If it's given and immutable that they will continue to hate politics, what is the news-equivalent of eating three servings of vegetables and getting twenty minutes of exercise a day?
If they genuinely hate politics then they should at least stay the fuck out of politics. I'm amazed at the number of people who constantly forward right wing talking points on Facebook but don't seem to think that that constitutes doing something "political". Because, you know, they don't like politics.
I have been pushing: stop watching TV news and read Time, Newsweek, or the Economist instead. Always-on-TV news Staying informed is an unpleasant civic duty, like keeping your lawn mowed.
I don't have an answer for shared/forwarded low quality political links on FB. Maybe saying that forwarding false/false-ish stuff is basically pollution, the mental equivalent of a big gulp and a three 7-11 hot dogs. But that's a pretty aggressive thing to say on there.
Whoops-- sentence fragment in 2.
Always on TV news is structurally bad, shouty infotainment TV news similarly so.
If they genuinely hate politics then they should at least stay the fuck out of politics.
This is true, but I can think of a fair number of people who do in fact mostly stay out of it. They think of politics as combative and distasteful and only makes everyone mad at each other. (I know uninformed people on both sides of the spectrum who feel this way.)
(But the lefty people I'm thinking of aren't culpably uninformed the way their right counterparts are.)
My question: what is the bare minimum amount of political self-education that these adults ought to be expected to do, in order to pass into "acceptably minimally informed" realm?
This is easy: Whatever amount of self-education it takes to lead them to the conclusions I have reached. If they are looking for a heuristic that will help them reach the right answer without putting in lots of onerous work, they can ask me for the right answer. I'm happy to share.
I think people make a mistake when they frame the issue as a lack of information. What people need are:
1. basic human decency
2. a method for separating false information from true information.
Pew tells us that Republicans know lots of stuff.
Republicans fare substantially better than Democrats on several questions in the survey, as is typically the case in surveys about political knowledge.
The more education Republicans get, the more likely they are to get climate change wrong.
Knowledge, per se, doesn't get you very far. Epistemology is the real issue.
Political debates are so often useless because they never acknowledge the actual area of disagreement. Sure, on a superficial level, I disagree with someone's vote for Trump, but it only takes two minutes of conversation with a Trump voter to realize that the real sources of disagreement are the ones I listed above: What constitutes human decency? How does one discern the truth?
What's an immoral suburban greedy racist shithead to do?
Stop taking things "seriously but not literally"?
That is, if I think of what's stereotypically wrong with that kind of Republican, it's that they kind of sort of believe all sorts of things that they don't really believe in the same way they believe in things that matter to their daily life.
Like, that Pizzagate thing. The guy who showed up with a gun really believed it. The millions of other people who listened to it and bought into it kinda, didn't really believe it in the sense that they thought there were literally children getting molested in that pizza place. But they sorta kinda believed it was the sort thing that was kind of true about that sort of Democrat. They have a category of political beliefs that aren't susceptible to being disproved because they weren't literal beliefs about facts in the first place.
And it carries over to policy stuff. They kind of sort of believe "Obamacare" is making their lives worse and repealing it will make their lives better in a similarly uncorrectable way.
It's easy to say both sides do it, but I don't think they really do in a parallel way. There's stuff Democrats are wrong about, and stuff they're fuzzy about, but I don't think there's much at all they care deeply about in a way that's divorced completely from its conventionally understood truth value.
"They" included the son of the man who was, briefly, NSA.
They have a category of political beliefs that aren't susceptible to being disproved because they weren't literal beliefs about facts in the first place.
This sounds remarkably similar to something I read years ago by, I think, Amanda Marcotte. In that case she was talking about evangelicals and the Proctor and Gamble Satanism nonsense.
Does this kind of thought map onto thoughts in other, non-political, realms? Professional sports fandom, maybe?
Political debates are so often useless because they never acknowledge the actual area of disagreement. Sure, on a superficial level, I disagree with someone's vote for Trump, but it only takes two minutes of conversation with a Trump voter to realize that the real sources of disagreement are the ones I listed above: What constitutes human decency? How does one discern the truth?
6 is very good (PF has been on fire lately, I really liked, this comment yesterday)
9: The people who run the Cultural Cognition blog are all excited about their discovery of this (the search string would be "Kentucky Farmer model") but I have never understood what you are meant to do with it. The KF canonically engages with efforts to do better water management or whatever, while still performatively disbelieving in climate change, but the whole point about climate change is that's just insufficient while he continues to veto action on the required macro-level.
Yeah, I don't know what to do about it at all, but that's where the problem is. I mean, go back to Al Gore and W in the debates, with Gore pointing out that W's budget numbers didn't add up on a very, very simple level (I've forgotten the details, but he was literally doing something like spending the same trillion dollars twice.) And W successfully just made fun of him for it, and came out of the exchange better off.
I can imagine listening to that exchange and not knowing who was right and so not caring. But I can't imagine following it at all and thinking better of W as a result, but people did.
A practical suggestion is available in here:
Note that the canonical Cranky Retired Engineer type was much happier listening to NPR, as he was relieved of the cognitive costs of all that yelling.
I kind of think rolling news should be considered a form of drug, and persuading them to kick the habit or at least cut down for their own health might be worthwhile. Especially if the benefits are evident on a week-to-week scale.
15: This is the article. Interesting read.
17: This line stood out to me:
"I heard nothing positive about Trump the whole week," Herbon [the cranky engineer] said. "I'd be OK with 60 (negative Trump news) to 40 (positive Trump news), but 100-0? Really?
As if he expects reality to find room, and justify, his proclivities. Yet at the same time, I'm absolutely certain that Obama stories on "The Patriot" weren't 40% positive.
I had a bitchy interaction with an old friend not long ago -- she's ex-military and sort of uncomfortably 'moderate', in the sense that she probably mostly votes Democratic but still repeats a lot of Republican talking points.
Anyway, she was saying that Clinton was a terrible candidate to have run, and she had a hard time even considering voting for her because of how viciously Clinton had attacked the women Bill had raped. And I asked her what, specifically, she was talking about, because the story I know is that Juanita Broddrick alleges that after Bill raped her, she met Hillary at a fundraiser and Hillary thanked for everything she'd done for them, and she just knew by looking at Hillary that it was a threat. I was prepared to get into a reasonably civil discussion of how even if you accept everything factual in Broddrick's account -- the rape, the exchange with Hillary -- that's not much to attribute knowledge and intent to threaten to Hillary from. What Broddrick says she said is exactly what a candidate's wife would say to anyone at a fundraiser.
Anyway, my friend got this sort of 'aren't I naughty?' look on her face and said she couldn't remember anything specific about what she was basing it on, but it really made it hard to think about voting for Hillary. And it looked like conscious bad behavior: I'm going to disagree with you because of the 'facts' I believe in, and they're solid enough to justify my beliefs but they're not the sort of thing that it is possible to discuss the truth or falsity of.
I don't know what the hell is going on with her (oh, something about having gotten tribal in a weird bad environment), but it was a strange conversation -- a smart well-educated person culpably pretending to be an idiot.
But anyway, I don't think those people need more information. I mean, everyone needs more information, but if the problem was fixed they'd get it somehow, no problem. They need to start caring about whether the beliefs that drive their political behavior are true in the ordinary sense of the word true.
I find most liberals to *also* be really uninformed about most issues. And before getting too judgmental about anyone for their political beliefs, it's worth remembering that if your parents were Republicans you'd probably be a Republican, straight up.
I don't think that's really it. I think you need to both have had Republican parents and to have not moved far from them. If it weren't for the almost inevitable shift in opinions that comes from living in a city and seeing that so many of the rural fears are just ghost stories, there would hardly be any white Democrats.
I can imagine listening to that exchange and not knowing who was right and so not caring. But I can't imagine following it at all and thinking better of W as a result, but people did.
My recollection is that the media did a horrible job of reporting it. "Fuzzy math" was Bush's ho-ho counterpunch against Gore, and that was reported completely without context -- especially without the context that Bush's own math was bullshit, and Gore's was correct.
I wish churches were more into the giving-to-the-least-of-my-people stuff again. I think the shift to a more individual-based 'saved' view of Christianity is an under-examined reason for the current stupidity.
Jesus Christ told you to fucking feed the hungry and take care of the sick. What the fuck are doing?
Relatedly, my (Canadian) mother didn't know that Catholic hospitals in the US weren't free. She thought that they were just giving healthcare away to the sick. Hahasob. I sent her and my dad an AARP calculator to determine what kind of healthcare you could afford/deserve to teach them what the US system expects. And also a breakdown of my last health care payment (including costs to my employer). My mom had been complaining about the Canadian healthcare costs which turns out to be a $50 for a shingles vaccine.
I'm in Barry's shoes wrt to trying to figure out how not to explode if they dismiss the horribleness of the US right now. Fortunately we are WASPy so drinking will be involved (early and often).
24: The most important thing about that debate was Gore's sighing.
25.1 Is accurate. The prosperity gospel has seen a resurgence, and the whole justified by grace Calvinist bullshit has been big for a long time in the US but is making a lot of progress with getting mainline church goers to switch to megachurches like the one run by Joel Osteen. There's also the abortion thing, which evangelicals as recently as the 1970s were deeply split on. They've now coalesced on the anti side thanks in part to leadership that actually changed the translation of relevant bible verses.
22: Really, basic human decency goes a long way. You need almost no information once you accept the premise that we should provide cancer treatments to four-year-olds even if they can't afford it.
I am the Democratic son of two hardcore Republicans. I don't think that's particularly unusual. Me and my seven siblings are split pretty evenly - three Ds, three Rs, and two "swing voter" types.
I wholeheartedly agree with 25.1 and 27. The Puritans were assholes, and they're still fucking us over. America was the only country in part founded as a Puritanical religious theocracy, and it's the only first world country to not provide healthcare or a decent social safety net.
25.2
Our system is barbaric and all foreigners should be completely horrified. I was at a conference, and the Europeans I were talking to were worried about getting hit by a car and needing American medical care. My German godfather's mother had a very minor heart attack in the US once, and she booked a next day flight home. The cost of a next day international ticket in the 1980s was still orders of magnitudes cheaper than getting American healthcare.
28
I wrote about it in the last thread, but what makes me despair is the number of people who increasingly don't think a 4 year old cancer kid deserves treatment, because if he can't pay his own way he's a mooching loser who deserves to die. These are people who chanted "let him die" about an Iraq war vet.
28: Would you describe the Rs and swing voters in your family as lacking basic human decency?
And it looked like conscious bad behavior: I'm going to disagree with you because of the 'facts' I believe in, and they're solid enough to justify my beliefs but they're not the sort of thing that it is possible to discuss the truth or falsity of.
I'm increasingly thinking this is a big motivator in the relatively informed wing of the Republican base: just as Trump flaunts his power by forcing people to join him in obvious lies, they flaunt their power over Democrats by supporting in both votes and polls someone who they know to be a buffoon.
I feel like the decent Republicans I knew drew a line in the sand with Trump. I have some Conservative Baptist family members who would be moderate Republicans. Pro-life, but reasonably supportive of social programs. My second cousin, who I know for a fact voted for GWB in 2000, has been posting non-stop anti-Trump stuff on FB. She's a public school teacher, and she's also been posting pro civil service, pro worker's union things. This is all mixed in with the pictures of kids and the Jesus stuff. Her posts get liked by her relatives, who include a Baptist minister and a missionary.
My aunt's husband is a retired air force colonel and also a Republican. He grew up on the Oregon coast, which is historically very conservative. Was utterly horrified by Trump's rise in the primaries, and didn't vote for him in the general. He is genuinely worried that Trump is unstable and will start a massive stupid war and needlessly cost millions of lives.
31: This gets back to the discussion in the other thread about whether Rs are, more-or-less by definition, evil.
We are, all of us, mixed bags. I'm comfortable saying that one of the Rs is straightforwardly evil and the others are not because they don't let their political evil spill over into their non-political lives.
But certainly, yeah, in their political views and actions, the R siblings lack basic human decency.
My parents, on the other hand, I consider to have been more epistemologically fucked up than evil (see 6).
He is genuinely worried that Trump is unstable and will start a massive stupid war and needlessly cost millions of lives.
Me too.
35
Yeah. I can disagree with him politically, but I feel like we share an epistemic ground. I'm increasingly not feeling like that with about a third of our country.
12: The excellent essay that kicks off from the Proctor&Gamble Satanism rumor is False Witnesses from Slacktivist. From the conclusion:
This is why the rumor doesn't really need to be plausible or believable. It isn't intended to deceive others. It's intended to invite others to participate with you in deception.
Are you afraid you might be a coward? Join us in pretending to believe this lie and you can pretend to feel brave. Are you afraid that your life is meaningless? Join us in pretending to believe this lie and you can pretend your life has purpose. Are you afraid you're mired in mediocrity? Join us in pretending to believe this lie and you can pretend to feel exceptional. Are you worried that you won't be able to forget that you're just pretending and that all those good feelings will thus seem hollow and empty? Join us and we will pretend it's true for you if you will pretend it's true for us. We need each other.
37: Is that like a Kierkegaardian leap of faith for dummies?
Rising support for single-payer among the young, and among Democrats - 52% of Dems, compared to 33% in early 2014; 45% of all parties aged 18-29.
We are, all of us, mixed bags.
I call bullshit on this. 100% bullshit. The absolute minimum that Heebie's abstract don't-wanna-be-political family could do, is withdraw completely from public life. Become *Amish*. Anything else is political. You're UMC? You have a nice job? Guess what? *political* decisions made that job possible, that company possible. Large groupings of people are *organized* by politics; it comes with the territory. People who say they don't want to be political, are ALREADY political -- they LIKE the current politics, and don't want it to change.
So, for that family: unless you want to become Amish, drink battery acid.
My first political epiphany: when my mom pointed out that Reagan's medicare rules condemned poorer older Americans suffering from heart attacks to a greater chance of death and repeat (due to reimbursement rules for precautionary hospital stays).
My second: TNC's writings on the black experience in America, and BLM.
P.S. Every *one* of these fat-cats has parents, and they don't want their parents living in their basements. Again: They like the current settlement, and don't want it changed. They may not *know* that changes coming down the pike are gonna adversely affect them, and when they find out, they'll howl like a thousand wildcats. But fer sure, they're already political.
I do feel strange about the generational inheritance of politics. I have moved very little from my parents -- I mean, my mother is kind of politically insane, but where she's recognizably in contact with reality I agree with her, and my dad has some problematic old-white-guy issues but nothing bad enough to ever get to him to vote for someone I'd disapprove of.
So I don't get any particular credit for my political beliefs, they were handed to me. On the other hand, I'm pretty convinced that I'm (roughly) morally and practically correct on most political issues, and I hope I would have gotten here even if I hadn't started here.
Yeah, maybe. That conversation felt odd -- sort of daring me to be rude by not accepting her version of reality. "I'll tell you the sky is orange and then bemoan your lack of civility for wanting to insist that it isn't."
I've been sort of shitty at civility lately anyway.
Well, yeah, me too. I didn't actually raise my voice, but I got clipped and precise enough with her that my kids spoke gently to me on the train home about how I wasn't ever going to convince anyone by being mean to them.
I have a few Republican-leaning evangelical Christians in my life whom I care quite a lot about, and believe to be genuinely good people. IIRC, they sat out one or both of the '08 and '12 elections. This election, they made a point of voting for McMullin.
As I understand, political scientists debate whether people, other than political elites, actually have opinions on issues. Two articles that I have read recently:
Nathan P. Kalmoe, "Speaking of Parties... Dueling Views in a Canonical Measure of Sophistication"
David E. Broockman, "An Artificial Disconnect: The Extreme Public and its Moderate Representatives"
The Broockman paper contains a survey, including a standard test of political engagement.
One is politically engaged if one knows:
Which party or parties control the house and the senate.
What job Paul Ryan holds (I've updated this).
What job John Roberts holds.
What industry the Dodd-Frank Act regulates (this question must change over time).
What political party FDR was a member of.
The term of a US senator.
How much of a majority is required for the House and Senate to override a veto.
And these are multiple choice questions. Not a large percentage of the public can answer these.
It's all affect, except at the top of the attentiveness scale. If you don't have any dislike of Sean Hannity and you don't know why what he says is wrong while he's saying it, you'll absorb that information even to the point where walking into a pizza shop with a rifle seems like merely premature anti-communism or whatever.
People who say they don't want to be political, are ALREADY political -- they LIKE the current politics, and don't want it to change.
I tweeted something that that effect, from a pseud, and it got picked up and repeated by a fairly high volume person on twitter. Basically, to the effect that, in the UK, people who claim not to be political, or claim that all politicians are the same, are secretly Tories.*
* generalisation. I mean, my Dad claims not to be political, but he's an anarchist who used to be a Trotskyist, with a strong undercurrent of total misanthropy. He isn't non-political, in the sense that he votes Tory and supports the status quo, he definitely does not. But ... he's a massive outlier.
50: re: the Brockman paper
["you" below is addressed to Joe-Bob, rando UMC Texas shithead.]
Unless you're a trust-fund baby, if you're in the UMC you got an *education*. If you decided not to learn these basic facts about our shared polity, geez, I don't know what to say, other than "please drink more battery acid". New citizens need to know more than this, I'd bet (though I don't know, b/c I went thru the entire US (Texas, so debatable ;-) education system before becoming naturalized, and there was no test).
It's the soft bigotry of low expectations, not expecting these richies (and anybody in the UMC *is* a richie, notwithstanding that they worry about paying their kids' private-school tuitions (boo hoo!)) to know how we run our country.
Yes, there are a *ton* of poorer people who got shitty educations -- I went to high school with a lot of them -- and for them, there's a good argument to be made that our country failed -them-. But for a richie? No, you entitled fuck, *you* failed your country!
Whenever I see something like the list in 50, I think that if I got asked those questions on the street, and freeze and have my mind go blank and be like, "Paul Ryan? He's...You know.... The herman munster kid from the meme where he's pointing to the board that says, 1. More money for us, 2. Fuck you. He's that guy?" and get all my answers counted wrong.
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You know what would be cool? One of those time lapse maps of earth, like they did for nuclear explosions. It would have flashing lights for the duration of every auto plant that has existed. Like the nuclear explosions, it's a pretty discrete set of places. I guess you could quibble about some of the details.
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The Ford Fusion and Dodge ICBM could be in both.
This isn't really solvable because the disinformation machine will create a fake reality that is just believable enough for the majority. If they increase their media savvy a bit, the lies just will be made more complex.