Reagan, Trump (and Other Republicans and Conservatives), and COVID-19

Ronald Reagan, as a candidate for president in 1980, kept telling us that government--at least big government--is a bad thing. Government is sprawling, bureaucratic, inefficient, corrupt. And anything that government does can be done better and cheaper by private industry.

And, as president, Reagan put this policy into practice, and cut, defunded, or eliminated many government agencies and programs. (For example, the day of his inauguration he stopped all Department of Energy funding for alternative-energy research, thereby setting back our work on sustainable energy sources by 30 years or more.  This ultimately cost me my job so--disclosure!--okay, maybe here I have an axe to grind.)

Reagan's continued railing against government convinced a lot of people--someone said, "Reagan won that battle"--and has perhaps become the prevailing philosophy in America. Certainly we see it in Trump, who also has been cutting and defunding a lot of government offices and programs. Just as an example, he cut funding to the Centers for Disease Control.

I want to quote a little publication called Catalyst, published by the Union of Concerned Scientists:

In 2014, the Obama administration established an office within the National Security Council to coordinate the federal government's future response to pandemics and provide accountable and organized leadership.

In 2017, the Trump administration abolished this office--and perhaps as a direct result, its response to the coronavirus pandemic was initially haphazard, inept, and lacking in overall accountability. We didn't have a clear sense of who is coordinating federal agencies to address public health and safety. We do have bungled efforts, like the failure to arrange for an adequate supply of testing kits. . . .

Conventional wisdom holds that private markets are the best way to satisfy society's needs, and the role of government should be primarily focused on ensuring that markets work properly. COVID-19 puts the lie to this proposition. When a crisis hits, there is no substitute for effective action directed and mandated by government.  Market signals alone will not ensure that the right people get tested, that emergency hospitals are set up, that ventilator manufacturing is ramped up, and so on.

 Catalyst, Volume 20, Spring 2020, pp. 2, 20

As of a few days ago, the death toll from this virus had surpassed 100,000. I believe that Trump and the philosophy I have cited here are at least partly to blame for these deaths. However much Reagan and other conservatives influenced public thinking and subsequent politics, I strongly believe that, as this article suggests, it's time to say that here we have a real-life situation that shows that this philosophy is flawed.

The Nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court

There was a post here about then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh; but I've deleted it because there's been so much water over the dam since I wrote that. (So this displays with an incorrect date and was actually posted on 10/11/2018.)

There was a complex and emotional story leading up to Kavanaugh's eventual (last Saturday) confirmation to the Supreme Court by the US Senate Judiciary Committee and then the whole Senate--as required by the US Constitution.

Since the story was well reported, even in international news, I will recap it briefly: Kavanaugh was accused of sexually attacking a woman, going back more than 30  years. Both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, testified in a special Senate hearing. Kavanaugh got very emotional, particularly in relating how the accusations have taken a toll on him and his family--and this probably earned him a good deal of sympathy.

However, he segued into a rant in which he claimed that the whole business was a plot by Democrats to exact revenge for Trump's defeat of Hilary Clinton in the presidential election of 2016. (Had he been coached in this by Trump? Because it sure sounds like one of Trump's paranoid hoax/conspiracy claims.)

Anyway, an FBI investigation was ordered. However, the problem with that is that Trump ordered the investigation and thereby was able to set the parameters and limits of the investigation, and limited it such that the FBI was allowed only a week for the investigation and interviewed only nine people. Probably it was a foregone conclusion that the bottom line to the FBI report contained nothing earth-shaking and was in fact entirely trivial.

(In the Senate vote, Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine widely regarded as a moderate who frequently did not follow Republican or Trump ideology; and Democratic Sen. Manchin from Tennessee, both voted to confirm. This was a surprise (a disappointment, if you were on one side of the issue). So the vote was 50 Yea, 48 No. If one of those two had voted No, there would have been a 49-49 tie; and then Vice President Pence, acting as Senate President Pro Tempore, would have cast the deciding Yea vote--again, all according to the Constitution.)

So Mr. Trump in the end got his extremely conservative nominee confirmed and now, we are told, we have the most conservative Supreme Court in many decades, one which may well reverse such landmark Supreme Court decisions as Rowe v. Wade (which legalized abortion) and Obergefell (which legalized same-sex marriage). The only hope that these decisions will be left alone is if the Court keeps in mind a judicial principle called stare decisis ('let the decision stand').

Copyright © 2018.

Critique of Conservative Philosophy

Conservatives believe that less government is better. They want to leave much to private industry, rather than having government involved in it (financing it, etc.) because they believe government is inefficient, wasteful, and even corrupt.

They also believe in lessening government regulation of business. This is a major conservative tenet. Rather than government ensuring that business takes measures to protect its workers (e.g., from factory injuries), protect consumers from unsafe products, and avoid polluting the environment--the air we breathe and the water we all must drink--conservatives believe that if you just leave businesses alone, they will do the right thing. This ignores the innumerable times that businesses have put their own profit and other business objectives before the health and welfare of their workers, customers, and the public.

Conservative economics have given us "trickle-down" economics under President Ronald Reagan (when it did not work) and now again under Donald Trump. This idea holds that if you cut taxes to the wealthy and to big corporations, they can invest the money they save on taxes and use it to expand their businesses; this creates new jobs--or so the theory goes. As I said, this theory did not work in Reagan's day, and today this same economic theory is being urged on Trump by an economic advisor of his who has been wrong over and over and over again.

Conservative individuals sometimes go so far as to say that they feel they should not have to pay taxes, that the income which they have legitimately earned (through hard work, or being enterprising, or being rapacious) should not be taken from them and given to the poor and needy who, they believe--usually with definite racist implications--simply do not want to work. The recent incident (caught on video and gone viral on social media) involving New York lawyer Aaron Schlossberg shows Schlossberg saying that his taxes go to support these immigrant, Spanish-speaking restaurant workers whom he is complaining about through "welfare". This makes little sense, because if they were on welfare they would not be there, working in the restaurant. And if they are there, working in the restaurant, they are not on welfare. But this is typical conservative thinking: Reagan and Trump both got elected by implying that these lazy people (African-Americans and/or Hispanics) don't want to work and simply take money away from the good, noble, hard-working (white) guy who pays taxes.

To go back to some of our earlier points: Public health has been one of the major successes of government. Government entities identify epidemic diseases (food-borne illnesses, diseases, and so forth), identify the sources, and put public-health countermeasures in place.

Also, as I have said, government (except to the extent that Trump is doing his best to undermine and even stop these functions) helps keep our food and medicine safe, our air and water clean, pure, and safe, and nearly every aspect of life in our country as  many of us would like it to be.

Update: A conservative (unfortunately I can't tell you who it was) appearing, I believe, on Fox News, said of the children detained at the US border and wrenched from their parents, "Well, they're not our kids. This exemplifies what I believe to be a very common characteristic of conservative people: no empathy--that is, the  ability to imagine themselves in someone else's shoes.
One time, while I was on a business trip and pleasantly enjoying dinner in Lake Tahoe, I quoted a US Supreme Court justice (I think it was Justice Frankfurter, and I don't recall what the topic of conversation was or what prompted me to come out with this) as saying something to the effect, "Better nine guilty men should go free than that one innocent man should be unjustly punished." To this my colleague said, "See, I don't agree with that!"
But what if the innocent, unjustly accused person had been his spouse, or child, or parent, or sister or brother? I think that, were the matter to touch home in that way, he might feel differently.

Copyright © 2018.

How the US Government Could Save Money--and Save You on Your Taxes

Conservatives don't want to pay taxes that fund social-welfare programs. I know this because I have heard at least a few individuals say that to me, face-to-face.

They say that money is taken from them in the form of taxes and given to people who don't want to work. (At heart this idea is racist: They are really talking about African-Americans and the sentiment relies on the old racist canard that African-Americans don't want to work--never mind pointing out to them that huge numbers of job applicants have turned out, with lines going around the block, when there has been a widely announced hiring event in their communities, as shown in photos and video clips.

I will tell you, them, whomever—where tax dollars are really going to waste.

For one thing, the United States sends billions of dollars to the government of Afghanistan; and in turn, in the course of just one year, a billion dollars of Afghan aid was "lost to corruption." For another thing, Afghan President Karzai is an opportunist who has given power—and immunity from prosecution—to men who in another time and place would be counted as war criminals.

Much as I might support the aspirations of women in Afghanistan to have those rights which Taliban rule in Afghanistan would deny them, I see a relic of the cold war here: The United States got involved in Afghanistan after the country was wrecked and ruined by civil wars, fighting between war lords and factions that followed the withdrawal of the Soviets. (To remember our history: In Vietnam, the French lost and pulled out and America thought it could do better, but could not and lost also. Similarly, the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan and apparently the US felt it could do better, and the final results of that may not be in but it does not look optimistic.)

So, I have to suspect that US efforts in Afghanistan have been a waste of your and my tax dollars. And here is another one: Businesses like Walmart, and fast-food companies like McDonald's who pay their workers inadequate wages.

These companies are allowed to pay their workers a minimum wage which has not gone up, in real dollars (or even in nominal dollars) for decades.

A Walmart worker who is single earns a wage which puts her at about the poverty level. If a Walmart, or McDonald's, worker earns minimum wage but supports a family of four on his or her income, that worker's income is supplemented by aid from the government which costs us an average of about $1700 for that family. So, what Walmart or McDonald's does not pay the worker, you and I pay.

Walmart is making huge profits. Basically every American taxpayer, by having to add to the insufficient income that the Walmart or McDonald's worker receives from her employer, is paying his taxes ultimately into the pockets of the owners of Walmart and McDonald's. It would save us, the middle-class Americans who pay taxes, money if those companies were compelled to pay a living wage.

Copyright © 2013.

Right-Wing Lies about "Obamacare"

I have blogged twice (September 21, 2012 and August 5, 2013) about lies generated by right-wing or conservative commentators, politicians, and bloggers, and spread by emailers who forward e-mails.

Obamacare--that is not the correct term but was originally a derogatory term coined by these right-wing people and now it seems to have stuck as the common term by which to refer to the Affordable Care Act--has been the victim of much misinformation.

Many people may remember Sarah Palin's assertion, quite some time ago, that there would be "death squads" which would decide whether elderly patients would receive treatment or would be allowed to die. I hope that anyone who heard that has since come to understand that there are no such things as these death squads.

More recently, Rush Limbaugh asserted that Obamacare is in effect a massive tax increase. Again, false.

One other assertion is that under the new health care plan, doctors would be obliged to ask patients about their sex lives.

I get very troubled by such deliberate dissemination of lies. If you are a person who always tries to believe the best about people, maybe you believe that these are well-intentioned and that the people who have spread these false ideas had reason to believe they were true. If you are more cynical, then you probably will believe that the people who say these things know they are false and say them anyway.

I think it was Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propoganda, who said that you only have to repeat a lie enough times and people will believe it. Unfortunately, this is true; and as I said in one of my earlier blog postings, people who hear or read these things are not always critical of what they hear and take it as fact and truth.

Why Do People Believe What They Believe?

I often read, and write comments on, the online news site Huffington Post. I am moved to write replies to people who express ideas counter to mine—such as "homosexuality is a sin (abomination, etc.)."  This may result in a back-and-forth dialog in which they in turn try to refute what I said.

Of course I have to suspect that no one convinces anyone. Neither they nor I am there to have my mind changed. Nor, generally, do we behave with open minds. So much of what we read only reinforces opinions we already hold. Liberals read liberal magazines, conservatives read conservative magazines. That's called "preaching to the choir." So we hear (or read) what we already believe because that's what we want to hear.

But as a thoughtful person—forgive a little patting-of-self-on-back—I wonder why people believe what they believe.

Often people have received their ideas, to put it simply: from parents, teachers, preachers. Of course that only begs the question, by moving it up, or back, to someone else, and then we have to ask why they believe. . . ad infinitum.

As to receiving ideas from one's teachers: it is commonly believed that education makes one more liberal. I'd agree, but would hasten to add that it depends on the kind of education. The business school student who reads Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman is going to have different ideas than the English major who reads John Steinbeck and Kurt Vonnegut.

Many people receive the ideas, attitudes, values, beliefs, etc., that are prevalent in their environment: their family, culture, church, etc. A great majority of people are not likely ever to doubt or question their beliefs. If and when people do question what they (and their family, etc.) have believed, it's often the result of something occurring. Something has occurred to shake a person's faith in God. A mother learns that her child is gay and starts to question the condemnations of homosexuality that she has heard all her life. The son of slave owners comes to feel that blacks deserve better treatment than they are receiving under the system of slave ownership.

There are characteristics of the individual at work sometimes. Those few people who question the beliefs received from their parents may possess a certain character--perhaps something like autonomy, or skepticism; at any event, what we might call an independent cast of mind. And, some people are more thoughtful, more "sensitive." This we might call personality, character, whatever. And they'd do well to have some courage, too, because they are going to be "on the outs" with their families, and that can be a difficult row to hoe.

I think people with a certain psychological makeup or personality type are more likely to be conservative, and there probably is something more or less parallel in the making of a liberal. And probably there is simply a certain mystery to it all.

Sometimes it's a whole culture that undergoes a conversion to new ideas. I was just reading some interesting ideas about why Hitler was as powerful and influential as he was. I think that's an interesting question. It's often been pointed out that here was a cultured nation, arguably the leader of the world in many fields of scholarship and the arts, that allowed itself to be led into an insane war and also to commit some of the worst atrocities in human history.

But maybe that was not so much a case of changing of minds as just stirring up and exploiting existing attitudes. The article on Hitler's influence said that the German people were already predisposed to anti-Semitism. But it did not go too much into the nationalistic ideas that had prevailed in Germany for a long time, nor Germany's wounded national pride as the result of its defeat in World War I and the humiliation (as they saw it) of the Treaty of Versailles. It's clear that all these things were going on.

Religious conversion might be an interesting case. If you look at they way in which many European cultures became converted to Christianity, often the king or other ruler was persuaded to convert—and then (certainly not miraculously!) the rest of the country converted, too.

Other times religious evangelizing has targeted individual after individual. One only has to think of missionaries, such as Mormon missionaries, who go door to door. So when this is successful, it is a case of changing people's minds. Christianity sometimes won converts because it promised an afterlife. It might be interesting to figure out what carrot (or stick) the Mormons use to gain converts; I'm neither inclined nor qualified to do this here and now.

So, back to my original question. Sometimes we can see where people's ideas have come from. Then there are the issues of whether and in what circumstances minds do or don't get changed. Sometimes we can see what has gone on. But to put it all in a larger perspective, human behavior is complex and very seldom explained simply.  We've got the science of the behavior of the individual—psychology—and sciences of the behavior of people en masse—sociology, political science, economics. I submit that none of these fields is so far advanced that we thoroughly, completely understand human behavior.

Revised and expanded April 29, 2013

Appendix A, Added April 29, 2013

Okay, now I would like to propose a question for my readers (with some possible answer choices). I pose this as a question put to my readers because, while this blog has, very gratifyingly, been getting a significantly greater readership lately, my postings—which sometimes try to be controversial and provocative—have not been getting any comments.

So, here is my question which at the very least I hope may provide food for thought. Why are conservatives anti-gay? Please feel free to vote with your answer or any other comment.

A. Because, in the sense of "conservative," they want to keep things as they are, and discriminating against gays is the way it's always been.
B. Because they subscribe to a brand of religion which is basically anti-sex.
C. It's their personality type. For example, they are tight-asses or maybe just mean and nasty people.
D. All of the above.
E. Some other reason (please specify).

Copyright © 2013.

Liberals and Conservatives (Again)

For those conservatives who complain about liberals: If you appreciate having clean air to breathe and clean water to drink, thank the liberals. If you appreciate having food and medicine that are safe, thank liberals. It's conservatives who want to gut the government's (the FDA's and EPA's) ability to ensure the safety of our food, medicines, water, and air. But public health is one of the major government success stories.

Ronald Reagan convinced much of the country that the government is the problem. But, if you think it through: Who do you want to provide you with police and fire protection? To build and repair highways? To put up traffic signals, or control air traffic? Are you going to get together with your neighbors to create organizations to provide these things? Then you've created a government!

Conservatives have also persuaded people that the government takes too much from them in the form of taxes, usually with the further thought that their taxes go to support no-good people who don't want to work--actually an appeal to racial prejudice and racial stereotypes.

But really, those who say these things are the wealthy whose motivation is to avoid paying tax themselves. If you are not also one of the 1%, they don't care what you pay. If you look at the facts (which seem to get overlooked in these arguments): the top income tax bracket under Eisenhower it was 91%. Under Nixon it was 70%. Under Ronald Reagan it was 50%. So it's been steadily going down for decades. It's currently 35%. (And since the top tax rate on capital gains is only 15%, the rich get a real break, and that is why billionaire Warren Buffet has told us that his secretary pays more tax than he does!)

Yet the super-rich are still not satisfied. Some conservatives go so far as to claim that if they've earned their money, they have the right to keep it. But court decisions have repeatedly upheld the government's right to tax its citizens, and anyone who rejects that is not just a conservative but an anarchist.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Richard Stein

Two More Wars in the Offing?

It's no secret—or should not be any secret—the Republicans and conservatives like war. Well, maybe that's not a way of phrasing it that they'd agree with. How about, they are more prone to favor the use of military force?

That is why we've been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a loss of over 4000 American lives—arguably in both cases for at best a very unclear purpose. Supposedly America is always trying to export "freedom"—meaning, presumably, its brand of democracy—to other countries, whether they want it or not. Iraq is not and is not going to be a democracy after the American model, and heaven only knows what can be accomplished in Afghanistan, where we cannot even free the country from the influence of war lords.

Anyway, those are wars that commenced, and that fact cannot be changed. I must acknowledge that the US has supposedly largely exited from Iraq, thanks to a Democratic president—whether or not we have left the country any better off. (For one thing, I'd like an update on whether the Iraqi people yet have reliable, 24-hour electrical service, or whether they feel secure outside of their homes.)

So really, there is only a point in talking about the future. Currently Republicans and other "hawks" (we don't hear that word much, anymore) want the US to attack Syria and Iran. President Obama evidently is not very keen on doing either one; but if a Republican gets elected president in November, we may indeed find ourselves in the midst of yet another war.

The US has an all-volunteer military services. I don't understand why young American men want to join the military and go and fight. Evidently they feel they are being patriotic and "serving their country"; but when America has not been clearly attacked by these countries; and when the connection between these wars and America's welfare is similarly not clear; I have to think they may be misguided. (Remember, George W. Bush sold us on the Iraq war by falsely claiming that Saddam Hussein was developing "weapons of mass destruction." Many other wars, such as the Vietnam War, were also based on lies.) Those in Iraq who were attacking American troops did not view Americans as their saviors but as foreign invaders.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Population Control, Conservatives, and Christianity

I have written about the problems of growing world population before. The current estimate of the number of people on Earth has reached 7 billion. The human species, compared to other species with which we share the planet, has been extremely successful in these last couple hundred years and human populations have exploded as medicine has reduced infant mortality, conquered many diseases, and lengthened life expectancy.

Through advances in agriculture (use of new strains of crops, use of fertilizers and pesticides, etc.), productivity of food crops has been increased miraculously, so that the population disaster that was predicted at the end of the eighteenth century has been staved off. But for how long can population growth continue without bringing on catastrophe? Short-term and local droughts and famines are already causing starvation in many places on Earth. And millions more are malnourished.

And the ability of the world to feed its booming population is by no means the only reason to be concerned about the growth in numbers of humans. More people means more demand not only for food but also for water, timber, fiber, and fuel. Destruction of rain forests to produce timber and to make new farmland accelerates global warming because it means fewer trees to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.

The larger share of population growth has been in less-developed countries. But as living standards increase, these populaces have greater expectation of eating a Western-style, meat-heavy diet (and along with that, consuming more energy and producing more greenhouse gases). And the production of animals for meat uses more grain—several times as much, depending on the animal—than if that grain were consumed directly by people.

What needs to be done is to control fertility. The modern world can offer a number of tools for preventing pregnancy. But Republicans in Congress have shown opposition to (1) funding of birth control pills by health insurance, as will be provided by the recent health-care reform law when its provisions go into effect; and (2) funding of family planning in other countries by the US, directly and via the United Nations.

One columnist for The Washington Times was quoted in The Reporter, a publication of Population Connection:

Free birth control. . . is about consolidating the sexual revolution. The post-1960s left has been at war with Christianity. Its aim is to erect a utopian socialist state—one built on the rubble of Judeo-Christian civilization. In fact, liberals want to create a world without God and sexual permissiveness is their battering ram. Promoting widespread contraception is essential to forging a pagan society based on consequence-free sex.

So we learn from this that birth control is not only anti-Christian but anti-God. He uses the accusations "socialist," atheist, and even "pagan." It's hard to believe that even one person believes this.

For many such extreme conservatives and Religious Far-Right types, any ideas of stewardship of the planet—recycling and conserving resources, protection of wildlife habitat, avoiding overfishing, and so forth—are at best unnecessary because of their views that (1) the Bible says that God gave Adam the right to use (and presumably exploit to any degree whatsoever) the Earth and all its creatures; (2) we don't need to be so concerned about Earth because this is all a transient and transitory existence and we should focus on the next world.

Another reason is one I have suggested earlier: they are simply anti-sex and believe (this has been, as I see it, a strain in Christianity since very early times and, pending anyone correcting me on this, I ascribe it to St. Paul) that any sex is evil, and sex—and only in certain positions—is less bad only if performed within monogamous, heterosexual marriage.

Unfortunately this is not a new trend in American social and political life, and there were in fact laws making contraception illegal that were enacted in 1873 and overturned by the US Supreme Court only in 1965. Like Prohibition, these have been instances where an extreme strain of moralizing has been successful in passing laws that affect us all.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Some Roots of the Conservative Mindset in America

Norway may be the classic example of what at one time in America was called the welfare state. The government provides for many human needs, including health care; and in turn, taxes are high.

A majority of the people in Norway—of course not everybody—think it's a good system and are happy with it.

This would never fly in America. I even think that if Social Security were up for a vote in our Congress right now, it would not pass.

There is a lot of anti-government feeling in America and even a conviction that the government cannot do things well because it is too bureaucratic and wasteful of taxpayers' money. Conservatives would like many things left to private enterprise and, for example, would like to privatize Social Security.

Okay, maybe you know all this. Let's look at sort of a history of ideas in America for a bit. I've blamed Ronald Reagan for boosting the idea that big government is a bad thing. But he didn't originate that way of thinking, it's a result of the history of this country. For a long time there's been an ethos in America that esteems personal independence and self-reliance. It's the vision of the pioneer on the frontier who might have had no one around to aid him. Maybe even the Army or Cavalry was not available, most of the time, to help him defend himself against hostile Indians.

So the noble American pioneer is the very picture of self-reliance. He does it all himself, building his house, plowing his fields, making most of what he needs, etc.

But this figure is pretty much obsolete. And why should not needing the government mean despising the government and saying that the government should not aid that guy over there? I'm not sure, but there seems to be a strong idea of "What I need and want (or don't want) should be okay for you, too."

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

A Word for Conservatives

Ronald Reagan, when he was running for president, did a pretty good job of convincing a lot of Americans that "government is the problem," and we'd all be better off with less government regulation, smaller government bureaucracy, and so on. A lot of people believed what he said, and still, some 30 years later, it's common to hear people say that government is bad.

To these people I say, if you don't like government, let me make a suggestion for you. Move to Mississippi, where there are very low taxes. Also--just coincidentally--they have the worst education, the lowest literacy, the lowest life expectancy, the greatest rate of obesity. They rank at the bottom of almost every list. All because of very low government spending--which correlates with the low taxes they have.

At the other extreme might be a country like Norway, where taxes are very high but the government provides nearly everything everyone could want, pretty much cradle-to-grave.

Maybe, my imaginary anti-government friends, once you've abolished the government, you might find you need to try to get together with your neighbors to arrange for fires to be put out, criminals to be caught, roads to be built, traffic lights and stop signs to be put up--oh, and how about trying to ensure the safety of the food you eat, the medicines you take. . .

Sure, you could form some kind of association with your neighbors to do these things--but then you'd have a government!

By the way, I posted this (in pretty much these words) as a comment on an AOL/Daily Finance article on the Republican candidates--and a reply to my comment called me a "commie." Nice, reasonable refutation of my ideas.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Reading HuffPost: How Any Liberal and/or Gay Can Get Very Disheartened

I mentioned in an earlier posting that I have been spending time reading articles on AOL/HuffPost, reading other readers' comments, writing my own comments and replying to other comments.

I think I spend too much time doing this and I am resolving to stop doing it, not because of the time I'm spending but because it's too discouraging to read what other people think and say.

For one thing, there are so many conservatives who want to bash Obama and the "libs" (or, one time, "libbs"). They demonstrate the stereotypes and animosity they hold. Of course they are entitled to their opinion, and I must recognize that there are people out there—and even a great many people—who do not or would not agree with some of my ideas. But it's looking like America is getting to be very polarized; there could almost be another civil war, I sometimes think.

Secondly, any time there is an article relating in any way to homosexuality (and HuffPost has a subsection called "Gay Voices"), all the homophobes come out of the woodwork. They are quick to state their opinion that homosexuality is wrong, it's immoral, it's a sin (their Bible tells them that). One woman said thinking about it "makes her skin crawl."

It's a disease, a disorder, it's sick, it's unnatural, it's evil. We've heard all this before. We've been hearing it for many years. And all this anti-gay prejudice is one reason why being gay is still difficult (even though, supposedly, things have gotten better in the last 50 years), and why there is a much higher rate of suicide among gay teens than for non-gay young people in the same age group.

And people will chime in with their disbelief about climate change and their antipathy to illegal immigrants (as I said elsewhere, this usually boils down to "we hate Mexicans").

All in all, I see so much bigotry, ignorance, close-mindedness, belief in misconceptions and discredited ideas. (It is a sad characteristic of human beings that they are capable of believing things that are not so.) And, as I have said before, the rhetoric of the Right often includes asserting things which they even know to be incorrect. As an example, a Right-wing anti-abortion group was actually slapped with a lawsuit for incorrectly asserting that "Obamacare" (as they delight in calling it) includes taxpayer funding of abortion.

I wrote in another blog posting about my overall, philosophical view of humanity and its prospects. I think I have become more pessimistic: I don't think we're much further along than the days when people who were nonconforming or in some way odd were burned as witches.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Good Argument Against Conservatives

Dr. David Katz, writing online, makes some points which I think put very well what I have long believed. He rebuts the conservative points about people needing to take "individual responsibility," rather than relying on help from the government:

. . . [D]espite the popular railing about bootstraps and personal responsibility, we are subject to forces larger than ourselves. We have millions more uninsured, unemployed neighbors, friends and relatives than we had a year or three or five ago. Do we think these people succumbed to a contagion that siphons off personal responsibility? Did a virus devour their determination? Has some new plague agent ravaged willpower, self-control or work ethic?

All nonsense, of course. Personal responsibility, willpower and work ethic are the same as they ever were. Human character has not undergone a wholesale metamorphosis in the past year, or three, or five (or, for that matter, 500). To reiterate: It's the economy, stupid. It is a force larger than any individual victim's control.

We all know that with great power comes great responsibility. There is an overlooked corollary: We can't expect people to take responsibility when they are disempowered.

Larger forces can disempower us. A dismal economy is one such larger force.

He goes on to talk about the obesity epidemic, which is more his (medical) field. To read the full article, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/the-economy-and-obesity_b_963823.html

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Fourth Freedoms

Today is Independence Day in the United States—almost always referred to as "The Fourth of July."

Fireworks are traditionally associated with celebrating the Fourth of July. However, the law in some places is that fireworks can only be used by designated organizations, like municipal governments.

This state, Illinois, is one of those where shooting off and even possession of fireworks by individuals is illegal. (As to the reasons for such a law: Yes, it might be a case of the government trying to protect you and your children from your own poor judgment; but also, your fireworks might set your neighbor's roof on fire. It does happen.)

However, this illegality does not stop an awful lot of people. In this area, it's easy to drive to the next state and purchase fireworks, and then bring them home and shoot them off in your back yard, in front of your house (which might seem a bit more of a flagrant violation of the law), etc. The law seems to be very laxly enforced.

I suspect that many people consider it their God-given right to celebrate the Fourth of July with their own fireworks. Here, fireworks are going off right now and it's not even noon. And fireworks were going off last night and even the previous day—neither of which, of course, was the Fourth of July.

This made me reflect on who considers what to be their right.

Conservatives consider the following, among others, to be their right:

• To cheat other people by means of financial chicanery (if you are a Wall Street firm) or to deceive the public with false advertising, false product labeling, etc. (if you are a manufacturer).
• To not pay their fair share of taxes.
• To pollute or otherwise destroy the environment (again this applies to corporate entities).
• To own a gun.
• To drive as fast as they like, and without wearing seat belts.
  
• To impose their own religious and moral notions on others by banning books, forbidding mosques being built, banning abortion, and denying equal rights to gay people.

And here are some rights that many progressives ("liberals," if you will, although conservatives use the term as if it were a dirty word) feel they have, or should have:

• To be free from government spying.
• To have an abortion.
• To marry one's partner of the same sex.
• To be free from government-sponsored or –supported religious exercises.
• To read whatever they want.
  

Now I ask you, which group of rights causes more harm to the general welfare?

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

"Sovereign Citizens" (and other not-quite-so-extreme conservatives)

There recently was a segment on the TV Program "60 Minutes" (which I viewed online, as you can as well) about a group or movement called "sovereign citizens."* These individuals are somewhat like some of the extreme right-wing militia groups we've got in the US. Based on erroneous ideas about the philosophies that prevailed in the late eighteenth century, they question the legitimacy of the US government as it currently exists. They refuse to acknowledge the authority of the government, or the police, over them. They won't carry driver's licenses. They draw up documents declaring they are "sovereign," so in effect each of these sovereign citizens is his own country. They believe--and this is downright silly--that if they draft these documents in a certain way—for example, putting the text diagonally across the page, or writing with orange crayon or signing with a fingerprint in blood--that this makes their sovereignty documents valid and they can't be challenged.

These people are scary, especially when you combine their extremist ideas with the wide availability of guns—and even assault weapons—in America. One sovereign citizen who was profiled on the program was stopped, along with his son, by police for a traffic violation. The man and his son opened fire with assault weapons—getting off something like 22 shots. A police officer was killed and I think both the sovereign citizen and his son were killed.

People who consider themselves sovereign citizens are estimated to number as many as 300,000. This is scary but of course it's only one American in 1,000. So hopefully most Americans would see these people as extremists and wack jobs. Still, they're only one or two steps farther to the right than some people I have known and talked to.

Some of the latter have told me they don't feel they should have to pay taxes. Such people need to simply read our Constitution, where Article 8 clearly gives Congress the power to impose taxes.

A "no taxes at all" view is extreme, still; but some would simply say they are loath to see their taxes ultimately benefit (or, in their minds, be paid to) any less fortunate individual. I could understand the conservative "no tax money of mine to help the less fortunate" position if their argument went something like, "Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs didn't work. Rather than throw money at social problems like urban poverty, let's wait until they're better understood, and/or we know what sort of measures work." But their argument is simply, "It's their [the people needing assistance] fault that they are in the situation they're in." I guess if I objected, "What about victims of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods. . . ?" they'd reply, "Well, it's their fault for living in the wrong place."
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*If you go to youtube.com and search for "sovereign citizens," about 128 listings will appear, many of them from the viewpoint of the sovereign citizens themselves, who feel they are persecuted when the government lists them as terrorists. Paranoia is one element of the whole phenomenon of the sovereign citizens.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Further Dialog on Conservatives (or, Rant Against Conservatives. Part III or Part IIA)

Regular readers of this blog may be aware that one posting, "A Rant Against Conservatives. Pt. II," has provoked some comments.

To one poster of a comment, I posted a comment replying to him. It seems that his and my dialogue could continue to go back and forth, but I don't want to see the Comment feature used in that way.

I do, however, want to write about one or two of his ideas. First, he says that the fact that I got some free work done by the painter whom I mentioned shows that conservatives can be "compassionate." Well, two things in reply to that, if indeed this example supports any generality: First, the freebie thing can't be taken too far. Yes, he did one thing for me and refused compensation. Another thing that he offered to do for me, he did not follow through on. He never called to arrange a return visit—but I'm okay with that; it's reasonable and natural and even almost expected.

But also, I think that a point I made is still supported: I mentioned that conservatives might be nice (whether "compassionate" is the appropriate word, I'm not at all sure) when they know the person involved. So they're nice to family, friends, neighbors, fellow church members, customers. But I still say that it's very different when we're talking about people who they don't know, who are distant, different, etc.--for example, the poor or people of another race or ethnicity.

I said that I feel this is like people in small towns who might be thought to be warm, neighborly, the salt of the earth, and all that. Yet they're suspicious and even hostile toward strangers or any "outsiders."

I said also that this is a matter of "we" versus "they." And I believe even more strongly that I was right about that, in view of something I saw on TV a couple days ago. There was a PBS program called "The Human Spark," hosted by Alan Alda, who first became known to many from starring in the TV show M*A*S*H. (This program was originally shown last January, and anyone reading this may view the program on the PBS web site, pbs.org.)

This program showed some experiments with very young children. In one, it was first established which of two foods the child preferred, between some "slimy" green beans or graham crackers. Then two puppets were shown to the child; one puppet was presented as liking and disliking the same food choices as the child (liking the crackers, disliking the beans; and then vice versa for the other puppet). Then the child was offered the choice of which puppet he wanted to play with, and nearly all the children picked the puppet who had the same food preferences as himself.

This is what is to be inferred: We like, and presumably identify with, those (puppets and presumably people) who we think have the same preferences as ourselves, who are like us. The experimenter (Karen Wynn of Yale) infers, this shows we have an instinct to affiliate with those who are like ourselves. Paul Bloom* phrased it only slightly differently: we have "an inclination to bond with others who are like us."

This is a very close paraphrase of some of what Bloom said:

At every point we're splitting the world into those who are allies and those who are enemies.. . .People have an inclination to bond with others who are like us. . . .

People unite with others like themselves, e.g. with the same religion, and help each other. . . .they may wear the same clothes and eat the same foods. That means being united against those who are "over there" or who practice different beliefs.

As yet another scholar said, this is why we have holy wars like the Crusades.
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* Paul Bloom is the spouse and collaborator of Karen Wynn, who is also quoted here.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

A Rant against Conservatives. Part II

This posting will attempt to make two points. First, that conservatives will put forth arguments that they know to be false. Second, I want to look at the idea they often put forth, trying to justify their opposition to any aid to the poor by saying, "I pulled myself up out of poverty, why can't they?"

My painter, last week, among other things, started to say that taxes--his taxes, naturally--go to pay for unemployment compensation. I pointed out that unemployment benefits are funded through an insurance scheme into which employers pay. Turns out he knew that. (In Part I, I mentioned another example of this same guy using something that he probably knew was incorrect in arguing.) Also he said, in so many words, about those bad people who collect unemployment benefits and get food stamps, "Why can't they just go and get a job?" I failed to remind him that jobs, just now, are hard to get. He'd probably insist that anyone who really wants a job can get one.

On the national scene, one Senator Kyle publicly claimed that Planned Parenthood spends 90% of the funding it receives from the government on abortions. When it was pointed out to him that the correct figure actually is 3%, he (or his lackeys) said of his assertion, "That was not intended to be a factual statement." What??? As I think about that, the only "translation" I can make of that absurd statement is, "It was a lie and I knew it at the time."

The myriad organizations that lobby against rights (such as marriage rights or non-discrimination in employment) for gay people very egregiously use false information: half-truths and out-and-out untruths. I think they use this tactic cynically and calculatingly, and know that they're lying. The belief (or simple prejudice) comes first, and then the wide reach to find something to support the belief. (As an aside, a University of Chicago law professor named Martha Nussbaum has said that she beliefs that nearly all anti-gay prejudice has at its base a disgust at the thought of sex acts between two people of the same sex.) Anyway, their tactics work in fund-raising letters. (Sadly, the "other" side may use at least broadly similar, "the-sky-will-fall-unless-you-send-money," tactics in its fund-raising letters.)

Now, my other point. I think a lot of conservatives are your stereotypical up-from-poverty, Horatio Alger* types. One might think that someone who lived amidst poverty or other disadvantage in childhood might have more sympathy for others who have had similar struggles. But it doesn't seem to work that way. It becomes, "If I could do it (get up and out of the ghetto, or whatever), then why can't they?"

Some people are afflicted by poverty. Some by drug or other additions. Some by disabilities or other liabilities. And some people show wonderful success in how they deal with these problems; others do not.

Also, even if you look at, for example, those with the problem of drug or other addiction, it would seem that, even for a single individual, there might be times when they can deal with the problem successfully and times when they cannot. They might go along for months or years before they somehow become ready, willing, and able to change.

I wrote about this once. But, since I personally never have never had to deal with an addiction, I would have liked a person who has done so to tell me more about what had to first change within them before they could make progress in fighting their addiction.

But it's not completely clear that escape from poverty is analogous to shaking off a substance addiction. It might be said, without much of a stretch, that there are external conditions in both cases. It's almost a cliché—and I don't know enough about the subject to know how true this is—that the addict may begin to use drugs regularly to escape from an unbearable reality. However, although poverty is a matter of an individual's or a family's personal pocketbook, there are definitely impoverished neighborhoods, so it seems to be a social, rather than strictly individual matter.

So, our model person in the Horatio Alger scenario says to him- or herself, "I'm living in these awful conditions, and I don't want to live with plumbing that doesn't work (etc., etc.) for my whole life. So I'm going to study hard, get good grades in school, go to college. . . ." I think that, whether it's this case or that of overcoming other sorts of disadvantages, it takes determination and perhaps a whole lot of internal traits, and maybe luck and other external circumstances such as a mentor, a teacher, someone to inspire, encourage, etc.

And it's not a case of some unchanging internal state: the addict may be able to do something--admitting his problem and going to seek treatment--tomorrow but not today. Today but not yesterday.

The more conservative types will say, Anyone can do it, it's just a matter of wanting to. I think this is a more complicated matter than that and needs more thought and maybe study by scholars.

By the way, the painter quoted here (and in Part I) is a nice guy. He's done some things for me with no remuneration. And a lot of conservatives would strike us (or me) as "nice people" if, for example, we met them on a cruise and did not yet know some of their views. Clearly, people can or will be "nice" to people who they know, but they're not benevolent to some people they don't know--"them." I think it's analogous to the fact that small-town Americans are helpful to their neighbors but can be suspicious of strangers. This is not just an American trait, it's a human trait: the business of "we" versus "they" that I have blogged about before.
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* Alger was a nineteenth-century writer—better known at one time than now—who wrote books for juveniles in which the protagonists rose from rags to riches.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

A Rant against Conservatives. Part I

Yesterday a guy was here to do some painting for me. This guy is very chatty, so we got to talking—or maybe arguing.

This guy is a typical conservative. His wife came up from a background of poverty, so he has no sympathy for anyone who lives in poverty; says they don't want to work.

And maybe this guy is a little more extreme than some conservatives. He seems to feel he shouldn't have to pay any taxes at all.

But like a lot of conservatives, when he argues, a lot of his facts are wrong. (I believe that these guys know that the arguments they use are incorrect. Conservative in the public eye, like politicians, do that, and this guy showed that he was doing it, too.)** He said that the property tax that he pays goes to our governor. I got out my property tax bill, and not one single item on there has anything to do with state government. It's all local and county: village, township, county, school districts, this district and that district. But nothing at all that said "Illinois."

These people are so accustomed to hearing, and parroting, common canards of the Right. They have no concern for what is or is not true.

He said he has no formal education, and that's uttered as a boast. Presumably education is a bad thing. I'm reminded of the days when I was a college teacher in a college town, in an otherwise rural area. When I had my haircut I'd hear the attitudes of the "townies" toward the university. We were faggots and commies who were there to subvert their wholesome, corn-fed offspring. They called us the "fuckalty."

And my painter reminds me of my father, who didn't know what he didn't know. Or maybe my grandfather. My grandfather always boasted about being a self-educated man. One day he gave me a problem to solve. I asked for pencil and paper, and in probably less than a minute, I had the answer for him. He was amazed. It was basically a rather simple problem in high-school algebra. But he didn't even know that there was such a tool. See, an example of not knowing what you don't know.

What does education do for people? Ideally, rather than just imparting facts, it also teaches critical thinking and has an influence on attitudes.*

And why do these conservative types, like my painter, glory in being uneducated, scoff at education and the educated? Maybe it's because they secretly know that education would disabuse them of a lot of their currently-held, incorrect ideas.
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*Update. On the subject of what a nontechnical education can do for you--a favorite subject of mine, see this link: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/05/26/oh-the-humanities-why-not-to-pick-a-college-major-based-on-a-s/

**Update (October 14, 2011). An example of how conservatives lie: This is from an article on Huff Post Politics:

A federal judge ruled in August that the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List had to stop making the claim on its website that "Obamacare" subsidizes abortions because the assertion is false.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Strict Interpretation - When It Suits 'Em

Republicans and religious conservatives may advocate a strict interpretation--of the Constitution in the one case, and of the Bible in the other.

But they seem to me to be hypocritical because they can be shown to favor strict construction only when it is in their interests; and otherwise, they just ignore whatever they prefer to ignore.

Former US President George W. Bush effected "substantial military actions" in Afghanistan and Iraq "that under any traditional reading of the Constitution [would have] required a declaration of war" (Robert Dallek, "Power and the Presidency," Smithsonian, January 2011); but, as is implied, these actions were done without a declaration of war. But I don't recall Bush's conservative supporters crying foul, complaining about his possibly unconstitutional actions--even though they are always saying that they favor strict interpretation of the Constitution.

And I think it's somewhat analogous when religious conservatives point to the Bible as justification for their condemnation of homosexuality and gay people. They need to remember that the Bible was used to justify slavery in the decades preceding the Civil War.

Also, they point to a passage in the Old Testament book of Leviticus that calls homosexuality an "abomination." Leaving aside the fact that abomination may not have meant, when the Old Testament was written, what they would have us believe it means, Leviticus also calls the eating of shellfish and pork an abomination. It also forbids wearing clothing made of mixed fibers, and prescribes particular sacrifices for many types of sins and crimes.

Not only do these people not make the sacrifices that Leviticus says we need to perform, I'd wager they also eat pork and shellfish, and don't give any thought to whether their clothing is a mixture of fibers.

So it looks like the Constitution, and the Bible, must be strictly adhered to only when to do so happens to harmonize with the aims of Conservatives.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Richard Stein

Which Freedoms Are You Concerned About?

Conservative/Right Wing/Tea Party types have been complaining that their freedoms are being taken away by the government.

They have also been known to evoke the Founding Fathers, and claim that the shape (or size, or power) that the government has achieved has strayed far from the vision of the Founding Fathers.

Well, as to the second of those: We now live in a far larger, more complex, and more diverse society than anyone in the late 18th century could have envisioned. This society confronts us with issues that also could not have been foreseen (pollution, derivative financial instruments--just to name a couple). We need (even if evidently not everyone expects) the government to have some involvement with these problems.

Also part of our federal government is a huge intelligence establishment. There are at least three intelligence agencies, the CIA, FBI, and Defense Intelligence Agency. Not only are these agencies huge, but they are very powerful and--worse--secretive. Their operation is hidden from the public and from scrutiny by the public and even, too often, from scrutiny by Congress. These agencies have abused their power by spying on US citizens on US territory, even citizens who there was no valid reason to suspect of any wrongdoing.

It seems that the conservatives are not concerned about these invasions of their privacy. When they talk invasion of their freedoms, they don't care about their privacy--just as long as they can keep their guns.