A Matter of Trust

[_MeDotOrg]

Isn't the purposeful push of 'low trust'-inspiring rhetoric designed to eliminate the impact of fact-based observation and discussion?

Just how do we climb out of this situation, besides learning how to peaceably share a drink with folks - perhaps even family members - who insist on believing sometimes foolish or demonstrably untrue things and then voting based on those beliefs? This just sounds like surrendering to the folks who have purposefully pushed us to this point as a method that serves only their own interests.

When George Bush was President, there was a joke that if Bush said the world was flat, the headline on Fox would be:

Shape of the World: Opinions differ

...and this is the trap that ensnares people. In the name of being fair and objective, journalists feel duty-bound to report both sides of the story, when in reality there is often only one side which is logical and objective.

There's another side of the coin: Not only do people hold opinions that are scientifically indefensible, but the arguments used against science have nothing to do with science. To me it is a classic case of projection: Those who are most afraid of seeing their own special interests negatively impacted by a response to climate change always attribute greed to the scientists making the reports.

[_honorentheos]

How do you defeat that? I'm not sure the answer is as simple as more of the same. I don't know what the answer is. I don't think anyone does, which is a source of despair from at least some quarters of elite commentary on the health of our country. The only answer I got is that it doesn't work without their propagandistic media propping them up and the key is cripple that, but I have no idea how. I do know that some people, like the person his article is about, think the answer is unrelenting shame towards anyone who props up that media. I'm not so convinced, but their actions make more sense once you see the problem.

I've come to wonder if the problem lies is framing. That being, if we view the problem as massive, catastrophic and existentially something to be defeated, there's cause for despair. Both sides seem to be viewing the world through this frame. I see the article as one attempt at reframing, scaling down to make it actionable at the level of the individual. It suggests turning down the volume on the drama, establishing one's base principles, and being decent.

[_EAllusion]

I've come to wonder if the problem lies is framing. That being, if we view the problem as massive, catastrophic and existentially something to be defeated, there's cause for despair. Both sides seem to be viewing the world through this frame. I see the article as one attempt at reframing, scaling down to make it actionable at the level of the individual. It suggests turning down the volume on the drama, establishing one's base principles, and being decent.

The problem is massive, potentially catastrophic, and existentially something to be defeated. The stakes are are the loss of liberal democracy in the US, which in addition to being bad for people in the US, is very dangerous for the world given our military might and traditional role in bolstering liberal democracy abroad. I think you are underestimating just how authoritarian the dominant faction within the American right has become.

Again, the core problem is that if a powerful political faction isn't willing to buy in to the principles you are referring to, then they become a weakness to be exploited. If only one side is willing to compromise, then what you get is compromise when they are in power, and unrelenting defeat when they are not. If only one side is wiling to abide any number of traditional norms surrounding forbearance in governance, then what you get is forbearance when they are in power, and total defeat when they are not. And that's what's been happening.

[_EAllusion]

The Wisconsin State legislature has a near super-majority of Republicans. This happened even though Republicans lost the popular vote in the state in 2018 by a landslide. This is primarily thanks to gerrymandering that occurred in 2010. To say that Republicans are only able to win elections in the state in the sense of maintaining control of the Assembly due to gaming the election system itself is accurate. It is not equivalent to saying that Democrats won the votes because illegal immigrants voted for them en masse. The former is true. The latter is an unhinged lie. It's important not to draw a false equivalence between these kind of claims. I don't think Republicans would be unable to win elections if they didn't draw the maps to overrepresent them, use the law to cripple the financial health of Democratic special interests, make it harder for Democratic voters to vote, etc. It's near 50/50 state. Republicans would just have to win by appealing to the public more and take defeats in years like 2018.

Republicans are currently in the process of using their legislative control before Tony Evers takes over as governor to limit the powers of the governor's office. This isn't being done because there is an objective need to change the powers of the governor based on the most reasonable structure of power distribution in the state government. It's being done because the incoming governor is a Democrat and Republicans want to limit Democrats from having power and have a willingness to use any means at their disposal to do so.

This is a serious violation of civic norms in pursuit of maintaining as much control as possible. The thing is, if Democrats eschew these kind of power grabs while Republicans engage in them, the end result isn't a healthier civic culture. It's just Republicans undermining a healthy democracy to maximize political gains. If only one side does it, it tilts the entire system, and that's especially important given one of the primary agenda items Republicans have when they get power is to use the law to make it difficult for Democrats to win elections going forward. How do you defeat that? I don't know. A lot of the analysis I've read on this "constitutional hardball" tends to argue that when a powerful political faction goes down this path and is able to win power, there's a good chance the society is screwed.

I'd like to think blowing the whistle could help, but that's not going to do anything in an environment where a huge % of the voting public is either captured by a vast disinformation apparatus or confused by it.

[_honorentheos]

While I tend to agree there are consequences at the scale described, if every individual engages as if US politics demanded militant opposition, it becomes inevitable the only possible outcome is...yeah.

[_Res Ipsa]

We’re living the prisoner’s dilemma.

[_EAllusion]

While I tend to agree there are consequences at the scale described, if every individual engages as if US politics demanded militant opposition, it becomes inevitable the only possible outcome is...yeah.

Let's take a concrete example. Republican legislators and their special interest backers were clearly signaling leading up to 2016 that if Hillary Clinton won the presidency and they held the Senate, they would not confirm any judicial nominees from President Clinton. Any. They had already a near total shut down of Obama once they won the Senate at the end of 2014. It was virtually guaranteed to happen. Last time Democrats had power in the Senate, but did not have the presidency, they did not behave this way, but what should they do going forward?

If you think the answer is to continue to confirm opposition party presidential appointments, then you are saying they should cede the entire judicial branch. Because what will happen in that environment is that Republicans will be able to get people on the bench both when Republicans control the presidency and Senate and when Republicans have the presidency, but Democrats control the Senate. Democrats would just be left with the times they control both the Presidency and Senate. The times when Democrats would be anticipated to have both the Presidency and Senate would be relatively rare to start with, but Republicans currently enjoy a substantial geographic advantage in Senate apportionment, and their control of the judiciary will allow them to pass ambitious laws that make it harder for Democrats to win elections and have those laws survive an allied partisan court system. Over time, Democratic appointees would just be whittled off the courts to the point that only a few would remain.

Sticking to the principles of good governance in this case just cedes the government if you can't persuade Republicans to stop this, and you really can't. You can't even trust them if they promise not to do this because Republicans have so consistently lied about their aims and suffered little consequence for it. So what's the solution? No one is saying fighting fire with fire is ideal, but what else can you do? You're in a prisoner's dilemma where one side is a near guarantee to betray you.

[_EAllusion]

We’re living the prisoner’s dilemma.

Heh. I just wrote a longer post where that sorta was my conclusion, then saw this.

[_Res Ipsa]

We’re living the prisoner’s dilemma.

Heh. I just wrote a longer post where that sorta was my conclusion, then saw this.

Either great minds think alike or fools seldom disagree. Take your pick.

[_EAllusion]

After the Walker administration passed a voter ID law in Wisconsin, they proceeded to try and shut down DMV's in areas of with lots of Democratic voters and open more up in areas where Republicans live. The justifications for doing this were such an obvious sham that it was like performance art.

It was such a blatant attempt at making it harder for Democrats to vote and easier for Republicans to vote in order to tilt election outcomes in favor of Republicans. Deliberately burdening a voting demographic so they are less likely to vote is wrong. This is an essential value in a liberal democratic society. The thing is that waving your finger and saying "shame shame" doesn't stop them from doing it. They don't have a problem with doing it if they can get away with it. There's no civic conscience to appeal to. You cannot understand the modern political environment until you understand just how authoritarian the Republican party has become or how little respect among them for the legitimacy of the Democratic party there is.

In this case, there's happily a way to fight back through voter rights bills that don't require you to also abandon basic civic values for strategic purposes, but I'm quite skeptical this is true in every instance of what we are talking about.