Current Affairs – US

This paper, which is the results of a research project into the behaviors of the members of a 1950’s “end of days” cult, is a seminal piece of documentation of the mindset of cult followers, and how they react to events and information that shows that their leaders are promulgating bullshit.
The tendency, known as “doubling down”, when authoritarian leaders are informed that they are talking nonsense is a very familiar one in today’s political landscape. Once people become emotionally invested in a worldview that they believe forms part of their core identity, any information that contradicts that worldview is likely to be discarded or rationalized away as unimportant or irrelevant.
The current behavior of many Donald Trump supporters fits this behavior pattern. Many of them regard Trump as a savior, the man who will Sort The Mess Out, turn the political world upside down and restore America to greatness (whether or not America is still great is not up for discussion). When people see self-proclaimed leaders as a savior, whether they realize it or not, they just became cult followers.
Cult followers, like conspiracy theory adherents, are pretty much immune to reason or logical arguments. I decline the opportunity for interaction with them for those reasons. It strains my patience way too much.

Over the last 15 years, the difference between events in the real world and events as satirized in The Onion has progressively narrowed. Onion stories can (and sometimes are) mistaken for reality by the desperate or gullible.
However, Donald Trump has now moved to a unique new level in the pantheon of public figures.
As of today, after perusing news and emerging events on the candidacy of Donald Trump, I have concluded that Donald Trump is the first public figure who is, for want of a better phrase, non-Onionable. No matter what the Onion might invent as a satirical or parodic fiction of events in Donald Trump’s life, they will never be able to come close to the sheer horrifying train-wreck of his revealed life and candidacy.

Right now we are deep into election season, and many people have already developed a very firm position on a number of issues, including who they intend to vote for in the election, and they are engaging in all manner of arguments, distribution and (in some cases) dissemination of propaganda as they seek to validate their choices, seek affirmation from others, and maybe persuade other people of their great wisdom. (Although I concluded a long time ago that the number of people who change their opinion on a significant issue because of some revelation via social media is so small as to be un-measurable).
One easy way in which I can distinguish people who argue and discuss their positions in good faith from those who are unable or unwilling to do so is their reaction when somebody shows them that an assertion or argument is incorrect.
When challenged on aspects of their worldview and opinions, many people are not exactly honest in their responses if (for example) somebody informs them that some aspect of that worldview is defective or incorrect. People who have read any books by George Lakoff will know all about this behavior pathology.
I have seen a whole pile of sneaky, deceptive and deceitful claims rolling across my wall this election cycle already. I know that the people publishing these claims are fundamentally intelligent, so I have to either extend the principle of charity and conclude that they keep making mistakes, or conclude that their worldview has nudged them in the direction of arguments and communications that are not totally open and honest good-faith arguments, as they seek to defend their choices and thinking.
One thing that I found out a long time ago however, is that people who argue in good faith are far more likely to accept their error and move on if somebody attempts to correct them. They may put up a rearguard action, but usually they accept it.
Those incapable or unwilling to argue and discuss in good faith tend to react in a number of predictable ways:

1. Not responding at all
2. Changing the subject or moving the goalposts
3. Pretending to have not read or understood the correction
4. Denying that they ever made the initial claim or argument, or claiming that it was misunderstood
5. Admitting to the error but then claiming in the same response that it does not matter because (insert new claim here)
6. Dismissing the correction with “I don’t care because I’m right anyway”
7. Engaging in ad hominems or insults

I find (1) indicative of embarrassment – 5 brownie points
(2) is weaselling – 10
(3) is being obtuse – 10
(4) is deceit – 50
(5) is a variant of 2 – 10
(6) is doubling down or diverting – 30
(7) is being a jerk – 50

No. I am joking, I am not really running a scorecard. However, since (4) and (7) tend to piss me off, anybody trying those this election season may well end up on my Hide list for the duration. Most of time, these defective and deficient rhetorical devices, like the use of numerous logical fallacies, tend to mostly amuse me.

There is so much material out there…

1. Irony meter blowout

"I consider myself in a certain way to be a blue collar worker." – Trump, Oct. 10, 2016. pic.twitter.com/kXH9SZ6NAT

— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) October 11, 2016

2. Bullshit detector
Whenever I see a politician blathering with a graphic saying “The Truth” on the screen, I get very very ready to activate my Bullshit detector. In the case of Pat McCrory, I would activate it immediately, given his track record of spouting total twaddle since his party decided that it would be a Really Good Idea to enact a wackadoodle piece of legislation against those weirdo trans bathroom invaders. McCrory and the GOP are in severe danger of losing the governorship of North Carolina. Shucks Pat, paybacks are bad aren’t they?

McCrory begs anti-LGBT pastors to save his candidacy: 'Speak out in North Carolina' https://t.co/89bTYQ0cJO

— Daily Kos (@dailykos) October 11, 2016

Over the years, I have been accused on more than one occasion of being an elitist.
One of the more amusing incidents was in 2004 when I was in a discussion on a discussion forum somewhere and I was called out as an elitist. I remarked that I was OK with that, but disappointed because the person making the comment had forgotten to prefix it with “latte-sipping”. I soon found out that my erstwhile opponent was totally irony-challenged, as he claimed to not understand my comment. In this view, I was being obtuse.
Those of you who have talked to me about politics know that I consider myself unelectable to any political office under any sort of current Western democratic process, especially in my adopted home in the USA.
I talk funny.
I use long sentences, and worse still, I tend to use Big Words.
I refuse to dissemble or pander.
I have a disturbing tendency to call bullshit out as bullshit.
I am intolerant of poor arguments.
How many strikes is that?
One of the truest but also sobering comments I read online recently was one from a statistician on a statistics forum. He reminded us “remember, by definition 50% of the population is of below-average intelligence”.
I am always reminded of this during every election season. Sometimes it is when I find myself watching or reading a prospective voter saying something that is some combination of poorly-argued, factually challenged or simply mind-bogglingly stupid.
And sometimes it is when I find myself listening to or reading a politician uttering something that is a combination of incorrect, stupid, poorly argued, or just plain weird.
In the case of Louis Gohmert, all of the above epithets apply.
The depressing reality about having to listen to Gohmert’s bloviations is not that that he talks like a complete idiot (which he is probably not, by the way). It is that he gets re-elected very 2 years in a landslide. Clearly, his verbal nonsense is appealing to a large number of people.
That, in a nutshell, is why my confidence and trust in electorates is limited.

Life is not a collection of binary actions and decisions. As all of us should know, life is messy, people are complex and illogical in their behaviors, and (contrary to the song that Donald Trump keeps playing at his rallies) you can’t always get what you want.
However, you wouldn’t know any of that if you read many of the postings that wend their way across my Facebook.
According to many of these postings, complex issues in life do have clear binary answers. There is a right answer, that the poster has of course signed on to. Then there is a wrong answer, which Other People have adopted.
Then it gets interesting and silly. It also appears that the Other People are not only wrong, but they are lesser individuals on multiple levels because they have a different worldview.
They can be many things, but smart and nice is not one of them. They apparently occupy some position in the world that makes them inferior.
They are unpatriotic. (The online world is full of self-proclaimed experts on who is a “Real American” these days)
They are stupid, moronic, or gullible.
They are retarded, perverted.
They are enablers of terrorism, atheism, homosexuality, perversion, communism, marxism, umpteen other isms

It seems to me that most of the people issuing these streams of denunciation are doing so because they cannot, on any emotional or logical level, handle and process dissent.
In a normal healthy social grouping or society, dissent is seen as useful. Dissenters often ask awkward questions that force people out of collective groupthink modes of operation. Dissenters have driven many of the great advances in human thinking and worldviews.
In unhealthy societies and groups where conformity is valued above independent thought, dissent is seen, incorrectly, as a form of disloyalty, subversive and therefore unacceptable. Cults, immature political movements, revolutionary groups, insecure businesses, narcissistic people and dysfunctional families all can adopt these attitudes.
In totalitarian dictatorships, the state takes over the job of policing obeisance and conformity. Dissenters are demonized, persecuted, and in many points in history, tortured and murdered, often with the full endorsement of the government.

Unfortunately, in many societal situations in the modern USA, I am constantly discovering individuals and groups who practice the policy of attempting to eliminate dissent, either by the expedient of tuning it out, or demanding that dissenters shut up or go away. They adopt the position that unless you openly profess unconditional fealty and credulous obeisance to a group or body in society, that you are opposed to that group.
There’s no polite way to summarize this. It’s utterly, moronically illogical, and has no seriousness or credibility. The people making these demands are, perhaps without realizing it, adopting the worst behavioral characteristics of totalitarian and cult leaders and supporters.
In the modern USA, there are numerous groups, event and symbols that many people believe have a right to enjoy perpetual, uncritical support. Provision of that uncritical support is seen by many people as some sort of litmus test of a person’s worth. The police, the military, the US flag, and and the National Anthem are all seen by many people as somehow above criticism and requiring uncritical fealty at all times.
There is a reason why the Bible included an injunction against idolatry. Idolatry is the worship of symbols, not people or processes. A flag is not a country, and an image is not a person. Students of history well know that totalitarian societies and dictatorships place great emphasis on the role of symbols in obtaining and maintaining uncritical fealty to the aims of the dictatorship. The film of Nazi rallies is chock-full of symbols of all types. Communist countries in Eastern Europe were full of air-brushed images of leaders displayed in public places.
In a healthy society that values individual freedom higher than unthinking group cohesion, no group or organization has a right to expect uncritical obeisance. Implementing that rule will ensure that the organization in question will, over time, slowly morph to behave in a thoroughly reprehensible way, since there is no possibility of it being asked awkward questions like “why are you behaving like a bunch of out of control assholes?”, and many humans, sadly, do what they can get away with, not what is right. World history shows this very clearly.
So, when I read postings that, shorn of flim-flam, say things like “you’re either 100% for this group or you are hostile to them and you need to shut up”, my considered reaction is to call bullshit on that line of reasoning. You can be married to somebody but see their faults, and discuss them with your partner. That’s not disloyalty, it’s smart and empathetic.
If your reaction to politely expressed dissent is to tell the dissenter to either shut up or go away, or to start down the road of juvenile ad hominem insults, you have the problem, not the dissenter, and I am going to call you on it.

At election season, my political postings tend to write themselves.
Earlier today I pointed out to a commentator on Facebook that being pointedly rude about a person from the opposing party that he had probably never met was not exactly useful.
So then I found this on Twitter this evening. I do have some suspicion that the guy is a plant. Not many Trump supporters that I have seen sport what seems to be a fake suntan like this guy, who looks to be fairly fit. However, the message speaks for itself (unfortunately).

I'm a one-issue voter, and that issue is seeing this guy cry in November pic.twitter.com/E38aoGC1rJ

— Shasta McNasty (@ItsTonyNow) October 11, 2016

Arrogant.
Unbelievably arrogant.
Back in the 2012 electoral cycle, I got involved in what diplomats call a “full and frank exchange” of views over the merits of Barack Obama as the candidate for POTUS. The individual in question, who removed himself from my Facebook a long time ago, was engaging in juvenile put-downs (along the lines of “Obama is a huckster in a $1500 suit”). When I pointed out that this was juvenile. he accused me of “unbelievable arrogance”, and then started attempting to bully me by saying to his friends “I am copying this to my friends so they can say what they think of this”.
A couple of times, other commenters have accused me of being “arrogant” on Facebook.
So..what did I make of this?
Well, in the first instance that I documented, I had been a bit pointed in some of my comments to him, so I apologized. I wished I had not, but I was trying to be nice to a person who seemed to be terribly angry online. It didn’t exactly do much good, he never apologized for being juvenile in his comments, and he dropped me off Facebook anyway.
My general view of being accused of being “arrogant” is simple. If you’re accusing somebody of being arrogant, you’re not critiquing substance. You are fixating on style.
In the internet world, there is a term for this. It’s called tone trolling. The perpetual demands for “civility”, “respect” and “politeness” are variants of the same underlying tone-trolling reaction.
Now, at this point I have to point out that I am a proponent of polite discussion and argument. It is possible to disagree without being disagreeable, a fact that a lot of online commentators either ignore, or did not understand in the first place. As my Dad used to say, good manners cost nothing.
But holding argument hostage to communication style is a cop-out. From time to time I read people saying things like “I’m not discussing this until you are more respectful”. When I then examine the interaction, it becomes clear that what they are really saying is that they simply want whoever it is they are disagreeing with to either shut up and go away, or to agree with them. In other words, they cannot handle dissent and disagreement in a non-emotional fashion. Allegations of “arrogance” often originate from people with those sensitivities. They simply do not want to process contrary opinions, views or evidence. However, they know that to admit that is the equivalent of admitting “my mind is welded shut” which they know makes then sound…well, not very constructive. So they dress it up in some sort of style-related complaint instead.
So, my response to anybody who accuses me of being “arrogant” this election cycle will be a two-part one:

1. You are complaining about perceived style, not substance. Why don’t you talk about substance?
2. Are you really complaining about my style, or is it that you don’t want to process my message?

One characteristic of third world, tinpot dicatorships and immature democracies is how the ruling parties not only regard political office as a means to engage in blatant patronage actions for supporters (less politely, blatant corruption), but also how they regard gaining political power as an opportunity to legally persecute their opponents or members of the prior government. We have seen that sort of behavior unfolding in Africa for decades, and also in Pakistan, where the first action of a new election winner seems to be to try to have as many members as possible of the old government jailed.
We are now entering that kind of zone here in the uSA, courtesy of Donald Trump’s remark tonight that if he were elected to the Presidency, Hillary Clinton would be in jail.

Donald Trump just called Hillary Clinton the devil and threatened to prosecute her https://t.co/B4LcJV7kTq

— TIME (@TIME) October 10, 2016

Jessica Schulberg calls that out for what it is:

Threatening to throw your opponent in jail if you win is pretty classic dictator behavior

— Jessica Schulberg (@jessicaschulb) October 10, 2016

I hear all sorts of poorly expressed views about politics and politicians.
One complaint that surfaces is often expressed along the lines of how modern politicians are not great leaders. The discussion invariably involves a comparison between today’s politicians and earlier politicians. In the UK, the discussion would usually involve comparing current politicians unfavorably against Winston Churchill. In the USA, the current generation of Republican politicians are often compared unfavorably to Ronald Reagan (sometimes Dwight D. Eisenhower appears, among military veterans).
The comparison is misguided. It is misguided because I concluded many years ago, watching the rise and fall of Margaret Thatcher in the UK, that electors, except in wartime or a national crisis, do not want leaders. They want panderers. They want politicians who will validate their beliefs, tell them everything in the world is fine, fix stuff For Them and make their lives (as they see it) better. They don’t want grand visions, big ideas, or anything that represents real change. (The phrase “policy wonk”, which I heard being used all the time in reference to Al Gore in the 2000 race, was not intended as a compliment). They only want leaders in a time of crisis. The rest of the time they just want validation, and a steady hand in government. You can see that whenever politicians give speeches suggesting big ideas or the need for the country to change. Most commonly the airwaves fill with bloviators ranting about the politician in question being “condescending” or “talking down” to people.
When countries hit a crisis, and enough electors determine that, there are two possible course of action. They can vote for an established politician with a bold vision who promises to lead. Or they can vote for an insurgent, usually somebody with big ideas, a grand vision, compelling rhetoric and a promise to turn the place upside down.
In the UK, Winston Churchill successfully led the UK through World War II. He was an established politician who returned from almost-retirement to take charge at a difficult time. Later on, the UK voted for Margaret Thatcher, a similar established politician. Thatcher’s leadership was not to a lot of people’s liking, including mine, but she did respect the fundamentals of democracy.
Germany, in the early 1930’s, where the established political process was deeply dysfunctional and ineffective, chose instead to vote for an insurgent Austrian-German with charisma and a promise to make Germany great again. His name was Adolf Hitler. We know how that turned out for Germany and a lot of the Western world.
The two points here?
1. I don’t believe electors demanding leadership from politicians. Most of the time they want no such thing.
2. If you vote for an insurgent, do not expect the insurgent to respect established norms such as democracy and due process. That’s why they are an insurgent. They want to turn the place upside down.