al Gore, "Bush has benefited from low expectations of his debating abilities. The fact that he skipped no less than three GOP primary debates, and the fact that he was reluctant to agree to the Commission on Presidential Debates proposal, has done little to contradict the impression of a candidate uncomfortable with this unavoidable fact of campaign life."</div>
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"Done little to contradict."</div>
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George W. Bush and Al Gore during a presidential debate in 2000. (Tannen Maury/AFP/Getty Images)</div>
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On November 6, 2000, during his final pre-election stump speech, Bush explained his history of political triumph thusly: "They misunderesimated me."</div>
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What an idiot. American liberals made fun of him for that one for years.</div>
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It is worth considering that he didn't misspeak.</div>
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He did, however, deliberately cultivate the confusion. He understood the smug style. He wagered that many liberals, eager to see their opponents as intellectually deficient, would buy into the act and thereby miss the more pernicious fact of his moral deficits.</div>
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He wagered correctly. Smug liberals said George was too stupid to get elected, too stupid to get reelected, too stupid to pass laws or appoint judges or weather a political fight. Liberals misunderestimated George W. Bush all eight years of his presidency.</div>
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George W. Bush is not a dumbass hick. In eight years, all the sick <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Daily Show</i> burns in the world did not appreciably undermine his agenda.</div>
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The smug mind defends itself against these charges. <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Oh, we</i><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">'re just having fun</i>, it says. <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">We don't mean it</i>. <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">This is just for a laugh, it's just a joke, stop being so humorless.</i><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"></span></div>
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It is exasperating, after all, to have to live in a country where so many people are so aggressively wrong about so much, they say. You go on about ideology and shibboleths and <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">knowing</i>, but we are <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">right</i> on the issues, aren't we? We are <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">right </i>on social policy and right on foreign policy and right on evolution, and same-sex marriage, and climate change too. Surely that's what matters.</div>
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We don't <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">really</i> mean they're all stupid — but hey, lay off. We're not smug! This is just how we vent our frustration. Otherwise it would be too depressing having to share a country with these people!</div>
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We have long passed the point where blithe ridicule of the American right can be credibly cast as private stress relief and not, for instance, the animating public strategy of an entire wing of the liberal culture apparatus. <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Daily Show</i>, as it happens, is not the private entertainment of elites blowing off some steam. It is broadcast on national television.</div>
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Twitter isn't private. Not that anybody with the sickest burn to accompany the smartest chart would want it to be. Otherwise, how would everyone know how in-the-know you are?</div>
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The rubes have seen your videos. You posted it on their wall.</div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Still don't get why liberal opinion is correct? This video settles the debate for good</i>.</div>
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I have been wondering for a long time how it is that so many entries to the op-ed pages take it as their justifying premise that they are arguing for a truth that has never been advanced before.</div>
<q style="-webkit-box-decoration-break: clone; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: #fff200; border: none; box-shadow: rgb(255, 242, 0) -0.4em 0px 0px, rgb(255, 242, 0) 0.4em 0px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4c4e4d; font-family: Balto, Helvetica, Arial, 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif; font-size: 2em; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.35; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0.2em 0px; quotes: none; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">We have long passed the point where blithe ridicule of the American right can be credibly cast as private stress relief</q><span style="background-color: #f1f3f2; color: #4c4e4d; font-family: "balto" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "nimbus sans l" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24.75px;"></span><br />
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"It's an accepted, nearly unchallenged assumption that Muslim communities across the U.S. have a problem — that their youth tend toward violent ideology, or are susceptible to "radicalization" by groups like the Islamic State," began an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/12/06/how-can-america-counter-the-appeal-of-isis/muslim-american-communities-should-not-be-blamed-for-violent-extremism" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">editorial</a> that appeared last December in the New York Times. But "after all," it goes on, "the <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">majority of mass shootings</a> in America are perpetrated by white men but no one questions what might have radicalized them in their communities."</div>
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But this contention — that Muslims possess superlative violent tendencies — has been challenged countless times, hasn't it? It was challenged<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"> </span><a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/muslims-only-carried-out-2-5-percent-of-terrorist-attacks-on-u-s-soil-between-1970-and-2012.html" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">here</a><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">, </span>and<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"> </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/anti-muslim-rhetoric-isnt-brave/2015/12/03/8442019c-9a01-11e5-94f0-9eeaff906ef3_story.html" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">here</a> and <a href="http://time.com/3934980/right-wing-extremists-white-terrorism-islamist-jihadi-dangerous/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">here</a> as far back as 9/11. The president of the United State challenged it on national television the night before this editorial was published. The Times itself did <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/opinion/fear-ignorance-not-muslims.html" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">too</a>. The myopic provincialism of anybody who believes that Muslims are a uniquely violent people is the basis of a <a href="http://www.theonion.com/article/man-already-knows-everything-he-needs-to-know-abou-17990" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">five-year-old</a> Onion headline, not some new moral challenge.</div>
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The smug style leaves its adherents no other option: If an idea has failed to take hold, if the Good Facts are not widely accepted, then the problem must be that these facts have not yet reached the disbelievers.</div>
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In December 2015, Public Policy Polling <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/poll-30-republicans-want-bomb-fictional-disney-country" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">found</a> that 30 percent of Republicans were in favor of bombing Agrabah,<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"> </span>the Arab-sounding fictional city from Disney's <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Aladdin</i>. Hilarious.</div>
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PPP has run joke questions before, of course: polling the popularity of <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/8/20/9183515/deez-nuts-explained" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;" target="_blank">Deez Nuts</a>, or asking after God's job approval. But these questions, at least, let their audience in on the gag. Now liberalism is deliberately setting up the last segment of the population actually willing to endure a phone survey in service of what it knew would make for some hilarious copy when the rubes inevitably fell for it. This is not a survey in service of a joke — it is a survey in service of a human punchline.</div>
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As if only Republicans covered up gaps in their knowledge by responding to what they assume is a good-faith question by guessing from their general principles.</div>
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It may be easy to mistake with the private venting of frustrated elites, but the rubes can read the New York Times<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">, </i>too. It is not where liberals whisper to each other about the secret things that go unchallenged. Poll respondents are not the secret fodder for a joke.</div>
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This is the consequence of "private" venting, and it is the consequence of <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">knowing </i>too: If good politics comes solely from good data and good sense, it cannot be that large sections of the American public are merely wrong about so many vital things. It cannot be that they have heard our arguments but rejected them — that might mean we must examine our own methods of persuasion.</div>
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No: it is only that the wrong beliefs are <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">unchallenged — </i>that their believers are trapped in "information bubbles" and confirmation bias. That no one knows the truth, except the New York Times<i style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </i>(or Vox). If only we could tell them, question them, show them this graph. If they don't get it then, well, then they're hopeless.</div>
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The smug style plays out in private too, of course. If you haven't started one yourself, you've surely seen the Facebook threads: Ten or 20 of Brooklyn's finest gather to say how exasperated they are, these days, by the stupidity of the American public.</div>
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"I just don't know what to do about these people," one posts. "I think we have to accept that a lot of people are just misinformed!" replies another. "Like, I think they actually don't <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">want</i> to know anything that would undermine their worldview."</div>
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They tend to do it in the comment section, under an article about how conservatives are difficult to persuade because they isolate themselves in mutually reinforcing information bubbles.</div>
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What have been the consequences of the smug style?</div>
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It has become a tradition for the smug, in editorials and essay and confident Facebook boasting, to assume that the presidential debates will feature their candidate, in command of the facts, wiping the floor with the empty huckster ignorance of their Republican opponent.</div>
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It was popularly assumed, for a time, that George W. Bush was too stupid to be elected president.</div>
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The smug believed the same of Ronald Reagan.</div>
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John Yoo, the architect of the Bush administration's torture policies, escaped <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Daily Show</i> unscathed. Liberals wondered what to do <a href="http://prospect.org/article/when-jon-stewart-fails" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">when Jon Stewart fails</a>. What would success look like? Were police waiting in the wings, a one-way ticket to the Hague if Stewart nailed him?</div>
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It would be unfair to say that the smug style has never learned from these mistakes. But the lesson has been, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">We underestimated how many people could be fooled</i>.</div>
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That is: <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">We underestimated just how dumb these dumb hicks really are.</i></div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">We just didn't get our message to them. They just stayed in their information bubble. We can't let the lying liars keep lying to these people — but how do we reach these idiots who only trust Fox?</i><i style="box-sizing: border-box;"></i></div>
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Rarely: <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Maybe they're savvier than we thought</i>. <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Maybe they're angry for a reason.</i></div>
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As it happens, reasons aren't too difficult to come by.</div>
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During a San Francisco fundraiser in the 2008 primary campaign, Barack Obama offered an observation that was hailed not without some glee as the first unforced error from then-Senator Cool.</div>
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"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania," Obama said, "and, like, a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter. They cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."</div>
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It's the latter part that we remember eight years later — the clinging to guns and religion and hate — but it is the first part that was important: the part about lost jobs and neglect by two presidential administrations.</div>
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Obama's observation was not novel.</div>
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The notion that material loss and abandonment have driven America's white working class into a fit of resentment is boilerplate for even the Democratic Party's tepid left these days. But in the president's formulation and in the formulation of smug stylists who have embraced some material account of uncool attitudes, the downturn, the jobs lost and the opportunities narrowed, are a force of nature — something that has "been happening" in the passive voice.</div>
<q style="-webkit-box-decoration-break: clone; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: #fff200; border: none; box-shadow: rgb(255, 242, 0) -0.4em 0px 0px, rgb(255, 242, 0) 0.4em 0px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 2em; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.35; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0.2em 0px; quotes: none; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">If the smug style can be reduced to a single sentence, it's, <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Why are they voting against their own self-interest?</em></q><br />
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This, I suspect, will one day become the Republican Party's rationale for addressing climate change: <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Look, we don't know how the dead hooker wound up in the hotel room. But she's here now, that's undeniable, so we've gotta get rid of the body.</i></div>
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Today, it is the excuse of American smug mind: Where did all of these poor people come from?</div>
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If pressed for an answer, I suppose they would say Republicans, elected by rubes voting against their own self-interest. Reagan, Gingrich, Bush — all those Bad Fact–knowing halfwits who were too dumb to get elected to anything.</div>
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Well, sure. In the past 30 years of American life, the Republican Party has dedicated itself to replacing every labor law with a photo of Ronald Reagan's face.</div>
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But this does not excuse liberals beating full retreat to the colleges and the cities, abandoning the dispossessed to their fate. It does not excuse surrendering a century of labor politics in the name of electability. It does not excuse gazing out decades later to find that those left behind are not up on the latest thought and deciding, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">We didn't abandon them. The idiots didn't want to be saved</i>.</div>
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It was not Ronald Reagan who declared the era of big government. It was not the GOP that decided the coastally based, culturally liberal industries of technology, Hollywood, and high finance were the future of the American economy.</div>
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If the smug style can be reduced to a single sentence, it's, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Why are they voting against their own self-interest? </i>But no party these past decades has effectively represented the interests of these dispossessed. Only one has made a point of openly disdaining them too.</div>
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Abandoned and without any party willing to champion their interests, people cling to candidates who, at the very least, are willing to represent their moral convictions. The smug style resents them for it, and they resent the smug in turn.</div>
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The rubes noticed that liberal Democrats, distressed by the notion that Indiana would allow bakeries to practice open discrimination against LGBTQ couples, threatened boycotts against the state, mobilizing the considerable economic power that comes with an alliance of New York and Hollywood and Silicon Valley to punish retrograde Gov. Mike Pence, but had no such passion when the same governor of the same state joined 21<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"></span>others in refusing the Medicaid expansion. No doubt good liberals objected to that move too. But I've yet to see a <a href="http://mashable.com/2015/03/31/boycott-indiana-list/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">boycott threat</a> about it.</div>
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Early in the marriage equality fight, activists advanced the theory that when people discovered a friend or relative was gay, they became far more likely to support gay rights. They were correct. These days it is difficult for anybody in a position of liberal power — whether in business, or government, or media — to avoid having openly gay colleagues, colleagues whom they like and whom they'd like to help.</div>
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But extend the point to the poor. Few opinion makers fraternize with the impoverished — or even with anyone from the downscale, uncool, Trump-loving white working class. Few editors and legislators and Silicon Valley heroes have dinner with the lovely couple on food stamps down the road, much less those scraping by in Indiana.</div>
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If any single event provided the direct impetus for this essay, it was a running argument I had with an older, liberal writer over the seriousness of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Since June 2015, when Trump announced his candidacy, this writer has taken it upon himself each day to tell his Facebook followers that Donald Trump is a bad kind of dude.</div>
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That saying as much was the key to stopping him and his odious followers too.</div>
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"Ridicule is the most powerful weapon we have against any of our enemies," he told me in the end, "but especially against the ones who, not incorrectly, take it so personally and lash out in ways that shine klieg lights on those very flaws we detest.</div>
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"If you're laughing at someone, you're certainly not respecting him."</div>
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"Anyway," he went on, "I'm done talking to you. We see the world differently. I'm fine with that. We don't need to be friends."</div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ridicule is the most effective political tactic.</i><i style="box-sizing: border-box;"></i></div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ridicule is especially effective when it's personal and about expressing open disdain for stupid, bad people.</i><i style="box-sizing: border-box;"></i></div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Political legitimacy is granted by the respect of elite liberals.</i><i style="box-sizing: border-box;"></i></div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">You can't be legitimate if you're the butt of our jokes.</i><i style="box-sizing: border-box;"></i></div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">If you don't agree, we can't work together politically.</i><i style="box-sizing: border-box;"></i></div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">We can't even be friends, because politics is social.</i><i style="box-sizing: border-box;"></i></div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Because politics is performative — if we don't mock together, we aren't on the same side.</i><i style="box-sizing: border-box;"></i></div>
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If there is a bingo card for the smug style somewhere, then cross off every square. You've won.</div>
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I would be less troubled if I did not believe that the smug style has captured an enormous section of American liberalism. If I believed that its politics, as practiced by its supporters, extended beyond this line of thought. If this were an exception.</div>
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But even as many have come around to the notion that Trump is the prohibitive favorite for his party's nomination, the smug interpretation has been predictable: We only underestimated how hateful, how stupid, the Republican base can be.</div>
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A Donald Trump rally in Pittsburgh. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)</div>
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Trump capturing the nomination will not dispel the smug style; if anything, it will redouble it. Faced with the prospect of an election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the smug will reach a fever pitch: six straight months of a sure thing, an opportunity to mock and scoff and ask, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">How could anybody vote for this guy?</i> until a morning in November when they ask, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">What the fuck happened?</i></div>
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On March 20, Salon's David Masciotra <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/03/20/who_are_these_idiot_donald_trump_supporters_trump_loves_the_poorly_educated_and_they_love_him_right_back/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">wrote</a> that if Trump "actually had the strength to articulate uncomfortable and inconvenient truths, he would turn his favorite word — 'loser' — not on full-time professionals in the press, but on his supporters."</div>
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Masciotra goes on:</div>
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Journalists found that in the counties where Trump is most dominant, there are large numbers of white high school dropouts, and unemployed people no longer looking for work. An alliance with the incoherent personality cult of Donald Trump's candidacy correlates strongly with failure to obtain a high school diploma, and withdrawal from the labor force. The counties also have a consistent history of voting for segregationists, and have an above average percentage of its residents living in mobile homes.</div>
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The kicker: "Many conservatives, and even some kindhearted liberals, might object to the conclusions one can draw from the data as stereotyping, but the empirical evidence leaves little choice. Donald Trump's supporters confirm the stereotype against them."</div>
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Here's the conclusion I draw: If Donald Trump has a chance in November, it is because the <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">knowing</i> will dictate our strategy. Unable to countenance the real causes of their collapse, they will comfort with own impotence by shouting, "Idiots!" again and again, angrier and angrier, the handmaidens of their own destruction.</div>
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The smug style resists empathy for the un<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">knowing</i>. It denies the possibility of a politics whereby those who do not share <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">knowing</i> culture, who do not like the right things or know the Good Facts or recognize the intellectual bankruptcy of their own ideas can be worked with, in spite of these differences, toward a common goal.</div>
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It is this attitude that has driven the dispossessed into the arms of a candidate who shares their fury. It is this attitude that may deliver him the White House, a "serious" threat, a threat to be mocked and called out and hated, but not to be taken seriously.<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"></span></div>
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The wages of smug is Trump.</div>
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Nothing is more confounding to the smug style than the fact that the average Republican is better educated and has a higher IQ than the average Democrat. That for every overpowered study finding superior liberal open-mindedness and intellect and knowledge,<a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/22/science-say-gop-voters-better-informed-open-minded/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;"> there is one</a> to <a href="http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/12/when-liberals-attack-social-science.html?mid=twitter_nymag" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">suggest</a> that Republicans have the <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2016/01/15/liberals-are-simple-minded" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">better</a> of these qualities.</div>
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Most damning, perhaps, to the fancy liberal self-conception: Republicans score higher in susceptibility to persuasion. They are willing to change their minds more often.</div>
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The Republican coalition tends toward the center: educated enough, smart enough, informed enough.</div>
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The Democratic coalition in the 21st century is bifurcated: It has the postgraduates, but it has the disenfranchised urban poor as well, a group better defined by race and immigration status than by class. There are more Americans without high school diplomas than in possession of doctoral degrees. The math proceeds from there.<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></span></div>
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The smug style takes this as a defense. Elite liberalism, and the Democratic Party by extension, cannot hate poor people, they say. We aren't smug! Just look at our coalition. These aren't rubes. Just look at our embrace of their issues.</div>
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But observe how quickly professed concern for the oppressed becomes another shibboleth for the smug, another kind of <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">knowing</i>. Mere awareness of these issues becomes the most important thing, the capacity to articulate them a new subset of Correct Facts.</div>
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Everyone in the <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">know</i> has read "The Case for Reparations," but it was the reading and performed admiration that counted, praised in the same breath as, "It is a better <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">history</i>than an actual case for actually paying, of course..."</div>
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Pretend for a moment that all of it is true. That the smug style apprehended the world as it really is, that <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">knowing — </i>or knowing, no inflection — did make our political divide. That the problem is the rubes. That the dumbass hicks are to blame. They can't help it: Their brains don't work. They isolate themselves from all the Good Facts, and they're being taken for a ride by con men.</div>
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Pretend the ridicule worked too: that the videos and the Twitter burns and <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">destroying</i>the opposition made all the bad guys go away.</div>
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What kind of world would it leave us? An endless cycle of jokes? Of sick burns and smart tweets and <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">knowing? </i>Relative to whom? The smug style demands an object of disdain; it would find a new one quickly.</div>
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It is central to the liberal self-conception that what separates them from reactionaries is a desire to help people, a desire to create a fairer and more just world. Liberals still want, or believe they still want, to make a more perfect union.</div>
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Whether you believe they are deluded or not, whether you believe this project is worthwhile in any form or not, what I am trying to tell you is that the smug style has fundamentally undermined even the <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">aspiration</i>, that it has made American liberalism into the worst version of itself.</div>
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It is impossible, in the long run, to cleave the desire to help people from the duty to respect them. It becomes all at once too easy to decide you know best, to never hear, much less ignore, protest to the contrary.</div>
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At present, many of those most in need of the sort of help liberals believe they can provide despise liberalism, and are despised in turn. Is it surprising that with each decade, the "help" on offer drifts even further from the help these people need?</div>
<q style="-webkit-box-decoration-break: clone; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: #fff200; border: none; box-shadow: rgb(255, 242, 0) -0.4em 0px 0px, rgb(255, 242, 0) 0.4em 0px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 2em; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.35; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0.2em 0px; quotes: none; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">It is impossible, in the long run, to cleave the desire to help people from the duty to respect them</q><br />
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Even if the two could be separated, would it be worth it? What kind of political movement is predicated on openly disdaining the very people it is advocating for?</div>
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The smug style, at bottom, is a failure of empathy. Further: It is a failure to believe that empathy has any value at all. It is the notion that anybody worthy of liberal time and attention and respect must capitulate, immediately, to the Good Facts.</div>
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If they don't (<a href="http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/80/S1/298.full" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">and they won't</a>, no matter how much of your Facts you make them consume), you're free to write them off and mock them. When they suffer, it's their just desserts.</div>
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Make no mistake: I am not suggesting that liberals adopt a fuzzy, gentler version of their politics. I am not suggesting they compromise their issues for the sake of playing nice. What I am suggesting is that they consider how the issues they actually fight for have drifted away from their egalitarian intentions.</div>
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I am suggesting that they notice how hating and ridiculing the people they say they want to help has led them to stop helping those people, too.</div>
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I am suggesting that in the case of a Kim Davis, liberalism resist the impulse to go beyond the necessary legal fight and explicitly delight in punishing an old foe.</div>
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I am suggesting that they instead wonder what it might be like to have little left but one's values; to wake up one day to find your whole moral order destroyed; to look around and see the representatives of a new order call you a stupid, hypocritical hick without bothering, even, to wonder how your corner of your poor state found itself so alienated from them in the first place. To work with people who do not share their values or their tastes, who do not live where they live or like what they like or know their Good Facts or their jokes.</div>
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This is not a call for civility. Manners are not enough. The smug style did not arise by accident, and it cannot be abolished with a little self-reproach. So long as liberals cannot find common cause with the larger section of the American working class, they will search for reasons to justify that failure. They will resent them. They will find, over and over, how easy it is to justify abandoning them further. They will choose the smug style.</div>
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Maybe the cycle is too deeply set already. Perhaps the divide, the disdain, the whole crack-up are inevitable. But if liberal good intentions are to make a play for a better future, they cannot merely recognize the ways they've come to hate their former allies. They must begin to mend the ways they lost them in the first place.</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Emmett Rensin is deputy First Person editor at Vox.</em></div>
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<span style="line-height: 1;"><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/04/is_liberalism_smug.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Is Liberalism Really “Smug”?</a></span></h1>
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<em>Vox</em> says smugness has reshaped the Democratic Party. How droll.</h2>
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By <a href="http://www.slate.com/authors.jamelle_bouie.html" rel="author" style="color: #660033; text-decoration: none;">Jamelle Bouie</a></div>
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<figure class="image inline " style="float: none; margin: 0px auto; width: 590px;"><img alt="Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. " src="http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/04/160422_POL_rally-to-restore.jpg.CROP.promo-xlarge2.jpg" src_tag_name="src" style="border: 0px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" title="160422_POL_rally-to-restore" /><figcaption class="caption" style="background-color: #281b21; color: white; font-size: 14px; padding: 5px 18px;"><em>The Daily Show</em> influences the conversation but doesn’t constitute it. Above, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart speak during the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in 2010.</figcaption><div class="credit" style="font-size: 10px; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 3px 5px; text-align: right;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">This “smug style” is informed by programs like <em>The Daily Show With Jon Stewart</em> and its offshoots, <em>The Colbert Report</em> and <em>Last Week Tonight With John Oliver</em>. It manifests on Twitter and Facebook, in tweets and status updates and displays of liberal arrogance. It’s present in how liberals talked about figures like Kim Davis, how they relate to people who disagree with them, in public and private.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Where does it come from? Rensin ties it to a demographic shift. Where once the Democrats were a working-class party, they’re now dominated by the professional and academic classes. “A movement once fleshed out in union halls and little magazines shifted into universities and major press, from the center of the country to its cities and elite enclaves,” writes Rensin. And he suggests that the <em>smug style</em> is one reason the working class, and the white one in particular, has kept its distance from the Democratic Party: “Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt. The rubes noticed and replied in kind.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It’s a comprehensive case. It’s a full-throated case. And it’s informed by a tradition of intra-left criticism of liberal elites, much of it fair and often needed. But it’s wrong. Or at least, it has three fatal flaws that make it far from persuasive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The first is just history. That liberal smugness might deter the white working class from the Democratic Party seems reasonable, if unfalsifiable. But to suggest that it is a prime mover in their alienation from the party is to ignore the actual dynamics at work. The driving reason working-class whites abandoned the Democratic Party is race. The New Deal coalition Rensin describes was <a href="http://democracyjournal.org/magazine/40/theres-no-going-back/" style="color: #660033; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">devoured by its own contradictions</a>, chiefly, the racism needed to secure white allegiance even as the party tried to appeal to blacks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Pressed by those blacks, Democrats tried to make good on their commitments, and when they did, whites bolted. The Democratic Party’s alliance with nonwhites is what drove those whites away, not the sniffing of comedians on cable television. And,<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/03/how_donald_trump_happened_racism_against_barack_obama.html" style="color: #660033; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">looking at the politics of the last seven years</a>, it’s still keeping them away. (It’s worth noting that, up until left-leaning whites and minorities elected Barack Obama president, Democrats <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/kansasqjps06.pdf" style="color: #660033; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">suffered little loss</a> with working-class whites outside of the South.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">That said, there’s no question that smug liberals exist. It’s incontestable. (<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/02/jon_stewart_stepping_down_from_the_daily_show_he_was_bad_for_liberals.html" style="color: #660033; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">I’ve complained about them myself</a>.) But Rensin doesn’t argue for the mere existence of liberals who are smug about their beliefs and ideology. He argues that smugness is<em>key</em> to contemporary liberalism. That it’s all but a plank of today’s Democratic Party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But his evidence is lacking. “The smug style in American liberalism” is defined entirely through media and social media. It is <em>The Daily Show</em>, it is liberal Twitter, it is <em>Gawker.</em>(Rensin devotes a portion of the essay to excoriating an <a href="http://gawker.com/dumb-hicks-are-americas-greatest-threat-1743373893" style="color: #660033; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">essay by writer Hamilton Nolan</a>.) But these are small portions—<em>fractions</em>—of the Democratic Party. And they’re far from representative of American liberals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Take <em>The Daily Show</em>. Under Jon Stewart, the show hit its ratings peak in 2012 during the presidential election. Its viewership in the last quarter of the year? Roughly 1.7 million viewers per episode. By the time Stewart left, <em>The Daily Show</em> pulled daily numbers of 1.15 to 3 million viewers. <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-overhyped-reaction-to-jon-stewart-leaving/" style="color: #660033; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">As Harry Enten notes for <em>FiveThirtyEight</em></a>, even if you include online viewers, you have a modest total of 1.5 million viewers daily. By contrast, Jimmy Fallon’s <em>The Tonight Show</em> was seen by an average of 3.7 million people in the last quarter of 2014.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Who are <em>The Daily Show</em>’s viewers? According to a 2012 study, 40 percent held college degrees, compared with 25 percent of all news consumers. Similarly, 40 percent made more than $75,000 a year, compared with 26 percent of all news consumers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Maybe this represents an important liberal constituency—an integral part of the Democratic Party. Or maybe it’s a minor and unrepresentative group of affluent people, likely clustered in a few major cities like New York City and Los Angeles. You can say the same for liberal users on Twitter (just a small minority of people use Twitter to talk about politics) and <em>Gawker</em> readers and perhaps even people who write for websites like <em>Vox</em> and <strong><em>Slate</em></strong>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Rensin seems to know this. He even tries to address it. “<em>The Daily Show</em>, as it happens, is not the private entertainment of elites blowing off some steam. It is broadcast on national television,” he writes. “Twitter isn’t private. Not that anybody with the sickest burn to accompany the smartest chart would want it to be.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This isn’t persuasive. <em>The Daily Show</em> might punch above its weight but it’s still at base a late-night comedy and talk show. It influences “the conversation” but doesn’t constitute it. And while <em>The Daily Show</em> and its peers are indeed smug, Rensin has mistaken this segment of national political dialogue for something that actually drives political activity. To posit that a show made by (and largely for) affluent, college-educated liberals somehow drives liberalism as a whole betrays an achingly parochial view of national politics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">That is the second fatal flaw. The final one is related. Affluent, college-educated liberals are just <em>part</em> of the Democratic Party. A substantial plurality of the party comprises nonwhites, spread throughout the country, and integral to its national and regional political victories (those liberals can’t win without them). Even if you limit this to the nonwhites who voted for Barack Obama in 2012, it dwarfs the number of people who could possibly participate in the smug liberal culture Rensin describes. Many of them—middle-aged and working-class—likely aren’t even aware it exists.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Rensin tries to deal with this fact. At the beginning of the essay, he acknowledges minority voters as part of the Democratic coalition but asserts that “bereft of the material and social capital required to dominate elite decision making, they were largely excluded from an agenda driven by the New Democratic core: the educated, the coastal, and the professional.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Later, he writes, “The Democratic coalition in the 21<span style="line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">st</span> century is bifurcated: It has the postgraduates, but it has the disenfranchised urban poor as well, a group better defined by race and immigration status than by class.” This is supposed to be a rejoinder—“Elite liberalism, and the Democratic Party by extension cannot hate poor people, they say!” he writes—but it’s not.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Rensin doesn’t seem aware, for instance, of the partnerships between black and white Democrats in the South that delivered a measure of investment in public goods through the 1970s, ’80s, and early ’90s—until racial resentment helped kill the white Southern Democrat as a political figure. He seems blind to the ways in which Hispanics of all classes became a powerful force in California, shaping the state’s politics in profound ways. Somehow, he’s missed the extent to which nonwhite voters in the Obama era have become premier coalition members, moving Obama on everything from criminal justice reform to immigration. It is too much to say that nonwhite Democrats fully shape the party’s agenda. But a quick survey of recent history shows, clearly, that they’re prime partners in power.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Missing from his description of the supposedly “bifurcated” Democratic coalition are the millions of blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans—the large majority of each group, in fact—that aren’t the “disenfranchised urban poor.” Somehow, Latino military families in Hampton Roads, Virginia, black suburbanites in Atlanta, and Asian American entrepreneurs in Seattle have vanished, subsumed instead in a single, teeming, and undifferentiated mass.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">All of this gets to the central irony of the essay: Rensin wants to condemn “elite liberalism” and the Democratic Party as an institution. But he misses the huge degree to which his vantage point on American liberalism isn’t <em>the</em> vantage point. Depending on where and who you are, liberalism looks different, both as politics and culture.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This is blinkered. And the result is an essay that doesn’t criticize “liberalism” so much as it positions Rensin against other members of his cultural cohort. It’s what you might write if you’ve mistaken the consumption habits and shibboleths of your tribe for a politics that drives one of two major political parties in a democracy of over 300 million people, if you’re convinced of your own centrality to the currents in American history. I can think of a word for that.</span></div>
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<br />NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-63023724205882032412016-04-28T21:37:00.000-07:002016-04-28T21:42:01.211-07:00Hillary Clinton: Where Pro-choice Becomes Eugenics<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>LifeNews.com</b></span></h2>
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<a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2016/01/11/hillary-clinton-tells-planned-parenthood-as-your-president-i-will-always-have-your-back/" target="_blank">Hillary Clinton Tells Planned Parenthood: “As Your President, I Will Always Have Your Back”</a></h2>
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At a political rally on Sunday, pro-abortion presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accepted the endorsement of the Planned Parenthood abortion business and told its leadership that it would have her unqualified support as president. Fresh from <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2015/10/27/11th-video-catches-planned-parenthood-abortion-doc-selling-aborted-babies-heads/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">months of expose’ videos catching its top officials selling the body parts of aborted babies</a>, the abortion business plans to spend as much as $20 million to elect Clinton as president.</div>
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As local news reports indicate:</div>
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Before a fired-up crowd of primarily pink-clad women, Clinton alluded to the controversies the group has faced since a series of videos by anti-abortion activists were released in 2015. Clinton argued that Republicans would “accelerate the assault on access to safe and legal abortion” and that she is the person best positioned to beat them in November.</div>
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“I will always defend Planned Parenthood and I will say consistently and proudly, Planned Parenthood should be funded, supported and protected, not undermined, misrepresented and demonized,” Clinton said. “As your president, I will always have your back.”</div>
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<a href="http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/we-oppose-hillary-clinton.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px;">SIGN THE PETITION! We Oppose Hillary Clinton!</span></em></a></div>
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Clinton was introduced by Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, who said Clinton was the “leader I trust in the White House to make sure women and families move forward.”</div>
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“In this election, with the attacks on women’s health and rights, more than ever before we don’t need a friend, a solid vote, a statement, we need a fighter,” Richards said about the former secretary of state.</div>
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Clinton understands what’s at stake in this presidential election: the long-term future of abortion and whether the Supreme Court will renew its support for unlimited abortions before birth or if it will overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to offer legal protection for unborn children.</div>
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“We need a Democratic nominee who will be able to beat the Republicans and get the job done for Americans,” Clinton said before asking the audience that “the next president would easily appoint more than one justice to the Supreme Court.”</div>
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“That fight is not over either. Access to affordable birth control is still hanging in the balance at the Supreme Court,” Clinton said. “If a Republicans wins this election and gets the chance to stack the Supreme Court with right-wing justices, together they will accelerate the move to take America in the wrong direction on so many issues that you and I have fought for and many Americans take for granted.”</div>
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Cecile Richards, the president of the abortion business, said Hillary is “everything Planned Parenthood has believed in and fought for over the past 100 years.”</div>
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Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List gave this response to LifeNews:</div>
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“In endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, Cecile Richards said that ‘<em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;">everything Planned Parenthood has believed in and fought for over the past 100 years is on the ballot.’ </em>She’s absolutely right<em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;">.</em> With the pathway created by the reconciliation process to defund Planned Parenthood, the pro-life movement is closer than ever before to achieving this longtime goal. If Americans elect a pro-life president, this legislation could be signed into law as soon as 2017.</div>
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“Planned Parenthood’s endorsement of Clinton is also a much-needed and welcome moment of clarity in this election. It is proof positive of her extremism on the abortion issue. Clinton is grossly out of step with the majority of Americans who support legislative proposals such as limiting abortion after five months and getting taxpayers out of the abortion business.</div>
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“Make no mistake, this radical position – sadly the norm for the Democratic Party – will cost Clinton votes in November. As DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz acknowledged this week, support for abortion on-demand, without limits, simply does not resonate with a younger generation.”</div>
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Clinton’s extreme position on abortion is clear. At a campaign event in August, she<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/27/politics/hillary-clinton-republicans-terrorist-groups/index.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">compared pro-lifers to terrorists.</a> Then, during a September interview on CBS, Clinton said<a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2015/09/21/hillary-clinton-supports-unlimited-abortions-up-to-birth-no-limits-even-in-the-9th-month/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">she would oppose a federal limit on abortion</a> at any stage of pregnancy.</div>
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During the first Democratic presidential debate in October, Clinton defended Planned Parenthood although <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2015/09/15/10th-video-catches-planned-parenthood-we-sell-fresh-aborted-baby-eyes-hearts-and-gonads/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">the abortion company has been caught selling aborted babies and their body parts</a>. She said she was tired of the attacks from pro-life Republicans who have been working overtime to <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2015/10/05/pro-life-groups-back-reconciliation-vote-to-get-planned-parenthood-de-funding-bill-to-obama/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">try to de-fund the abortion corporation</a>.</div>
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“They don’t mind having big government interfere with a woman’s right to choose and to take down Planned Parenthood — they’re fine with big government when it comes to that,” Clinton said. “I’m sick of it.”</div>
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Clinton, <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2015/10/14/hillary-clinton-is-tired-of-pro-lifers-trying-to-shut-down-planned-parenthood-im-sick-of-it/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">who brought up Planned Parenthood unprompted</a> during both debates, has been bending over backwards to protect and defend her friends at the abortion company, which will pull out all the stops in the 2016 election to ensure she takes over the White House from pro-abortion President Barack Obama.</div>
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Clinton, the Democratic front-runner in the presidential race, supports unlimited abortions up to birth – a radical stance that <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2015/05/13/americans-want-late-term-abortions-banned-back-bill-to-stop-them-after-20-weeks/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">most Americans oppose</a>.</div>
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In a Sept. 20 interview with CBS’ <em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;">Face the Nation</em> moderator John Dickerson, Hillary Clinton revealed that <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2015/09/21/hillary-clinton-supports-unlimited-abortions-up-to-birth-no-limits-even-in-the-9th-month/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">she wouldn’t support a federal limit on abortion</a> “at any state of pregnancy” in the name of a “woman’s right to choose.” While the 2016 presidential candidate once called the content of the recent videos exposing Planned Parenthood “disturbing,” she dismissed them as “misleadingly edited” to Dickerson.</div>
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According to Clinton, women should have the say in any circumstance.</div>
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“[T]his gets back to whether you respect a woman’s right to choose or not,” she said. “And I think that’s what this whole argument once again is about.”</div>
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<a href="http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/i-pledge-to-vote-for-a-pro-life-candidate-for-president.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px;">SIGN THE NEW PLEDGE: I Pledge to Vote for a Pro-Life Candidate for President</span></em></a></div>
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NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-58065525610220887012016-04-28T21:20:00.000-07:002016-04-28T22:25:18.075-07:00The Forgotten Lessons of the American Eugenics Movement<span style="font-size: x-large;">THE NEW YORKER</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-forgotten-lessons-of-the-american-eugenics-movement" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Forgotten Lessons of the American Eugenics Movement</a></h1>
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BY <span itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/andrea-denhoed" itemprop="url" rel="author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Andrea DenHoed">ANDREA DENHOED</a></span></h3>
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<figure class="horizontal attachment-large landscape img-expandable featured" style="border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DenHoed-ImbecilesBook-1200.jpg" itemprop="url" style="border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; max-width: 100%; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; width: 690px;" title="The Forgotten Lessons of the American Eugenics Movement"><img alt="Adam Cohen’s book “Imbeciles” details how Carrie Buck, shown here with her mother, Emma, in 1924, came to be at the center of a Supreme Court case that legalized forced sterilization for eugenic purposes." class="post-load horizontal attachment-large" src="http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DenHoed-ImbecilesBook-690.jpg" data-src-mobile="http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DenHoed-ImbecilesBook-290x149-1461184796.jpg" data-src="http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DenHoed-ImbecilesBook-690.jpg" itemprop="image" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 690px;" /></a><figcaption class="caption" itemprop="description" style="border: 0px; font-size: 1.6rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.8rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="caption-text" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 5px; vertical-align: baseline;">Adam Cohen’s book “Imbeciles” details how Carrie Buck, shown here with her mother, Emma, in 1924, came to be at the center of a Supreme Court case that legalized forced sterilization for eugenic purposes.</span><span class="caption-text" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 5px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span><span class="credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder" style="border: 0px; color: #9a9a9a; display: block; font-family: , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "segoe" , "segoe ui" , "segoe wp" , "calibri" , "arial" , "clean" , sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.1rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="hideFromView" style="border: 0px; clip: rect(0px 0px 0px 0px); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 1px; line-height: inherit; margin: -1px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute; vertical-align: baseline; width: 1px;">CREDIT</span>PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY ARTHUR ESTABROOK PAPERS, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS & ARCHIVES, UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY, SUNY</span></figcaption></figure><span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0); font-family: inherit;"><span style="border-color: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-style: initial; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;"><a class="tny-slot" data-total-words="0" href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="/2" style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></a><a class="tny-page" data-total-words="0" href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="/1" style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></a></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Carrie Buck was nobody you would have heard of. She was born in 1906 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Soon afterward, her father either abandoned the family or died—there’s no reliable record—leaving Carrie and her mother, Emma, in dire poverty. As a toddler, Carrie was taken in, with the approval of a municipal court, by a well-to-do couple, John and Alice Dobbs, who asked to become her foster parents after seeing Emma on the street. Carrie lived with the Dobbses and went to school through the sixth grade, after which they pulled her out of school so that she could do housework full time. She cleaned their house and was hired out to clean neighbors’ homes, until, at seventeen, she was discovered to be pregnant—she later said that she’d been raped, by Alice Dobbs’s nephew—at which point her guardians moved to have her declared mentally deficient, although there was no prior evidence that this was the case. They then had her committed to the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">When Carrie was sent to the Virginia Colony, in 1924, the forward thinkers of America were preoccupied by the imagined genetic threat of feeblemindedness, a capaciously defined condition that was diagnosed using often flawed intelligence tests and by identifying symptoms such as moral degeneracy, an overactive sex drive, and other traits liberally ascribed to poor people (especially poor women) who were seen as having stepped out of line. (Just a few years before Carrie was committed to the Virginia Colony, Emma was also sent there. It seems that she had turned to drug use and prostitution—although it’s hard to say, since many female vagrants were labelled prostitutes.) A sloppy reading of Gregor Mendel’s pea pods and Charles Darwin’s theories gave a scientific veneer to the conclusion that many social ills were caused by the proliferation of the wrong sort of people and that they could be neatly nipped in the bud with the intervention of eugenics—a term coined, in 1883, by Darwin’s half-cousin Francis Galton, who declared it “a virile creed, full of hopefulness.” Soon, the United States, along with Germany, was at the forefront of the movement to improve the human species through breeding. <em style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Scientific American</em> ran articles on the subject, and the American Museum of Natural History hosted conferences. Theodore Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and many other prominent citizens were outspoken supporters. Eugenics was taught in schools, celebrated in exhibits at the World’s Fair, and even preached from pulpits. The human race, one prominent advocate declared in 1909, was poised “to dry up the springs that feed the torrent of defective and degenerate protoplasm.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The Virginia Colony was one of many facilities for the disabled that were founded in the Progressive Era, partly to provide care for a vulnerable population and partly to remove it from the gene pool, by sequestering those individuals during their fertile years. (On the other side of the coin, Jill Lepore has written about how modern <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/03/29/fixed" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 1px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -3px 0px; text-transform: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;">marriage therapy</a> grew out of one man’s effort to promote “fit” unions.) Between 1904 and 1921, the rate of institutionalization for feeblemindedness nearly tripled. Carrie was just one of this crowd, except that she happened to arrive at the Virginia Colony right at the moment when its superintendent, Dr. Albert Priddy, was looking to transform his institution from a genetic quarantine center to a sort of eugenics factory, where the variously unfit could be committed for a short time, sterilized, and then released, like cats, back into the general population, with the happy assurance that they would never reproduce.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">A number of states passed laws permitting eugenic sterilization in the early twentieth century, some of which were subsequently struck down in court. Virginia passed its law in 1924, largely thanks to Priddy’s advocacy, but he was advised not to carry out any sterilizations until the law had been tested in court as far as appeals would take it. For this, he needed a patient to pin his legal case on. Carrie was a desirable candidate for several reasons. She had been declared a middle-grade moron—a technical designation, based on I.Q., that placed her relatively high on the intelligence scale, above the “idiot” and “imbecile” classifications and just below normal. Morons were considered particularly dangerous: they were smart enough to pass undetected and possibly breed with their superiors. Carrie, moreover, had had a child as an unmarried teen-ager, demonstrating the heightened sexuality and fertility—or “differential fecundity”—said to be common among the mentally deficient. Her mother and daughter had been labelled defective as well—the latter, still an infant, without any testing—providing evidence that Carrie’s reported shortcomings were hereditary. All of this added up to a terrifying spectre: Carrie was a walking womb, a pot of genetic poisons that might seep into purer bloodlines. And that is how Carrie Buck came to be at the center of the Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, which, in an 8–1 decision, made forced sterilization for eugenic purposes legal in the United States.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck,” by the journalist and lawyer Adam Cohen, gives a detailed account of the many forces that converged to bring about the Buck decision, tracing the intersecting paths of the people involved. He begins with Dr. Priddy, who was a true believer in the pure-blooded future. Priddy began pushing for legislation permitting eugenic sterilizations after he was sued by a patient whom he’d sterilized without her consent. He turned to a friend, a lawyer and politician named Aubrey Strode, who emerges as a fascinatingly banal character in Cohen’s account. Strode apparently wasn’t wholeheartedly in favor of the cause, but he did his job, drafting the law, suggesting the test-case approach, and representing the Colony in court. He argued the case before the Supreme Court, won, and then basically never mentioned it again. Carrie’s attorney in the case, selected by her court-appointed guardian, was a man named Irving Whitehead, a childhood friend of Strode’s and a former board member for the Colony. He collaborated with Priddy and Strode on the appeals process and handled Carrie’s case in a thoroughly negligent way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Strode wrote his legislation based on a model law drafted by the biologist Harry Laughlin, who was the director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Eugenics Record Office (an epicenter for research in the field) and perhaps the most influential eugenics advocate in the country. If Strode is Eichmann in this story, then Laughlin is Goebbels. (The Nazi comparison feels justified here, if only for its literal relevance: Laughlin corresponded with German eugenicists and was enthusiastic about Hitler’s leadership, praising him for realizing that the “central mission of all politics is race hygiene.” He was also a driving force behind the Immigration Act of 1924, which set strict quotas on various undesirable races, including Jews. He urged maintaining these quotas when, not many years later, large numbers of Jews were trying to flee Europe.) The team in Virginia asked Laughlin to be an expert witness in the Buck case, and he was happy to oblige. Without meeting Carrie, he submitted a notarized statement saying that she had a “record during life of immorality, prostitution, and untruthfulness” and belonged to “the shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of anti-social whites of the South.” He supported her proposed sterilization as a “potential parent of socially inadequate or defective offspring.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Oliver Wendell Holmes was on the Court when the case was tried and wrote the majority opinion. Cohen pays particular attention to his role, arguing that Holmes’s reputation as a paragon of democratic wisdom is largely undeserved, and that he was, in reality, a flinty character and an arrogant élitist whose decisions favored the powerful and whose ostensibly progressive opinions were arrived at through illiberal rationale. This reading is certainly borne out by <a href="http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/index2.html?tag=260" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 1px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -3px 0px; text-transform: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">the decision</a> he wrote for Buck v. Bell, which is five paragraphs and contains several coolly vicious flourishes, such as “It is better for the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” He declared, in reference to Carrie’s family, that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Cohen provides a detailed backstory for each character who appears, wandering sometimes confusingly far afield. But the panoramic view is instructive: one can see these men marching their agendas forward over bridges formed by social connections, whether it’s Priddy asking a friend to write him a law, Holmes being recommended for the Supreme Court by a fellow Boston Brahmin, or Laughlin getting his job at Cold Spring Harbor because he bonded with its founder over their shared love of chicken breeding. Cohen writes that there was widespread skepticism about eugenics among those whom Oliver Wendell Holmes once referred to as “the thick-fingered clowns we call the people,” but the opposition wasn’t large or organized enough to effectively counter the influential network behind the movement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Carrie herself all but disappears in the book. This isn’t Cohen’s fault: unlike the men in this story, she wasn’t the sort of person to leave behind an archive. Cohen, in fact, does an admirable job collecting scraps of information about her life. She was sterilized soon after the trial, and eventually released from the Colony. She was married in 1932, and again in 1965, after her first husband died. Her daughter, who was raised by the Dobbses, died in 1932; Carrie wasn’t told about her death until months later. Her own mother, Emma, died in 1944, and Carrie found out when she arrived for a visit, two weeks after the funeral. Carrie was evidently a devoted wife who enjoyed reading the newspaper and doing crosswords and never had much money. People who knew her said that they never noticed any signs of mental deficiency. In 1980, some reporters found her and asked what she thought about the Supreme Court case that bore her name. (No one seems to have asked her before.) She said that she would have liked to have a couple of children, and that she hadn’t fully understood the nature of the sterilization procedure until several years afterward. She died in 1983, in a home for the indigent elderly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Thirty-two states passed eugenic-sterilization laws during the twentieth century, and between sixty and seventy thousand people were sterilized under them. The rhetoric of the movement toned down after the U.S. went to war with Germany; most American eugenicists abandoned their explicit praise of the Nazi project, and the field dwindled as an area of officially sanctioned research. (The disassociation did not go both ways: Buck v. Bell was cited by the defense at Nuremberg.) But the sterilization rate remained high even after the Second World War. So many poor Southerners underwent the procedure that it became known as a “Mississippi appendectomy.” It was only in the nineteen-sixties and seventies, with evolving attitudes toward civil and human rights, that states began repealing their sterilization laws.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The culminating shock of “Imbeciles”—a book full of shocking anecdotes—is the fact that Buck v. Bell is still on the books and was cited as a precedent <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-8th-circuit/1017278.html" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 1px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -3px 0px; text-transform: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">in court</a> as recently as 2001. Forced or coercive sterilizations never entirely went away either. In 2013, the Center for Investigative Reporting <a href="http://cironline.org/reports/female-inmates-sterilized-california-prisons-without-approval-4917" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 1px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -3px 0px; text-transform: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">revealed</a> that at least a hundred and forty-eight female prisoners in California were sterilized without proper permission between 2006 and 2010. Last year, a district attorney in Nashville <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nashville-prosecutor-fired-amid-reports-of-sterilization-in-plea-deals/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 1px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -3px 0px; text-transform: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">was fired</a> for including sterilization requirements in plea deals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Despite these contemporary remnants of America’s involvement in eugenics, and despite the fact that the movement shaped national policy and held sway in the upper reaches of society for many years, this chapter of American history is surprisingly absent from the common conception of the country’s past. It’s not that it has been ignored by historians or journalists. <em style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The New Yorker</em><em style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </em>ran a lengthy <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/annals-of-eugenics" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 1px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -3px 0px; text-transform: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;">four-part series</a> on eugenics in 1984, and a number of books have been published on the topic. Many of these works approach the story of American eugenics as though it will be a surprise to the reader, which is probably a safe bet. Of the two other books on Buck v. Bell that have appeared in the past ten years, <a href="http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/20176/better-for-all-the-world/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 1px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -3px 0px; text-transform: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">one</a> has the subtitle “The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity,” while <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/three-generations-no-imbeciles" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 1px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 2px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -3px 0px; text-transform: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">the other</a> ends by noting that the history of eugenics in the U.S. is “often forgotten.” Cohen, too, writes that “<em style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Buck v. Bell</em> is little remembered today.” Yet it seems that the collective forgetfulness is not a matter of some well of information remaining untapped but of our inability or unwillingness to soak up what is drawn out of it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">What is hardest to forget about “Imbeciles” is the stream of grandiose invective against the supposedly unfit—the diatribes concerning “germs of dependency and delinquency” and the “world peopled by a race of degenerates and defectives.” It’s a language that combines the detachment of scientific terminology with the heat of bigoted slurs. It’s clearly from another time, but, lacking any lip service to equality and opportunity and the other touchstones of American political rhetoric, it also seems to come from another country. This is not how we talk about ourselves. And yet there are passages that sound startlingly familiar. In the debate over the Immigration Act of 1924, which excluded eugenically undesirable races from the U.S., a senator from Alabama declared, “We are coming to a pitiful pass in this great country when it is unpopular to speak the English language, the American language”—a lament that might have been taken from yesterday’s paper, except that he was bemoaning the proliferation of Yiddish.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It’s impossible, especially, to read “Imbeciles” without thinking of the current election cycle. Although the concerns of the eugenics movement don’t map neatly onto today’s political divides, patterns of thought are repeated: fears of procreation and infiltration still have force, although they’re directed not at “hopelessly vicious protoplasm” but at “anchor babies”; instead of the pure blood of the Nordic races, we hear invocations of that other superior species, the Winners. The 2016 Presidential campaign has reverberated with appeals to strength and victory and virility and contempt for weakness and failure and foreigners, hitting notes of blatant ugliness that we’re not used to hearing in the public sphere. The response in some quarters has been bafflement, as though this way of speaking had materialized out of nowhere. But perhaps it shouldn’t be so surprising. As Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote to a friend, about his pleasure in writing the Buck decision, “Sooner or later one gets a chance to say what one thinks.”</span></div>
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NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-88192659401412048272016-04-17T06:52:00.000-07:002016-04-17T06:52:07.203-07:0021 most consequential Clinton scandals, ranked from most important<img alt="Logo: The Washington Times" src="http://twt-assets.washtimes.com/v4/images/logo-twt.4b20fb5d7b29.svg" /><br />
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<a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/12/bill-clinton-hillary-clinton-scandals-ranked-from-/?page=all" target="_blank">21 most consequential Clinton scandals, ranked from most important</a></h1>
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<span class="byline" style="box-sizing: border-box;">By <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/the-washington-times/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #015fb6; text-decoration: none;">THE WASHINGTON TIMES</a></span><span class="source" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;"> - - Monday, October 12, 2015</span></div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">ANALYSIS/OPINION:</strong></div>
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<img alt="Illustration on Hillary Clinton's historical/political baggage by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times" height="640" src="http://twt-thumbs.washtimes.com/media/image/2015/10/12/10122015_b1-hillary8201_s878x1265.jpg?80899a73ae20c53c5f86478c66a84121814572fd" width="444" /><br />
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1. <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/monica-lewinsky/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #015fb6; text-decoration: none;">Monica Lewinsky</a>: Led to only the second president in American history to be impeached.</div>
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2. Benghazi: Four Americans killed, an entire system of weak diplomatic security uncloaked, and the credibility of a president and his secretary of state damaged.</div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3e3e3e; font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.8571px;">3. Asia fundraising scandal: More than four dozen convicted in a scandal that made the Lincoln bedroom, White House donor coffees and Buddhist monks infamous.</span><br />
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4. Hillary’s private emails: Hundreds of national secrets already leaked through private email and the specter of a criminal probe looming large.</div>
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5. Whitewater: A large S&L failed and several people went to prison. [see footnote]</div>
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6. Travelgate: The firing of the career travel office was the very first crony capitalism scandal of the Clinton era.</div>
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7. Humagate: An aide’s sweetheart job arrangement.</div>
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8. Pardongate: The first time donations were ever connected as possible motives for presidential pardons.</div>
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9. Foundation favors: Revealing evidence that the Clinton Foundation was a pay-to-play back door to the State Department, and an open checkbook for foreigners to curry favor.</div>
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10. Mysterious files: The disappearance and re-discovery of Hillary’s Rose Law Firm records.</div>
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11. Filegate: The Clinton use of FBI files to dig for dirt on their enemies.</div>
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12. Hubble trouble: The resignation and imprisonment of Hillary law partner Web Hubbell.</div>
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13. The Waco tragedy: One of the most lethal exercises of police power in American history.</div>
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14. The Clinton’s Swedish slush fund: $26 million collected overseas with little accountability and lots of questions about whether contributors got a pass on Iran sanctions.</div>
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15. Troopergate: From the good old days, did Arkansas state troopers facilitate Bill Clinton’s philandering?</div>
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16. Gennifer Flowers: The tale that catapulted a supermarket tabloid into the big time.</div>
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17. Bill’s Golden Tongue: His and her speech fees shocked the American public.</div>
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18. Boeing Bucks: Boeing contributed big-time to Bill; Hillary helped the company obtain a profitable Russian contract.</div>
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19. Larry Lawrence: How did a fat cat donor get buried in Arlington National Cemetery without war experience?</div>
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20. The cattle futures: Hillary as commodity trader extraordinaire.</div>
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21. Chinagate: Nuclear secrets go to China on her husband’s watch.</div>
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Footnote:</div>
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The <b>Whitewater controversy</b> (also known as the <b>Whitewater scandal</b>, or simply <b>Whitewater</b>) began with investigations into the real estate investments of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Bill Clinton">Bill</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Hillary Clinton">Hillary Clinton</a> and their associates, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_McDougal" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Jim McDougal">Jim</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_McDougal" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Susan McDougal">Susan McDougal</a>, in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewater_Development_Corporation" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Whitewater Development Corporation">Whitewater Development Corporation</a>, a failed business venture in the 1970s and 1980s.</div>
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A March 1992 <i><a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="New York Times">New York Times</a></i> article published during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_presidential_campaign,_1992" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Bill Clinton presidential campaign, 1992">U.S. presidential campaign</a> reported that the Clintons—then governor and first lady of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Arkansas">Arkansas</a>—had invested and lost money in the Whitewater Development Corporation. The article stimulated the interest of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Jean_Lewis" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="L. Jean Lewis">L. Jean Lewis</a>, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_Trust_Corporation" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Resolution Trust Corporation">Resolution Trust Corporation</a> investigator who was looking into the failure of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Guaranty" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Madison Guaranty">Madison Guaranty</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_association" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Savings and loan association">Savings and Loan</a>, owned by McDougal. She looked for connections between the savings and loan company and the Clintons, and on September 2, 1992, she submitted a criminal referral to the FBI naming Bill and Hillary Clinton as witnesses in the Madison Guaranty case. Little Rock <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Eastern_District_of_Arkansas" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas">U.S. Attorney</a> Charles A. Banks and the FBI determined that the referral lacked merit, but she continued to pursue it. From 1992 to 1994, Lewis issued several additional referrals against the Clintons and repeatedly called the U.S. Attorney's Office in Little Rock and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="United States Department of Justice">Justice Department</a> regarding the case. Her referrals eventually became public knowledge, and she testified before the <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Whitewater_Committee" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Senate Whitewater Committee">Senate Whitewater Committee</a> in 1994.</div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hale_(Whitewater)" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="David Hale (Whitewater)">David Hale</a>, the source of criminal allegations against the Clintons, claimed in November 1993 that as governor of Arkansas, Clinton had pressured him into providing an illegal $300,000 loan to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_McDougal" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Susan McDougal">Susan McDougal</a>, the Clintons' partner in the Whitewater land deal. Clinton supporters regarded Hale's allegations as questionable, as Hale had not mentioned Clinton in reference to this loan during the original FBI investigation of Madison Guaranty in 1989; only after coming under indictment in 1993 did Hale make allegations against the Clintons. A <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Securities_and_Exchange_Commission" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission">U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission</a> investigation did result in convictions against the McDougals for their role in the Whitewater project; and Bill Clinton's successor as governor, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Guy_Tucker" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Jim Guy Tucker">Jim Guy Tucker</a>, was convicted of fraud and sentenced to four years of probation for his role in the matter. Susan McDougal later served 18 months in prison for contempt of court for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_McDougal#Whitewater_grand_jury_and_civil_contempt_of_court" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Susan McDougal">refusing to answer questions</a> relating to Whitewater. The Clintons themselves were never prosecuted, after three separate inquiries found insufficient evidence linking them with the criminal conduct of others related to the land deal, and McDougal was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_by_Bill_Clinton#Pardons" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="List of people pardoned by Bill Clinton">granted a pardon by President Clinton</a> before he left office.</div>
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The term <b>Whitewater</b> is also sometimes used to include other controversies from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Bill_Clinton" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Presidency of Bill Clinton">Bill Clinton administration</a>, especially those such as <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelgate" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Travelgate">Travelgate</a>, <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filegate" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Filegate">Filegate</a>, and the circumstances surrounding <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Vince_Foster" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Suicide of Vince Foster">Vince Foster's death</a>, that were investigated by the Whitewater <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_counsel" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Independent counsel">independent counsel</a>.</div>
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Whitewater Convictions:</div>
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Ultimately the Clintons were never charged, but 15 other persons were convicted of more than 40 crimes, including Bill Clinton's successor as Governor, who was removed from office.</div>
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<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Guy_Tucker" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Jim Guy Tucker">Jim Guy Tucker</a>: Governor of Arkansas at the time, removed from office (fraud, 3 counts)</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Haley" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="John Haley">John Haley</a>: attorney for Jim Guy Tucker (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_evasion" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Tax evasion">tax evasion</a>)</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">William J. Marks, Sr.: Jim Guy Tucker's business partner (<a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(crime)" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Conspiracy (crime)">conspiracy</a>)</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Smith_(Whitewater)" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Stephen Smith (Whitewater)">Stephen Smith</a>: former Governor Clinton aide (conspiracy to misapply funds). Bill Clinton <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_by_Bill_Clinton#Pardons" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="List of people pardoned by Bill Clinton">pardoned</a>.</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster_Hubbell" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Webster Hubbell">Webster Hubbell</a>: Clinton political supporter; Rose Law Firm partner (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embezzlement" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Embezzlement">embezzlement</a>, fraud)</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_McDougal" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Jim McDougal">Jim McDougal</a>: banker, Clinton political supporter: (18 felonies, varied)</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_McDougal" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Susan McDougal">Susan McDougal</a>: Clinton political supporter (multiple fraud). Bill Clinton <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_by_Bill_Clinton#Pardons" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="List of people pardoned by Bill Clinton">pardoned</a>.</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hale_(Whitewater)" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="David Hale (Whitewater)">David Hale</a>: banker, self-proclaimed Clinton political supporter: (conspiracy, fraud)</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Neal Ainley: Perry County Bank president (embezzled bank funds for Clinton campaign)</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Wade_(real_estate_broker)" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Chris Wade (real estate broker)">Chris Wade</a>: Whitewater real estate broker (multiple loan fraud). Bill Clinton <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_by_Bill_Clinton#Pardons" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="List of people pardoned by Bill Clinton">pardoned</a>.</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Larry Kuca: Madison real estate agent (multiple loan fraud)</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Palmer" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Robert W. Palmer">Robert W. Palmer</a>: Madison appraiser (conspiracy). Bill Clinton <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_by_Bill_Clinton#Pardons" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="List of people pardoned by Bill Clinton">pardoned</a>.</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Latham_(Whitewater)" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="John Latham (Whitewater)">John Latham</a>: Madison Bank CEO (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_fraud" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Bank fraud">bank fraud</a>)</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Fitzhugh" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Eugene Fitzhugh">Eugene Fitzhugh</a>: Whitewater defendant (multiple bribery)</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Charles Matthews: Whitewater defendant (bribery)</li>
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NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-5250906140909812062016-04-14T18:16:00.001-07:002016-04-14T18:16:42.490-07:00Hillary Clinton Channels Allen and John Foster Dulles<br />
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<a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/04/hillary-clinton-channels-allen-and-john-foster-dulles/#more-62366" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hillary Clinton Channels Allen and John Foster Dulles</a></h1>
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Is the Clinton Foundation the Dulles Brother’s Sullivan and Cromwell?</div>
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by John Stanton / April 14th, 2016</div>
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According to <em><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/11/16/the-vices-of-hillary-clinton/" style="color: #333333;">Counterpunch</a></em> editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair:</div>
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The desire for secrecy is one of Mrs. Clinton’s enduring and damaging traits…Befitting a Midwestern Methodist with a bullying father, repression has always been one of Mrs. Clinton’s most prominent characteristics. Hers has been the instinct to conceal, to deny, to refuse to admit any mistake. Mickey Kantor, the Los Angeles lawyer who worked on the 1992 [presidential] campaign, said that Hillary adamantly refused to admit to any mistakes. Since Vietnam, there’s never been a war that Mrs. Clinton didn’t like. She argued passionately in the White House for the NATO bombing of Belgrade. Five days after September 11, 2001, she was calling for a broad war on terror…“I’ll stand behind [George W.] Bush for a long time to come”, Senator Clinton promised, and she was as good as her word, voting for the Patriot Act and the wide-ranging authorization to use military force against Afghanistan…Of course she supported without reservation the attack on Afghanistan and, as the propaganda buildup toward the onslaught on Iraq got underway, she didn’t even bother to walk down the hall to read the national intelligence estimate on Iraq before the war.</div>
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As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton instigated and legitimized the overthrow of the Honduran government in 2009 not all that unlike the 1954 Guatemala Coup engineered primarily by CIA Director Allen Dulles, supported by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and with the glowing approval of President Dwight Eisenhower.</div>
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In a March 2016 interview with Amy Goodman on <i>Democracy Now</i>, <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/11/before_her_assassination_berta_caceres_singled" style="color: #333333;">Greg Grandin</a>, a professor of Latin American history at New York University, discussed the fallout from the 2009 Honduran Coup.</div>
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I mean, hundreds of peasant activists and indigenous activists have been killed. Scores of gay rights activists have been killed. I mean, it’s just—it’s just a nightmare in Honduras. I mean, there’s ways in which the coup regime basically threw up Honduras to transnational pillage. And Berta Cáceres [a prominent Honduran activist assassinated in 2016], in that interview, says what was installed after the coup was something like a permanent counterinsurgency on behalf of transnational capital. And that was—that wouldn’t have been possible if it were not for Hillary Clinton’s normalization of that election, or legitimacy.</div>
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In an April interview with <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2016/4/13/shes_baldly_lying_dana_frank_responds" style="color: #333333;">Dana Frank</a>, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, on <i>Democracy Now</i>, Frank indicated that President Obama had basically turned over Central and South America to Hillary Clinton. Frank then said this:</div>
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I think it’s really about the U.S. pushback against the democratically elected governments of the left and the center-left that came to power in Latin America in the ’90s and in the 2000s—Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, El Salvador, all these countries. And Zelaya was the weakest link in that chain. He, himself, did not come out of a big social movement base at the time of his election, certainly since the coup. And I think they were—the U.S. was looking for a way to push back against that. There’s a very important military base, U.S. military base, Soto Cano Air Force Base, in Honduras. And Honduras has always been the most captive nation of the United States in Latin America. So, I think they were testing what they could get away with. And they got away with it. It was the first domino pushing back against democracy in Latin America and reasserting U.S. power, in service to a transnational corporate agenda.</div>
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<b>It’s Not Your Country or Life</b></div>
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The 1954 coup that ousted Guatemalan President Jacob Arbenz from the presidency had the same rationale as Hillary Clinton’s 21st Century Honduran effort. David Talbot, writing in the must-read book <i>The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government</i>, noted that Arbenz’s mistake was antagonizing the United Fruit Company by attempting to “expropriate acreage from the United Fruit Company’s large holding that were not under cultivation, and [Arbenz] had offered the multinational corporation fair compensation for the seized land.”</div>
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But United Fruit had powerful connections in the Eisenhower Administration. John Foster Dulles had long been a legal advisor to United Fruit for many years. Both brothers held shares of stock in the company. Robert Cutler, head of Eisenhower’s National Security Council, was the former chair of United Fruit. Walter “Beetle” Smith, former CIA director and close friend of Eisenhower, would end up on the United Fruit Board of Directors after the coup. Even Eisenhower’s personal secretary, Ann Whitman, was affiliated with United Fruit: her husband was its publicity director. Other violent overthrows of foreign governments and the destruction of their societies for crass business and career interests would be coated by Allen Dulles in layers of red paint; that is, Communist red paint. Murder, extortion, coups, wars, torture, oppression, censorship, lies, theft, profits, racism, threat exaggeration and evil leadership would be legitimized under the guise of national security during the Cold War. Just so.</div>
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According to Talbot, “By the time the bloodletting had run its course [in Guatemala], four decades later, over 250,000 people had been killed in a nation whose total population was less than four million when the reign of terror began.”</div>
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For many years, the Dulles brothers were ensured the support of the gatekeepers in banking, finance, media, the military and the US Congress through relationships made and sealed during World War I, the interwar years, and World War II. The Nazis would serve the Dulles brothers well in their private and public roles. Allen would direct the merger of the CIA with some of the worst elements of the defeated Third Reich. John Foster—who while at Sullivan and Cromwell pushed back against closing its satellite office in Nazi Germany– often advocated that nuclear weapons should be viewed as conventional weapons. In some sense, the two brothers seemed to possess the same zealousness and cruelty of the Third Reich.</div>
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Near WWII’s end, Allen protected Nazi intelligence chief for the Eastern Front, Major General Reinhard Gehlen, from war crimes trials and would later merge Gehlen’s operatives and network into the CIA’s operation. Gehlen would become the first chief of West German intelligence (BND) and hold the position until 1968. Allen also cut clandestine deals with other Nazis—government officials, bankers, scientists, researchers, <em>et al</em>–through various operations like PAPERCLIP and SUNRISE. Nazi expertise was used in experimental brain/cognitive modification via ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA. Talbot speculates, chillingly, that Allen was connected with the assassination of John F. Kennedy and not only via his critical role on the Warren Commission. Talbot documents the frenetic activity at the ex-CIA director’s residence in Georgetown, Washington, DC, prior to 22 November 1963. He also notes Allen’s encampment at “The Farm”—a clandestine training center on the CIA campus—from 22 to 24 November 1963.</div>
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<b>It’s a Good Day for Someone Else to Die Hard</b></div>
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According to <em><a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2015/10/22/hillary-clintons-failed-libya-doctrine-2/" style="color: #333333;">Consortium News</a></em>, when Hillary Clinton was asked about the death of Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s deposed ruler, at the hands of a mob, she said, “We came, we saw, he died.” That’s a comment Allen Dulles–or a psychopath–might have made. That’s worrisome in a world in which President Hillary Clinton may become a reality. Her penchant for war, secrecy and cover-up, Yale pedigree and alumni network, corporate connections from Wall Street to London, fealty to Israel, shapeshifting Republican/Democrat persona, and the use of the Clinton Foundation as a sort of non-profit, quasi-government, global intelligence/networking agency makes comparing her with the Dulles brothers — and their public/private lives — not as crazy as it first seems. The <a href="https://www.clintonfoundation.org/" style="color: #333333;">Clinton Foundation</a> has initiatives in dozens of countries throughout the world. Its connections in international corporate board rooms and the principals of foreign national and local governance give it access to information/intelligence. It is also involved in US domestic political campaigns indirectly through its donors.</div>
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For example, one of the Clinton Foundation’s board members is Frank Guistra. According to a 2013 <em><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-horn/frank-giustra-president-b_b_4061084.html" style="color: #333333;">Huffington Post</a></em> article:</div>
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Clinton was borrowing [Giustra’s private jet] to begin a four-day speaking tour of Latin America that would pay him $800,000…Frank Giustra was forming a friendship that would make him part of the former president’s inner circle and gain him introductions to presidents of Kazakhstan and Colombia… Giustra’s self-serving philanthropy also took him and Clinton to Kazakhstan in September 2007, as documented in a January 2008 <em>New York Times</em> investigation… Within two days [of the beginning of the trip], corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company [UrAsia Energy Ltd.] signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom,”…The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company [UrAsia] into one of the world’s largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Giustra….Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra… Within a year and a half, Giustra sold off his stake in the Kazatomprom joint venture for $3.1 billion, which he had originally purchased for $450 million.</div>
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In a 2015 <em><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/scores-of-clinton-donors-pumped-millions-into-mcauliffe-coffers/2015/07/29/d6396064-1e99-11e5-84d5-eb37ee8eaa61_story.html" style="color: #333333;">Washington Post</a></em> piece by Laura Vozzella on the governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe:</div>
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More than 175 contributors to the Clinton Foundation and to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign have dug deep into their wallets for McAuliffe (Democrat), often giving prolifically despite little or no connection to Virginia…Among them is an Omaha database executive who lavished so much corporate jet travel on himself and the Clinton family that shareholders forced him out. A Hollywood media mogul with a singular interest in Israel. And an Argentine-born energy tycoon who recalled visiting Richmond just once — flying in and out years ago with Bill Clinton, his Georgetown classmate. Of the $60 million McAuliffe has raised for his two gubernatorial bids, inauguration, political action committee and the Democratic Party of Virginia, nearly $18 million has come from contributors to the Clinton Foundation or to Hillary Clinton’s current campaign.</div>
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John Stanton is a writer from Virginia. His latest book is <span style="font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1508866368/dissivoice-20" style="color: #333333;">Media Trolls, Technology Shamans</a></span>. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:captainkong22@gmail.com" style="color: #333333;">captainkong22@gmail.com</a>. <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/author/johnstanton/" style="color: #333333;">Read other articles by John</a>.</div>
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This article was posted on Thursday, April 14th, 2016 at 3:43pm and is filed under <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/espionage/cia/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">CIA</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/corruption/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Corruption</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/turtle-island/central-ixachilan-america/guatemala/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Guatemala</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/turtle-island/central-ixachilan-america/honduras/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Honduras</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/africa/libya/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Libya</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/media/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Media</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/militarism/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Militarism</a>,<a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/language/propaganda/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Propaganda</a>.</div>
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NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-42999633066412285922016-04-14T05:34:00.000-07:002016-04-14T05:34:40.501-07:00How Bill Clinton lost his legacy; Hillary losing hers: Tied KARMA<h2>
<a href="https://www.yahoo.com/"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Yahoo</span></a></h2>
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<a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/how-bill-clinton-lost-his-1406972950126646.html" target="_blank">How Bill Clinton lost his legacy</a></h1>
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<i style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.5px; letter-spacing: 0.3px; line-height: 23.25px;">Former President Bill Clinton at a benefit concert for his wife in New York City in March. (Photo: Mike Segar/Reuters)</i><br />
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When Bill Clinton left office in 2001, historians compared him to <a data-rapid_p="8" data-ylk="itc:0;elm:context_link;" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/03/post-president-for-life/302683/" style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(25, 143, 255) !important; text-decoration: none;">Teddy Roosevelt</a>. Like the Bull Moose, the Big Dog was unusually young (only 54) and still popular when he finished his presidency. He established his base in New York, about 100 blocks from where Roosevelt was born.</div>
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For a while there was even talk of Clinton running for mayor, as Roosevelt once had. What a spectacle that would have been.</div>
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Looking back now, though, the comparison seems wildly off. Roosevelt, you may recall, ended up running for president again and then crusading against Woodrow Wilson’s pacifism. To the day he died in 1919, TR jealously protected his twin legacy of reform and internationalism.</div>
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Clinton, on the other hand, has run from every big ideological fight like a man on parole. From the moment he stepped out of the White House, the husband of a <a data-rapid_p="9" data-ylk="itc:0;elm:context_link;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/08/politics/08YORK.html" style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(25, 143, 255) !important; text-decoration: none;">newly elected</a> senator, his own political interests have been subservient to his wife’s.</div>
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Sure, he started a foundation and got crazy rich, but for the last 16 years — a period in which much of what he achieved has been steadily distorted and discredited — Clinton has been chained by the role of dutiful political spouse.</div>
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And so this is what it’s come to, as the most talented campaigner of the modern age apologizes for defending his own record and <a data-rapid_p="10" data-ylk="itc:0;elm:context_link;" href="http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2016/04/05/bill-clinton-stumps-hillary-campaign-rochester/82612094/" style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(25, 143, 255) !important; text-decoration: none;">stumps cautiously</a> for Hillary ahead of next week’s New York primary. What was supposed to be the final validation of Bill Clinton’s legacy inside the Democratic Party — the election of his wife as a successor — has now become the only thing left that can save it.</div>
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To be clear, Clinton’s governing legacy, unlike Roosevelt’s, featured little by way of transformative legislation. Though he presided over a surging economy, Clinton’s presidency played out mostly like a tragedy in three acts: first the stumble over health care; then the survival of Republican rule through compromise; and finally the sex scandal that crippled his second term.</div>
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Whatever lasting achievements Clinton might have claimed as world leader were probably washed away eight months after he left office, when the sudden strike of terrorists exposed a glaring failure of his tenure.</div>
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But Clinton’s more lasting political legacy — the thing for which he should have been remembered — was the transformation of the Democratic Party from a tired, marginalized coalition of interest groups to a governing entity that embraced modern realities.</div>
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As I was recently reminded watching “Crashing the Party,” an <a data-rapid_p="11" data-ylk="itc:0;elm:context_link;" href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/31/to-bring-the-gop-back-from-donald-trump-republicans-should-follow-the-dlc-s-map.html" style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(25, 143, 255) !important; text-decoration: none;">upcoming documentary</a>about the founding of the Democratic Leadership Council in the 1980s, Democrats by 1992 had lost five of the previous six presidential elections and were losing ground everywhere else. They were perceived, fairly, as reflexively anti-military and anti-business.</div>
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Clinton’s central argument, which it took no small amount of courage to make in those early days, was that in order to both win and govern effectively, Democrats had to stop agitating for an ever more expansive government and start trying to build a better one.</div>
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That was the philosophy that underlay Clinton’s string of pragmatic achievements: free trade, a balanced budget, welfare reform, the crime bill. For a while, anyway, it seemed like he had left an indelible stamp on the party, widening its focus from the poor and excluded to encompass the broader middle class.</div>
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Except then came the Iraq War and the collapse of Wall Street, a crushing recession followed by an even more crushing recession and soaring inequality. Angry liberal populism reemerged as a powerful force, first in Howard Dean’s insurgency and then through the reborn John Edwards and now Bernie Sanders.</div>
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At first, both Clintons tried gamely to defend the underpinnings of what became known as Clintonism. “I think that if ‘progressive’ is defined by results, whether it’s in health care, education, incomes, the environment, or the advancement of peace, then we had a very progressive administration,” Clinton told me during an interview in 2006 for my first book, on <a data-rapid_p="12" data-ylk="itc:0;elm:context_link;" href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1386209.The_Argument" style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(25, 143, 255) !important; text-decoration: none;">Democratic politics</a>.</div>
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When I had lunch with him in South Carolina the next year, while working on a <a data-rapid_p="13" data-ylk="itc:0;elm:context_link;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/magazine/23clintonism-t.html" style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(25, 143, 255) !important; text-decoration: none;">cover piece</a> for the New York Times Magazine about his legacy, Clinton readily agreed to talk more about it. By then, though, Hillary Clinton’s aides had decided that the more Bill went on about his own centrist legacy, the less helpful he became. They promptly quashed the interview.</div>
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Now, some eight years later, the DLC is long dead (succeeded by a group called Third Way), and Clinton’s legacy inside his own party is savaged as never before. He’s derided on the left as a shill for Wall Street, a racist for supporting mass incarceration, a conservative for overhauling welfare.</div>
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Clinton refuses to defend his own record at any length, and when he can’t help himself and plunges in anyway — as he did in <a data-rapid_p="14" data-ylk="itc:0;elm:context_link;" href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/clinton-sanders-turn-spiky-ahead-york-primary-100817640.html" style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(25, 143, 255) !important; text-decoration: none;">rightly defending</a> the crime bill to a couple of activists last week — he almost immediately retreats.</div>
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It’s hard now to escape the conclusion that Clinton did not ultimately transform his party, the virus of Clintonism having been expelled from its bloodstream. Ordinary Democrats still love the former president, but the Democratic leaders and activists reject pretty much everything he stood for.</div>
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In politics, you see, timing is everything. Bill Clinton arrived on the scene at a time when Democrats were desperate and dispirited, and they were willing to entertain any argument that might reverse their string of losses, even if it clashed with their own dogma.</div>
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Hillary never had that luxury. She’s trying to fend off her own Jerry Brown circa 1992 at a time when Democrats have been winning presidential elections, and winning parties tend to care a lot about ideological purity. She can’t have Bill out there excoriating populism and protectionism.</div>
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Maybe this is Bill Clinton’s penance — the price he pays for having humiliated his wife so publicly in 1998. Maybe in order to salvage what remained of his presidency and his marriage, he ultimately had to be willing to sacrifice his own case for historical relevance.</div>
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Maybe this is why Clinton seems so much older all of a sudden, the white hair more brittle, the eyes more watery, the cranelike movements of the arms slower and more deliberate. You can imagine how all that forced silence takes its toll, how physically ruinous it must be to keep the fury inside, when all you want to do is defend yourself.</div>
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What we know is that if Hillary Clinton goes on from New York to win the nomination, it will have more to do with the Obama record than with her husband’s. And if she’s elected in November, it won’t validate Bill’s legacy so much as offer him some path to redemption.</div>
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Bill Clinton once argued to me that Teddy Roosevelt didn’t see his own progressive legacy affirmed for 24 years after he left office, when his distant cousin, Franklin, was elected with the same name and a similar platform. That may or may not be a sound interpretation of history.</div>
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But you can see why it’s a comforting thought.</div>
<br />NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-57138459966492184152016-04-04T18:50:00.000-07:002016-04-04T18:51:52.790-07:00The Panama Papers leak scandal: A look at who is named<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">RAW STORY</span></h2>
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<a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/the-panama-papers-leak-scandal-a-look-at-who-is-named/" target="_blank">The Panama Papers leak scandal: A look at who is named</a></h1>
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<img alt="Jackie Chan speaking at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con International in San Diego, California (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)" src="https://www.rawstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Jackie-Chan-800x430.jpg" /><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: "roboto"; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 21.7px;">Jackie Chan speaking at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con International in San Diego, California (</span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/7588081216/in/photolist-cywUbu-cywTz1-s4mHNw-oRT9az-cywTqN-cywQUS-cywRkS-cywRGG-cywSo7-cAbpFo-azaaNz-xkDcc-7uhduB-22V2M-d8WyXE-aWNEH6-d8WB6w-d8WBwY-d8WBjm-aWF43k-aWF44T-aWF4aT-aWF46B-5qVHX2-dp524B-ERvQA-cywSz1-cywTME-cywUtm-cywQK5-cywR93-cywQxJ-cywUBS-cywUTs-cywRxN-cywUJG-cywSGY-deUydi-7riiKq-4voNLY-3Wmhd7-agVz2M-7E3SbL-2refjN-7AbTsr-4zcna-7BTyay-7vvpgo-6iZUAx-3Y7q1" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #ce2121; font-family: Roboto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; line-height: 21.7px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 300ms, background-color 300ms, opacity 300ms; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Gage Skidmore/Flickr</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: "roboto"; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 21.7px;">)</span><br />
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<time id="pubdate" itemprop="datePublished" style="color: #505050; font-family: 'PT Sans'; font-size: 18px; line-height: 27.9px;">April 4, 2016</time><span style="color: #505050; font-family: "pt sans"; font-size: 18px; line-height: 27.9px;"></span><br />
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<span itemprop="name">Lucy Westcott</span> </div>
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Posted with permission from Newsweek</div>
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Football stars, internationally renowned actors and the friends and family of current and former world leaders are among those named in the Panama Papers scandal.<br />
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On Sunday, more than 100 news outlets around the world published stories on the <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/panama-papers-what-scandal-how-putin-linked-443630" style="color: #383838; text-decoration: none;">Panama Papers</a>, the more than 11 million files that were leaked from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonesca. The law firm is believed to have helped wealthy individuals set up offshore shell companies that in some cases allegedly helped them to hide assets, carry out drug or arms deals or avoid paying taxes.<br />
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The files span 40 years. They were given to the International Consortium of International Journalists (ICIJ) and German newspaper <em>Suddeutsche Zeitung</em>, which helped dozens of media outlets conduct a year-long investigation into the findings. The source of the leak is not known.<br />
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The ICIJ has a <a href="https://panamapapers.icij.org/the_power_players/" style="color: #383838; text-decoration: none;">detailed list</a> of politicians, public officials and their friends and family members who were named in the documents. They include Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, the former prime minister of Qatar and Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, former emir of Qatar; Petro Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine; Rami and Hafez Makhlouf, cousins of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad; and Ian Cameron, British Prime Minister David Cameron's father.<br />
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Other high-profile figures listed below were also named in the documents, though it does not necessarily mean they were involved in illegal conduct.<br />
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<strong>Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson</strong></div>
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Iceland’s Prime Minister <a href="https://panamapapers.icij.org/the_power_players/?lang=en#49" style="color: #383838; text-decoration: none;">Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson</a> had been accused of hiding millions of dollars in an offshore firm based in the British Virgin Islands. According to documents that are part of the Panama Papers leak, Gunnlaugsson and his wife, Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir, bought offshore company Wintris in 2007 and used it to hide their investments in three Icelandic banks that collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis.</div>
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Gunnlaugsson didn’t declare his interest in Wintris in 2009, when he entered parliament. He maintains that he didn’t break any rules and that he and his wife didn’t benefit financially when he <a href="https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160403-iceland-prime-minister.html" style="color: #383838; text-decoration: none;">sold</a> the company to her for $1 on December 31, 2009. Gunnlaugsson has so far rejected calls for him to resign from office.</div>
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<strong>Vladimir Putin</strong></div>
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The Panama Papers show a $2 billion trail of hidden assets that leads to Russian President Vladimir Putin. While Putin hasn’t been named in the papers, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/panama-papers-what-scandal-how-putin-linked-443630" style="color: #383838; text-decoration: none;">Sergei Roldugin,</a> a cellist who is Putin's childhood best friend and godfather to the president’s older daughter, has been. According to the documents, Roldugin owns 3.2 percent of Bank Rossiya, a private bank in St. Petersburg, and has a 12.5 percent interest in Video International, Russia’s largest TV advertising agency, which earns more than $1.1 billion a year.</div>
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<strong>Jackie Chan</strong></div>
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The actor was named in the documents leak on Sunday and is believed to have six companies represented by Mossack Fonseca, the AFP <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/film-stars-bachchan-jackie-chan-spotlight-over-panama-114103286.html" style="color: #383838; text-decoration: none;">reports</a>. Meanwhile, Bollywood film star Amitabh Bachchan was named as the director of four shipping companies established 23 years ago, while his daughter-in-law, actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, was named as a former director and shareholder of an offshore company. </div>
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<strong>Lionel Messi</strong></div>
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The world-famous football star was named in the documents along with 20 other high-profile players. In addition to Messi, FIFA officials and the suspended former chief of UEFA, Michel Platini, were also named. Messi and his father, Jorge, have previously been accused of tax fraud after allegedly failing to declare $4.74 million in taxes and are due to stand trial in May.</div>
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Mossack Fonseca released a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/mossack-fonsecas-response-to-the-panama-papers" style="color: #383838; text-decoration: none;">lengthy statement</a> in response to the leak and said it “cannot provide response to questions that pertain to specific matters, as doing so would be a breach of our policies and legal obligation to maintain client confidentiality.”</div>
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“However, we can confirm the parties in many of the circumstances you cite are not and have never been clients of Mossack Fonseca,” it said.</div>
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“We regret any misuse of companies that we incorporate or the services we provide and take steps wherever possible to uncover and stop such use,” Mossack Fonseca said. “If we detect suspicious activity or misconduct, we are quick to report it to the authorities.”</div>
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<br />NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-8468909183686125872016-03-30T07:36:00.003-07:002016-03-30T08:01:45.073-07:007 things to know about polarization in America<br />
<img alt="Pew Research Center" src="http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/lib/img/pew-research-center.svg" /><br />
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<a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/"><span style="font-size: large;">Fact Tank - Our Lives in Numbers</span></a></h2>
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JUNE 12, 2014</div>
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<a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/7-things-to-know-about-polarization-in-america/" target="_blank">7 things to know about polarization in America</a></h2>
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BY <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/staff/carroll-doherty/" rel="author" style="border: 0px; color: #bc7b2b; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="View the profile of Carroll Doherty">CARROLL DOHERTY</a><a class="comment-count" href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/7-things-to-know-about-polarization-in-america/#comments" style="background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/pewresearch/img/comment-icon.png"); background-position: 8px 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; border-left-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-left-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 0px 1px; color: #bc7b2b; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 400; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 7px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">37 COMMENTS</a></div>
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Political polarization is the defining feature of early 21<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 9.6px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; top: -0.4em; vertical-align: baseline;">st</span> century American politics, both among the public and elected officials. As part of a year-long study of polarization, the Pew Research Center has conducted the <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public" style="border: 0px; color: #bc7b2b; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">largest political survey</a> in its history – a poll of more than 10,000 adults between January and March of this year. It finds that Republicans and Democrats are further apart ideologically than at any point in recent history. Growing numbers of Republicans and Democrats express highly negative views of the opposing party. And to a considerable degree, polarization is reflected in the personal lives and lifestyles of those on both the right and left.</div>
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Here are 7 key findings on polarization in America today:</div>
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<a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2014/06/polarization505px_30fps.gif" style="border: 0px; color: #bc7b2b; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="U.S. Political Polarization" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-260315" src="http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2014/06/polarization505px_30fps.gif" height="413" style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="505" /></a></div>
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<big class="honkin-number" id="number-1" style="border: 0px; color: #ec9f2e; float: left; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 2.5em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0.4em 0px 0px; padding: 0.2em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">1</big><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 17.6px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled</strong> over the past two decades, from 10% to 21%. As a result, the amount of ideological overlap between the two parties has diminished. The “median,” or typical, Republican is now more conservative than 94% of Democrats, compared with 70% twenty years ago. And the median Democrat is more liberal than 92% of Republicans, up from 64%. Among Republicans and Democrats who are highly engaged in politics, 70% now take positions that are mostly or consistently in line with the ideological bent of their party. <span id="more-260181" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
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<big class="honkin-number" id="number-2" style="border: 0px; color: #ec9f2e; float: left; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 2.5em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0.4em 0px 0px; padding: 0.2em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">2</big><a href="http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/" style="border: 0px; color: #bc7b2b; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Republicans, Democrats and growing animosity" class="alignright wp-image-260271 size-full" src="http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2014/06/FT_14.06.11_polarizationFindings_partyUnfav.png" height="484" sizes="(max-width: 420px) 100vw, 420px" srcset="http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2014/06/FT_14.06.11_polarizationFindings_partyUnfav-260x300.png 260w, http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2014/06/FT_14.06.11_polarizationFindings_partyUnfav.png 420w" style="border: 0px; clear: right; float: right; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 5px 0px 15px 15px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="420" /></a><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 17.6px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Partisan antipathy has risen.</strong> The share of Republicans who have <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">very</em>unfavorable opinions of the Democratic Party has jumped from 17% to 43% in the last 20 years. Similarly, the share of Democrats with very negative opinions of the Republican Party also has more than doubled, from 16% to 38%. But these numbers tell only part of the story. Among Republicans and Democrats who have a very unfavorable impression of the other party, the vast majority say the opposing party’s policies represent a<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">threat</em> to the nation’s well-being.</div>
<div class="selectionShareable" style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.6em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 25.6px; margin-bottom: 1.25em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<big class="honkin-number" id="number-3" style="border: 0px; color: #ec9f2e; float: left; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 2.5em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0.4em 0px 0px; padding: 0.2em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">3</big>“Ideological silos” are now common on the right and, to a lesser extent, the left. <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 17.6px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">About six-in-ten (63%) consistent conservatives and 49% of consistent liberals say most of their close friends share their political views, </strong>compared with just 35% among the public as a whole.</div>
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<big class="honkin-number" id="number-4" style="border: 0px; color: #ec9f2e; float: left; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 2.5em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0.4em 0px 0px; padding: 0.2em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">4</big><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 17.6px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Differences between the right and left go beyond politics. </strong>Three-quarters of consistent conservatives say they would opt to live in a community where “the houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away,” while 77% of consistent liberals prefer smaller houses closer to amenities. Nearly four times as many liberals as conservatives say it is important that their community has racial and ethnic diversity; about three times as many conservatives as liberals say it is important that many in the community share their religious faith.</div>
<div class="selectionShareable" style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.6em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 25.6px; margin-bottom: 1.25em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<big class="honkin-number" id="number-5" style="border: 0px; color: #ec9f2e; float: left; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 2.5em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0.4em 0px 0px; padding: 0.2em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">5</big>The center has gotten smaller: <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 17.6px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">39% of Americans currently take a roughly equal number of liberal and conservative positions, down from 49% in surveys conducted in 1994 and 2004</strong>. And, those with mixed ideological views are not necessarily “moderates.” Despite their mixed ideological views in general, many express very conservative – or very liberal – opinions, depending on the specific issue. As a result, many current policy debates, such as immigration, gun control and health care policy, inspire nearly as much passion in the ideological center as on the left or the right.</div>
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<big class="honkin-number" id="number-6" style="border: 0px; color: #ec9f2e; float: left; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 2.5em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0.4em 0px 0px; padding: 0.2em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">6</big><a href="http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/" style="border: 0px; color: #bc7b2b; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Politically engaged and polarized" class="alignright wp-image-260291 size-full" src="http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2014/06/FT_Polarization.Politically.Engaged.png" height="493" sizes="(max-width: 420px) 100vw, 420px" srcset="http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2014/06/FT_Polarization.Politically.Engaged-260x305.png 260w, http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2014/06/FT_Polarization.Politically.Engaged.png 420w" style="border: 0px; clear: right; float: right; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 5px 0px 15px 15px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="420" /></a><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 17.6px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The most ideologically oriented Americans make their voices heard through greater participation in every stage of the political process</strong>. Self-reported voting rates are higher among those on the right than the left, but higher among those on the left than in the middle. Political donation rates are roughly double the national average among ideologically consistent liberals (31% have donated money) and conservatives (26%).</div>
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<big class="honkin-number" id="number-7" style="border: 0px; color: #ec9f2e; float: left; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 2.5em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0.4em 0px 0px; padding: 0.2em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">7</big>To those on the ideological right and left, <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 17.6px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">compromise now means </strong><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: franklin-gothic-urw, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 17.6px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">that their side gets more of what it wants</strong>. About six-in-ten across-the-board liberals (62%) say the optimal deal between President Barack Obama and the GOP should be closer to what Obama wants. About as many consistent conservatives (57%) say an agreement should be more on the GOP’s terms.</div>
TOPICS: <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/topics/political-attitudes-and-values/" style="border: 0px; color: #bc7b2b; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND VALUES</a>, <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/topics/political-polarization/" style="border: 0px; color: #bc7b2b; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">POLITICAL POLARIZATION</a>, <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/topics/u-s-political-parties/" style="border: 0px; color: #bc7b2b; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">U.S. POLITICAL PARTIES</a></div>
NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-64974937077413102172016-03-29T06:29:00.000-07:002016-03-29T06:29:19.587-07:00 In Praise of Negative Campaigning<a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/"><span style="font-size: x-large;">POLITICO Magazine</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/in-praise-of-negative-campaigning-120151" target="_blank">In Praise of Negative Campaigning</a></span></h2>
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By <span class="vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a class="url fn" href="http://www.politico.com/staff/jack-shafer" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0a7cc4; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.25s ease;" target="_top">Jack Shafer</a></span></div>
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<time datetime="2015-07-15T04:53-0400" style="box-sizing: border-box;">July 15, 2015</time></div>
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Updated <time datetime="2015-07-16T12:15-0400" style="box-sizing: border-box;">July 16, 2015</time></div>
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The 2016 race is about to turn rough—very rough. Now that almost every conceivable member of the human race has entered the race for the GOP presidential nomination, millions of dollars from superPACs are flooding into the primary elections and the GOP is beginning the process of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/us/the-best-way-to-vilify-clinton-gop-spends-heavily-to-test-it.html?_r=0" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0a7cc4; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.25s ease;">vilifying likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton</a>, this next phase of the election is about to see lots of what campaigns like to euphemistically call “contrast” ads.</div>
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In fact, I’ve ordered a shiny new set of cutlery to better slice and devour the 2016 presidential campaign’s negative ads. By this time next year, I should be fat as a pastry chef—presidential campaigns have been getting more negative every cycle. The campaign ads from 2012 were more negative than the ads in 2008, 2008’s were more negative than 2004’s and, you guessed it, 2004’s more negative than 2000’s. But far from disparaging the form—or my thickening waistline—I celebrate it. Negative campaigning is a genuine positive for democracy.</div>
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I come to my understanding both intuitively and from paging through a new book, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Positive Case for Negative Campaigning</i>, by political scientists Kyle Mattes and David P. Redlawsk. The popular abhorrence for negative campaigning seems to stem from the word “negative,” for how could anything good come from something whose essence seems so retrograde? The press encourage this sort of thinking by declaiming each election the most negative or nasty or mudslinging without pausing to explain what constitutes a negative ad. A negative ad is not necessarily a false ad. As Mattes and Redlawsk explain, the standard political science definition for negativity in campaigns is “talking about the opponent.” The scholars at the Wesleyan Media Project who track, among other things, campaign negativity, likewise embrace this definition, stating that ads are negative if “they mentioned an opponent.” <o:p style="box-sizing: border-box;"></o:p></div>
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Keep this soft definition in mind the next time you hear a politician or columnist bemoaning the rise of negativity in campaign. Is it even possible to run a campaign without mentioning your opponent? Amazingly, only <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=AEYZBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=%22it+will+take+time+and+great+effort+for+the+winner+to+drain+the+poison%22&source=bl&ots=Mm2Baqvglw&sig=PXYJorIC54Sz-pNu0EL0tkk952A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAGoVChMIjNqwzuzaxgIVC3Q-Ch1LaAOK#v=onepage&q=1960&f=false" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0a7cc4; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.25s ease;">10 percent</a> of presidential campaign ads were negative in 1960, which means the candidates used their ads to talk mostly about themselves and their stands on the issues, and almost never mentioned their opponents. By 2008, that rose to about 60 percent.</div>
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The overly broad definition ends up overstating the octane of negative ads, lumping together as it does personal slams and attacks on opponent’s stands. But the rising numbers do reflect a change in campaigning styles over the decades: Contemporary presidential candidates have made their opponents their focus, doing less grandstanding about their own wonderfulness or explaining their stands in their ads. And many of these ads are barbed and cutting. But in general, Mattes and Redlawsk applaud this switch, as do I, as long as the ads don’t engage in “scurrilous, nonrelevant attacks” or lie.</div>
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Overly positive campaigns, the authors hold, deprive voters the “full range of information that allows voters to make up their minds.” Imagine making a decision about what car to buy, what job to take, where to vacation or what restaurant meal to consume if the only information you were exposed to was the positive information provided by carmakers, employers, vacation spots or restaurants. Useful decisions are rarely made by comparing the positives of what’s on offer. One must also judge the negatives, which reveal failings and weaknesses. But sellers of cars or candidates never volunteer their own negatives or flaws. For that information we must rely on the competition—opposing candidates—or third parties (like journalists).</div>
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Relentlessly positive campaigns stink of “puffery” and self-aggrandizement, they write. By deterring candidates from going negative we deny voters the contrasting information they need to challenge the positive campaigners. By testing the assertions of positive campaigners, negative campaigners keep their foes honest. Or, if not a trifle more honest or more accountable, at least on notice. According to research <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/14080.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0a7cc4; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.25s ease;">findings</a>, ads that name a presidential candidate’s opponent are, on average, more truthful and contain more information than self-advocacy ads.</div>
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Any ban or discouragement of negative ads would also benefit incumbents, who enjoy in most cases greater name recognition and access to campaign donations. How can a candidate possibly persuade voters to replace the incumbent, or to fund his own campaign, unless he goes negative by pointing out the mistakes made by the incumbent, the shortcomings of his voting record and his general poor performance? You can’t beat an incumbent by merely yodeling your own positives. “Is it really worse to have a candidate attack an opponent on issues, when the attacks are accurate, than it is to have that same candidate make false statements about his or her own record in presumably positive ads?” Mattes and Redlawsk write. “Banning negativity does not ban falsehoods.” Both positive <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">and </i>negative ads can be false.</div>
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Negative campaigning signifies competitive elections, they continue, and more competitive elections in turn attract more funding, which leads to more competition—and often to more negativity. But voters are not fragile little beings, endangered by excessive campaign negativity, they assert. Quite the opposite, they’re able to interpret the “rough and tumble of politics” and make independent choices about candidates. As for the assertion that negative campaigns turn voters off, routinely expressed by the press, the authors produce research that shows that voters “are not as negative about negativity” as is commonly believed. Besides, if negative campaigning really peeved voters, wouldn’t candidates strive to charm them by producing more and more positive advertisements instead of more and more negative ads?</div>
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Luckily for the republic, both parties love negative campaigns. According to the Wesleyan Media Project, in 2012 Barack Obama ran the <a href="http://mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/releases/2012-shatters-2004-and-2008-records-for-total-ads-aired/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0a7cc4; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.25s ease;">most</a> negative campaign in recent presidential history, with 58.5 percent of his broadcast and cable ads being judged negative. That eclipsed the previous leader, George W. Bush, who scored 55.4 percent negative. Academics and the occasional journalist may squeal in horror over the demise of campaign civility, but as Frank Rich <a href="http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/negative-campaigning-2012-6/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0a7cc4; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.25s ease;">wrote</a> for <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York </i>magazine in 2012, negativity is in the great American political tradition.</div>
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So toss the worry beads and relax. The more negative the campaign the better. The only fear I have is that the campaign ads of 2016 will turn inexplicably positive. If that happens, call me!</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: proxima-nova, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">If the subject is negative ads, you gotta include a link to </i><span style="background-color: white;"></span><a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/14080.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0a7cc4; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.25s ease;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">John Geer</i></a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">. Who else deserves a shout-out? Send your thoughts via email to </i><span style="background-color: white;"></span><a href="mailto:shafer.politico@gmail.com" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0a7cc4; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.25s ease;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Shafer.Politico@gmail.com</i></a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">. My </i><span style="background-color: white;"></span><a href="http://eepurl.com/gB_ov" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0a7cc4; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.25s ease;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">email alerts</i></a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">are on drugs, my </i><span style="background-color: white;"></span><a href="https://twitter.com/jackshafer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0a7cc4; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.25s ease;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Twitter</i></a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">feed raised your taxes, and my </i><span style="background-color: white;"></span><a href="http://www.politico.com/rss/jackshafer.xml" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0a7cc4; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.25s ease;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">RSS</i></a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">feed is a cannibal. </i><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></span></span><br />
<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: proxima-nova, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: white;">Jack Shafer is POLITICO's senior media writer. Previously, Jack wrote a column about the press and politics for Reuters and before that worked at Slate as a columnist and as the site's deputy editor. He also edited two alternative weeklies, </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">SF Weekly </em><span style="background-color: white;">and </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Washington City Paper</em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">. </em><span style="background-color: white;">His work has been published in</span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"> The </em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times Magazine</em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">, </em><span style="background-color: white;">The </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times Book Review</em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">, </em><span style="background-color: white;">The </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Washington Post</em><span style="background-color: white;">, the </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Columbia Journalism Review</em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">, </em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Foreign Affairs</em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">, </em><span style="background-color: white;">The </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New Republic</em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">, </em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">BookForum </em><span style="background-color: white;">and the op-ed page of The </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Wall Street Journal</em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">.</em><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></span></span></span>NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-47881756574961239892016-03-16T18:34:00.000-07:002016-03-16T18:34:22.325-07:00Presidential Elections 2016: The Revolt of the Masses<br />
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<a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/02/presidential-elections-2016-the-revolt-of-the-masses/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Presidential Elections 2016: The Revolt of the Masses</a></h2>
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by James Petras / February 24th, 2016</div>
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The presidential elections of 2016 have several unique characteristics that defy common wisdom about political practices in 21st century America.</div>
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Clearly the established political machinery — party elites and their corporate backers — have (in part) lost control of the nomination process and confront ‘unwanted’ candidates who are campaigning with programs and pronouncements that polarize the electorate.</div>
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But there are other more specific factors, which have energized the electorate and speak to recent US history. These portend and reflect a realignment of US politics.</div>
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In this essay, we will outline these changes and their larger consequences for the future of American politics.</div>
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We will examine how these factors affect each of the two major parties.</div>
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<strong>Democratic Party Politics: The Context of Realignment</strong></div>
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The ‘rise and decline’ of President Obama has seriously dented the appeal of ‘identity politics’ – the idea that ethnic, race and gender-rooted ‘identities’ can modify the power of finance capital (Wall Street), the militarists, the Zionists and ‘police-state’ officials. Clearly manifest voter disenchantment with ‘identity politics’ has opened the door for class politics, of a specific kind.</div>
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Candidate Bernie Sanders appeals directly to the class interests of workers and salaried employees. But the ‘class issue’ arises within the context of an electoral polarization and, as such, it does not reflect a true ‘class polarization’, or rising class struggle in the streets, factories or offices.</div>
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In fact, the electoral ‘class’ polarization is a reflection of the recent major trade union defeats in Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio. The trade union confederation (AFL-CIO) has almost disappeared as a social and political factor, representing only 7% of private sector workers. Working class voters are well aware that top trade union leaders, who receive an average of $500,000-a-year in salaries and benefits, are deeply ensconced in the Democratic Party elite. While individual workers and local unions are active supporters of the Sanders campaign, they do so as members of an amorphous multi-class electoral movement and not as a unified ‘workers bloc’.</div>
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The Sanders electoral movement has not grown out of a national social movement: The peace movement is virtually moribund; the civil rights movements are weak, fragmented and localized; the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement has peaked and declined while the ‘Occupy Wall Street Movement’ is a distant memory.</div>
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In other words, these recent movements, at best, provide some activists and some impetus for the Sanders electoral campaign. Their presence highlights a few of the issues that the Sanders electoral movement promotes in its campaign.</div>
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In fact, the Sanders electoral movement does not ‘grow out’ of existing, ongoing mass movements as much as it fills the political vacuum resulting from their demise. The electoral insurgency reflects the defeats of trade union officials allied with incumbent Democratic politicians as well as the limitation of the ‘direct action’ tactics of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Occupy’ movements.</div>
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Since the Sanders electoral movement does not directly and immediately challenge capitalist profits and public budget allocations it has not been subject to state repression. Repressive authorities calculate that this ‘buzz’ of electoral activity will last only a few months and then recede into the Democratic Party or voter apathy. Moreover, they are constrained by the fact that tens of millions of Sanders supporters are involved in all the states and not concentrated in any region.</div>
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The Sanders electoral movement aggregates hundreds of thousands of micro-local struggles and allows expression of the disaffection of millions with class grievances, at no risk or cost (as in loss of job or police repression) to the participants. This is in stark contrast to repression at the workplace or in the urban streets.</div>
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The electoral polarization reflects horizontal (class) and vertical (intra-capitalist) social polarizations.</div>
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Below the elite 10% and especially among the young middle class, political polarization favors the Sanders electoral movement. Trade union bosses, the Black Congressional Caucus members and the Latino establishment all embrace the anointed choice of the political elite of the Democratic Party: Hillary Clinton. Whereas, young Latinos, working women and rank and file trade unionists support the insurgent electoral movement. Significant sectors of the African American population, who have failed to advance (and have actually regressed) under Democratic President Obama or have seen police repression expand under the First Black President, are turning to the insurgent Sanders campaign. Millions of Latinos, disenchanted with their leaders who are tied to the Democratic elite and have done nothing to prevent the massive deportations under Obama, are a potential base of support for Bernie.</div>
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However, the most dynamic social sector in the Sanders electoral movement are students, who are excited by his program of free higher education and the end of post-graduation debt peonage.</div>
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The malaise of these sectors finds its expression in the ‘respectable revolt of the middle class’: a voters’ rebellion, which has temporarily shifted the axis of political debate within the Democratic Party to the Left.</div>
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The Sanders electoral movement raises fundamental issues of class inequality and racial injustice in the legal, police and economic system. It highlights the oligarchical nature of the political system – even as the Sanders-led movement attempts to use the rules of the system against its owners. These attempts have not been very successful within the Democratic Party apparatus, where the Party bosses have already allocated hundreds of ‘non-elected’ so-called ‘mega-delegates’ to Clinton – despite Sander’s successes in the early primaries.</div>
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The very strength of the electoral movement has a strategic weakness: it is in the nature of electoral movements to coalesce for elections and to dissolve after the vote.</div>
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The Sanders leadership has made no effort to build a mass national social movement that can continue the class and social struggles during and after the elections. In fact, Sanders’ pledge to support the established leadership of the Democratic Party if he losses the nomination to Clinton will lead to a profound disillusionment of his supporters and break-up of the electoral movement. The post-convention scenario, especially in the event of ‘super-delegates’ crowning Clinton despite a Sanders popular victory at the individual primaries, will be very disruptive.</div>
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<strong>Trump and Revolt on the Right</strong></div>
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The Trump electoral campaign has many of the features of a Latin American nationalist-populist movement. Like the Argentine Peronist movement, it combines protectionist, nationalist economic measures that appeal to small and medium size manufacturers and displaced industrial workers with populist right-wing ‘great nation chauvinism’.</div>
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This is reflected in Trumps’ attacks on ‘globalization’ — a proxy for Peronist ‘anti-imperialism’.</div>
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Trump’s attack on the Muslim minority in the US is a thinly veiled embrace of right-wing clerical fascism.</div>
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Where Peron campaigned against ‘financial oligarchies’ and the invasion of ‘foreign ideologies’, Trump scorns the ‘elites’ and denounces the ‘invasion’ of Mexican immigrants.</div>
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Trump’s appeal is rooted in the deep amorphous anger of the downwardly mobile middle class, which has no ideology … but plenty of resentment at its declining status, crumbling stability and drug-afflicted families (Witness the overtly expressed concerns of white voters in the recent New Hampshire primary).</div>
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Trump projects personal power to workers who bridle under impotent trade unions, disorganized civic groups, and marginalized local business associations, all unable to counter the pillage, power and large-scale corruption of the financial swindlers who rotate between Washington and Wall Street with total impunity.</div>
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These ‘populist’ classes get vicarious thrills from the spectacle of Trump snapping and slapping career politicians and economic elites alike, even as he parades his capitalist success.</div>
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They prize his symbolic defiance of the political elite as he flaunts his own capitalist elite credentials.</div>
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For many of his suburban backers he is the Great Moralizer, who in his excess zeal, occasionally, commits ‘pardonable’ gaffes out of zealous exuberance – a crude ‘Oliver Cromwell’ for the 21st Century.</div>
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Indeed, there also may be a less overt ethno-religious appeal to Trump’s campaign: His white-Anglo-Saxon Protestant identity appeals to these same voters in the face of their apparent marginalization. These Trumpistas are not blind to the fact that not a single WASP judge sits on the Supreme Court and there are few, if any, WASPs among the top economic officials in Treasury, Commerce, or the Fed (Lew, Fischer, Yellen, Greenspan, Bernacke, Cohen, Pritzker etc.). While Trump is not up-front about his identity – it eases his voter appeal.</div>
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Among WASP voters, who quietly resent the Wall Street bailouts and the perceived privileged position of Catholics, Jews and African-Americans in the Obama Administration, Trump’s direct, public condemnation of President Bush for deliberately misleading the nation into invading Iraq (and the implication of treason) has been a big plus.</div>
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Trump’s national-populist appeal is matched by his bellicose militarism and thuggish authoritarianism. His public embrace of torture and police state controls (to ‘fight terrorism’) appeals to the pro-military Right. On the other hand, his friendly overtures to Russian President Putin (‘one tough guy willing to face another’) and his support to end the Cuban embargo appeals to trade-minded business elites. His calls to withdraw US troops from Europe and Asia appeals to ‘fortress America’ voters, while his calls to ‘carpet bomb’ ISIS appeals to the nuclear extremists. Interestingly, Trump’s support for Social Security and Medicare, as well as his call for medical coverage for the indigent and his open acknowledgement of Planned Parenthood’s vital services to poor women, appeals to older citizens, compassionate conservatives and independents.</div>
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Trump’s Left-Right amalgam: Protectionist and pro-business appeals, his anti-Wall Street and pro-industrial capitalism proposals, his defense of US workers and attacks on Latino workers and Muslim immigrants have broken the traditional boundaries between popular and right-wing politics of the Republican Party.</div>
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Trumpism is not a coherent ideology, but a volatile mix of ‘improvised positions’, adapted to appeal to marginalized workers, resentful middle classes (marginalized WASPs) and, above all, to those who feel unrepresented by Wall Street Republicans and liberal Democratic politicians based on identity politics (black, Hispanic, women and Jews).</div>
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Trump’s movement is based on a cult of the personality: it has enormous capacity to convoke mass meetings without mass organization or a coherent social ideology.</div>
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Its fundamental strength is its spontaneity, novelty and hostile focus on strategic elites.</div>
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Its strategic weakness is the lack of an organization that can be sustained after the electoral process. There are few Trumpista cadres and militants among his adoring fans. If Trump loses (or is cheated out of the nomination by a ‘unity’ candidate’ trotted out by the Party elite) his organization will dissipate and fragment. If Trump wins the Republican nomination he will draw support from Wall Street, especially if faced with a Sanders Democratic candidacy. If he wins the general election and becomes President, he will seek to strengthen executive power and move toward a Bonapartist presidency.</div>
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<strong>Conclusion</strong></div>
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The rise of a social democratic movement within the Democratic Party and the rise of a <em>sui generis</em> national-populist rightist movement in the Republican Party reflect the fragmented electorate and deep vertical and horizontal fissures characterizing the US ethno-class structure. Commentators grossly oversimplify when they reduce the revolt to incoherent expressions of ‘anger’.</div>
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The shattering of the established elite’s control is a product of deeply experienced class and ethnic resentments, of former privileged groups experiencing declining mobility, of local businesspeople experiencing bankruptcy due to ‘globalization’ (imperialism) and of citizens resentment at the power of finance capital (the banks) and its overwhelming control of Washington.</div>
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The electoral revolts on the Left and Right may dissipate but they will have planted the seeds of a democratic transformation or of a nationalist-reactionary revival.</div>
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James Petras is author of <span style="font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.powells.com/partner/36683/biblio/9004268855?p_isbn" rel="powells" style="color: #333333;" title="">Extractive Imperialism in the Americas: Capitalism's New Frontier</a></span> (with Henry Veltmeyer) and <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/0986073105?p_isbn&PID=36683" style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The Politics of Empire: The US, Israel and the Middle East</span></a>. <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/author/jamespetras/" style="color: #333333;">Read other articles by James</a>, or <a href="http://petras.lahaine.org/" style="color: #333333;">visit James's website</a>.</div>
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This article was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2016 at 7:02pm and is filed under <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/class/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Classism</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/democracy/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Democracy</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/democrats/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Democrats</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/elections/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Elections</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/labor/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Labor</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/labor/unions/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Unions</a>, <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/category/finance/wall-street/" rel="category tag" style="color: #333333;">Wall Street</a>.</div>
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NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-74036704407633401152016-03-05T06:39:00.000-08:002016-03-05T06:39:24.843-08:00Nazi Zombies Ate Gloria Steinem’s Brain! (or Why US Politics Turns Ordinary People into Drooling Morons)<br />
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<a href="https://ongenocide.com/"><span style="font-size: x-large;">On Genocide</span></a></h2>
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Nazi Zombies Ate Gloria Steinem’s Brain!</h1>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box;">(or Why US Politics Turns Ordinary People into Drooling Morons)</b></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">The problem, in a nutshell, is this: when people decide to support a prospective candidate in the US primary races they are putting themselves in the position of defending the indefensible. The very nature of this politico-Darwinist death match means that once you pick your chosen leader you must reject all criticism and suppress all doubt. You must become aggressively defensive and you must, above all, prevent your own wayward brain from thinking those bad thoughts that weaken the image of the immaculate leader. Any chink in their armour will be exploited by the enemies that surround them. Loyalty must be automatic and unconditional. Vigilance must be constant.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box;">Triumph of the Ill</b></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Gloria Steinem caused some kerfuffle this week by saying:</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">“Women are more for [Clinton] than men are. Men tend to get more conservative because they gain power as they age, women get more radical because they lose power as they age.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">They’re going to get more activist as they grow older. And when you’re younger, you think: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.’”</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">When you let it sink in the implications of what Steinem said are quite stunning in their utter stupidity. Here is a feminist icon suggesting that young women support Sanders only to impress or be with “boys”. As some have pointed <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/06/bernie-sanders-gloria-steinem-women-voters-men-hillary-clinton" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">out</a>, this is a sexist generalisation that is disrespectful, demeaning and disempowering of young women.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Steinem apologised for being “misinterpreted” and clarified her position by contradicting herself <a href="http://time.com/4211234/gloria-steinem-bernie-sanders-apology/?xid=newsletter-brief" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">entirely</a>: “What I had just said on the same show was the opposite: young women are active, mad as hell about what’s happening to them, graduating in debt, but averaging a million dollars less over their lifetimes to pay it back.” Because she is not retracting her repeated <a href="http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/interviews/gloriasteinem.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">contention</a> “women are more conservative when we’re young and we get more radical as we get older” she seems to be quite happy to believe two contradictory things and just pick whichever seems right for the occasion.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Steinem also tacitly declares that supporting Hillary Clinton is an act of radicalism. This is demonstrably false. Clinton is a former First Lady, former US Senator, and a former Secretary of State. Clinton and her spouse are among the richest people on the planet and have been <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-paid-speeches/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">paid</a> $153 million in speaking fees. Her own personal <a href="http://www.davemanuel.com/pols/hillary-clinton/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">income</a> for 2014 was $30.5 million. Clinton is arguably the most “establishment” person seeking candidacy – even more than J. E. Bush the (wannabe) Third.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">So what makes Gloria Steinem spout nonsense and contradict herself? Aside from the general human idiocy in which we all partake, it is that most glorious of institutions: US presidential politics. More specifically it is the bipartisan electoral process which is formally and informally constituted of tribal factionalism, cult of personality, manipulative marketing campaigns, dog-whistle invective, incendiary rhetoric, buzzwords, patriotism, sentimentality and many other components. These components all have one thing in common; they bypass thought. They direct decisions and impel action through impulse, emotion and herd reflex. US Presidential electoral politics is the epitome any such electoral process. It is like other elections, but even more so. It is dominated by deception, manipulation and sentiment.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Throughout the history of politics, popular appeals have been divided into appeals to reason and appeals to unreason. Technology, scale, and the narrow control of mass media have conspired to bring a moment of near total triumph for unreason. The individual voter will be profiled and targeted with anything from the scale of the tear on the cheek of a pretty 5 year-old girl, to the roar of a stadium of roaring mass fervour. The result of such mass unreason is, among other things, an ostensibly political electoral system that is devoid of substantive politics. But it is also a totalising ideology. It tells people that it represents the entirety or near-entirety of the legitimate political spectrum. People in countries with multi-party elections for central government seem universally to accept that the breadth of political ideology is largely represented by the competing parties and that the space between the two (or more) camps is the ideological “centre”.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">In reality, regardless of the political system, political elites are inclined to be elitist and authoritarian. They like to think of themselves as more enlightened and progressive than the reactionary masses, but by nature their “centre” is to the right of popular sentiment, sometimes drastically so.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">We don’t have to settle for defining left and right in relative terms set by political elites. The left/right division has a clear historical basis and can be defined in <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/05/what-is-and-is-not-left-wing/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">absolute</a> terms. In these terms we see that each person, each party and each ideology has left and right elements. There is no pure Left or pure Right out there. We can also see that Republicans and Democrats have always been broadly right-wing. (In other countries there were once broadly left electoral choices in Labour, Socialist or Social Democrat parties, but these have all since embraced broadly right-wing liberal/neoliberal policies, along with military nationalism and Western interventionism). Electorates are regularly presented with two right-wing alternatives, one of which is falsely labelled as “left”.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Authoritarian’s Dilemma</b></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">There is incessant propaganda screaming over and over at people that if they do not partake in the electoral process they are deficient and delinquent and it is their fault that the government is crap. In the US, where everything apparently needs to be taken to self-parodic extremes, this spawned the “Vote or Die” movement.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Small wonder then, that people get involved in electoral politics. But instead of choosing a person who actually represents their own interests blended with their own sense of what is morally and ethically right, people choose according to irrational criteria. Citizens are lured by many things, but mostly by the deliberately fostered delusion that a particular candidate will in some way embody and be responsive to the will of that citizen. They are led to believe that the candidate wants what they want, sees things as they do, and will make the same choices that they would. Their candidate is a version of themselves, but a superior version. It is a sad and pathetic spectacle. It gets even sadder when a candidate takes office and the citizen must continually reassess their beliefs because the former candidate makes choices that must be right because they know and understand more.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">People like that are <a href="http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">referred</a> to as “right-wing authoritarians”. This is a description used by some psychologists for a group of inter-related psychological tendencies which add to a desire for authoritarian leadership in politics, in the workplace, in religion, and in the domestic sphere. Obviously such people tend to be attracted to right-wing politics, but they can also be attracted to authority in left-wing or ostensibly left-wing politics. These people are authoritarian followers. They seek the certainty of strong leadership.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Party politics, or any form of popular politics, will always attract authoritarians. But in our time, if you are not an authoritarian you must become one just to participate. If you choose to support Clinton, for example, there is a ton of baggage that comes with it. Her wealth, her power, her history of warmongering, and the blood on her hands are a much bigger burden to her supporters than to her. Clinton is a media-trained expert hack who only ever faces comparative softball questions. Her supporters might find themselves asked to give real answers to justify Clinton’s record, and there are none. Judged by the standards of ordinary mortals she is pondscum and a war criminal. The best moral justification you can give for her is that she is deranged by power and hence has diminished responsibility.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Can anyone actually give a real defence of her actions in helping to bring war to Libya? She has the blood of thousands on her hands. Daughters, sons, fathers, mothers – real people who suffered and died, for what? So she could gloat like a demented crime boss: “We came, we saw, he died”? Would it be okay if it was a failed attempt to do good (if anyone can believe that), or was the plan destroy Libya and create yet another failed state of lingering suffering, violence and death so that US oil hegemony remained unchallenged by any strong nationalism or anticolonial internationalism? Murderously incompetent and arrogant, or murderously power-mad and Machiavellian? Either way, she cannot be defended if someone is willing to put things in those terms</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Hillary supporters cannot even defend Hillary to themselves. They must lash out by delegitimising opposition. Steinem’s now retracted criticisms of of Sanders supporters were pure <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">ad hominem</i> of the vilest sort. She created a caricature, a generalisation about those who felt differently by imposing on them a personal trait. This is a technique used against feminists so often that you might think her scruples would have stopped her.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">To take another example, it is impossible in moral and legal terms to justify the support that Hillary Clinton has given to Israel. Bear in mind that this is not solely about Israel’s 1967 occupation of land and its illegal settlements. As a UN signatory that shares responsibility for the initial 1948 seizure of Palestinian property and flight of Palestinians from the self-declared state of Israel, the US is obliged to find a “just and lasting settlement” to the plight of 1948 Palestinian refugees. Because the state of Israel is dependent on US support it can be argued that high-level US politicians are actually more culpable than high Israeli politicians without even having any false justifications of an “existential threat”. Clinton is responsible for Israel’s crimes in a very real sense.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">This brings me to Bernie Sanders. He too is responsible for Israel’s crimes. As Thomas Tucker wrote in August 2014:</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">“Let’s not be fooled by any politician appealing to high ideals when they are in the business of war and empire.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Sanders not only defends military contracts that benefit his constituents in Vermont, he also joined the 100 to 0 vote in the Senate to give unalloyed moral and political support to the state of Israel during its most recent bombing campaign against Gaza.”</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Someone also <a href="http://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/msg/1454905481.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">pointed</a> out that criticism of Sanders foreign policy record is only half of the story. On domestic issues <span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">he v</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">ot</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">ed</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;"> “for continuing intelligence gathering without civil oversight; </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">o</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">pposing local attempts in Vermont to impeach Bush II (</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">h</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">owever he advocates prosecuting Snowden in some capacity if he returns to the US!); …against ending offshore tax havens and promoting small businesses; …</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">f</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">or legislation that extended and, in some areas, made fourteen provisions of the Patriot Act permanent and extended the FBI’s power to perform roving wiretaps and access certain business records; …repeatedly against the Brady Bill that mandated waiting times and background checks for firearms purchases.” </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">What a guy!</span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">How do you defend such a record? The same way you defend Clinton’s record. You yell. You employ </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">ad hominems</i></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">. You employ the “appeal to consequences”, another fallacy which goes something like this:</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Q: How do you justify Sanders</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">‘</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> bloody militarism, pork-barrel cynicism, support for war crimes, support for restricting liberties and complicity in Israel’s occupation of Palestine?</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">A: Donald Trump!</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">March Of The Swivel Heads</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Speaking of Donald Trump, everything I have written so far is about Democrat supporters. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">W</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">ould anyone be so silly as to think that Republicans are any better? In some respects Republican supporters have less need to be defensive of their chosen candidate because Republicans don’t try to hide their warmongering and racism, they simply embrace it with a patriotic exceptionalism </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">beneath which</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> is an unstated thuggish sensibility that says we are strong and we will crush those who transgress against us </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">(</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">transgression being subject to broad interpretation</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">)</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Republicans have the same situational factors shaping them into right-wing authoritarians, b</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">ut t</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">he</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> Republi</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">can Party has been quite a home for right-wing authoritarians for years, so in a way the fact that this </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">has</span> <span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">worsened to any degree</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> is not much of a story </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">in itself</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">T</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">he reason that we should fear the spread of </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">right-wing authoritarianism</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> is that once an authoritarian has chosen their leader they will be loyal regardless of any actions that leader takes. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The structure and the discourse of electoral politics in the US (which is setting a standard for other countries) are such that people are forced into the position of </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">becoming mindless </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">shambling</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> followers of each Great Leader.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">People who support Obama, for example, have become as immune to reason and evidence as any George W. Bush supporter in 2008. Obama attracted those supporters with a very personal charismatic style, and his policy messages were overtly about emotions of hope and belief rather than a coherent platform based on an articulated ideology. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">(</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">You won’t get anything different from US politics: Bernie, for example, has substantively <a href="http://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/thread/1454989052.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">replicated</a> the style, shape and colour of Obama’s “Change We can Believe In” placards to create “A Future to Believe In”.</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">) </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This is all great fertiliser in which to cultivate uncritical worship and obedience, but I think the real kicker is the way people have been conditioned to reject criticism of Obama by the constant unprincipled, unfair, untrue, hyperbolic and hysterical criticisms levelled at</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">him</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> by Republicans and other right-wing</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">ers</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This ranges from the “Birther” movement to simple blatant and hateful racism.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The same can be said of Hillary Clinton. The whole Benghazi issue was turned into a type of fake witch-hunt against Clinton. This not only gave her a much need new layer of Teflon, but helped to conceal the stunning blatant illegality of US government acts that went far further than just Clinton and the State Department.</span> <span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Partisan badgering, real or fake,</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> creates the sense that the person that </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">supporters</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> place their hope in is constantly under siege. Under the siege mentality it begins to feel dangerous to question anything about the Leader. Any admission against them can be exploited and abused and so you must steel your mind to perfect unquestioning loyalty.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Because it is a bipartisan framework and not a dictatorial one, </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">this regime of leader</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">worship </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">differs in many ways from historical Fascist or Communist “cult of personality” regimes. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The US regime b</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">lends aspects of that nationalistic “One Leader, One People, One Empire” style with a more fragmented style of right-wing factionalism akin to </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">a milieu of </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">organised crime interests that may co-operate, compete, or fight.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">T</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">he Price </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">of a Special Place in Hell</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;"> is Worth It</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Linked to the Gloria Steinem story has been a </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">prominent</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> story about Madeleine Albright. Albright once said that she thought that the “price” of 500,000 dead Iraqi children was “worth it”. She is </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">also </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">the Godmother to a cluster of humanitarian interventionists and liberal imperialists dominated by Clinton that is linked </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">(</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">by revolving</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/06/human-rights-watchs-revolving-door/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">door</a>)</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> to NGO’s <a href="https://ongenocide.com/2012/11/21/amnesty-international-and-liberal-imperialism-video-audio-illustrated-hypertext-transcript/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">such</a> as Amnesty International <a href="https://ongenocide.com/2014/06/20/why-blocking-the-revolving-door-wont-fix-human-rights-watch/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">and</a> Human Rights Watch.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Regarding support for Clinton, Albright said: “</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!” </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">She used exactly the same words in 2008, for the same candidate. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In fact she </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">claims she</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> has used </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">the phrase</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> for 40 years. That does not change the fact that she was equating</span> <span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">failure to support</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> Hillary with betraying </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">one’s</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">own gender, </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">as if the election was a giant job interview and women had an obligation to give poor Hillary a shot</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">. The extreme and hateful implications stand regardless of how “lighthearted” Clinton says they were.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Like the extreme rhetoric of Republicans, </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Albright’s</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> words</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> show a distinct lack of any brain activity. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I am the last person to suggest that political elites are actually stupid, but they are deeply out of touch with normal life. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Despite all of their focus groups and messaging specialists, politicians at this level are as tone-deaf as any inbred 18</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="bottom: 1ex; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 11.25px; height: 0px; line-height: 0; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">th</span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">century aristocratic dandy. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">Albright has angered people on many fronts, in many ways. The Intercept’s Jon Schwarz <a href="https://twitter.com/tinyrevolution/status/697175583210528768/photo/1?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=fb&utm_campaign=ongenocide&utm_content=697185096600662017" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">tweeted</a> the blurb from a book specifically exploring the immense harm done to Iraqi women by the sanctions that Albright supported. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">She is damned by her own words, so to speak.</span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Albright and Clinton being who they are, much of the </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">angry </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">reaction has suggest</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">ed</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">that electing an elitist warmonger is not feminism </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">if the warmonger happens to have</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">internal genitalia and wear skirts</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">. Rania Masri <a href="http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/dear-hillary-madeline-and-gloria-full-feminism-demands-we-say-no-americas-deadly" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">put</a> it </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">thus</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">: </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“Feminism demands a critique of U.S. policies, both domestically and internationally. It demands a critique of all wars and all hegemonies and of all structures of oppression.”</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Independently engaged people get angry, but most people blind themselves to the gulf that separates them from their political masters. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">T</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">he system continues because people foolishly believe that they have to choose within the candidates of the major parties, or they are effectively disenfranchised. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The fear of one side </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">makes</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> people</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">stampede </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">into the other camp. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Once</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> again </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">they are</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> avoiding the </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">process of thinking when making the decision to commit. They end up in positions that are morally and intellectually indefensible, but they can get away with it by only associating with like-minded fools and by snarling viciously at the unrealistic people who point out the</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">immorality and/or foolishness</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> of their choice.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">When </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">they have safety in numbers; when the harsh light of reality will not intrude; believers </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">may</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> debate </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">within accepted bounds of disagreement. They are thus</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> secure in the knowledge that no one will point out that they are all backing different naked emperors who are engaged in an unflattering unclothed brawl that is just as revolting</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">in actuality </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">as my metaphor suggests. That is when they say really stupid things. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">For example, i</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">n response to the fact the policies under Bill Clinton had a terrible impact on black people Madeleine Kunin <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2016/2/9/hillary_clinton_the_mass_incarceration_machine" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">said</a> that “</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Bill Clinton was called </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">‘</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">the first black president.</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">‘</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">” </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">She followed by saying of Hillary “she’s been voted the most admired woman in the world, year after year, because people respect her.” </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I am not sure what world she is referring to, but it is not the planet Earth. In fact she is probably referring to a Gallup poll that asks “Americans” which woman they admire anywhere in the world. Kunin probably doesn’t understand the difference.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Not to be outdone Kunin’s debate opponent, Ben Jealous, <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2016/2/9/ex_naacp_head_ben_jealous_sanders" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">said</a> that “on the issues that Dr. Martin Luther King referred to as the ‘giant triplets of evil’—racism, militarism and greed—Bernie is the clearest and the most consistent.” Not only is that only true if you preclude third party candidates, but there is a piece of authoritarian lunacy hidden there in plain sight. If you care about what Dr King believed in, why endorse someone that he would never have endorsed? King might have forgiven the banal ways in which Sanders has soiled himself in the pits of DC muck, but he would never have tolerated Sanders</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">‘</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/21/dont-get-berned-again-the-sanders-bribe/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">embrace</a> of militarism and empire. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Perhaps the scariest thing is that people do not see this immediately. People seem to have forgotten what it means to have principles around the same time they forgot what it means for their country to be at war.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Kunin and Jealous would probably feel a need to pick a prospective winner because they are immersed in this sort of politics. “Relevance” is capital to such people, but ordinary folks are also drawn to power. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">People want to feel they are part of something. The fervour of manic Trump supporters is really only the shabby and slack-jawed version of the credulousness of </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Democrats who are</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> seeking to be part of “history” by supporting the first woman president or the first </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">b</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">lack president. The mania is the same regardless of how noble the pretext.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">W</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">omen who support Clinton in the belief that it is somehow feminist or will advance the cause of women in general are zombiefied. They brainlessly shuffle through an undead parody of a political process, immune to the ample <a href="http://observer.com/2015/11/why-bernie-sanders-cares-more-about-womens-issues-than-hillary-clinton/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">evidence</a> that in actions, rather than rhetoric, Clinton is not a great supporter of women’s rights. Nor can Obama supporters process the <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2014/12/10/obama-im-not-the-deporter-in-chief-because-i-only-just-discovered-my-powers-or-something/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">reality</a> that his administrations have deported more immigrants than any others in US history; have slowly reconstituted the wars he was supposed to end; and have carried out the largest international <a href="https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">assassination</a> programme in history;</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">and</span> <span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">numerous studies over the years show that the vast majority of </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">his </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">victims are <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/civilian-deaths-drone-strikes_us_561fafe2e4b028dd7ea6c4ff" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">civilians</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><b style="box-sizing: border-box;">Third Party Insurance</b></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">M</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">y </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">concluding </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">advice to US voters: vote for a 3</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="bottom: 1ex; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 11.25px; height: 0px; line-height: 0; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">rd</span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;"> party </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">candidate in any election that you can</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">. People mistakenly believe that votes do not count if your candidate is not elected. That is stupid. How many elections come down to just one vote? More to the point, how responsive to the voters are people </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">once elected? Studies have <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #f16e50; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">shown</a> that elected officials do not carry out the will of voters and that “mandate theory” is empirically invalid. A vote is only good as an official statement of your belief, so it is not “tactical” to compromise on beliefs. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">Q</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">uite the opposite. Voting for a 3</span><span style="bottom: 1ex; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 11.25px; height: 0px; line-height: 0; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">rd</span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;"> party in the US </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">(</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">assuming that votes are recorded honestly</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">)</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;"> is a message to your fellow citizens. If enough people do it, then the usual plutocrats will be weakened when they campaign in 2, 4, or 6 years because they will have to forestall any emerging alternative. Furthermore, they are so entrenched and decadent that they may fail </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">to quell a growing alternative </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">despite the resources at their command. Then you will have a real choice.</span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Be smart. Do not put your faith in elected leaders. Vote 3</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="bottom: 1ex; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 11.25px; height: 0px; line-height: 0; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: small;">rd</span></span> party, then continue to fight for democracy in other ways. The current electoral process is not real democracy, it is the dance of the dead – the Nazi Zombie Shuffle.</span></div>
NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-672694366166450222016-03-04T21:56:00.001-08:002016-03-04T21:56:09.264-08:00What Makes People Vote Republican?<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><img alt="Edge.org" class="site-logo image-style-none" src="https://edge.org/sites/default/files/edge_logo.jpg" typeof="foaf:Image" /><br />
T<em style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 14px;">o arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.</em><br />
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<a href="https://edge.org/conversation/jonathan_haidt-what-makes-people-vote-republican" target="_blank"><br /></a></h1>
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<a href="https://edge.org/conversation/jonathan_haidt-what-makes-people-vote-republican" target="_blank">What Makes People Vote Republican?</a></h1>
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<span class="member-name"><a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/jonathan_haidt" style="color: #822209; font-size: 1em !important; text-decoration: none;">Jonathan Haidt</a></span></span> </span><span class="views-field views-field-field-date" style="font-size: 1.2em; font-weight: 600;">[9.8.08]</span></div>
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<em>...the second rule of moral psychology is that morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. When Republicans say that Democrats "just don't get it," this is the "it" to which they refer.</em></div>
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JONATHAN HAIDT is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, where he does research on morality and emotion and how they vary across cultures. He is the author of <em>The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom.</em></div>
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<a href="http://edge.org/memberbio/jonathan_haidt" style="color: #822209; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 700;">Jonathan Haidt's <em>Edge</em> Bio Page</span></a></div>
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Further reading on Edge: Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion By Jonathan Haidt [9.22.07]</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;"><a href="http://edge.org/conversation/what-makes-vote-republican#rc" style="color: #822209; text-decoration: none;">THE REALITY CLUB</a>:</span> Daniel Everett, Howard Gardner, Michael Shermer, Scott Atran, James Fowler, Alison Gopnik, Sam Harris, James O'Donnell<br /> </div>
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What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.</div>
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Diagnosis is a pleasure. It is a thrill to solve a mystery from scattered clues, and it is empowering to know what makes others tick. In the psychological community, where almost all of us are politically liberal, our diagnosis of conservatism gives us the additional pleasure of shared righteous anger. We can explain how Republicans exploit frames, phrases, and fears to trick Americans into supporting policies (such as the "war on terror" and repeal of the "death tax") that damage the national interest for partisan advantage.</div>
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But with pleasure comes seduction, and with righteous pleasure comes seduction wearing a halo. Our diagnosis explains away Republican successes while convincing us and our fellow liberals that we hold the moral high ground. Our diagnosis tells us that we have nothing to learn from other ideologies, and it blinds us to what I think is one of the main reasons that so many Americans voted Republican over the last 30 years: they honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to the one offered by Democrats. To see what Democrats have been missing, it helps to take off the halo, step back for a moment, and think about what morality really is.</div>
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I began to study morality and culture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. A then-prevalent definition of the moral domain, from the Berkeley psychologist Elliot Turiel, said that morality refers to "prescriptive judgments of justice, rights, and welfare pertaining to how people ought to relate to each other." But if morality is about how we treat each other, then why did so many ancient texts devote so much space to rules about menstruation, who can eat what, and who can have sex with whom? There is no rational or health-related way to explain these laws. (Why are grasshoppers kosher but most locusts are not?) The emotion of disgust seemed to me like a more promising explanatory principle. The book of Leviticus makes a lot more sense when you think of ancient lawgivers first sorting everything into two categories: "disgusts me" (gay male sex, menstruation, pigs, swarming insects) and "disgusts me less" (gay female sex, urination, cows, grasshoppers ).</div>
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For my dissertation research, I made up stories about people who did things that were disgusting or disrespectful yet perfectly harmless. For example, what do you think about a woman who can't find any rags in her house so she cuts up an old American flag and uses the pieces to clean her toilet, in private? Or how about a family whose dog is killed by a car, so they dismember the body and cook it for dinner? I read these stories to 180 young adults and 180 eleven-year-old children, half from higher social classes and half from lower, in the USA and in Brazil. I found that most of the people I interviewed said that the actions in these stories were morally wrong, even when nobody was harmed. Only one group—college students at Penn—consistently exemplified Turiel's definition of morality and overrode their own feelings of disgust to say that harmless acts were not wrong. (A few even praised the efficiency of recycling the flag and the dog).</div>
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This research led me to two conclusions. First, when gut feelings are present, dispassionate reasoning is rare. In fact, many people struggled to fabricate harmful consequences that could justify their gut-based condemnation. I often had to correct people when they said things like "it's wrong because… um…eating dog meat would make you sick" or "it's wrong to use the flag because… um… the rags might clog the toilet." These obviously post-hoc rationalizations illustrate the philosopher David Hume's dictum that reason is "the slave of the passions, and can pretend to no other office than to serve and obey them." This is the first rule of moral psychology: <em>feelings come first and tilt the mental playing field on which reasons and arguments compete</em>. If people want to reach a conclusion, they can usually find a way to do so. The Democrats have historically failed to grasp this rule, choosing uninspiring and aloof candidates who thought that policy arguments were forms of persuasion.</div>
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The second conclusion was that the moral domain varies across cultures. Turiel's description of morality as being about justice, rights, and human welfare worked perfectly for the college students I interviewed at Penn, but it simply did not capture the moral concerns of the less elite groups—the working-class people in both countries who were more likely to justify their judgments with talk about respect, duty, and family roles. ("Your dog is family, and you just don't eat family.") From this study I concluded that the anthropologist Richard Shweder was probably right in a 1987 critique of Turiel in which he claimed that the moral domain (not just specific rules) varies by culture. Drawing on Shweder's ideas, I would say that the second rule of moral psychology is that <em>morality is not just about how we treat each other</em> (as most liberals think); <em>it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way</em>.</div>
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When Republicans say that Democrats "just don't get it," this is the "it" to which they refer. Conservative positions on gays, guns, god, and immigration must be understood as means to achieve one kind of morally ordered society. When Democrats try to explain away these positions using pop psychology they err, they alienate, and they earn the label "elitist." But how can Democrats learn to see—let alone respect—a moral order they regard as narrow-minded, racist, and dumb?</div>
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After graduate school I moved to the University of Chicago to work with Shweder, and while there I got a fellowship to do research in India. In September 1993 I traveled to Bhubaneswar, an ancient temple town 200 miles southwest of Calcutta. I brought with me two incompatible identities. On the one hand, I was a 29 year old liberal atheist who had spent his politically conscious life despising Republican presidents, and I was charged up by the culture wars that intensified in the 1990s. On the other hand, I wanted to be like those tolerant anthropologists I had read so much about.</div>
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My first few weeks in Bhubaneswar were therefore filled with feelings of shock and confusion. I dined with men whose wives silently served us and then retreated to the kitchen. My hosts gave me a servant of my own and told me to stop thanking him when he served me. I watched people bathe in and cook with visibly polluted water that was held to be sacred. In short, I was immersed in a sex-segregated, hierarchically stratified, devoutly religious society, and I was committed to understanding it on its own terms, not on mine.</div>
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It only took a few weeks for my shock to disappear, not because I was a natural anthropologist but because the normal human capacity for empathy kicked in. I <em>liked</em> these people who were hosting me, helping me, and teaching me. And once I liked them (remember that first principle of moral psychology) it was easy to take their perspective and to consider with an open mind the virtues they thought they were enacting. Rather than automatically rejecting the men as sexist oppressors and pitying the women, children, and servants as helpless victims, I was able to see a moral world in which families, not individuals, are the basic unit of society, and the members of each extended family (including its servants) are intensely interdependent. In this world, equality and personal autonomy were not sacred values. Honoring elders, gods, and guests, and fulfilling one's role-based duties, were more important. Looking at America from this vantage point, what I saw now seemed overly individualistic and self-focused. For example, when I boarded the plane to fly back to Chicago I heard a loud voice saying "Look, you tell him that this is the compartment over MY seat, and I have a RIGHT to use it."</div>
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Back in the United States the culture war was going strong, but I had lost my righteous passion. I could never have empathized with the Christian Right directly, but once I had stood outside of my home morality, once I had tried on the moral lenses of my Indian friends and interview subjects, I was able to think about conservative ideas with a newfound clinical detachment. They want more prayer and spanking in schools, and less sex education and access to abortion? I didn't think those steps would reduce AIDS and teen pregnancy, but I could see why the religious right wanted to "thicken up" the moral climate of schools and discourage the view that children should be as free as possible to act on their desires. Conservatives think that welfare programs and feminism increase rates of single motherhood and weaken the traditional social structures that compel men to support their own children? Hmm, that may be true, even if there are also many good effects of liberating women from dependence on men. I had escaped from my prior partisan mindset (reject first, ask rhetorical questions later), and began to think about liberal and conservative policies as manifestations of deeply conflicting but equally heartfelt visions of the good society.</div>
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On Turiel's definition of morality ("justice, rights, and welfare"), Christian and Hindu communities don't look good. They restrict people's rights (especially sexual rights), encourage hierarchy and conformity to gender roles, and make people spend extraordinary amounts of time in prayer and ritual practices that seem to have nothing to do with "real" morality. But isn't it unfair to impose on all cultures a definition of morality drawn from the European Enlightenment tradition? Might we do better with an approach that defines moral systems by what they do rather than by what they value?</div>
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Here's my alternative definition: <em>morality is any system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible</em>. It turns out that human societies have found several radically different approaches to suppressing selfishness, two of which are most relevant for understanding what Democrats don't understand about morality.</div>
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First, imagine society as a social contract invented for our mutual benefit. All individuals are equal, and all should be left as free as possible to move, develop talents, and form relationships as they please. The patron saint of a contractual society is John Stuart Mill, who wrote (in On Liberty) that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." Mill's vision appeals to many liberals and libertarians; a Millian society at its best would be a peaceful, open, and creative place where diverse individuals respect each other's rights and band together voluntarily (as in Obama's calls for "unity") to help those in need or to change the laws for the common good.</div>
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Psychologists have done extensive research on the moral mechanisms that are presupposed in a Millian society, and there are two that appear to be partly innate. First, people in all cultures are emotionally responsive to suffering and harm, particularly violent harm, and so nearly all cultures have norms or laws to protect individuals and to encourage care for the most vulnerable. Second, people in all cultures are emotionally responsive to issues of fairness and reciprocity, which often expand into notions of rights and justice. Philosophical efforts to justify liberal democracies and egalitarian social contracts invariably rely heavily on intuitions about fairness and reciprocity.</div>
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But now imagine society not as an agreement among individuals but as something that emerged organically over time as people found ways of living together, binding themselves to each other, suppressing each other's selfishness, and punishing the deviants and free-riders who eternally threaten to undermine cooperative groups. The basic social unit is not the individual, it is the hierarchically structured family, which serves as a model for other institutions. Individuals in such societies are born into strong and constraining relationships that profoundly limit their autonomy. The patron saint of this more binding moral system is the sociologist Emile Durkheim, who warned of the dangers of anomie (normlessness), and wrote, in 1897, that "Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free himself from all social pressure is to abandon himself and demoralize him." A Durkheimian society at its best would be a stable network composed of many nested and overlapping groups that socialize, reshape, and care for individuals who, if left to their own devices, would pursue shallow, carnal, and selfish pleasures. A Durkheimian society would value self-control over self-expression, duty over rights, and loyalty to one's groups over concerns for outgroups.</div>
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A Durkheimian ethos can't be supported by the two moral foundations that hold up a Millian society (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity). My recent research shows that social conservatives do indeed rely upon those two foundations, but they also value virtues related to three additional psychological systems: ingroup/loyalty (involving mechanisms that evolved during the long human history of tribalism), authority/respect (involving ancient primate mechanisms for managing social rank, tempered by the obligation of superiors to protect and provide for subordinates), and purity/sanctity (a relatively new part of the moral mind, related to the evolution of disgust, that makes us see carnality as degrading and renunciation as noble). These three systems support moralities that bind people into intensely interdependent groups that work together to reach common goals. Such moralities make it easier for individuals to forget themselves and coalesce temporarily into hives, a process that is thrilling, as anyone who has ever "lost" him or herself in a choir, protest march, or religious ritual can attest.</div>
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In several large internet surveys, my collaborators Jesse Graham, Brian Nosek and I have found that people who call themselves strongly liberal endorse statements related to the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations, and they largely reject statements related to ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. People who call themselves strongly conservative, in contrast, endorse statements related to all five foundations more or less equally. (You can test yourself at <a class="ext" href="http://www.yourmorals.org/" style="color: #822209; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">www.YourMorals.org</a><span class="ext" style="background: url("extlink.png") 100% 50% no-repeat; padding-right: 12px;"></span>.) We think of the moral mind as being like an audio equalizer, with five slider switches for different parts of the moral spectrum. Democrats generally use a much smaller part of the spectrum than do Republicans. The resulting music may sound beautiful to other Democrats, but it sounds thin and incomplete to many of the swing voters that left the party in the 1980s, and whom the Democrats must recapture if they want to produce a lasting political realignment.</div>
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In <em>The Political Brain</em>, Drew Westen points out that the Republicans have become the party of the sacred, appropriating not just the issues of God, faith, and religion, but also the sacred symbols of the nation such as the Flag and the military. The Democrats, in the process, have become the party of the profane—of secular life and material interests. Democrats often seem to think of voters as consumers; they rely on polls to choose a set of policy positions that will convince 51% of the electorate to buy. Most Democrats don't understand that politics is more like religion than it is like shopping.</div>
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Religion and political leadership are so intertwined across eras and cultures because they are about the same thing: performing the miracle of converting unrelated individuals into a group. Durkheim long ago said that God is really society projected up into the heavens, a collective delusion that enables collectives to exist, suppress selfishness, and endure. The three Durkheimian foundations (ingroup, authority, and purity) play a crucial role in most religions. When they are banished entirely from political life, what remains is a nation of individuals striving to maximize utility while respecting the rules. What remains is a cold but fair social contract, which can easily degenerate into a nation of shoppers.</div>
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The Democrats must find a way to close the sacredness gap that goes beyond occasional and strategic uses of the words "God" and "faith." But if Durkheim is right, then sacredness is really about society and its collective concerns. God is useful but not necessary. The Democrats could close much of the gap if they simply learned to see society not just as a collection of individuals—each with a panoply of rights--but as an entity in itself, an entity that needs some tending and caring. Our national motto is e pluribus unum ("from many, one"). Whenever Democrats support policies that weaken the integrity and identity of the collective (such as multiculturalism, bilingualism, and immigration), they show that they care more about pluribus than unum. They widen the sacredness gap.</div>
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A useful heuristic would be to think about each issue, and about the Party itself, from the perspective of the three Durkheimian foundations. Might the Democrats expand their moral range without betraying their principles? Might they even find ways to improve their policies by incorporating and publicly praising some conservative insights?</div>
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The ingroup/loyalty foundation supports virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice that can lead to dangerous nationalism, but in moderate doses a sense that "we are all one" is a recipe for high social capital and civic well-being. A recent study by Robert Putnam (titled <em>E Pluribus Unum</em>) found that ethnic diversity increases anomie and social isolation by decreasing people's sense of belonging to a shared community. Democrats should think carefully, therefore, about why they celebrate diversity. If the purpose of diversity programs is to fight racism and discrimination (worthy goals based on fairness concerns), then these goals might be better served by encouraging assimilation and a sense of shared identity.</div>
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The purity/sanctity foundation is used heavily by the Christian right to condemn hedonism and sexual "deviance," but it can also be harnessed for progressive causes. Sanctity does not have to come from God; the psychology of this system is about overcoming our lower, grasping, carnal selves in order to live in a way that is higher, nobler, and more spiritual. Many liberals criticize the crassness and ugliness that our unrestrained free-market society has created. There is a long tradition of liberal anti-materialism often linked to a reverence for nature. Environmental and animal welfare issues are easily promoted using the language of harm/care, but such appeals might be more effective when supplemented with hints of purity/sanctity.</div>
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The authority/respect foundation will be the hardest for Democrats to use. But even as liberal bumper stickers urge us to "question authority" and assert that "dissent is patriotic," Democrats can ask what needs this foundation serves, and then look for other ways to meet them. The authority foundation is all about maintaining social order, so any candidate seen to be "soft on crime" has disqualified himself, for many Americans, from being entrusted with the ultimate authority. Democrats would do well to read Durkheim and think about the quasi-religious importance of the criminal justice system. The miracle of turning individuals into groups can only be performed by groups that impose costs on cheaters and slackers. You can do this the authoritarian way (with strict rules and harsh penalties) or you can do it using the fairness/reciprocity foundation by stressing personal responsibility and the beneficence of the nation towards those who "work hard and play by the rules." But if you don't do it at all—if you seem to tolerate or enable cheaters and slackers -- then you are committing a kind of sacrilege.</div>
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If Democrats want to understand what makes people vote Republican, they must first understand the full spectrum of American moral concerns. They should then consider whether they can use more of that spectrum themselves. The Democrats would lose their souls if they ever abandoned their commitment to social justice, but social justice is about getting fair relationships among the parts of the nation. This often divisive struggle among the parts must be balanced by a clear and oft-repeated commitment to guarding the precious coherence of the whole. America lacks the long history, small size, ethnic homogeneity, and soccer mania that holds many other nations together, so our flag, our founding fathers, our military, and our common language take on a moral importance that many liberals find hard to fathom.</div>
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Unity is not the great need of the hour, it is the eternal struggle of our immigrant nation. The three Durkheimian foundations of ingroup, authority, and purity are powerful tools in that struggle. Until Democrats understand this point, they will be vulnerable to the seductive but false belief that Americans vote for Republicans primarily because they have been duped into doing so.</div>
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REALITY CLUB DISCUSSION</h2>
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<a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/roger_schank" style="color: #822209; font-size: 1em !important; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="" class="image-style-mini-thumbnail" height="48" src="https://edge.org/sites/default/files/styles/mini-thumbnail/public/member-pictures/bk_144_roger_schank.jpg?itok=X0_iyv9a" style="border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%;" typeof="foaf:Image" width="48" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/roger_schank" style="color: #822209; font-size: 1em !important; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">Roger Schank</span></a></div>
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<em>Psychologist & Computer Scientist; Engines for Education Inc.; Author, Make School Meaningful-And Fun!</em></div>
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The Haidt article is interesting, as are the responses to it, but these pieces are written by intellectuals who live in an environment where reasoned argument is prized. I live in Florida.</div>
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When I travel, I live the life of an intellectual. In Florida, I hang out with jocks and retirees. I try not to talk politics with them. When, it happens that I have no choice but to hear what they think about politics I take note of it. Here is what I have heard:</div>
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Obama is a Muslim. His pastor hates America. In fact nearly everyone outside of America hates America. If you travel outside of America, go on a cruise, so you won't have to eat whatever it is one eats in those places. You don't want to talk to the people either, but that’s not a problem because none of them speak English. And, anyway they all hate us for our freedoms. Obama will put Al Sharpton in the cabinet. Dick Cheney was the greatest Vice President in history. The Jews are running the country anyway.</div>
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I am not making this up. This is not a caricature. I wish I carried a tape recorder.</div>
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Why do these people vote Republican?</div>
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It is common to make the assumption that people are thinking when they vote and they are making reasoned choices. I harbor no such illusion. No argument I have ever gotten into with these people, (despite avoiding talking to them, I sometimes can't resist saying something true) has ever convinced anyone of anything. They are not reasoning, nor do they want to try. They simply believe what they believe. What do they believe?</div>
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1. They don't like blacks. Forget the rest. It isn't that they are racists. They will be polite if a black person ever appears. (This doesn't happen much, although I am sure they must live here too.) They just don't like them. They have no reason. If you ask them today, as a result of recent remarks by Michelle Obama and their pastor, they will say that blacks hate America. This is not the reason, but they sound more reasoned in their own minds if they say it that way.</div>
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2. They don't like wussies. The Democrats are always nominating wussies,—men who are not men. Obama looks like his wife runs the show at home. Kerry? Gore? Dukakis. Wussies. Not real men. Bad people are trying to kill us. We need to kill them first. Those guys wouldn't pull the trigger. (I am not making this up. I wish I were.)</div>
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3. They worry about money. Who wants to take their money away? Liberals of course. They want to give it to the blacks.</div>
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Where I live is not redneck country. There is a lot of church going but no talk about abortion or of being born again. There is a just a distaste and distrust for people not like us (which I am sure includes me.)</div>
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It is all very nice to come up with complex analyses of what is going on. As is often the case, the real answer is quite simple. Most people can't think very well. They were taught not to think by religion and by a school system that teaches that knowledge of state capitals and quadratic equations is what education is all about and that well reasoned argument and original ideas will not help on a multiple choice test.</div>
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We don't try to get the average child to think in this society so why, as adults would we expect that they actually would be thinking? They think about how the Yankees are doing, and who will win some reality show contest, and what restaurant to eat it, but they are not equipped to think about politics and, in my mind, they are not equipped to vote. The fact that we let them vote while failing to encourage them to think for themselves is a real problem for our society.</div>
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The scientific question here is how belief systems are acquired and changed. I worked on this problem with both Ken Colby and Bob Abelson for many years. Colby was a psychiatrist who modeled paranoid behavior on computers. The basis of his work was research on how neurotic thinking depends upon the attempt to make inconsistent beliefs work together when the core beliefs cannot change.</div>
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Abelson worked on modeling political belief systems. He built a very convincing model of Barry Goldwater that showed that once you adopted some simple beliefs about the cold war, every other position Goldwater took could be derived (and asserted by a computer) from those core beliefs. The idea of a set of unchanging core beliefs is not true of only politicians or psychiatric patients of course. Everyday average Joes behave the same way. Adult belief systems rest on childhood beliefs instilled by parents mostly and by assorted other authorities.</div>
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Republicans do not try to change voter's beliefs. They go with them. Democrats appeal to reason. Big mistake.</div>
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<a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/james_j_odonnell" style="color: #822209; font-size: 1em !important; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="" class="image-style-mini-thumbnail" height="48" src="https://edge.org/sites/default/files/styles/mini-thumbnail/public/member-pictures/bk_117_james_j_o_donnell.jpg?itok=6zhxHNiy" style="border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%;" typeof="foaf:Image" width="48" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/james_j_odonnell" style="color: #822209; font-size: 1em !important; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">James J. O'Donnell</span></a></div>
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<em>Classics Scholar, University Librarian, ASU; Author, The Ruin of the Roman Empire; Pagans; Webmaster, St. Augustine's Website</em></div>
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<em style="font-size: 17.6px; line-height: 27.28px;">Edge</em><span style="font-size: 17.6px; line-height: 27.28px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 17.6px; line-height: 27.28px;">has latterly published two provocative pieces, Jon Haidt's essay on why people vote Republican and Clay Shirky's ruminations and calculations on the cognitive surplus we have at our disposal. To a historian, these pieces dovetail and underscore a fundamental landslip that's taking place around us. I'll comment on Haidt first, then get to Shirky, but no</span><span style="font-size: 17.6px; line-height: 27.28px;"> </span><em style="font-size: 17.6px; line-height: 27.28px;">Edge</em><span style="font-size: 17.6px; line-height: 27.28px;">visitor should miss either. Roughly speaking, we are discovering that words don't matter.</span></div>
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Or they don't matter as much as we thought. Take the political question. The underlying fiction of electoral bodies is that the electors make rational choices about (ideally) what is in the best interests of the whole community or (realistically) what is in the best interests of themselves or some group to which they belong.</div>
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We know how to accept the results of that kind of thinking, always closing our eyes a bit to the extent to which things don't actually go that way. Corrupt political machines have been influencing votes wholesale for a long time and it's hard to argue that the dead citizens of Chicago really had their own best interests in mind when they voted. But I'm reading just now Livy's description of how the Romans chose their first king, Numa Pompilius, when Romulus died, and it's certainly framed as looking about for the best qualified candidate for the job.</div>
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The cynicism of the last years makes it clear that no one in high electoral politics now needs to, wants to, or should think that way if they want to win an election. This came home to me in the aftermath of the 2004 election when I saw a map of who-voted-how coded at a level that made it clear that the counties of the US that produce the wealth and innovation voted overwhelmingly Democratic and the counties of the US that depend on government subsidy or that simply underperform economically voted overwhelmingly Republican.</div>
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That's nuts—and it makes perfect sense at the same time. Perfect sense in that the Republican success of the last generation, since Nixon and Reagan cracked the code, has been to exploit irrelevant (to national policy) anxieties. We are at the point where the national maneuvering for office has nothing to do with argument (so much for folks who say that "the economy should be Obama's best argument") and everything to do with positioning a message between now and election day so that pulling the lever or pushing the button or punching the chad for one candidate makes you feel morally satisfied, which is to say, less anxious and guilty and ashamed.</div>
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McCain's choice of Palin confirms what the Democrats choice of Obama made clear: the candidate's qualifications for some notional job don't matter at all. What matters is the candidate's qualification for getting you to push the button. After that, it's politics as usual. And for a generation or more now, one party has been better at that than the other, and of course they claim that it's because their message is stronger and truer. Truth has nothing to do with it.</div>
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Shirky's piece gives more context for our transition away from words that matter. I don't mean we don't speak and write and that words aren't highly functional tools, but the exact framing of sentences and the precise structure of the verbal argument are less and less important. Bullet points on a powerpoint get the conversation going and the group working together gets to the result that matters. The "writer" is less important than he has been since, oh, Herodotus. (Example? Obama's speech on race earlier this summer. Good work, well-written, seen by almost no one, read by a few, and then blown off the screens by his preacher's TV appearances. Net result, the image and the illogic prevail.) Shirky is one of many voices confirming that this fading of the power of the specific written word is not all bad news and even has good news to it, but the old classics professor in me at least needs to slow down long enough to observe the the humanistic culture of the orator from Demosthenes to Martin Luther King Jr. is decisively gone. We don't fully understand what's replacing it, but it's happening all around us—you might even call it a third culture...</div>
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<a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/sam_harris" style="color: #822209; font-size: 1em !important; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">Sam Harris</span></a></div>
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<em>Neuroscientist; Co-founder and Chairman, Project Reason; Author, Waking Up</em></div>
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The human brain is an engine of belief. Our minds continually consume, produce, and attempt to reconcile propositions about ourselves and the world that purport to be true:<em>Iran is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons; human beings are contributing to global climate change; I actually look better with gray hair</em>. What must a brain do to believe such propositions? This question marks the intersection of many fields: psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, economics, political science, and even jurisprudence. Understanding belief at the level of the brain is the main focus of my current research, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).</div>
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Belief encompasses two domains that have been traditionally divided in our discourse. We believe propositions about <em>facts</em>, and these acts of cognition subsume almost every effort we make to get at the truth—in science, history, journalism, etc. But we also form beliefs about <em>values</em>: judgments about morality, meaning, personal goals, and life's larger purpose. While they differ in certain respects, these types of belief share some important features.</div>
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Both types of belief make tacit claims about <em>normativity</em>: claims not merely about how we human beings think and behave, but about how we<em> should</em> think and behave. Factual beliefs like "water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen" and ethical beliefs like "cruelty is wrong" are not expressions of mere preference. To really believe a proposition (whether about facts or values) is also to believe that one has accepted it for legitimate reasons. It is, therefore, to believe that one is in compliance with a variety norms (i.e., that one is sane, rational, not lying to oneself, not overly biased, etc.) When we really believe that something is factually true or morally good, we also believe that another person, similarly placed, should share our conviction.</div>
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Despite the remonstrations of people like Jonathan Haidt and Richard Shweder, science has long been in the values business. Scientific validity is not the result of scientists abstaining from making value judgments; it is the result of scientists making their best effort to<em> value</em>principles of reasoning that reliably link their beliefs to reality, through valid chains of evidence and argument. The answer to the question, "What should I believe, and why should I believe it?" is generally a scientific one: Believe a proposition because it is well supported by theory and evidence; believe it because it has been experimentally verified; believe it because a generation of smart people have tried their best to falsify it and failed; believe it because it is<em> true </em>(or seems so). This is a norm of cognition as well as the epistemic core of any scientific mission statement.</div>
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But what about meaning and morality? Here we appear to move from questions of truth—which have long been in the domain of science if they are to be found anywhere—to questions of goodness. How should we live? Is it wrong to lie? If so, why and in what sense? Which personal habits, uses of attention, modes of discourse, social institutions, economic systems, governments, etc. are most conducive to human well-being? It is widely imagined that science cannot even pose, much less answer, questions of this sort.</div>
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Jonathan Haidt appears to exult in this pessimism. He doubts that anyone can justifiably make strong, realistic claims about right and wrong, or good and evil, because he has observed that human beings tend to make moral judgments on the basis of emotion, justify these judgments with post hoc reasoning, and stick to their guns even when their post hoc reasoning demonstrably fails. As he says in one of his earlier papers, when asked to justify their emotional reactions to certain moral (and pseudo-moral) dilemmas, people are often "morally dumbfounded." He reports that subjects often "stutter, laugh, and express surprise at their inability to find supporting reasons, yet they would not change their initial judgments…" But couldn't the same be said of people's failures to solve logical puzzles? I think it would be fair to say that the Monty Hall problem leaves many of its victims "logically dumbfounded." Which is to say that even when a person gets the gist of why he should switch doors, he often cannot shake his initial intuition that each door represents a 50 percent chance of success. This reliable failure of human reasoning is just that—a failure of reasoning. It does not suggest that there isn't a single correct answer to the Monty Hall problem. While it might seem the height of arrogance to say it, the people who actually<em>understand</em> the Monty Hall problem really do hold the "logical high ground."</div>
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As a counterpoint to the prevailing liberal opinion that morality is a system of"prescriptive judgments of justice, rights, and welfare pertaining to how people ought to relate to each other," Haidt asks us to ponder mysteries of the following sort: "But if morality is about how we treat each other, then why did so many ancient texts devote so much space to rules about menstruation, who can eat what, and who can have sex with whom?" Interesting question. Are these the same ancient texts that view slavery as morally unproblematic? It would seem so. Perhaps slavery has no moral implications after all—could Abolition have been just another instance of liberal bias?—otherwise, surely these ancient texts would have something of substance to say about it. Or, following Haidt's initial logic, why not ask, "if physics is just a system of laws which explains the structure of the universe in terms of mass and energy, why do so many ancient texts devote so much space to immaterial influences and miraculous acts of God?" Why indeed.</div>
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Haidt is, of course, right to worry that liberals may not always "hold the moral high ground." In a recent study of moral reasoning, subjects were asked to judge whether it was morally correct to sacrifice the life of one person to save one hundred, while being given subtle clues as to the races of the people involved. Conservatives proved less biased by race than liberals and, therefore, more even-handed. It turns out that liberals were very eager to sacrifice a white person to save one hundred non-whites, but not the other way around, all the while maintaining that considerations of race had not entered into their thinking. Observations of this sort are useful in revealing the biasing effect of ideology—even the ideology of fairness.</div>
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Haidt often writes, however, as if there were no such thing as moral high ground. At the very least, he seems to believe that science will never be able to judge higher from lower. He admonishes us to get it into our thick heads that many of our neighbors "honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to the one offered by Democrats." Yes, and many of them honestly prefer the Republican vision of cosmology, wherein it is still permissible to believe that the big bang occurred less than ten thousand years ago. These same people tend to prefer Republican doubts about biological evolution and climate change. There are names for this type of "preference," one of the more polite being "ignorance." What scientific purpose is served by avoiding this word at all costs?</div>
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Haidt appears to consider it an intellectual virtue to adopt, uncritically, the moral categories of his subjects. But where is it written that everything that people do or decide in the name of "morality" deserves to be considered part its subject matter? A majority of Americans believe that the Bible provides an accurate account of the ancient world (as well as accurate prophecies of the future). Many millions of Americans also believe that a principal cause of cancer is "repressed anger." Happily, we do not allow these opinions to anchor us when it comes time to have serious discussions about history and oncology.</div>
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Much of humanity is clearly wrong about morality—just as much of humanity is wrong about physics, biology, history, and everything else worth understanding. If, as I believe, morality is a system of thinking about (and maximizing) the well being of conscious creatures like ourselves, many people's moral concerns are frankly immoral.</div>
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Does forcing women and girls to wear burqas make a positive contribution to human well-being? Does it make happier boys and girls? More compassionate men? More confident and contented women? Does it make for better relationships between men and women, between boys and their mothers, or between girls and their fathers? I would bet my life that the answer to each of these questions is "no." So, I think, would many scientists. And yet, most scientists have been trained to think that such judgments are mere expressions of cultural bias. Very few of us seem willing to admit that simple, moral truths increasingly fall within the purview of our scientific worldview. I am confident that this period of reticence will soon come to an end.</div>
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Unless human well-being is perfectly random, or equally compatible with any events in the world or state of the brain, there will be scientific truths to be known about it. These truths will, inevitably, force us to draw clear distinctions between ways of thinking and living, judging some to better or worse, more or less true to the facts, and more or less moral.</div>
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Of course, questions of human well-being run deeper than any explicit code of morality. Morality—in terms of consciously held precepts, social-contracts, notions of justice, etc.—is a relatively recent invention. Such conventions require, at a minimum, language and a willingness to cooperate with strangers, and this takes us a stride or two beyond the Hobbesian "state of nature." But prior to emergence of explicit notions of right and wrong, the concept of well-being still applies. Whatever behaviors served to mitigate the internecine misery of our ancestors would fall within the scope of this analysis. To simplify matters enormously: (1) genetic changes in the brain gave rise to social emotions, moral intuitions, and language… (2) which produced increasingly complex cooperative behavior, the keeping of promises, concern about one's reputation, etc… (3) which became the basis for cultural norms, laws, and social institutions whose purpose has been to render this growing system of cooperation durable in the face of countervailing forces.</div>
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Some version of this progression has occurred in our case, and each step represents an undeniable enhancement of our personal and collective well-being. Of course, catastrophic regressions are always possible. We could, either by design or negligence, employ the hard-won fruits of civilization, and the emotional and social leverage of millennia of biological and cultural evolution, to immiserate ourselves more fully than unaided Nature ever could. Imagine a global North Korea, where the better part of a starving humanity serves as slaves to a lunatic with bouffant hair: this might, in fact, be worse than a world filled merely with warring Australopithecines. What would "worse" mean in this context? Just what our (liberal?) intuitions suggest: more painful, less fulfilling, more conducive to fear and despair, etc. While it will never be feasible to compare such counterfactual states of the world, that does not mean that there are no experiential facts of the matter to be compared.</div>
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Haidt is, of course, right to notice that emotions have primacy in many respects—and the way in which feeling drives judgment is surely worthy of study. It does not follow, however, that there are no right and wrong answers to questions of morality. Just as people are often less than rational when claiming to be rational, they are often less than moral when claiming to be moral. We know from many lines of converging research that our feeling of reasoning objectively, in concordance with compelling evidence, is often an illusion. This is especially obvious in split-brain research, when the left hemisphere's "interpreter" finds itself sequestered, and can be enticed to simply confabulate by way of accounting for right-hemisphere behavior. This does not mean, however, that dispassionate reasoning, scrupulous attention to evidence, and awareness of the ever-present possibility of self-deception are not cognitive skills that human beings can acquire. And there is no reason to expect that all cultures and sub-cultures value these skills equally.</div>
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If there are objective truths about human well-being—if kindness, for instance, is generally more conducive to happiness than cruelty is—then there seems little doubt that science will one day be able to make strong and precise claims about which of our behaviors and uses of attention are morally good, which are neutral, and which are bad. At time when only 28 percent of Americans will admit the truth of evolution, while 58 percent imagine that a belief in God is necessary for morality, it is truism to say that our culture is not prepared to think critically about the changes to come.</div>
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<a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/alison_gopnik" style="color: #822209; font-size: 1em !important; text-decoration: none;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><img alt="" class="image-style-mini-thumbnail" height="48" src="https://edge.org/sites/default/files/styles/mini-thumbnail/public/member-pictures/bk_78_alison_gopnik.jpg?itok=iD2TSTY3" style="border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%;" typeof="foaf:Image" width="48" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/alison_gopnik" style="color: #822209; font-size: 1em !important; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">Alison Gopnik</span></a></div>
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<em>Psychologist, UC, Berkeley; Author, The Philosophical Baby</em></div>
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I agree with Jonathan Haidt that philosophy and politics take off from everyday moral intuitions. And I agree there are real and valuable moral intuitions that liberalism doesn't capture, and that motivate many working-class Republican voters. But the moral intuitions I have in mind aren't in Haidt's moral taxonomy either. They are the special moral intuitions that we all have about raising children. This has become particularly vivid with the Republican enthusiasm for Sarah Palin.</div>
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For most of us, our children are the source of our gravest moral obligations, deepest moral dilemmas and greatest moral triumphs. But the moral intuitions of childrearing aren't well articulated by the liberal scheme, or any other philosophical scheme for that matter. (There is an obvious reason for this, childrearing has been women's work, philosophy, psychology, theology and politics have belonged to men).</div>
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The liberal Enlightenment philosophy that underpins Democratic politics is rooted in intuitions about good and harm, autonomy and reciprocity, individuality and universality. Each individual person deserves to pursue happiness and avert harm, and by cooperating reciprocally we can maximize the good of everyone—the basic idea of the social contract. But individualist, universalist and contractual moral systems, whether they are libertarian or socialist, utilitarian or Kantian, just don't get it about raising kids.</div>
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Childrearing isn't individualistic. It doesn't feel like just another moral relation to another person—a neighbor, a fellow citizen, even a friend. When you take on the care of children, you create a moral unit that is larger than you are. As a result there is nothing morally or rationally incoherent in the fact that caregivers regularly, indeed necessarily, sacrifice their own happiness and autonomy for the happiness and autonomy of their children. The good of the baby simply becomes your own good.</div>
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Childrearing is particular, not universalist. One of the everyday but astonishing facts of life is that while we choose our friends and our mates, we don't choose our children. Even when we adopt a baby, we don't know how that baby will turn out. And even the most basic features of what a baby is like are beyond our control, a situation that becomes vivid for the parents of children with disabilities.</div>
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And yet, with some tragic exceptions, when we care for a child we love <em>that child</em>, not other children or children in general. And we have a moral relation to that child that we don't have to other children. Sometimes we love the neediest babies most of all. Sarah Palin's baby is such a powerful image for many women because caring for a Down syndrome child exemplifies the paradox of all childrearing—I love my children in particular, it doesn't matter what they're like or what they do, I'd sacrifice my own happiness for theirs.</div>
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Childrearing also isn't contractual or reciprocal. We may vaguely expect that our children may one day take care of us. But every sane parent appreciates the fundamental and necessary asymmetry of caregiving. Even with mates, and certainly with friends, we expect a certain reciprocity. The neediest of our intimates give us something in return. But every child is needier than the most intolerably demanding friend or lover.</div>
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These moral intuitions have their roots in our evolutionary history. Human beings have a longer period of protected immaturity, a longer childhood, than any other species, and human children demand an exceptional amount of parental investment. As a species, we reap great benefits from this arrangement—in fact, it's the secret of our evolutionary success.</div>
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The period of protected immaturity allows us to learn flexibly about a wide range of environments, before we actually have to act on them. It depends on the especially profound and protracted commitments of human caregiving. But I'd argue that our moral intuitions about childrearing are right independently of their evolutionary origins. It really is a good thing that we care for children in the way we do.</div>
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Empirically, there is sociological evidence that childrearing is especially problematic and challenging for working–class Americans, particularly in the areas that are most likely to vote Republican. Economic insecurity, divorce, the mobility that puts grandmothers and aunts on the other side of the country, all make it difficult for families to thrive. That itself is a reason why "family values" loom so large for these voters. But middle and upper-class blue state voters also share the intuition that childrearing is special, although they can afford to treat the morality of caregiving as a private matter separate from politics.</div>
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Of course, subsidies to new parents, family leave, good early childhood education, fewer working hours with higher pay and more flexibility, are much more likely to actually help parents than abstinence education, abortion restrictions, or gay marriage bans. Some politicians have started to realize this—red states like Georgia and Arkansas have been leaders in creating early childhood programs. It's particularly ironic that contraception and abortion which look inimical to childrearing, may empirically actually allow for more thriving, caring and intimate families, and that the drive for gay marriage is motivated in part by the desire of many gay couples to raise children.</div>
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But politics is about articulating ideals as much as about formulating policies. The philosophical framework of liberalism makes it hard for Democrats to articulate the intuitions that most people share. Caring for a particular, individual baby, even a "special needs" baby, and being part of a particular, individual family, even a complex, messy family, are intrinsic human goods. Politics should help people achieve them successfully. All human babies are specially needy and all human families are complex and messy, and nobody could ever make a good argument that you love your kids and your relatives because they maximize your utilities.</div>
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Democrats use the language of universal entitlement, when they talk about state-supported preschool or childcare, or the language of individual autonomy, when they talk about choice or contraception, or the language of investment, when they talk about the long-term benefits of healthy and well-educated children. But none of these ways of talking about children really capture our everyday intuitions. Of course, there isn't a good alternative conservative language for these intuitions either. The Republican language of traditional religion also doesn't get it, which is why the celebration of Sarah Palin's unwed daughter's pregnancy seemed so paradoxical.</div>
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One way we might try to bridge this gap between intuition, philosophy and policy is by appealing to the fact that human childrearing extends far beyond biological mothers.</div>
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Psychologically, there is strong evidence that we love the children we care for, not just the ones we bear. As the ethologist Sarah Hrdy points out, when animals make big parental investments they spread the load. In socially monogamous species, including many birds and a few mammals, fathers as well as mothers invest in caregiving, and fathers make this investment even when babies aren't their genetic offspring.</div>
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In other species, including lemurs, dolphins and elephants, there are alloparents—animals who help take care of the babies of others. Humans make particularly great parental investments, they are socially though not sexually monagamous (no species is sexually monogamous, not even swans), and they rely on alloparents.</div>
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Sarah Palin quite literally presented a picture of a group of committed caregivers, husbands, siblings, boyfriends and grandmothers—a group larger than a mother but smaller than a state. Philosophers and political thinkers could try to articulate an ethics of childrearing that takes off from this sense of a widening circle of parental responsibility and care—an ethics that would capture the particularity of mother love, but extend it to include an entire community or even a country.</div>
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The articulation of moral intuitions in liberal Enlightenment philosophy was one of the greatest human intellectual achievements. Not all everyday moral intuitions survive that sort of philosophical scrutiny. I'll bet that if we just counted up the most frequent moral intuition across cultures and historical periods the winner would be that the way other people have sex is wrong (closely followed by the intuition that the way we have sex ourselves is wrong).</div>
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In the case of the moral intuitions of disgust that Haidt studies, the best philosophical policy would be to just persuade people to get rid of them. I'd say the same about lots of intuitions about hierarchy and purity. But raising children really is one of the most morally profound human activities, and it would benefit us all, Democrat and Republican, if we could find a philosophical and political way to talk about it.</div>
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<a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/james_fowler" style="color: #822209; font-size: 1em !important; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="" class="image-style-mini-thumbnail" height="48" src="https://edge.org/sites/default/files/styles/mini-thumbnail/public/member-pictures/bk_201_james_fowler.jpg?itok=tpcUYNKY" style="border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%;" typeof="foaf:Image" width="48" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/james_fowler" style="color: #822209; font-size: 1em !important; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">James Fowler</span></a></div>
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<em>Professor of Medical Genetics and Political Science, University of California, San Diego; author, Connected</em></div>
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As a political scientist, I see the question "Why do people vote Republican?" and I think immediately of its premise. Haidt and other commenters have focused on the choice between a Republican and a Democrat. But this choice misses half the question. When someone votes Republican, the first question they must ask themselves is "Should I vote at all?" People who vote Republican have chosen not to vote Democratic, but they have also chosen not to abstain. And it is that choice to vote or not that says something deep about political competition and group behavior.</div>
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The choice to vote or not hinges in part on our perception of the effectiveness of the activity. Will voting matter? To know this, we need to imagine what happens in a world where we vote and what happens in a world where we do not, and then compare those two worlds. Thinking about the world this way may seem like an impossible task because there are so many possible outcomes. Obama could beat McCain by 3 million votes. Or he could beat him by 2,999,999 or he could lose to McCain by 1,345,267. Or… there are literally millions of possible outcomes.</div>
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Of course, there is actually only one circumstance in which an individual vote matters. And that is when we expect an exact tie. To see why this is true, ask yourself what would you do if you could look into a crystal ball and see that Obama would win the election by 3 million votes. What effect would your vote have on the outcome? Absolutely none. You could either change the margin to 2,999,999 or to 3,000,001, but either way Obama still wins. Notice that the same reasoning is true even for very close elections. No doubt some citizens of Florida felt regret about not voting in 2000 when they learned that George W. Bush had won the state (and therefore the whole election) by 537 votes. But even here, the best a single voter could do would be to change the margin to 536 or to 538, neither of which would have changed the outcome.</div>
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So what is the probability of an exact tie? One way of looking at this is to assume that any outcome is equally possible. Suppose 100 million people vote for Obama or McCain. McCain could win 100 million to 0. Or he could win 99,999,999 to 1. Or he could win 99,999,998 to 2…. You get the point. Counting all these up, there are 100 million different outcomes, and only one of these is an exact tie. So the probability of an exact tie for a given number of voters is just one divided by the number of voters. Since roughly 100 million people vote in US Presidential elections, that would mean that the probability was about 1 in 100 million. Just to give a sense of scale, the odds of being struck by lightning in the United States are about one in a million, which would make getting struck by lightning 100 times more likely than one person determining the outcome of an election because of an exact tie in the popular vote!</div>
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The exact probability is obviously much more complicated than this, since it is unlikely that Obama or McCain would win every single vote. Close elections are probably more likely than landslides. So instead of theorizing about the probability of a tie, we could study lots and lots of real elections to see how often it happens. In one survey of 16,577 U.S. elections for the House and Senate over the last hundred years, not one of them yielded a tie. The closest was an election in 1910 for the Representative for New York's 36th congressional district, when the Democratic candidate won by a single vote, 20,685 to 20,684. However, a subsequent recount in that election found a mathematical error that greatly increased the margin, so there are actually no examples of winning by a single vote, either.</div>
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Thus, a rational analysis of voting suggests that the core act of modern democratic government makes absolutely no sense. Economists would literally call voting "irrational" because it violates the preferences of the people who engage in it. For some reason, people decide to vote even though they would not buy a lottery ticket with identical odds, cost, and payoff. Economists typically think that people who vote are making a mistake, or there are other benefits to voting that we have not considered. For example, early scholars noted that people might vote in order to fulfill a sense of civic duty or to preserve the right to vote. Later scholars have also pointed out that people might vote because they enjoy expressing themselves in the same way they enjoy expressing themselves when they cheer for their favorite team at a ballgame. But these explanations beg the question, "Why?" It is a tautology to say that people vote because they feel like voting.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">Social Networks and Voting Cascades</span></div>
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In my collaboration with Nicholas Christakis, we have thought about the effect of social networks on voting and several other important phenomena like obesity, smoking, and even happiness. And as it turns out, the rational analysis of voting overlooks important psychological features of human social networks that we have known about for some time. The earliest research on the social spread of political behavior came in the classic voting studies of Paul Lazarsfeld and Bernard Berelson that took place in the 1940s in the towns of Erie, Pennsylvania, and Elmira, New York. These giants in social science helped invent the survey method and bullied their colleagues into starting the long march towards making the study of politics a science. Their classic election studies eventually became the American National Election Studies that are still conducted every two years.</div>
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Although Lazarsfeld and Berelson did not collect information about the whole network that interconnected all their subjects, they did ask people to discuss who influenced them and how, and this gave us the very first picture of how important networks can be. One of the key findings from these studies was that the media does not reach the masses directly. Instead, a group of "opinion leaders"—a coinage they may have invented—usually acts as intermediary, filtering and interpreting the media for their friends and family who pay less attention to politics. In other words, the media appeared to work by getting its message to those who are most central in the social network. Politicians themselves follow a similar strategy, targeting frequent voters who have already made up their minds, rather than trying to persuade those at the periphery of the network who may or may not participate. It's efficient to do this, of course, but it is also, as we will see, unavoidable, and this kind of process arises from the fundamental nature of social networks.</div>
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Later research by Robert Huckfeldt and John Sprague in the 1970s and 1980s would innovate on these earlier designs. Their voting studies in South Bend, Indiana, Indianapolis, Indiana, and St. Louis, Missouri, would use a "snowball" design, asking people to talk about friends who influenced them and to give the researchers their friends' contact information so they could be in the study, too. Huckfeldt and Sprague found that when it comes to politics, birds of a feather flock together. Democrats tend to be friends with other Democrats and Republicans tend to be friends with other Republicans. In fact, about 2 out of every 3 friends had the same ideology as the respondent. We can even see this on a large scale in recent U.S. elections by looking at the increase in polarization between "Red States" that support the Republicans and "Blue States" that support the Democrats. In other words, people appear to be clustered together politically, acting and believing in concord with the people who surround them.</div>
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Nicholas Christakis and I wondered whether this insight could shed light on why people vote at all. We also wondered whether strong similarity in people's local networks could arise from a spread of political behaviors and ideas. Did people choose to associate with those who resembled them or did they induce a resemblance by influencing their peers? Robert Huckfeldt and John Sprague showed us the person-to-person effect, but now we wanted to know how and whether it might spread to other people in the network. Could one vote really spur thousands of others to the polls in a "voting cascade"?</div>
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In order to find out just how far we could push the idea that voting might spread from person to person to person, we decided to create a computer model to answer the question, "If I vote, how many other people are likely to vote as well?" The results were very surprising. In some cases one person's vote spread like wildfire, setting off a cascade of up to 100 other people voting. In our world of artificial voters we saw some people tell their friends to vote, who then told their friends to vote, and so on, and so on and so on. Moreover, since liberals and conservatives tend to associate more with like-minded individuals, these cascades would yield sizable increases in the number of people voting the way their friends wanted them to. About 60% of the time, one person's vote turned into two or more votes for their favorite candidate. One interesting implication here is that the more polarized we become by befriending only people with similar ideologies, the greater incentive we have to participate in politics. This certainly creates a dilemma for people who think polarization is bad and voter turnout is good!</div>
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We were also able to use this experiment to see what factors increase the size of a voter cascade. Not surprisingly, these cascades got bigger when we increased the number of friends each person has, the number of interactions they have with each other, and the probability that that one will influence the other. But we also discovered a complex relationship between the cascades and the degree to which people were socially clustered in tightly-knit groups. When we move from a low to high probability that one's acquaintances know one another, the number of paths between individuals in the group increases dramatically. This increases the number of ways a single decision to vote can be transmitted to other people in the population. However, as the group gradually gets even more clustered, people tend to cut ties to the outside world and focus only on members of their own group. This means there is a sweet spot in the amount of social interconnection that maximizes the likelihood that people will participate in politics. Thus, contrary to Robert Putnam's advice, sometimes more social interaction is not always better.</div>
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Interestingly, the number of people voting had virtually no effect on how far the cascades would spread in our computer model. Nicholas Christakis and I originally believed that the size of voter cascades would be bigger in larger populations because of the increased number of people who might be influenced by a cascade. However, instead we discovered that voter cascades are primarily local phenomena, occurring in a smaller part of the population closely connected to an individual. As it turns out, this is exactly what we have been finding in our other studies of the spread of obesity, smoking, and happiness. These phenomena can spread to our friends (1 degree of separation), our friends' friends (2 degrees), and our friends' friends' friends (3 degrees), but not much further. This "3 Degree Rule" suggests that the power of one individual to influence many is limited by the effect of competing waves of influence that emanate from everyone else in the network.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">Experimental Evidence of Voting Cascades</span></div>
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Our computer model provided some of the first indirect evidence that voter cascades are real, but direct evidence was not far behind. In 2006, Notre Dame political scientist David Nickerson traveled to neighborhoods in Denver, Colorado and Minneapolis, Minnesota to conduct a novel experimental study of voter turnout. In this study, experimenters walked door-to-door to contact people who lived in two-person households. Each of these households was randomly assigned to receive one of two treatments. In one treatment, the experimenter encouraged the person who answered the door to vote at an upcoming election. In the other treatment, the experimenter encouraged the practice of recycling. Nickerson noted who came to the door to speak to the experimenter, and then waited until after the election to look up who voted and who did not.</div>
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Voter contact studies are very common, and it is well-established that get-out-the-vote campaigns actually work. So it was not surprising that the people in Denver and Minneapolis who answered the door and heard the plea to vote were about 10% more likely to turn out than those who heard the plea to recycle. The big surprise, however, was the behavior of the people who did not answer the door. As it turns out, the other person in the household was about 6% more likely to vote. In other words, 60% of the effect on the person who answered the door was passed on to the person who did not answer the door.</div>
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Consider for a moment how these indirect effects might flow through a whole network. Nickerson's creative study showed that a single plea to vote can change political behavior and spread from the experimenter to the person who heard the get-out-the-vote message to a person who neither heard the message nor met the experimenter. But why would it stop there? The person who didn't answer the door might pass the effect on to his or her other friends and family, as well. The effect probably won't be as strong when it gets passed along—like the game of telephone when kids whisper a message from friend to friend to friend, the get-out-the-vote message might get lost along the way as it passes from person to person to person. But suppose that the reduction of the effect is the same between every pair of people, decreasing by 60% at every step. If the first person is 10% more likely to vote and the second person is 6% more likely to vote, then the third person would be 3.6% more likely to vote, the fourth person would be 2.16% more likely to vote, and so on. That may not seem like much change, but remember that while the size of the contagious effect decreases at each step, the number of people affected increases exponentially. Thus the decision to vote appears to be an inherently social phenomenon that scholars are only recently coming to terms with.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">Doing Your Civic Duty</span></div>
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So where do these results leave us on the question "Why do people vote?" The existence of voter cascades suggests that rational models of voting have underestimated the benefit of voting. Instead of each of us having only one vote, we effectively have several and we are therefore much more likely to have an influence on the outcome of the election.</div>
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The fact that one person can influence so many others may help to explain why some people have such strong feelings of civic duty. Establishing a norm of voting with one's acquaintances is one way to influence them to go to the polls. People who do not assert such a duty miss a chance to influence people who share similar views, and this tends to lead to worse outcomes for their favorite candidates. In large electorates, the net impact on the result might be too marginal to create a dynamic that would favor people who assert a duty to vote. However, as Alexis de Tocqueville noted almost 200 years ago, the civic duty to vote originated in much smaller political settings like town meetings where changing the participation behavior of a few people might make a big difference.</div>
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And this norm has taken such a strong hold, that many people are actually dishonest when they talk to pollsters. Typically, about 20-30% of the people who say they voted in an election actually did not. How do we know this? The ballot in America is secret, but whether or not you showed up to cast a ballot is a matter of public record, so we have very good third-party official information about who voted and who did not. The problem of over-reporting voter turnout is very well-known among political scientists and a common subject in college classrooms. One of our favorite moments in Poli Sci 101 occurs when we ask our students to raise their hands really high if they did not vote. Typically only about a quarter raise their hand, but realistically it should usually be more than half the class.</div>
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So why do people lie about this? One possibility is that they fear social sanctions. Another is that people believe that others are influenced by their political actions. Consider what happens if you tell everyone you are voting, but then you stay home instead. On average your actions will increase turnout even though you didn't vote yourself. Moreover, since most of the people who decide to vote are likely to share your beliefs, you can increase the vote margin for your favorite candidates without going to the polls. Hence, one explanation for why people vote is that they are connected and that it is rational for them to vote—as a result of this connection. In fact, one begins to wonder why anyone would ever say that they do not vote.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">The New Science of Genopolitics</span></div>
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Christopher Dawes and I have also tackled voting from a brand new point of view. Unbeknownst to most political scientists, behavior geneticists began using twin studies in the 1970s to study variation in social attitudes, and these studies suggested that <em>both </em>genes and environment played a role. However, behavior geneticists did not specifically pursue the question of whether or not political attitudes were heritable, and political scientists remained largely unaware of the heritability of social attitudes until 2005. In that year, the<em>American Political Science Review </em>published a reanalysis of political questions on a social attitude survey of twins that suggested liberal and conservative ideology is heritable. Follow-up studies showed that genes did not play much of a role in the choice of a political party, supporting a core finding in the study of American politics that the choice to be a Democrat or a Republican is largely shaped by parental socialization. In other words, one very important reason why people vote Republican is because their parents did. However, other studies have shown that the decision to affiliate with any political party and the strength of this attachment are significantly influenced by genes.</div>
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These initial twin studies suggested political <em>ideas</em> are heritable, but they said little about political<em> behavior</em>. That changed this year when we published a new study in the American Political Science Review that examined the heritability of voter participation. We matched publicly available voter registration records to Laura Baker's twin registry in Los Angeles, analyzed self-reported turnout in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), and studied other forms of political participation. In all three cases, both genes and environment contributed significantly to variation in political participation. This suggests that at least some of the difference between someone who votes and someone who does not has to do with the genetic lottery.</div>
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More recently, Chris Dawes and I turned our attention to specific genes that might be associated with political behaviors and attitudes. In particular, we focused on genes that affect the serotonin and dopamine systems because these systems are known to exert a strong influence on socialization. In the first-ever research to link specific genes to political phenotypes, we established a direct association between voter turnout and monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) and a gene-environment interaction between turnout and the serotonin transporter (5HTT) gene among those who frequently participated in religious activities. In other research we have also found an association between voter turnout and a dopamine receptor (DRD2) gene that is mediated by a significant association between that gene and the tendency to affiliate with a political party. Thus we are beginning to find specific genes that can help us to predict who will vote and who won't.</div>
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In our most recent work with Jaime Settle, Peter Hatemi, and Nicholas Christakis, we have brought together social networks and genopolitics. Political liberalism has been associated with the psychological trait of ‘openness' and the gene DRD4 has been associated with novelty-seeking behavior. One might think that these two associations would lead to a direct association between DRD4 and political liberalism, but this misses the important point that novelty-seekers sometimes exhibit anti-social tendencies. They might, for example, be quite interested in climbing a mountain alone. We thus hypothesized that individuals with a genetic predisposition towards seeking out new experiences would tend to be more liberal, but only if they are embedded in a social context that provides them with multiple points of view. Using data from Add Health, we tested this hypothesis and found that the number of friendships a person has in adolescence is significantly associated with liberal political ideology among those with novelty-seeking variant of DRD4. Among those without the gene variant there is no association. This is the first study ever to elaborate a specific gene-environment interaction that contributes to ideological self-identification, and it highlights the importance of incorporating both nature and nurture into the study of politics.</div>
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Whether or not this association or any of the others we find will have an impact on the decision to vote for a Republican is an open question. But one thing is clear. We can no longer hide our head in the sands when people whisper that genes and biology might play a role. And we can no longer ignore the important influence of social network structure on how attitudes and behaviors might spread from person to person to person. In the next few years we will see an increasing number of studies that report neurological and physiological differences between members of these two political groups and how they affect the transmission of political information and ideas.</div>
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There is obviously still plenty of room to make and manipulate individual choices—genes and networks are not destiny. However, these studies suggest that the divide between voters and abstainers and between left and right is a long-lasting and natural part of our heritage as humans, and therefore political choices are not always amenable to rational analysis or moral suasion. We are not blank slates, and any effort to understand the moral basis for a political action like voting for a Republican must acknowledge that our evolutionary history has endowed us with genetic and social variation that constrains (but does not extinguish) our capacity for self-control. We do not have vicious debates about why autumn winds cause some leaves to turn red and others blue. So why get so worked up about a similar November occurrence, cleaving our states into red and blue?</div>
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<a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/scott_atran" style="color: #822209; font-size: 1em !important; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">Scott Atran</span></a></div>
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<em>Anthropologist, Directeur de recherche, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut Jean Nicod, Paris, Co-Founder, Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict, University of Oxford. Author of Talking to the Enemy</em></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">How Religion Creates Moral Society</span></div>
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"He who is not with Me is against Me;<br />and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad."</div>
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—Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew, xii, 30</div>
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"And the Lord said unto the servant,<br />Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in."</div>
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—Luke, xiv, 23:</div>
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Jonathan Haidt argues on the basis of some experimental evidence and anthropological observation that Republicans more than Democrats tap into universal moral passions to foster in-group solidarity over concerns for outgroups. Daniel Everett responds that some of these supposed universal passions, such as respect for authority and hierarchy, may not be universal because small-scale societies (especially foraging societies) tend to be egalitarian and non-hierarchical. Howard Gardner argues that rightwing authoritarian propaganda that champions collective over individual interests is hypocritical, and its leaders Machiavellian, because happiness is actually lower in rightwing societies and groups, including Protestant evangelicals and traditional (Reagan Catholics). Michael Shermer presents evidence that conservatives in U.S. society do report being happier than liberals, and do really believe in helping others, but through voluntary means of private charity rather than government enforced redistributions of wealth.</div>
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Haidt's and Shermer's arguments, I believe, are basically sound. Everett has a point, which requires some tweaking of Haidt's thesis: the moral issue of black versus white, us versus them, arises with large-scale cooperation and competition and is not a critical feature of small-scale societies. Gardner's arguments about hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance miss the key point that true believers in (divinely sanctioned) moral values are usually sincere, and that Enlightenment values cannot be successfully advanced (if Haidt is right) unless the moral passions that Haidt talks about are sincerely engaged by Democrats. Only some professional philosophers, jurists, scientists and academics believe that the principal point of political argument (or most any argument) is, or ought to be, truth rather than persuasion, and that an argument's principal appeal should be reason rather than passion. To paraphrase Karl Rove: reason may be fine for studying and analyzing history and politics, but not for living or making them.</div>
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Recent economic studies (most notably <em>Unequal Democracy</em> by Larry Bartels, a professor of political science at Princeton) show that when Democrats were in the White House, lower-income American families experienced slightly faster income growth than higher-income families, and that the reverse was true when Republicans were in control. If people vote rationally their economic interests, one would expect Democrats to be perennial favorites among working poor and middle class, and especially so in this year of economic downturn. Why then does polling show that the election is so close?</div>
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Conservative whites who vote Republican generally cite patriotism and national security as the most important issues in deciding who should be President. Over the last few generations, it is only when these voters perceive economy to be in dire straits, or when a previous Democratic administration has been successful in palpably increasing their prosperity, do patriotism and national security take on slightly less value than usual. Patriotism and national security are about binding and preserving what has become the primary reference group for political identity in the modern world, the nation.</div>
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In <em>The Descent of Man</em>, Charles Darwin wrote that:</div>
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<em>"The rudest savages feel the sentiment of glory… A man who was not impelled by any deep, instinctive feeling, to sacrifice his life for the good of others, yet was roused to such action by a sense of glory, would by his example excite the same wish for glory in other men, and would strengthen by his exercise the noble feeling of admiration."</em></div>
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The official website for John McCain's candidacy uses a quote from his book <em>Faith of My Fathers</em> as his banner:</div>
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<em>"Glory is not a conceit. It is not a prize for being the most clever, the strongest, or the boldest. Glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you rely, and who rely on you in return. No misfortune, no injury, no humiliation can destroy it."</em></div>
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When Jonathan Haidt says that morality is (pretty universally) not just about treating others fairly, but also "about living in a sanctified and noble way," he's right and that's why John McCain's appeal is powerful.</div>
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Among many Republican conservatives, there's one factor that is very strongly correlated with patriotism and national security, is of even more overriding concern in daily life, and stands inseparable from love of country. Religion. A Gallup poll found, for example, that nearly two thirds (65%) of highly religious American white voters would vote Republican, no matter what their interests in other issues are. When Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin says that the Iraq war is "a task that is from God," other conservatives may think she is wrong but they honor her sentiment as fundamentally noble and good.</div>
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If one looks at recent expression of religious devotion in the USA, as indicated by belief in the Bible and by church attendance, the classic division between the Blue states of the East and West versus the Red States of the South and Middle America is apparent: in the East and West,1 in 4 people believe that the Bible is fable; in the south and Midwest only 1 in 7 believe that.</div>
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Also apparent is the difference in education that goes with belief in the Bible (and religious devotion in the United States), where "education" may also be taken as a strong indicator of susceptibility to economic and other "issue-oriented" arguments.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">What's Universal about Morality and What's not?</span></div>
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Primatologist Frans de Waal finds that even capuchin moneys have a sense of fairness: if an experimenter offers cucumbers to a pair of capuchin moneys, both eagerly grab the cucumbers; but if one of the monkeys is offered grapes, the other will throw the cucumber in the experimenter's face. This is a primitive version of the "Ultimatum Game" that all human cultures seem to subscribe to. Anthropologist Joe Henrich and his colleagues went to 17 small-scale societies with offers to split the equivalent of days wage between two anonymous players who had done no work for the money. The researchers found that there is always some lower bound that one of the players finds unacceptable, although this varies across cultures (the average cutoff may be close to 50-50 in one society but only 80-20 in another).</div>
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Studies by social psychologists Richard Nisbett and colleagues suggest that human cultures fall into two broad categories, individualist (mainly the U.S. and Western Europe) and collectivist (the rest of the world). Richard Shweder argues that for so-called collectivist societies there is also a strong "ethics of community" (authority/respect, duty/loyalty); often there is an "ethics of divinity" (purity/sanctity) as well. Here, too, there is evidence of universal cognitions.</div>
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Like other biological systems, moral intuition consists of an imperfect community of jerry-rigged faculties. Societies further combine these universal ingredients in creatively different ways. But in an internet experiment involving thousands of subjects, Haidt shows that even our own society all of these universal elements are not only present but their differential presence helps greatly to explain our current culture wars. Liberals tend to insist on individual rights and are uncomfortable with pronouncements and institutions built on the foundations of "the ethics of community" and the "ethics of divinity" because they often lead to patriotic jingoism (overblown loyalty), inequality (subordination of the weak or disadvantaged) and exclusion (racism, proscriptive nationalism and other forms of purification). Conservatives, however, want a richer, more interdependent social life, which require a regulation of relationships that goes beyond harm and fairness to individuals. This includes limits to sexual relations, management of obligations and authority, and the control of group boundaries and borders. Liberals see Conservatives as "repressive." Conservatives see liberals are "irresponsible."</div>
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The combination of moral intuitions into a moral culture is not a natural or logical determination, but an underdetermined product of historical contingency and willful choice. Belief in moral "rightness" or "truth" is matter of faith.</div>
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There is blind, closed, reactionary and dogmatic faith, like the Holy Inquisition's faith in the existence of witches and the power of torture to reveal the truth about The Devil. And there is open faith with reason and insight and the belief that cruel punishment demeans everybody's life. Such faith motivated a small band of American colonists to oppose the mightiest empire in the world. It was faith in the good sense and good will of men of reason—a faith supported by "firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence," which gave them the courage "to pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor."</div>
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The American revolutionaries mixed the evolutionary elements of morality in a different way. The "self-evident" aspects of "human nature" that The Creator supposedly endowed us with—including "inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"—are anything but inherently self-evident and natural in the life of our species: cannibalism, infanticide, slavery, racism and the subordination of women are vastly more prevalent over the course of history than "human rights." It was not inevitable or even reasonable that conceptions of freedom and equality should emerge, much less prevail. Nevertheless, the new ideal of individual liberty required upgrading the element of individuality, that is, our innate awareness of individuals as self-motivated agents who can act on their own to achieve goals. The focus of empathy shifted from people as parts of a group to individuals as such.</div>
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The Americans also downgraded elements of authority, loyalty and purity current in European politics. The French revolutionaries who followed lowered the emphasis on the individual and raised the importance of the group. That is why whole classes of counterrevolutionaries, rather than just individuals, could be brought to justice and collectively punished regardless of any individual actions or crimes they may have committed. Most modern revolutions and regimes follow more the French example than the American.</div>
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Alexis de Tocqueville stresses in <em>Democracy in America</em>, his masterful analysis of our young Republic, that religious conservatism in the United States does not mean sacrifice of individual interest for group interest, or subservience of the individual to the State or any other ruling collectivity. Rather, religion mitigates the selfishness of unbridled individualism and "private animosities," while shoring up free institutions that engage "aspiring hopes" as against "general despotism [which] gives rise to indifference."</div>
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<em>"It must be acknowledged that equality, which brings great benefits to the world, nevertheless… tends to isolate them from each other, to concentrate every man's attention on himself; and it lay open the soul to an inordinate love of material gratification…. Religious nations are thus naturally strong on the very point on which democratic nations are weak, which shows of what importance it is for men to preserve their religion as their conditions become more equal….. Thus it is, that, by respecting all democratic tendencies not absolutely contrary to herself, and by making use of several of them for her own purposes, Religion sustains a successful struggle of that spirit of individual independence which is her most dangerous opponent…. As soon as several of the inhabitants of the United States have taken up an opinion or feeling which they wish to promote, they look out for mutual assistance; and as soon as they have found out each other they combine. From that moment they are not longer isolated men, but a power seen from afar, whose actions serve as an example, and whose language is listened to."</em></div>
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De Tocqueville surmised, correctly it seems, that religion in America would give its democracy greater endurance, cooperative power and competitive force than any strictly authoritarian regime or unbridled democracy.</div>
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Humans often use religion to cooperate to compete. (For example, it was only in the 1950s during height of the Cold War, that the Pledge of Allegiance was altered to include God). As Darwin noted, in competition between groups with similar levels of technology and population size, those groups will tend to win out that favor and transmit willingness to sacrifice some self interest for group interests (that also promote individual interests in the long run). Most cultures celebrate costly collective commitments as morally good and glorious. Many such celebrations are time-worn collective rituals with proven success in fostering cooperation within the group and making it more competitive with other groups. That basic dynamic is still with us and is unlikely to go away. Republicans intuitively get it; Democrats often don't. But Democrats do get more the meaning and message of the Enlightenment, which may allow in a wider world if only they can learn better from Republicans how to gather up the country first. </div>
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<a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/michael_shermer" style="color: #822209; font-size: 1em !important; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">Michael Shermer</span></a></div>
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<em>Presidential Fellow, Chapman University; Publisher, Skeptic magazine; Monthly Columnist, Scientific American; Author, The Moral Arc</em></div>
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Two cheers for Jonathan Haidt's essay. At long last a liberal academic social scientist has recognized (and had the courage to put into print) the inherent bias built into the study of political behavior—that because Democrats are so indisputably right and Republicans so unquestionably wrong, conservatism must be a mental disease, a flaw in the brain, a personality disorder that leads to cognitive malfunctioning. Thus, Haidt is mostly right when he asks us to move beyond such "diagnoses" and remember "the second rule of moral psychology is that morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. When Republicans say that Democrats 'just don't get it,' this is the 'it' to which they refer."</div>
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I allocate two (instead of three) cheers for Haidt's commentary because I think he does not go far enough. The liberal bias in academia is so entrenched that it becomes the political water through which the liberal fish swim—they don't even notice it. Even the question "What makes people vote Republican?" hints at something amiss in the mind of the conservative, along the lines of "Why do people believe weird things?" As Haidt notes, the standard liberal line is that people vote Republican because they are "cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death." A typical example of this characterization can be found in a famous 2003 paper published in the prestigious journal Psychological Bulletin by the New York University social psychologist John Jost and his colleagues, entitled "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," in which they argue that conservatives suffer from "uncertainty avoidance," "need for order, structure, closure," and "dogmatism, intolerance of ambiguity," all of which leads to "resistance to change" and "endorsement of inequality."</div>
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It is not the data of these scientists that I am challenging so much as it is the characterizations on which the data were collected. We could just as easily characterize Democrats and liberals as suffering from a host of equally malevolent mental states: a lack of moral compass that leads to an inability to make clear ethical choices, an inordinate lack of certainty about social issues, a pathological fear of clarity that leads to indecisiveness, a naïve belief that all people are equally talented, and a blind adherence in the teeth of contradictory evidence that culture and environment determine one's lot in society and therefore it is up to the government to remedy all social injustices. As all conservatives know, liberals are a bunch of sandle-wearing, tree-hugging, whale-saving, hybrid-driving, trash-recycling, peaceniks, flip-floppers and bed-wetters.</div>
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This is a crass, unfair, and inaccurate characterization, of course, and that's my point. Once you set up the adjectives in the form of operationally defined personality traits and cognitive styles, it's easy to collect the data to support them. The flaw is in the characterization process itself. Two recent examples can be found in the 2008 book <em>The Political Mind </em>by Berkeley cognitive scientist George Lakoff and the 2007 book <em>The Political Brain</em> by Emory University psychologist Drew Westen. The tropes are familiar: liberals are generous to a fault ("bleeding hearts"), rational, intelligent, optimistic, and appeal to voters' reason through cogent arguments; conservatives are stingy ("heartless"), dour, and dim-witted authoritarians who appeal to voters' emotions through threat and fear-mongering. But conservatives win most elections because of their Machiavellian manipulation of voters' emotional brains.</div>
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None of this is true. Although Republicans defeated Democrats 25 to 20 in the 45 Presidential elections from 1828 to 2004, in the Senate Democrats outscored Republicans 3395 to 3323 in contesting 6832 seats from 1855 to 2006, and in the House Democrats trounced Republicans 15,363 to 12,994 in the 27,906 seats contested from 1855-2006.</div>
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Further, according to the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Surveys, 1972-2004, 44 percent of people who reported being "conservative" or "very conservative" said they were "very happy" versus only 25 percent of people who reported being "liberal" or "very liberal." A 2007 Gallup poll found that 58 percent of Republicans versus only 38 percent of Democrats said that their mental heath is "excellent." One reason may be that conservatives are so much more generous than liberals, giving 30 percent more money (even when controlled for income), donating more blood, and logging more volunteer hours. And it isn't because conservatives have more expendable income. The working poor give a substantially higher percentage of their incomes to charity than any other income group, and three times more than those on public assistance of comparable income—poverty is not a barrier to charity, but welfare is. One explanation for these findings is that conservatives believe charity should be private (through religion) whereas liberals believe charity should be public (through government).</div>
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Why are academic social scientists so wrong about conservatives? It is, I believe, because almost all of them are liberals! A 2005 study by the George Mason University economist Daniel Klein, using voter registrations, found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans among the faculty by a staggering ratio of 10 to 1 at the University of California, Berkeley and by 7.6 to 1 at Stanford University. In the humanities and social sciences the ratio was 16 to 1 at both campuses (30 to 1 among assistant and associate professors). In some departments, such as anthropology and journalism, there wasn't a single Republican to be found. The ratio for all departments in all colleges and universities throughout the U.S., says Klein, is 8 to 1 Democrats over Republicans. Smith College political scientist Stanley Rothman and his colleagues found a similar bias in a 2005 national study: only 15 percent professors describe themselves as conservative, compared to 72 percent who said they were liberal (80 percent in humanities and social sciences).</div>
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Why do people vote Republican? Because they believe their lives—and the lives of all Americans—will be better for it. And as often as not they are right. </div>
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<a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/howard_gardner" style="color: #822209; font-size: 1em !important; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">Howard Gardner</span></a></div>
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<em>Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Author,Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed</em></div>
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Jonathan Haidt' s analysis seems on the mark as far as it goes but, in my view, it misses half of the puzzle of why much of the American electorate votes as it does. To be sure, the appeal of right wing ideas is clearly due in part to a Durkheimian privileging of the group over the individual; Rick Shweder is to be commended for introducing this perspective into contemporary, overly Enlightenment-oriented analyses of moral judgment.</div>
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But at least with reference to contemporary American society, I would posit an equally important part of the puzzle: a combination due to Oscar Wilde and Leon Festinger. Wilde famously quipped that "Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue." And Festinger, an important social psychologist during the middle of the 20th century, demonstrated that individuals continue to hold on to views, despite (or even because) the empirical evidence against them mounts.</div>
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Consider these facts. The right wing says it cares about groups, rather than individuals; and yet it favors the most rampant form of 'dog-eat-dog' capitalism. The left wing is suspicious of markets and wants to even the playing field across citizens. The right wing claims that its positions will reduce crime and strengthen the families. Yet it is the most left wing states that have the lowest crime rate and the strongest, most stable marriages. Happiness ratings are highest in the socialist societies, while lowest in right wing authoritarian societies. This list could be extended.</div>
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Why, then, do right wing partisans ignore this evidence and continue to support policies that are patently dysfunctional? I believe it is because, having stated a position, based on either their own family values or those dictated by their religion, they are loathe to change their minds and declare that they have been wrong. And so, following Festinger, the disconfirming evidence causes them (or at least many of them) to dig in their heels more deeply.</div>
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Another element operates as well. Right wing positions are more frequently associated with Protestant evangelicals and with traditional (Reagan) Catholics. Often the leaders of these groups (e.g. television evangelists, sinning priests) epitomize the opposite of the stated values. But both of these groups embrace forgiveness, absolution, being born again. Other groups—atheists, non-fundamentalist Jews and non-fundamentalist Protestants—do not have the option of absolution; they make firmer demands on themselves and are oppressed by their superegos. Note the 'pass' that non-combatants Bush and Cheney received, in comparison to Gore and Kerry who volunteered to serve during the Vietnam War. Note the forgiving attitude toward to Sarah Palin, with her sinning family, which would never be afforded a comparable Democrat. "What we profess is important—not what we have done".</div>
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Given that the analyses of Durkheim and Festinger are powerful, and unlikely to disappear, my analysis does not give much solace to those of us who would prefer to see more individuals with progressive Enlightenment views secure office. Still, a greater effort to nail hypocrisy—a so-called hypocrisy watch—might improve the quality of the campaign, if not of the candidates.</div>
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<a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/daniel_l_everett" style="color: #822209; font-size: 1em !important; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">Daniel L. Everett</span></a></div>
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<em>Linguistic Researcher; Dean of Arts and Sciences, Bentley University; Author, Language: The Cultural Tool</em></div>
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I once heard John Wayne say in an interview, "They tell me that things aren't always black and white. I say, 'Why the hell not?'" This is a common sense view of morality and I think that it is fairly widespread. Having spent (in another life it seems) more than twenty-five years as an ordained minister and missionary, I know first-hand that one of the most important messages of many organized religions is that morality is absolute and that there is always a black and white to an issue if you think about it hard enough—grayness is for fuzzy-brained liberals. Or so I was told.</div>
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At the other end of the spectrum, Noam Chomsky has often said that the choice between Democrat vs. Republican is about the same as the choice between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, not much to get hot and bothered about.</div>
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I think that Wayne's view is much closer to being right than Chomsky's. Chomsky's perspective seems to be based on a view of politicians rather than of their parties' political platforms—what we know that political figures are likely to do (very little in all too many cases) vs. what their party spells out as its values. Wayne's question, "Why the hell not" is an anti-cynical, pragmatic question that is intended to challenge us to think harder and act more nobly.</div>
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So I think that Haidt's view that people share a strong desire for unity and belonging guided by moral rectitude and dealing with violators of the social bonds is surely correct. But he oversimplifies by failing to consider simpler societies, such as Amazonian peoples, in which there are no social hierarchies, no civic leadership, and only ostracism as the enforcement of constraints to promote well-being and societal harmony. His research, if he is to use lofty adjectives (largely meaningless in my experience) such as 'innate' to describe social structures and desires, must encompass a wider range of societies.</div>
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Democrats used to be the ones with the monopoly on belonging. In my family, most with backgrounds like those described in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, FDR was a member of the divine quaternity—Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit, and FDR. His picture was everywhere in my families' homes. Why?</div>
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Because he constructed social ties, based on belonging to the group of the oppressed and depressed, and he offered solutions that respected the concepts of fairness and unity simultaneously. He no doubt was elected four times at least in part because he was perceived by people like my grandmother as satisfying both the Millian and Durkheimian views at the same time—something that we have arguably seen in no other politician or political party since.</div>
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Ultimately, reflection like Haidt's is useful and there certainly is a lot worthwhile in it. But, once again, I am skeptical that much, if any, of this is innate. And I doubt that we will ever know whether it is or not without a greater empirical coverage, taking into its scope diverse tribal societies.</div>
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NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-8014636371810580012016-02-29T04:38:00.000-08:002016-02-29T04:38:14.342-08:00It’s their party and they’ll do what they want to, Part Now<br />
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<a href="http://lagniappemobile.com/party-theyll-want/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">It’s their party and they’ll do what they want to</a></h1>
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<span class="by-author"><span class="by">By:</span> <span class="author vcard" style="font-weight: bold; text-transform: uppercase;"><a class="url fn n" href="mailto:jefferypoor@gmail.com" rel="author" style="color: #666666; text-decoration: none;" title="More from Jeff Poor">JEFF POOR</a></span></span><span class="sep"> | </span><time class="entry-date updated dtstamp pubdate" datetime="2016-02-24T15:02:17+00:00">February 24, 2016</time></h5>
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Whether they win the nomination or not, the campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have stunned the political world by bucking the Republican and Democratic party establishments and scoring electoral success as outsiders.</div>
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Should they continue their successes and both score wins in each of their parties’ caucuses and primaries, it is entirely possible for the Republican and Democratic parties to deny them the nominations.</div>
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It is something that is not without precedent.</div>
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In 1986, then-Alabama Lt. Gov. Bill Baxley ran against then-Alabama Attorney General Charlie Graddick for the Democratic Party’s nod for governor.</div>
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At that time in statewide elections Alabama was still a one-party Democratic state, but there was a clear conservative-liberal ideological division within the party, which was on display in the 1986 election.</div>
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The left plank of the Democratic Party at the time supported Baxley and the right supported Graddick.</div>
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The voter turnout that year proved Alabama was even more of a one-party state than it is now. In the 1986 election cycle, the Democratic Party primary had a turnout of more than 800,000 voters while the Republican Party primary drew 40,000.</div>
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Unknown Cullman County Probate Judge Guy Hunt cruised to the GOP nomination while Graddick and Baxley fought it out.</div>
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Graddick won the Democratic primary, but the party ultimately granted Baxley the nomination because the Democratic establishment at the time saw Graddick as unworthy of the party’s nod. Their argument was that Graddick won as a result of Republican crossover voters in the Democratic Party. Graddick even took the battle to federal court, but lost.</div>
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While Graddick lost the fight, its aftermath was arguably worse for Alabama Democrats.</div>
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Later that year, Alabama elected Guy Hunt in the general election, the state’s first Republican governor in a century. Many blamed the outcome of that election on the shenanigans the Democratic Party played in the nomination.</div>
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Fast-forward 30 years.</div>
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As of last week’s Nevada caucus, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has received 151,584 votes when combining the Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada outcomes, while Hillary Clinton has received 95,252 of those votes. However, the delegate count as of now is firmly on Clinton’s side by a margin of 502-70. The bulk of Clinton’s lead is composed of super delegates, which are unelected delegates free to support either candidate, by a margin of 451 for Clinton to 19 for Sanders.</div>
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On the GOP side of the presidential election it’s also possible the party could tip the scales against Trump.</div>
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The idea of an outsider like Trump winning the Republican nod is repulsive to a lot of the party’s long-time establishment. They loathe the thought of a “short-fingered vulgarian” from Queens carrying their party’s banner.</div>
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That conflict sets itself up for an ugly fight heading to the GOP’s convention in Cleveland, Ohio, later this year, even if Trump continues his winning streak throughout the primary process.</div>
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So, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for both parties to nominate a candidate who did not win the popular vote nationally in primaries. And if it happens, there’s probably not much anyone can do about it.</div>
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While the parties would be acting at their own peril, there’s a legitimate argument to be made against Trump and Sanders.</div>
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Although Bernie Sanders caucuses with the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, he has always run as an independent candidate, going back to his days as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, including running in some elections against a Democratic candidate.</div>
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There’s an argument to be made that Sanders was never willing to be a Democrat until this presidential election, so why give him the party’s most important nomination?</div>
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The same goes for Trump.</div>
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One of the big knocks on Trump is he has supported Democrats for many years. Up until 2011, Trump had contributed evenly between Democrats and Republicans. But from 2012 forward, he has given overwhelmingly to Republican candidates.</div>
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But the fact that he donated to both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and to the senatorial campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid is a disqualifier in the minds of much of country’s Republican hierarchy.</div>
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If either scenario happens, where the Republicans or Democrats buck their respective party’s popular vote, there probably isn’t much anyone can do about it.</div>
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It’s sure to be litigated in the courts, but the Republican and Democratic parties are not necessarily beholden to the voters in picking their presidential nominee. There is not a constitutional right for a candidate to receive a political party’s nod.</div>
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It isn’t out of the realm of possibility for the parties to say, “Screw the vote, we’re going to do what we want. We don’t want a repeat of George McGovern or Barry Goldwater, so we’re going to do what we think is in our best interests. Trump and Sanders have never done anything for our parties’ apparatuses, so why should we reward them with our party’s nomination?”</div>
<div style="font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;">
If it happens, it does have the potential to backfire on the two parties. It sets up a situation where one of the candidates would benefit from the backlash of the opposing party.</div>
<div style="font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;">
But what if both parties opt to go against the will of the voters and both select candidates that did not win the popular votes of the parties? It’s entirely possible if one does it, the other will see it as cover to do the same and voters in both primaries will be disenfranchised.</div>
<div style="font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;">
If that happens, be prepared for a voter revolt and the rise of multiple political parties beyond just the Democratic and Republican parties we have today.</div>
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NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176294088959359266.post-73094881713118055382016-02-15T16:03:00.000-08:002016-02-15T16:03:16.415-08:00 Antonin Scalia: Forefather of Modern Republican Nihilism<div id="above_banner">
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<a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/antonin-scalia-forefather-modern-republican-nihilism" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Antonin Scalia: Forefather of Modern Republican Nihilism </a></h1>
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<b>Antonin Scalia wasn't just a giant of conservative jurisprudence. He was an architect of right-wing legal extremism.</b></div>
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<em>By</em> <em><a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/heather-digby-parton">Heather Digby Parton</a></em>
/ <span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.salon.com/">Salon</a></span></span></span></div>
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<em><span class="field field-name-field-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" content="2016-02-15T07:44:00-08:00">February 15, 2016</span></span></span></span>
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<br />
Supreme Court Justice
Antonin Scalia, pictured last year, denied Wednesday falling out with
the top US court's chief justice over his shock decision to back
President Barack Obama's health reform law<br />
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It’s ironic, to say the least, that the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia, a man known for the legal doctrine of “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism" target="_blank">originalism</a>,”
would immediately lead the majority leader of the Senate to declare
that no nominee to replace him would be confirmed until a new president
is inaugurated in a year’s time. The founders would very likely scratch
their heads in wonder at Mitch McConnell’s odd statement that “the
American people should have a voice in the selection of their next
Supreme Court Justice, therefore this vacancy should not be filled until
we have a new president.” They would likely point out that the American
people did have a voice in that decision in 2012, when they voted for
Barack Obama for a four year term. There’s nothing in the Constitution
that says after three years the president is no longer authorized to
nominate Supreme Court Justices.<br />
<br />
Be that as it may, the
reality is the Republican Senate is not going to confirm anyone
President Obama sends up, and I don’t think anyone would imagine
otherwise. What’s startling about McConnell’s statement is the fact that
he said it so openly. It’s another example of the reckless disregard of
political norms, traditions and the rule of law by the modern GOP. In
the old days, they would have at least paid lip service to the idea that
a president is obligated to nominate Supreme Court justices and the
Senate is obligated to fulfill its advise-and-consent role. Sure, they
would delay the nomination, but to just announce upfront that they have
no intention of following the usual procedure is a new thing. They don’t
even pretend to care about preserving the integrity of the institution.<br />
<br />
Last
night in the GOP debate, all the candidates backed up McConnell. It
would seem they too believe that even the pretense of normal
constitutional processes is no longer necessary. This will be good to
keep in mind as they bray incessantly about President Obama’s use of
executive orders as if they were acts of treason. (By the way, his use
of Executive Orders is right in line with all modern presidents, <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php" target="_blank">including Republicans</a>.)<br />
<br />
But
then, if there’s one Supreme Court justice who exemplifies this
propensity of modern American conservatives to bend the system for
partisan ends when needed, it was Justice Antonin Scalia. His legacy as a
hardcore legal conservative is second to none, but it will always be
over-shadowed by one decision: Bush v. Gore. The Republicans had already
begun the process of destroying the integrity of Congress with its
partisan witch hunts and the impeachment circus of the 1990s; but if
there’s one Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for the total
abandonment of any pretense of dignified non-partisan adherence to
traditions for the sake of preserving the integrity of our institutions
in the eyes of the public, it is that one.<br />
<br />
Indeed, Justice Scalia
may have written the single most fatuous line in Supreme Court history
with his brief concurrence in that case:<br />
<blockquote>
“The counting
of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten
irreparable harm [George W. Bush] and to the country, by casting a cloud
upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election.”</blockquote>
Scalia was
a very smart man, and he had to know that this would be one of the main
decisions for which he was remembered. His willingness to risk his
reputation by writing that ridiculous rationale for a nakedly partisan
outcome served as an example to conservatives everywhere: Win by any
means necessary.<br />
He did not like being reminded of it. When
college audiences would ask him about the decision he would usually
bellow, “Get over it,” which was the standard line the media employed in
the wake of the decision in 2000. But in recent years he led the way
with another modern Republican tactic, simply denying reality. In 2008 <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/09/441313/scalia-rewrites-history-claims-5-4-bush-v-gore-decision-wasnt-even-close/" target="_blank">he appeared on “60 Minutes”:</a><br />
<blockquote>
“People say that that decision was not based on judicial philosophy but on politics,” Stahl asks.<br />
“I say nonsense,” Scalia says.<br />
Was it political?<br />
“Gee,
I really don’t wanna get into – I mean this is – get over it. It’s so
old by now. The principal issue in the case, whether the scheme that the
Florida Supreme Court had put together violated the federal
Constitution, that wasn’t even close. The vote was seven to two.”</blockquote>
In 2012, <a href="http://www.middletownpress.com/general-news/20120308/supreme-court-justice-antonin-scalia-speaks-at-wesleyan-with-video-2?viewmode=fullstory" target="_blank">he said the same thing at Wesleyan University</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
At
the end of the speech, Scalia took questions from the audience. One
person asked about the Bush-Gore case, where the Supreme Court had to
determine the winner of the election. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
“Get over it,” Scalia said of the controversy surrounding it, to laughter from the audience.“ </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Scalia
reminded the audience it was Gore who took the election to court, and
the election was going to be decided in a court anyway—either the
Florida Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court.<br />
It was a long time ago, people forget…It was a 7-2 decision. It wasn’t even close,” he said.</blockquote>
The problem is that he was not telling the truth. <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/09/441313/scalia-rewrites-history-claims-5-4-bush-v-gore-decision-wasnt-even-close/" target="_blank">As Ian Millhiser at Think Progress explained:</a><br />
<blockquote>
Bush v. Gore was not a 7-2 decision — and indeed, Scalia could tell this is true by counting <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZD.html" target="_blank">all four of the dissenting</a> opinions
in that case. Although it is true that the four dissenters divided on
how the Florida recount should proceed — two believed there should be a
statewide recount of all Florida voters while two others believed a
narrower recount would be acceptable — not one of the Court’s four
moderates agreed with Scalia that the winner of the 2000 presidential
election should effectively be chosen by five most conservative members
of the Supreme Court of the United States.</blockquote>
Justice
Scalia had a long illustrious judicial career. He was a giant among the
modern conservative legal theorists on the right. But he was also one
of the fathers of the modern conservative movement’s “you can believe me
or you can believe your lying eyes” school of politics. If the 2016
Republican presidential primary is any example, his political legacy is
secure.<br />
<br />
<div class="bio-new body_news-politics">
<div class="author-bio">
Heather Digby Parton, also known as "<a href="http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/">Digby</a>," is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.<br />
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NOTES FROM THE WILDSIDEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499454400310101800noreply@blogger.com0