Current Affairs

Folks, if you think that passing a posting around on Facebook to your friends asking them to state their political preference is a poll…
Well, fine.
It is a poll. It is, however, unlikely to meet any established criteria for validity of any useful poll based on selection criteria.
Polling does not consist of asking your buddies what they think about an issue and reporting the results as statistically valid and therefore reflective of a wider reality. It’s a lot more scientifically and statistically rigorous than that.
To start with, polls randomly select people in an identified population. There may be some clear selection criteria (if you are asking women about beauty products, by definition you probably won’t be including men in your sample population), but the idea is that the overall sample should be random within the population that meets the selection criteria.
There is also the matter of sample size. As any statistician can explain, the margin of error in an analysis of this type is inversely related to sample size. A sample size of 50 has a much larger margin of error than a sample size of 5000.
In an election, anybody who is registered to vote can potentially vote, so any poll designed to determine likely voting preferences needs to sample all registered voters within a population. Your Facebook friends list does not meet that criterion, since it is reflective of self-selection and is therefore not random. I have never met anybody who chose real-life or online friends at random.
Of course I know what is really going on here. You are engaging in an exercise of in-group validation, a massive “we’re all the Right Ones” group hug. Which is fine. Just don’t make me laugh by dressing it up in pseudo-scientific wrapping-and-bow bullcrap by somehow claiming that it proves stuff that it clearly doesn’t.
Claiming “me and my friends held a Facebook poll and it shows that Trump is winning among my friends by a landslide” may be a correct statement. “me and my friends held a Facebook poll that proves that Trump is winning by a landslide” is not a correct statement.

1. You want to rig an election? Don’t listen to Donald Trump for ideas
As this article makes clear, there is election rigging going on in the modern USA. It’s just not being done in the cartoonish way that Donald Trump claims.

2. The subtle (and not-so-subtle) eliminationist rhetoric of Trump supporters
At a Donald Trump rally, a male supporter, deploying a level of semantic weaselling, since he understands the legal consequences of making direct threats, hinted very unmistakeably to the media in an interview that Hillary Clinton should be eliminated if she wins the Presidential election.
This is not an aberration. I have seen numerous similar comments on Twitter and in other online forums. There are a lot of people whose approach to opposition is to want to eliminate that opposition. For the groups on the authoritarian fringe who are, in many cases, armed to the teeth and itching to start the Second American Revolution, assassination is a perfectly reasonable approach.
Here’s another pile of ranting from a long-standing member of the crazy fringe, Jim Stachowiak. He seems to harbor every toxic resentment and animus known to man.

3. The “Hammond Ranch land sold by Hillary Clinton to Russian uranium company” conspiracy theory
The idea that the mineral rights of the land under the Hammond Ranch and the Malheur Wildlife Refuge had been sold to Russian or Chinese interests at the behest of Hillary Clinton is a claim that has gained credence amongst the anti-government pseudo-revolutionary fringe.
The main problem is that, like most ideas and claims, it started from a few disconnected facts and was then expanded into a grand conspiracy theory.

4. This is Spinal Tap – you starred in it – whaddaymean you want royalties?
This lawsuit, filed by one of the co-creators of “This is Spinal Tap”, could, if it actually goes to court, lift the lid on all manner of murky accounting practices by which media conglomerates magically convert highly profitable products into break-even products, in order to avoid paying creators royalties.

Unless you are wilfully ignorant, you will have noticed the increase in the level of toxicity in political and societal rhetoric this election season. We have a candidate for the GOP nomination who is openly claiming that the system is being rigged against him, has threatened the media with all manner of cocakanmie consequences, because they have been faithfully reporting on his toxic stew of conspiracy theorizing, mean-spirited ranting against opponents, and bizarre and constantly-shifting policy ideas. He also finds mocking disabled people at rallies to be an amusing diversion, and regards the ability to grope, fondle, and verbally harrass women in his employ or in his physical space to be some sort of base entitlement.
The trend towards eliminationist rhetoric against real or imagined opponents is being encouraged by other elected representatives, and some cases, elected law enforcement officers. As is normal, the justification for the promulgation of these ideas is Patriotism. Being a Patriot is now being treated as an entitlement card to propose and take part in all kinds of unconstitutional legal and extra-legal actions.
When self-identified leaders of the “Real American Patriot” communities hear these kinds of pronouncements from elected representatives, and people they perceive as sympathetic authority figures, the impact of the messages is amplified. They can (and will) conclude that the authorities are secretly on their side, and that they are therefore going to be indulged in their actions.
The level of eliminationist rhetoric has snowballed this year, with people openly proposing violent action against perceived enemies on a wide variety of online forums.
More dangerously, people are now moving beyond idle boastful talk in online forums, and have been planning actions.
The sort of pathology that many of these people are imbued with can be seen very clearly from his extract from the Criminal Complaint against Curtis Allen, Patrick Stein and Gavin Wright, arrested last week in Kansas City for conspiring to bomb Somali refugee locations:

Constitutionalists https://t.co/IZ19qT3UkS pic.twitter.com/7FOLkEwRgt

— J.M. Berger (@intelwire) October 15, 2016

The complain contains a mind-boggling series of reports of meetings where eliminationist actions were quite openly discussed:

…While they were discussing these plans, WRIGHT pulled up Google Maps on the computer at his
business and began dropping pins on the map at these various locations using the label
“cockroaches.” Prior to the meeting WRIGHT researched guides for making explosives and
printed off a substantial number of pages of this material. The group brainstormed various
methods of attack, including murder, kidnapping, rape, and arson. They decided to pick a
specific target at their next meeting. At one point, ALLEN stated: “We’re going to talk about
killing people and going to prison for life. Less than sixty days, maybe forty days until
something major happens. We need to be preemptive before something happens.” STEIN
responded: “The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.” At another point in the conversation,
STEIN said: “If you’re a Muslim I’m going to enjoy shooting you in the head.” Then he told the
group, “When we go on operations there’s no leaving anyone behind, even if it’s a one-year old,
I’m serious. I guarantee if I go on a mission those little fuckers are going bye-bye.”

These types of discussions are in no way unique or remarkable, based on my watching websites since 2008. The nativist lunatic fringe has convinced themselves and each other that these kinds of murderous actions are right, good and necessary to protect the purity of the USA. Here is a Google Search on another individual, Jim Stachiowak. As you can see, his worldview regards opening fire on BLM activists as perfectly acceptable.

When people are accused and/or determined to be guilty of bad behavior, their supporters always resort of all manner of attempts at rationalization for the bad behavior. Right now, supporters of Donald Trump are slowly cycling through the A to Z of Bad Rationalizations to try and minimize or exculpate him after a string of allegations that he engaged in sexually-based harrassment and assaults on women.
I find most of these attempts at rationalization to be amusing since they usually comprise a good introduction to the art and science of logical fallacies.
If the initial attempts at rationalization fail, the supporters eventually start to run out of plausible-sounding ideas, and then they turn to ever-more-implausible ones.
The latest one circulating is an interview with a beauty contestant from one of Donald Trump’s beauty pageants. The woman asserts that Donald Trump always behaved like a complete gentleman towards her.
Folks, please.
You’re killing me.
Reading this is like listening to a defense lawyer in a murder trial arguing for leniency for the defendant on the grounds that he once helped an old lady across the road.
Donald Trump, in my world, is supposed to behave like a total gentleman towards women. He doesn’t get any prize for behaving like a well-balanced member of society. That is a minimum expectation that every adult male should be able to meet.
Not only is the assertion that he behaved like a gentleman not at all praise-worthy, it doesn’t exculpate any of his other bad behavior. See the courtroom analogy.
If that is the best argument that Donald Trump’s supporters can find, they need to go engage their brains and work harder. This is laughable.

1. Interrupting and talking over people on-air
When I moved to the USA in 1994 for the first time, I tried briefly listening to talk radio and watching political programs on TV. Three things struck me about the medium immediately:
– the political views being espoused by the radio hosts and most of their callers would be regarded as a combination of completely barking mad and dangerous in the UK
– the radio hosts were not actually ever going to hold a dialogue with callers. They used callers’ questions or comments as a means of allowing them to repeat their messages, and basking in affirmation. Anybody who tried to call in to dispute the host’s viewpoint would be rapidly shuffled off the air, usually after the host had used the caller as a punchbag or punchline in some juvenile or intellectually risible volley of abuse.
– the hosts always talked over and interrupted guests. Hardly any question asked of a guest was permitted to be answered before the guest would interrupt. Sometimes the guest in turn would start interrupting. The nett effect was to feel that I was watching a re-creation of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party from “Alice In Wonderland”

I have come to realize that, for authoritarian host broadcasters, interruption is a power play. They do it because they control the microphone. They also do it routinely to cut off views or responses that they don’t want to have to deal with. In other words, a classical approach to perceived dissent.
For TV, interruption in all directions is also a power play, and also a means of generating controversy in a medium that absolutely relies on it to, as they say in England, to put bums on seats. It also tends to elevate the questioner to the same level as the interviewee, since in an ideal interview the interviewee is doing most of the talking. Large-ego TV anchors don’t want that, unless they are temporarily playing the role of fawning sycophant, which some of them do from time to time.
I also noticed that your view on the rights and wrongs of interruptions almost entirely depends on whose side you are on. If an interviewer is interrupting somebody you disagree with, you are far more likely to rationalize the interruption as a good thing. The opposite viewpoint applies, of course, if the interviewee is on Your Team. So viewpoints about interruptions tend to align along partisan viewpoints and preferences.
I happen to have a different viewpoint, that interrupting is fundamentally discourteous, and not conducive to debate and discussion, and I would like to see a medium where people are, you know, allowed to finish something that they started saying. But there I go again, being all logical.

2. What will the losing side supporters say after an election?
The question came up today in this discussion on Lawyers Guns and Money.
What I have seen happen in the past is that many supporters of the loser spend time ranting and raving about how the result was fixed. Most of them go quiet after a while, but some suffer from a permanent inability to accept the reality. The condition was dubbed “derangement syndrome” many years ago, and the name does seem appropriate.
My worry is that derangement syndrome, if Donald Trump loses, will not be limited to whining and moaning. There are a lot of people out there right now who are not only emotionally invested in Donald Trump, they are angrily invested in Donald Trump. They see him as the Last Hope for America. Trump has been cunningly hinting that the system is being rigged against him for quite some time, and my fear is that some of his more volatile supporters may start acting out, either on election day, as they try to make sure that The Right Sort of People vote (and only The Right Sort of People), or after the election, as they decide to go on the rampage. I know how many people have guns and ammunition stockpiled ready for the Second American Revolution. There are some crazy people out there who live in echo chambers that peddle a toxic mix of conspiracy theorizing, dystopian “the end is nigh” predictions, and the idea that all government is bad, but the Federal government is even worse.
When formerly fervent supporters of a person or party decide that their support was a mistake, one thing you will almost never find them doing is uttering a mea culpa. “I made a mistake and voted for The Wrong Guys”, said nobody publicly, ever. (If you don’t believe me, try to think of all of the elected representatives or media figures that have apologized for the sleep-walk of the USA into Iraq in 2003. The list will be a short one).
When one of my ex brothers in law decided that George W Bush was screwing up the country around 2007, he suddenly completely forgot that he had been all gung-ho about voting for him in 2004. I ended up triggering a silence at a family gathering by reminding him of his enthusiastic support for Bush and the GOP in 2004. This cut across his sudden attack of amnesia. As a species, we are at all good at publicly admitting to making bad decisions. We end up hoping that people will not notice. It is such a powerful source of angst that I can think of at least one politician and one fringe SovCit grifter, both of whom changed their names to try and prevent people from finding out about Bad Stuff they did previously in their lives. No, that doesn’t work in the internet era.

One easy way to identify people with authoritarian tendencies is to watch and listen to how they react to being challenged on their worldviews and opinions.
One would think that a person who once tried to run for the job of POTUS would have learned a while ago that it is not a good idea to try and bully questioners on-air.
Not Ben Carson.
On a TV show, when his BBC interviewer reminded him that he was not answering a question, his response was to cry “cut her mic”.
A rather revealing response I believe. Rather than answer a question, he decided to try and blow past it. When that was pointed out, his instinctive reaction was to demand that she effectively be prevented from asking him any more questions.
Folks, I should not have to spell this out. This is not a simple dispute over facts and style. This is a man attempting to bully and bluster his way past awkward questions from a woman on-air. He was being reminded that he was not answering the question, so his reaction was to try to get his own way by cutting off further questions.
Fortunately, Katty Kay is employed by the BBC, where for a long while the standard bearer for awkward question persistence was Jeremy Paxman, who actually helped to destroy the career of a leader of the Conservative Party when, like Katty Kay, he refused to let him off the hook for failing to answer a question. While the BBC has become horribly supine and non-inquisitive of late, failing to ask enough awkward questions over both the Jimmy Savile scandal and Brexit, Ms. Kay does seem to have some Jeremy Paxman DNA, and as a rule, UK television interviewers are a lot less deferential than their US counterparts.

POSTSCRIPT – If you want to sample the sheer juvenile bloviating fuckwittery of many of the newly-arrived supporters of Donald Trump , you can sample the comments on Twitter (WARNING – Place cushion on desk in front of you to reduce chance of concussion).

One of the standard tropes that political insurgents and frightened people use in troubled countries at election time is that “outside forces” or “subversives” are negatively influencing the country. Those forces can be other countries with malevolent intent, or shadowy groups or cabals. How the outside forces are actually negatively influencing the country is usually never specified in detail.
What you are hearing is standard conspiracy theories, nothing more, nothing less.
Like the early James Bond books and movies, the “outside forces” comprise a series of stock villians.
The list of stock villians outside the USA usually comprises one or more of the following:

1. The Illuminati
2. Jewish financiers (often those are alleged to be the same people as 1)
3. The United Nations
4. Muslims

Inside the USA, the list of subversives expands to include just about any part of the Federal government (although the military, being on a high pedestal, is usually pretty close to exempt, as is law enforcement). Any group perceived to be ideologically different is also listed as “subversives”. So if you are a GOP partisan, socialists, communists and marxists are all subversives, as are atheists if you are an adherent to most of the standard Western single-deity religions.
Many partisans also add the mass media to the list, who they suspect of being “in the tank” for subversives or the outside villians or The Establishment.

All of these obsessions with outside forces and subversives, of course, come at the expense of self-examination.
You don’t have to be an expert in psychology to know that when societal groups (families, corporations, countries, communities) run into problems, their first instinct is to blame outside forces or events. You may also know that behavior pathology as denial. Denial is very powerful emotionally, since it is a defense mechanism against self-examination that might require fundamental changes in behavior.
The difficulty in processing conflicting messages is also known as cognitive dissonance. Humans hate cognitive dissonance, and want no part of it until the pain of continuing with existing behaviors becomes too great.
So, any time that you read somebody here or elsewhere ranting about any of the villians listed above in an attempt to explain why things are going to hell in a handbasket and We Are All Doomed unless we give My Guy the keys so he/she can take charge and Save Us All From A Fate Worse Than Death, grab hold of that bullshit detector, since you are going to need it real quick. It is almost certain that the people doing the whining are in denial about events that they do not like, and rather than analyze how they or their group arrived in the mess, they have to blame outsiders, because, good lord, there is no way that they and their buddies could have made mistakes and ended up causing their own predicament. No sir.

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.