I read the transcript of Trump’s nomination acceptance speech. It was a grisly horror that painted a picture of an America that is a dystopian horror right now, which will be magically and instantaneously transformed on the very day he becomes president, and it was full of lies. The responses (and here’s a typical one) are all about how he twisted statistics dishonestly to make his rhetorical points.
I hate to say this, but the facts don’t matter. You can declare that unemployment rates are down, but those people who are out of work don’t care — and they’re the people Trump is yelling at. You can point out that he’s lying when he says crime is rising, but the people who have been mugged don’t care that they’re a statistic, and they’ll listen to Trump. Worse, people who haven’t been mugged will have been watching the crime stories on their local television station and Fox News, and have the perception that there is all kinds of lawlessness going on around them. Throwing national statistics at people who are counting one, two, many isn’t going to change their minds.
Furthermore, as Trump so ably demonstrates, all too often statistics are used not to identify a truth, but to justify a preconception. I was recently cooly informed that Muslims commit 98% of all terrorist attacks…never mind that the FBI has determined that 94% of all US terror attacks have been by non-Muslims. The guy is convinced that Islam is the source of all evil in the world, and he has a number that reassures him that his opinion is correct.
So here’s our terrifying problem: our little homegrown fascist is tapping into the fear and anxieties about their future of a significant number of people in the country. These fears are partly legitimate, and partly the product of a media that has been stoking them for years. You don’t reassure individuals by telling them that the average person is better off or that the trend lines are all rising — they don’t give a damn about averages when their problem is personal. In fact, waving tables of numbers and graphs at people to tell them their grievances are false is going to be more enraging than reassuring. And meanwhile, Trump will lie about the statistics and validate their gut feelings and pander to every prejudice they’ve got, and guess who they’re going to want to believe?
We’ll counter that by dumping a pile of actuarial tables on them. Yeah, that’ll work.
I’ll also point out that we’re seeing that policy doesn’t matter, either. For years, people have been voting against their own objective self-interest because demagogues have effectively whipped them into a froth of fear over religion, or guns, or abortion. See, for instance, Brownback’s Kansas. Progressive policies are almost always more appealing to the people, when presented without a label…but the media have effectively attached a lot of the hated positions to the Democrats (and rightly so — progressives should support women’s autonomy, minority rights, and oppose war and violence). Witness also Ivanka Trump’s bizarre speech at the RNC yesterday: she basically promoted the Democratic party platform and tried to attach it to her father. You can say he’ll do anything, and the disgruntled voters won’t care.
What are we to do? Data doesn’t matter, policy doesn’t matter. Politics is personal.
I see two strategies (I know there are more). The first necessary step is to recognize that the unhappy people who want Strong Man Trump to cure all their ills actually have legitimate problems — you cannot wave them away with a chart. So you can try to win them over by actually addressing their concerns, which would be ideal, except for the fact that one of their concerns is driven by raw, naked racism. Or you can simply write off that portion of the population as a regressive, deluded mess, and hope that the remainder are sufficiently numerous and motivated to vote, so you can get real political progress despite the unhappiness of that minority (which, if you’re a real progressive, you’ll then try to alleviate).
I think we should definitely be very afraid. The fascism is openly unmasked, and we’re facing a serious risk that it could be victorious in a few months. I dread waking up to newspapers that look like this.
Oh, damn. I did. That’s the front page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune this morning, featuring Great Leader surrounded by flags. And this is my nightmare.
All hail! Fearless Leader will save us all! (/sad attempt at snark)
I’ve come to the sad conclusion that there is no working strategy. Of course we should take people’s problems seriously, but facts and statistics are still necessary to show them that voting Sanders will make things better while voting Trump will make them worse – and still they choose to vote Trump. The only possible way will be a long and a steep one, starting from the bottom, supporting progressive powers in smaller communities, and educating our children to recognize demagoguery when they see it… And hope that the bigots don’t outbreed us!
Ye gods. I’m sure any minute now someone will pop into the comment to assure us that the authoritarian, racist, homophobic, personality cult, Big Lie leader isn’t really a fascist, those enclosures for Muslims and Mexicans aren’t really internment camps, and living in a society where police have the right to shoot civilians on a whim isn’t really a police state.
#2, rietpluim,
AHAHA
That’s awfully rich coming coming from a pro-Bernout goon, given that his entire platform was just a mirrored version of Trump’s: the complete absence of facts and statistics and full of empty rhetoric telling his followers what they want to hear. He, like Trump, had no plan how to make his incongruous make-believe “revolution” work and would’ve run the country into the ground because he has no fucking clue how national or global politics work, just like Trump.
I don’t know if this is avaikable worldwide, but:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/22/dont-bring-a-knife-to-a-gun-fight-and-dont-bring-facts-to-a-republican-national-convention
1. The main driver for Trump (and Bernie) is rising economic inequality.
The middle class has been disappearing since 1970.
2. As this happens (the GINA coefficient rises), societies become unstable. We are now an unstable society.
Until this is dealt with, we aren’t going anywhere.
3. To take one important example, the recovery from the Great Depression has been anemic. A lot of mainline economists think it is because of…economic inequality. The masses don’t have money to spend. This keeps Aggregate Demand down and the economy creeps along.
Trump is a symptom, not a cause. And needless to say, a guy who knows nothing and reads nothing while living in a tower with his name on it, isn’t going to fix anything.
Remember, ISIS et al crave a mindlessly belligerent US administration next year. And they happen to be really good at nasty provocations…
Also: 95° * 74° … When did Minnesota get Florida’s temps?
I read an interesting article by someone who went around speaking to people at the RNC about the state of their regions. When you asked people about the state of their region, they tended to wax enthusiastic. Unemployment was down, factories were hiring, people were getting along well, things were great. It was only when you asked them about the state of the country as a whole that the doom and gloom set in.
In other words, Republican voters, at least as represented at the RNC, seem to be placing an inordinate weight on the negative news coming through the media, rather than their own personal experiences. Reagan saw that happening too, in 1980, and figured people needed a big dose of optimism. HIllary could do that too, but it’s a tougher sell when she isn’t promising a radical departure from the policies that have gotten us here — even though those policies have largely worked.
CNN Commentator afterwards, noted that Obama cummuted the sentences of more convicted felons than the last 7 presidents combined!! Not including the fact that these commutations were for convictions of non-violent crimes, most being minor drug related offenses that were grossly over penalized. Weh asked by one of the other panelists how many of those commuted repeated crimes, the first only said, “I don’t know, it doesn’t matter, We have a president that gives the sense of releasing criminals back onto the street” (with a facial expression of “that’s a bad thing, right.”)
an earlier segment “fact checking” did note that many of Drump’s figure were outright false, many were misleading, a small few were actually Correct. One specific I saw was Drumph’s stats that “policemen killed have gone up over 50% this year over last year!!” If you look more closely at the actual quantities, the raw number did increase by the percentage Drumph alluded to (actually 59%) but the numbers are still quite small compared to the number of deaths cops perpetrated rather than being victims of. The annual death rate policemen over the past 10 years is 50/yr, last year was 59 deaths. The analysis did lack emphasizing the ease of distorting figures by only presenting ‘percentage increase’ without providing the raw figures.
Always investigate the actual quantities used to calculate the percentages.
To say “store A is twice as far away as Store B”, is inconsequential if the distance is 1 block (for A) vs 2 blocks (for B), but more significant if A=10miles vs B=20miles.
Documentation.
Bill Clinton had it right long ago.
It’s the economy stupid!!!
raven, I believe you mean Gini coefficient (named after Corrado Gini), not GINA.
*Also posted in the Political Madness thread*
AP fact check of Trump’s speech.
Slithey trove #9, AP’s analysis of the police statement.
How to stop the deliberate killing of police? Have them stop killing unarmed civilians. It would help.
1. PZ is right. It’s not impossible for Trump to get elected President.
He is polling close to Hillary. In a rational world, he would be around 20%, the level of Geocentrists.
2. Which means, the USA is over with for my remaining lifetime.
The Bush/Cheney Disaster set us back a generation.
The Trump Catastrophe will likely set us back another generation.
As a Boomer, I don’t have huge amounts of time left to hope the USA gets itself back together.
Two points. First, a grad school friend of mine observed eons ago that Americans don’t care about anything that doesn’t affect them directly, like, for example, the price of gasoline. In the 70’s nobody gave a rat’s ass about oil, the mid-East or even heard of OPEC. Then came the embargo and the price of gasoline doubled, tripled. There was nationwide panic in the streets. Neighbor fought neighbor for a gallon of gasoline. There was real fear, and enough concern that the national speed limit was lowered to 55mph. Think about it today. The price of gasoline is low and nobody is squawking. Raise it to $5/gallon and it would be, “Thanks, Obama” in a bad way.
Second, stagnant wages. Well, for the worker bees, but not for the management bees. When I started my career the difference between my salary and the CEO was 40-fold. By the time I retired it was 400-fold. Management was getting 20% increases and 150% bonuses while the worker bees were scraping along at 1-3% per year. It’s not the economy that’s doing that, it’s corporate governance. Management can and does get by with theft so long as they can convince the workers it’s providing nebulous “stockholder return.”
So, it’s only partly the “economy stupid,” but I’ll wager a larger driver of inequality is management greed.
What you say about management greed is true and I’ve experienced it first hand myself.
But you have cause and effect mixed up.
Management greed, economic elite greed….to economic inequality…..to sluggish economy due to low Aggregate Demand.
The sluggish economy doesn’t cause economic inequality. It is a product of…economic inequality.
Read the excerpt posted above from Wikipedia.
The add currently appearing at the top of this page (for me, at least) is an invitation to donate to the Trump campaign. Just saying.
Trump shows many of the characteristics of fascism, and his rise certainly parallels events in Germany around 1932. German conservatives thought they could control Hitler. He was commonly considered a buffoon, not serious, etc. One difference is that the NSDAP was really organized, and that may be a note of hope. The Trump “organization” seems quite incompetent. That oddly doesn’t seem to have hurt them much so far, but perhaps there is reason for hope.
So, will any of this convince the Bernistas to vote for Hillary?
Among the numerous hundreds of other things that need to be done to make sure this kind of mess never happens again, I think it is vital that we foster a culture that understands rhetoric and demagoguery much better than it currently does.
And I’m not just talking about the kind of rhetorical higher education that Renaissance humanists and Medieval scholastics and Roman statesmen and Greek poets and philosophers prescribed – though the reasons they held rhetoric in such high regard remain the same. I think this is something that high school English classes need to spend a lot more time on. Hell, even pre-school children’s educational programming should stress it prominently. “Be very suspicious of what the slick man on the telly is telling you” should be as much an everyday maxim of early years education as “don’t go off with strangers” or “look both ways before crossing the road”. It needs to be that
Because having political power is not enough to run a successful society – you have to learn how to use it appropriately and wisely. You need to know in what ways your vote and your influence are up for grabs. At the moment the only people who are routinely trained in and aware of the power of rhetoric are the political classes – they have the tools to manipulate and influence, the vast majority of the public are not equipped to resist them.
*needs to be that ubiquitous, I meant to say.
PZ:
Mine too. It’s worse than a nightmare. Anyone who still isn’t taking this seriously, read their platform, what they want to do:
https://prod-static-ngop-pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/media/documents/DRAFT_12_FINAL%5B1%5D-ben_1468872234.pdf
Colbert hit the nail on the head with this one.
Prologue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GFVKMTJUos
Actual Segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqOTxl3Bsbw
re 20:
yours is damn good, this follow-on is also quite worthwhile:
re 21:
sorry for that, intended to leave just the plain URL, not the actual video.
In northeastern PA there have been a large number of people who have switched their party affiliation from Dem. to Repub. and have voted overwhelmingly for Trump. I have been wondering why places like Luzerne county have switched and I believe part of it is because things like unemployment and crime are high when compared to the national averages. This is old coal country has been like this for years and isn’t likely to change regardless of who is president.
Cross posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread.
Listening to Trump’s speech last night made me so weary I could barely move. Wait, that might be depression.
Trump is not done with Cruz. You will remember that back in May Trump said,
Miami Herald link.
He continued to cast aspersions on Trump’s father this morning:
Vox link.
Trump uttered that drivel at an event in Ohio.
Trump thinks he can count on the “credibility” of the National Enquirer. This, my friends, is day #1 of Trump’s official campaign as the Republican nominee. He is no longer the presumptive nominee.
The facts:
Now, there are lots of things for which one can criticize Cruz’s father, but the assassination of JFK is not one of them.
If he follows his MO, a president Trump would most likely steal all the furniture in the White House, stuff the treasury in his pocket, run away, and declare victory.
Two side effects of a Trump presidency would be 1) nobody will take US presidency seriously again, and 2) US hegemony over the world will be permanently wrecked.
Of course we’ll all die in the process.
I hope the Democrats are taking Trump seriously as a threat. The rumors that Kaine will be the VP pick seems to suggest they are.
But polling numbers right now are useless. It’s the middle of summer. The majority of American voters aren’t paying close attention to anything election related right now. They will start paying attention after Labor Day, when the vacations are over and the kids are back in school and the yard signs start popping up and they realize the election is coming up. That’s when they start to pay attention and that’s when the wheels tend to come off.
Then the debates will happen, and while I’m the lukewarmest of Clinton voters, we’re talking about a woman who was First Lady, a US Senator, Secretary of State and had to debate Barack Obama, arguably one of the finest public speakers of his generation. I want to see her facing off against He, Trump in those debates so badly. He has nothing but slogans and authoritarian words. In a debate, with a neutral moderator and an audience that will not be adoring him and fellating his ego, he’s going to fall completely apart.
Even if his polling manages to survive, demographics are hard against him (every non-white population in the country, GLBTQA folks and their allies, young people overall and single women, the last of whom have been ever-more critical to presidential elections and who are now a record number of voters ), and the recent decisions about the voter ID laws in Wisconsin and Texas will cause trouble for Republicans suppressing votes. Though the DNC will need to get its head out of its ass and focus on GOTV efforts to make it all work, which is debatable.
Also how serious and effective the rightwing is at this year’s Massive Existential Threat of the Fall episode will matter. Daesh, ebola, Latin American immigration, all of them have become the greatest crisis of our times in the fall of each year and then faded into obscurity on the day after election day, and the media falls for this every single year. If they can find something genuinely scary, it will help Trump, although I still feel demographically he’s got no shot.
In reality the average income has been stagnant under both republican and democratic presidents. TPP and NAFTA are both democratic ideas.
So now we’ve got a guy who appeals to the worst in people and gives them a scapegoat. I suspect we’ve got one last chance. But I also expect the democratic party elites have learned nothing
Being able to tap into and guide herd fear is a powerful tool to use to clear the road to a dictatorship.
They couldn’t fit more flags behind Herr Trump? Do they hate America or something?
And now I am desperately left hoping that the UK’s disastrously stupid political decision will be the last disastrously stupid political decision we will see this year.
Come on America – you don’t want to join us at the table reserved for idiots who have decided to light their future on fire. Indeed, our idiocy primarily harmed us rather than others, but a Trump Presidency would represent an imminent threat to the entire world, so you would have achieved the nigh impossible and made a bigger mistake than Brexit in the same year as Brexit. You really don’t need to out do us in this.
That is true. The Democrats aren’t innocent here either.
1. Economic inequality slowed down a lot under Bill Clinton.
2. It increased a lot under George Bush. He took a budget surplus. And cut taxes. Twice and heavily biased towards the ultra-rich.
Hard to say. They certainly haven’t done much.
It is clear some of them have learned the lessons of Piketty, Krugman, Stiglitz, Schiller, etc.. Bernie sure did.
As to what to do to fix economic inequality? Oddly enough, there are a lot of ideas out there. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize winning economist has written books on this.
IMO, it won’t happen fast. You can’t fix a problem that has taken 46 years to happen, overnight.
I’ll add here that Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wallstreet are the best friends of the ultra rich oligarchies.
They just don’t know it yet.
1. At best, they end up on top of a literal heap as an unstable society turns into a smouldering wreck.
2. At worst, they end up riding a tumbrel to the guillotine. Or something similar.
In inequal societies, the oligarchies don’t have body guards. That simply won’t do.
They have private armies. And frequently spend much of their time…somewhere else. Like the USA where their co-citizens aren’t able to assassinate them.
Trump is never going to run the country. He will do what he has always done: leave the real work to others and take the credit for it himself.
I’m glad it only took 4 posts for our native anti-Social Justice troll to stop by to insult Sanders on a post that didn’t even mention him.
At least this time applehead managed to avoid saying anything sexist or homophobic, so hey, maybe they’re getting better.
1) It is utterly unforgivable that the DNC basically conceded this year to Clinton and did this best to run any non-Clinton candidate out of the race. We are, partially, in this mess because Clinton is a terrible, terrible, terrible candidate and any other year she would be losing badly.
Before anybody asks, there’s an 80% chance I will vote for Clinton; I only will not vote for her if 538 gives here a 99+% chance of winning the state I’m in. I will drunk (literal) to do it. But it’s a terrible action. I hate having to make it.
2) In the long term the best defense against Trumpism is to limit the power of the state. Trump is infinity more dangerous because Obama (and Bush) have withered the checks on raw naked state power and I would be less concerned about Trump if Obama didn’t grab the power to assassinate American Citizens at will.
3) We have to seriously think about making our system less Democratic. Senators should go back to being elected by the states, the primary process should be more isolated from popular will Judges should not have to face retention or election votes, etc.
We should also serious consider, somehow, limiting the vote to those who have a basic understanding public policy, economics and political philosophy. The average voter is a moron. I (and everybody else) have the right to not be interfered with by people who don’t know their ass from their elbow in terms of making a coherent ideology
Mike Smith @ 35;
I can think of few things more dangerous than adding ideological qualifications as a means of limiting political enfranchisement – that way lies the collapse of representative democracy and the misbegotten tyranny-in-waiting of a technocracy.
Leaving aside its fundamentally undemocratic, classist and elitist nature, once you set the precedent that such ideological restrictions on voting rights are acceptable then you have no control over what form those restrictions might actually take. Perhaps you could wind up with ideological tests… for ‘proper patriotic spirit’. Maybe ideological tests could metastasize into one of the few things I can think of that would be unambiguously even worse – religious tests. What you suggest wouldn’t prevent future Trumps getting into power; it would simply make it impossible to get rid of one after they do.
Trump – and the many, many other figures like him – are doing all they can to destroy America and the world at large and get rich off the carcass. Undermining the democratic process in the fashion you describe would serve to do nothing so much as putting a blade in their hands and pressing it to our collective throats, both those of American citizens and others all over the world directly affected by what happens in the US, still the most powerful nation on Earth.
I my opinion you should think very carefully indeed before conspiring in your own oppression and that of countless others.
@Gregory
I’m not talking about tests for ideological agreement, or worse yet some sort of litmus test for moral thinking. Such a thing is extremely dangerous for the reason you cited. I’m thinking more like a test that tests basic things like that there are 3 branches of the federal gov’t, that appropriation bills have to formally introduced in the house, that foreign treaties. And for coherence, such things like if you want to lower taxes you must either A) decrease gov’t spending, B) a budget deficit.
I’m being oppressed now. I’m being oppressed by 80 million or so American voters who are grossly incompetent. We know that people vote based on the weather. only 10% of voters have a coherent ideology. Millions and millions of people are being damaged because our electorate isn’t guided by the moral thinking.
@35, Mike Smith
Personally (though I’m not even at the level of armchair political scientist) I would think we could actually make our countries more democratic, and obviate the need to actually limit who can participate, with a system I’ve dreamed up.
It involves everyone being allowed to choose (not vote for) a person who then votes on their behalf. Very similar to proportional representation because this voter then has a voting power equal to the number of citizens who have chosen them. It could be the case that someone filling that role would be legally required to have a certain education.
Personally, I favor thousands of such decision makers, enough for everyone to meet and talk to them on a somewhat regular basis.
It’s a kind of division of labor. And I think it would be much more responsive to the people than voting between two or three options and writing letters to so and so.
Or, of course, I also favor making the general population much smarter etc. that could work too.
The decline in violent crime appears to follow the disappearance of tetraethyllead as a gasoline additive. Even that bastion of conservatism, Forbes Magazine, acknowledges that fact. And the Forbes’s author acknowledged the Mother Jones series of articles changing their mind.
Mike Smith, sounding like a troll:
Why don’t you and your attitude take a long walk off a short pier. That is not a valid argument, just a selfish one. Run for your school board and, if elected, promote critical thinking. All this is required.
Does Vivec still think that Trump is no more dangerous than your run of the mill Republican?
I don’t know, I think it’s fair to at least have a discussion about other political philosophies. I happen to like Democracy, but accepting it as the best a priori seems a little silly. If it’s the best, such considerations would only serve to reveal just how great it is, and if it’s not, at least we know where its failures our.
first read this: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/08/30/the-unpolitical-animal
(source: for previous claims) (also moral thinking should be critical thinking in the above)
The proposal is undemocratic (if democratic is understood as simple majoritarianism) to the same extent that an independent judicial branch is. That is to say it is a check on the tyranny of the majority, specifically it is intended to weed out grossly incompetent voters. I should not be subjected to rule by who don’t understand the laws of supply and demand. I should not be subjected to people voting out of their (perceived) self-interest. Yet I largely am subjected to voters that fits that description. If we already don’t allow pure representative democracy, this is just one more guard needed. As an unpopular minority, the convention goers freak me out more than Trump, himself does. If the majority in this country had its way (probably) I could still be sent to jail given who I am.
There’s ways of guarding against the encroachment of the elite from stripping voter rights unjustly. The two most obvious ones is to retain universal enfranchisement for all constitutional matters. And second make the test, however it is devised, every election. As a matter of constitutional law, make it so that a person can always retake the test, so a failure doesn’t permanently strip voting rights away.
We don’t allow people to drive a car without first passing a written test and a practical test. This is because unsafe drivers get people killed.
Incompetent voters, because of who they elect, get people killed, hurt and damaged. I don’t see the moral difference; At least not one of kind because given how important voting is that the test should be more straight forward and it makes sense that a test is needed.
If you don’t know that there are 3 branches of gov’t, and what their respective roles are you are immoral if you vote. It’s getting to point where such incompetent voters should be prevented from voting.
That’s a disingenuous question.
I think that a lot of what Trump proposes is blatantly unconstitutional and would almost certainly get brought down by the judiciary soon enough. I think that his stance on healthcare is awful – but so is every other conservative’s. I think his approach to foreign policy is simultaneously too weak and too hawkish, but we have people in both parties with equally disastrous policies.
So, in terms of “what would he be able to do if he did become president”, no, I don’t think he’s substantially more dangerous than any other conservative. Most of his policies are either impossible to implement, or no worse than his fellow conservatives.
In terms of his demagoguery and ability to whip up vast crowds of racists into violence, I absolutely do think he’s more dangerous.
Mike Smith @ 35:
Wait…what?!? You do realize that would mean more Republican Senators? Because state districts are Gerrymandered, meaning Republicans have control of a lot of state houses and senates, meaning they would pick the US Senators.
Based on that previous comment, I’m sorry, but I’m currently judging you as no better than average yourself.
Gregory @ 36 also makes some good points. I don’t think you’ve really thought through the consequences of your proposals.
Also, no, I’m not going to retread that entire thread, because anything of value that could have been said on that topic already was.
Also, odd to have singled me out when multiple other people in this thread hold the same position as me, but that’s none of my business.
Cross posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread.
Trump did not mention climate change during his speech, but he did mention a related issue: energy policy. In doing so, he presented “facts” that were not “facts,” and out-of-context facts that were completely misleading.
Slate link to article by Ben Adler
Read more: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/05/08/discuss-moments-of-political-madness-4/#ixzz4FArkrQQF
Mike Smith @ 37;
Educational achievement or political awareness tests are scarcely less dangerous – the moment you cast aside the principle of universal suffrage for everyone who is considered of age to vote (I think sixteen or fourteen would actually be a fairer age than eighteen in this regard, but that is another issue), then you open the door for a fatal undermining of the democratic system. Take educational tests – won’t they neatly serve to disenfranchise the least educated, who are also likely to be the poorest and most socially disadvantaged? How is that anything other than a dangerously irresponsible recipe for worsening social inequality and the further weakening of any prospect for social mobility? It would cast entire segments of society onto the scarp heap of total political irrelevancy, even more so than society already does, leaving them with no voice in the systems that govern their lives – second class citizens based principally upon an accident of birth. Grinding the already marginalized further underfoot is not a recipe for improving an already unjust society.
And then there is the point that the goalposts can still be moved by a motivated would be tyrant – what if sufficient understanding of politics to vote is defined as advanced knowledge of more obscure right wing tracts? The kind of thing that most progressive might not be all that familiar with? Then you are hoist with your own petard well and truly, aren’t you?
As Nerd of Redhead observes, that is an issue that can and should be addressed by better educational policy, not by undermining the functioning of democracy and creating just another politically unassailable, wholly unaccountable elite. There are better, more just and reasonable ways of going about this than denying people the vote because you think they are so inferior they don’t deserve to have any say in their lives – that way lies actual, good old fashioned oppression of the concentration camp and death squad variety, not of the ‘other people are stupid, so I don’t get my way and its just so unfair‘ variety.
I didn’t finish a thought above: I meant to say foreign treaties have to be ratified in the senate.
@Brian.
Umm maybe? I’m not following your system. Something has to change.
@Nerd
First of all I fail to see how I am acting selfishly. I voluntarily restrict who I vote for all the time because of the issues I am talking about. For example, I have never, and will never, for any judge as 1) I almost never know anything about the candidates, 2) I’m not a lawyer and as such my views are less competent, and 3) the judicial branch should not be held to the popular will.
Second, if we take democracy to mean majoritarianism (which is how I’ve been using the term), it is not given a priori that democracy is a good thing. Indeed there is plenty of reason to think that it isn’t. Case in point: there almost certainly exist large majorities in bible belt states that wish to ban abortion completely. But in that case it is the majority violating the rights of the minority.
I’m in favor of democracy insofar as it produces reasonable policy. (By reasonable policy I DO NOT mean policy I agree with, I mean policy that can be justified from a certain consensus position.) Given how voting plays out in the real world this probably means less direct control to voters is needed and/or a smaller electorate. I’m not anti-democratic; voting has it is proper place.
Third, education would be greatly helpful but it is not sufficient. There are many, many people who do not care about politics and there are valid conceptions of the good (life) that rejects political involvement. Fostering a situation on such people where they have to care and have to think deeply about political structures robs them of that liberty.
I wish I could spend all my time watching/reading/writing about baseball and the Chicago Cubs. I can’t do that however, because as matter of self-defense I have to keep the Republicans at bay and unfortunately the US gov’t is so powerful I can’t forsake the duty to make sure a person as awful as Trump doesn’t get into power. But I’ve been compelled, against my will, to live in a situation where I have to care about who holds the reigns of power because the state is very, very powerful.
I fucking hate politics. I hate that I have to care.
Take the ICH/FDA (FDA implements the ICH guidelines in the USA) guidelines.
If you read the ICH guidelines without any context, they do sound burdensome. But, if your company adapts any quality system like 6-sigma, the ICH guidelines essentially contain the same components, along with the concept of continuous improvement. So, your bottom line begins to notice drops in cost of manufacturing and testing, as that continuous improvement kicks in, along with improvement in product quality. So, you can complain to the Drumpf’s of the world that the imposed quality systems increase your cost, but you never mention the savings, as this is your profit.
@cartomancer #17
I think we’d do much better if we learned extensively about cognitive biases and pitfalls since childhood.
We’d be a bit more humble about our understanding of the world, and a bit more aware of what we don’t know, and maybe we’d be a bit more aware of how we can fall to manipulation.
I’m thinking more like a test that tests basic things like that there are 3 branches of the federal gov’t, that appropriation bills have to formally introduced in the house, that foreign treaties.
Given the history of how such tests have been used in the past, I can’t think of a way to empower racists ability to prevent minorities from voting more than instituting such a system would.
The good news is that Trump himself is not interested in doing any of the actual work of being president as he is totally ignorant. The bad news it that the actual job is going to be done by his VP, Mike Pence.
This is the difference between YOU and the general public, who also has the right to vote as THEY see fit.
Rights in the Constitution, and therefore protected unless amended.
No, you are anti-democratic. Anything that prevents ALL from voting is anti-democratic. You don’t like other peoples choices. Neither do I. But I can’t prevent them from exercising their right to vote, which is what any test about anything does. Example of a literacy test which finally caused Congress, upheld by SCOTUS to ban them. This was done as “literacy tests” could only be passed by people with pale skin coloration.
Try barking up another tree. Yours is empty of everything but your distrust of your fellow citizens.
re Mike Smith:
your complaints about our particular democracy has some merits, but I still think there is some value in Churchill’s sarcastic comment: –“(Hous of Commons, 11 November 1947)—but he was quoting an unknown predecessor”
not just a flash-in-the-pan comment, it has caught on because it expressions a very common opinion about democracy while expressing the positive value of the system.
While, ideally, voting for a third party one agrees with, has some value; recognize how to work with the system you’re presented with. Reducing the count of one candidate and giving it to a candidate with a minuscule voter count is much less effective that giving it to the strong contender.
F.O., #50
I’m not entirely sure what you’re suggesting above and beyond what I suggested. I would have thought all that comes under a familiarity with rhetoric and the persuasive arts.
Here’s a thought experiment.
There is an unoccupied trolley rolling down a track on a hill. If it continues on its present course, it will roll over and crush an entire preschool class, the class’ younger siblings, and several baskets of kittens. It can be diverted onto a side track by pulling a lever, which the reader happens to be standing near. The side track is quite short and if the trolley is diverted onto it, the trolley is likely to get a bit banged up in the process of stopping, will probably take some effort to get back on the tracks and moving, and might send some gravel flying that might cause some minor injuries. However, two hands are required to operate the lever, which mean the reader, in order to divert the trolley and save the lives of those children and kittens, will have to stop masturbating over how much purer and better they are than anyone else for at least a few seconds.
You see the dilemma?
Our driving testing procedure is hilariously bad at keeping incompetent drivers off the roads, as I was pointedly reminded about every five seconds for several hours earlier today. What makes you think this kind of test will be any better?
While I like the idea of addressing the non-racist concerns of Republican voters in theory, the possibility that it might, in actuality, look entirely like moving more to the right scares me a bit as it might mean alienating progressive voters whose first concern isn’t SCOTUS.
As for the notion floated above that voting be restricted based on some kind of intelligence test – it raises an important issue, but it’s not the answer. The issue is that the electorate must be educated, informed and capable enough to make good decisions.
I agree that we would be better off not trusting our future to ignorant people who cannot navigate the web of rhetoric and demagoguery which interested parties weave to snare them. The solution to that is to stop people being so ignorant.
Which is substantially about education, but it’s also about culture. A healthy, informed democracy needs a culture that values inquiry and analysis, fosters suspicion of trite platitudes and easy answers and encourages people to engage with one another and take other people’s views into account. It needs more than just familiarity with how the voting procedures and legislative procedures work.
For all their faults, the Classical Athenians knew this well. A democratic polity requires a democratic culture. This is why Athenian theatre reached such heights of excellence in the fifth century BC – the theatre was the people’s education in the requirements and pitfalls of democratic life. Athenian popular culture encouraged citizens to ponder deep questions of communal responsibility, to recognise the easy descent from strong government into tyranny and to meditate on decisions made in haste and regretted at leisure. Athenian Old Comedy, meanwhile, lampooned and satirised up and coming demagogues and tried to puncture their pretensions and pomposity. The Athenians were never natural democrats of course – the attempt to get them out of thinking like clannish tribal folk and into thinking like citizens in control of the Ship of State had to be so sustained because it was initially so alien to traditional Greek sensibilities. But they knew full well that such an attempt had to be made.
I do not think that many modern states take this as seriously as they ought to. Especially not highly capitalistic states where the media is in private hands and there is nobody in a central position who can influence the culture in that direction. When I look at the Trumpish grotesqueries that have been unleashed in America this week I do not see a culture that values what a democratic culture needs to – I see quite the opposite in fact. I see blind trust in leaders vaunted as a virtue, critical thought despised and tribalistic, divisive mentalities bolstered. This is very dangerous.
@57, Azkyroth
Wait, I’m trying to follow your logic. Are you saying we can do away with driving tests? That having them isn’t an improvement over not having them? Or just that they don’t solve everything perfectly, they only help a bit, therefore we don’t need them at all?
@Nerd
1. Should resident aliens (documented) be allowed to vote in US elections?
2. Damn right I distrust my fellow citizens. A quarter of them are about to vote for a quasi-fascist, reality TV star why on earth would I trust them? Humans are self-centered vicious machines that can only ever (by nature) act in perceived self interest. Why should I expect anything more? Look at the evidence before your eyes. Take people as they are.
I am gonna have longer post tomorrow addressing everything else. I just wanted to get those points out first.
….I’m saying that the situation with driving tests vs. people driving stupidly does not support Mike Smith’s contention that a voting test would solve the problem of people voting stupidly. I’ve made no further recommendations regarding driving tests themselves.
@57
That’s an argument to make driving tests better. It’s not an argument to not test voters for basic knowledge and reasoning skills.
Clearly we shouldn’t test anyone and let everyone drive because bad drivers can through!!!
@63
That only follows if driving test are completely ineffective. They are clearly not.
@62, Azkyroth
I’m still not sure I really understand your position.
Sure, it wouldn’t 100% solve it. It might not even 40% solve it. But wouldn’t it help? (And don’t you think improvement is what matters, not perfection?)
Or do you think that there would be no overall improvement in vote quality?
Thanks.
@cartomancer: The way I see it, we do most of the manipulation by ourselves.
While understanding how others can exploit our weaknesses is important, in the end it is based on how we are prone to deceiving ourselves; for example, how we are more likely to believe something that confirms our biases and discard something that goes against them, or how we easily overestimate our competence in specific fields, or how we tend to accept easy explanations over complex ones.
I think the focus should not be on malicious/stupid others, but on our well-intentioned selves.
raven @31:
Look at this graphic and tell us again how economic inequality slowed down a lot under Bill Clinton (1993-2001).
Asshole leading question, dismissed as fuckwittery and not relevant. Stop being an asshole.
You don’t have to TRUST them, but you do have to respect the fact that they bothered to vote. You know who doesn’t bother to vote? Progressives….Since they don’t vote, I don’t trust them, or care to listen to their complaints.
@nerd
This is why I generally ignore you. You are extremely bad at behaving in good faith.
You CLEARLY claimed up thread that “anything that prevents ALL from voting is antidemocratic.” And in the context implication is this is a bad thing.
Now either you are using anything and all in ways that don’t actually mean anything and all, in which case specify what you mean or you believe restricting the franchise to citizens is undemocratic. Which is it?
I’m not asking a leading question because one doesn’t have to agree to restrict voting rights to citizens. Indeed given the nature if immigration today it might make more sense to grant the franchise based on residency not citizenship. And for the record some countries do use residency as a requirement. There is an on going argument about Canadian voting rights of Canadians living aboard for example.
You only dislike the question because it demonstrates that voting rights can restricted justly. Its one of several ways we don’t gave universal suffrage in thus country, age being the other obvious one.
Nope, not at all. There is a strong legality that only those who are citizens, both natural and naturalized, can vote. Why are you being so obtuse?
Bad example, Canadian Citizens, not just any foreigner.
Nope, it only says you are an asshole, being an asshole, who want to suppress those who don’t vote in YOUR approved fashion. That is undemocratic, and UnAmerican.
@nerd
I’m aware what the law is. I don’t have problem with restricting the franchise to citizens. But I’m not the new who claimed, again, “anything prevents ALL from voting is antidemocratic”. You are now back peddling to ALL citizens. Because the implication that it is jus ground to restrict the franchise.
I am not being obtuse, on what grounds are you (or the law) denying resident alien the vote? They are as effected by American law as Citizens are (more so if an American is living aboard). So the criteria for being granted the Vote is what? It is not everyone already, as aliens and children can not vote.
Second the Canada case is imperfect analog to my question but it is still a case in which voting rights are being terminated. So let’s flip the question, should Americans living aboard have their voting rights restricted? A yes answer here does not seem implausible.
And you have utterly misunderstood what I am saying. I am not saying people need to vote the way I do to be competent. Indeed there are numerous defendable ideologies that exist. I’m saying the vote should be restricted to a people you have done the work to have a coherent ideology that, more or less, aligns with reality.
I am not a libertarian and I think Robert Nozick (the guy, hard core right libertarian) is dead wrong for a lot of reasons. However, Nozick if he was alive today should be allowed to vote because he more than ample demonstrated political competence.
It’s not about having an electorate that agrees me. It’s about having an electorate that understands that “govt spending on welfare” and “govt spending to help the poor” are the same thing. It’s about not having an electorate that votes on the weather or earthquakes. Or having an electorate that understand basic economics, like for every dollar you spend on x that is one less dollar to spend on y. Or an electorate that understands checks and balances, can explain basic concepts like judicial review or separation of powers.
The average voter is a moron.
It is an insult to ignorant people to call the average voter ignorant. They are worse than ignorant; they are influenced by color schemes and ballot layout. They are blissfully unaware that they suck at reasoning and knowing their ass from theur elbow.
My life is greatly damaged because grossly incompetent voters have forced Republicans and Democrats on me. It’s a human right to not be subjected to incompetent rule. It’s basically arbitrary and cruel otherwise.
We either have to restrict the vote or restrict what is subjected to a vote because no one has the fucking right to ruin my life by being a moron.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls wrote:
That is one nasty test, especially with the time limit of ten minutes. Most questions have multiple possible answers (I’m certain only one is considered correct), most are highly subjective, some are vague, some are impossible, others are trick questions (like the “Paris in the the spring” nonsense) that does not test literacy, and none of it would be easy to complete in ten minutes (which is only twenty seconds per question).
Brian Pansky wrote:
History shows that such a test would only be used to entrench those already in power. It would not be terribly hard to craft a test that either Republicans or Democrats (or your favorite religion, race, sports preference, etc) can more easily pass than the other. Look at the test Nerd posted, and tell me if you think that this test improved the quality of voters.
Democracy means that the people governs itself. And with people is meant ALL people, including the smart and the stupid ones. That’s how it works; there is no other way, no matter how much we’d like to now and then.
Spoken like a true rethug, who want to prevent those who don’t vote like him from voting. You are advocating their policies for their reasons. You sound stupid because of that.
Given the choice between being a democracy where everybody votes, or being a pretend democracy where you must vote a certain way in order to be able to vote, it is a no-brainer. Everybody can vote.
Way to prove you are an average voter.
Yeah, why vote? Mike Smith can decide for all of us who is and who isn’t competent! Our votes are redundant!
Now we’re at it, why not make him supreme ruler and dictator for life?
@Nerd
Please either read what I write in its entirety or stop responding to me or kindly GI to hell.
I took pains to provide an example in which I think a person could vote morally despite fundamentally disagreement between us.
Here’s a couple of more Molly Susan Okin, Ed Brayton, Obama, David French, Marcotte (probably), Rachel Maddow. I have great disagreements with all those people and yet I’m confident that they are competent voters.
@riet
I voluntarily restrict my vote all the time because I am not competent to make the decision. Case in point: in the primary I only voted for one local race as it was the only one I had time to research. I skipped over the rest because I didn’t know any of the rest.
If a test was ever devised and I couldn’t pass it, my voting rights ought to be terminated.
This isn’t about my views being dominant, it is about weeding out people who vote for the challengers because there was a earthquake. We know shut like that happens.
The point being: what competence does one need to exercise their basic rights?
Answer: none. That’s why they’re called “basic rights”, bitches.
Mike@77: If the goal is “reduce to a minimum the proportion of ignorant voters”, then the far superior solution is “concentrate on educating voters to remove their ignorance”?
There’s a few ways this could be done, if there were a will to do so. A bipartisan non-profit could run free night school classes, or something. Attendance at them would not be mandatory, but I would imagine a lot of the so-called ignorant voters would welcome the chance to cure themselves of this ignorance, especially if it could be done via something like an online University course. (There are definitely practical concerns – how do you stop a pro-Republican or pro-Democrat organisation giving a biased view of these things? – but I imagine these are controllable, if not solvable, problems).
Restricting voting privileges is a very dangerous position to stake out; even if done from the noblest of intentions, it can easily be subverted. There’s a fair argument in fact for the exact opposite – compulsory voting. If everyone has to vote, and if the majority of the population are progressive, then the whole “how do you get these lazy people to vote against Trump?” problem becomes a non-issue.