131 Comments

Thanks for a very thoughtful article. There's much to consider here.

For this comment, let me just make one point about the idea of "Trust the experts". Speaking as a technical person, one thing I'd say humanities types don't do well about, understandably, is science distinctions of the kind of roughly:

1) This is very well known and is "true" as well as can be said - e.g. in general, vaccines work

2) We don't really know, but this is our best estimate based on what little we have at the moment, could be wrong, but if you want an answer RIGHT NOW, this is it - e.g. how does Covid spread?

3) Somebody threw together some statistical trash to get a publication - e.g. replication crisis

All of this gets put under "Science". I know, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. But it's a pretty common tactic for right-wing liars to take case 2, which by definition is wrong many times, and use it to try to invalidate case 1. Crucially, I locate the main institutional problem here as being fundamentally with the right-wing liars, not on everyone else to always be perfect in explaining the limitations. Because I don't think such perfection is humanly possible.

There's also a complicated 4) This is likely false, but we want to justify our social institutions by cloaking them in Science - e.g. pseudoscientific racism

That's a whole different topic.

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In your COVID context, the tactic of right wing liars originates in the tactic of left wing bureaucrats who overstate case 2 as 1, ie overvalue the epistemic weight of a given view, in order to justify authoritarian measures while manufacturing consent across institutions, media and culture.

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Yes - whatever the motivations, I do agree there was a lot of exaggeration of the degree of scientific certainty on many issues during the pandemic.

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Exaggeration or just lying?

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In the summer of 2021 a second round of Covid restrictions, most especially related to masks, schools, and vaccine mandates was initiated.

This happened because of a mass Covid outbreak in Provincetown, MA during “bear weak”. Essentially a mass gay orgy full of drug use that caused a Covid outbreak despite vaccines.

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/08/provincetown-delta-variant-hot-vax-summer/

The vaccine wasn’t sterilizing, it couldn’t prevent someone from getting nor transmitting Covid. This was obvious from the studies this was true, and the emergence of variants was also easy to predict. Figures like “90% effective” constantly failed to mention the short timeline after vaccination before it wore off (far too short to get constant boosters).

Nevertheless, Democrats looked at some polls and thought they could blame a new set of lockdowns on the “unvaxxed”. The science didn’t matter, they could manufacture scientific consensus.

This continued until Nov 2021, when the democrats did very badly in elections. Virginias governorship is a known win but they did bad across the board, only saved by the fact that 2021 was an off year.

In short, voters told pollsters what they thought they wanted to hear, but in the voting booth wanted the covid nonsense to end.

Finally, omicron was so transmissible that even hyper vaxxed and isolated liberals were getting it, and they found it wasn’t that bad. Pols of liberals showed they overestimated the health risks of covid by factors of 10-100x (even more in children). It was similar to how much they exaggerated the killing rate of unarmed black men by police.

So when we say “vaccines work” what do we mean? Vaccines took an already very low chance of serious illness, far too low to deserve all that was done about it, and reduced it 90%. Beyond that they didn’t do anything. And yet it still wasn’t enough to get our lives back for another year. Because it was never about the science. It was about control and demonization and hysteria.

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Thanks. And yep - good points.

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I mostly enjoyed this article, but you underestimate how poorly those institutions are performing. The debate among the serious non-left on universities has been moving from “how do we fix them?”to “how do we close them down?”. https://lawliberty.org/dissolve-the-universities/

We are living in a situation of metastasizing bureaucracies and an “official” discourse that is delusional.

The catastrophising of Trump strikes me as ridiculous. He has been President. We know what that is like. In many ways, he ran a conventional Republican Administration, with the normal international result of less deaths in wars. https://hwfo.substack.com/p/global-peace-by-us-president

What Trump does is treat the (increasingly delusional) pieties used to generate social leverage by control of legitimacy in public discourse with contempt. That drives folk crazy.

Oh, and by the way, VP Harris lies, a lot. https://drewholden.substack.com/p/fact-checking-kamala-harris-at-the

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In the spirit of a case study, let me ask you: Aren't Trump's actions of Jan 6 disqualifying for a candidate in small-d democracy? Weren't they literally an *existential* threat to our democracy, and further, he gives every indication of intending to do so again if he doesn't win?

I fear I'm becoming radicalized myself by the partisanship. And increasingly skeptical of the idea of ordinary people having any ability to "turn down the temperature" (i.e. that it's all pretty much about warring factions of the ruling class, very crudely outright Fascism vs whatever we have now, "Democracy" is the nice word, but maybe "Liberal Corporatism" is more accurate).

I mean, I know, there's going to be a whole bunch of talking-points in reply:

1) Knocking Down A Strawman: What Trump did is not as bad as the worst ever done. Yes, it wasn't as bad as e.g. the Civil War. Granted. But that's a low bar. That wasn't the question. It's not asking if he's the lowest in US history - it's if he's way too low.

2) False Moral Equivalence: Democrats have whined to high heaven about losing elections. Yes, they sure have. But they conceded and didn't encourage and endorse violent riots to disrupt the process. Trump's done far, far, worse than Clinton or whoever, *qualitatively* different.

3) It's A Conspiracy: I don't know what to say to this one.

I'm troubled by the evidence that after a certain point - and too quickly - trying to reach across the divide, to understand your opponent's point of view, to be charitable, etc. etc. just doesn't work. This can go very bad very fast. But there's a failure-mode in the other direction too.

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I agree that Trump's actions surrounding the 2020 election and then Jan 6 are utterly disqualifying and place him far outside of the bounds of legitimate democratic politics.

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How do you know? Your interpretation of those events was mediated by people antipathetic to Trump, unless you were there yourself.

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If that was self evident, why is he still here?

Why is Tim waltz, a man that supported mass mob violence in his own state against citizens and law enforcement, the Minnesota Nice Guy?

During covid i kept wondering when mobs were going to murder all our politicians over what they were doing, but it never happened. I was always disappointed by this.

The dem led floyd riots of 2020 directly affected me, the trump riot of Jan 6th only affected people I hate that deserved it.

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Small d democracy isn't that important (and we hardly have one anyway) so no, January 6th is not an important issue.

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For those who wonder about my political biases, I am a U.S. citizen who votes, but am not affiliated with and do not endorse political parties or politicians running for office. I do not know who I will vote for President, but unlikely to be from either major party. The nature of the system is corrupt, largely due to near unanimous willful ignorance on the part of the public, who often erroneously shift blame from ourselves onto those we elect.

If Trump actually wins the presidency again, one hopes you are correct that those of us "catastrophising" him are the guilty party, not he and his supporters. You are also correct that Trump brings positive aspects to the top spot. But so did Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot.

However, it seems that your comment minimizes what he and his supporters habitually TRY to do: overturn democracy and install him as dictator. The new ballot hand count requirement in Georgia enacted by his supporters being one of the latest attempts. Some say it will be impossible to fulfill this new requirement in the required time.

With him in the White House again, he and his supporters will have more time and power to effect their prior goals.

There is also the matter of his thirty thousand + documented lies or distortions. This seems to exceed any other presidential candidate in the history of our country--by leaps and bounds.

While true our national politicians in or running for office are all factually and intellectually dishonest to varying degrees - the best only by omission - being alarmed that Trump and Republicans' endless dishonesty, habitual attempts to overturn democracy while denying votes and election legitimacy, environmental evasion and denialism, as well as (with plenty of help from Democrats) continually worsening an already onerous amount of sovereign debt, while of course repeatedly claiming he will erase it, is a sign of being awake and responsible, not catastrophising.

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“But so did Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot.” And we move to the ridiculous catastrophising.

Trump functionally accepted the results of the election and vacated the office of President. Was his denunciation of the election disgraceful? Yes. But so was 4 years of the attempt to delegitimise his Electoral College win, claiming it was Russian bots and disinformation and he was a Russian agent. “Russiagate” was just QAnon for the college-educated.

Moreover, it was not as if there was nothing to point to about the 2020 election. The wave of changes of electoral rules, the use of mail ballots on an unprecedented scale, the way so many States were able to complete their vote counting on the night, while crucial swing States somehow took longer. I have never seen good evidence that shenanigans actually changed the result, but there was certainly something to work with.

The US has now had two Presidential elections where the losing side attempted to de-legitimise the results. That is setting the US up for disaster, and it is not just a one side problem. Believing it is, is much of the problem.

Possibly Trump was the most-lies President. But he was also the most lied about President. Much of that “fact-checking” was actually narrative enforcement.

As for lies, the utter bullshit narrative about systematic police brutality led to anti-police activism on a scale that predictably led to a massive surge in homicides.

A surge in homicides that was, in fact, predicted. https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/uncategorized/and-now-we-wait-for-the-bodies-to-fall/

All based on delusions generated by systematically distorted media narratives.

https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/data-driven-look-at-race-and-policing/

Thousands of young African-American males died violently so the moral giants of the NYT and WaPo could push their bullshit narrative. What lies from Trump or the Republicans did anything remotely as bad?

An African-American economist exposed what bullshit the narrative was, and what happened to him? Well …

https://youtu.be/rHDhj7Bua1Q?si=eR5VIXYxvnmqAyI2

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Trump continues to deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

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The Roland Fryer link was great. Thks for that.

As usual, your expressions are succinct and hit it out of the park [can you hit it out of the park in Cricket? My TV exposure is unclear on that.]

"Moreover, it was not as if there was nothing to point to about the 2020 election. ... I have never seen good evidence that shenanigans actually changed the result, but there was certainly something to work with. ... Believing [election issues still exist] is much of the problem." If the AG's of several states could not get "standing" with the US SCOTUS to address concerns with Penn. voting practices, where else where they supposed to go? Just suck it up?? Not acceptable, given the sanctity with which we presumably assign to elections for our system to actually let the people speak!

"Possibly Trump was the most-lies President. But he was also the most lied about President. Much of that “fact-checking” was actually narrative enforcement." And not just lied about, but including the lawfare against him and his chief advisors, et al.

There are a number of judges that need to be impeached and disbarred.

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The University of Austin (UATX), which hosted Roland Fryer, is the sort of new higher education instution we need. It teaches students how to think rather than indoctrinating them on what to think.

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I agree. Much was said about Trump by the media and left that were blatant lies or taken out of context. Heck even the NYT had to walk back claims by the left, example his bleach comment.

I don’t deny he has said crazy things but the left are just as guilty of wild claims, Steele documents for example.

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Even though it is widely reported that Trump repeatedly threatens - and has attempted - to prosecute his political enemies who have not committed any crimes, I agree he is unlikely to be as bad as the historical figures I list. But who knows--not a positive omen.

However, my main point is that even far worse individuals than Trump usually have one or two pluses. I also used well known historical examples, so that most people can have a frame of reference.

I have begun watching the YouTube video you link. I plan to watch most or all of it, as it looks like there is a decent chance it is illuminating, and I am hoping it will rationally challenge some of my current understandings. But at 78 minutes, I will consume it in installments.

I have also begun reading your already illuminating Quadrant link, so I thank you for these.

But these do not change the well established facts of Trump's habitually dishonest, illegally power usurping, convicted felon, extreme character.

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I'm always a bit irked by something like "Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot" - Stalin oversaw the defeat of the overwhelming-seeming German war machine (after admittedly, doing much to put the USSR in the position it was in), and Mao co-led the fight against the Japanese invaders and won a civil war.

Hitler failed a putsch, lost several elections, was finally hoisted into power but conservative elites, and then proceeded to lead the country he governed to material and spiritual ruin. Pol Pot won a civil war against putschists with the support of the North Vietnamese and then proceeded to oversee the killing of a quarter of the population.

The first two are not like the other two, even if all four were dictators and got a lot of their people killed!

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Lorenzo asserts "VP Harris lies, a lot" and then provides a link to support his claim.

You assert Trump has 30k+ lies and distortions and provide no supporting evidence.

Yes, Trump seems to be a complex mix of successful, intelligent business leader (and decently successful former president), plus cognizant of the issues; and also a narcissistic "blowhard" public figure bent on never admitting to any mistakes. Here are two links to interviews of Trump being reasonable and personable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6NAwzGtxAg [12 min]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f92WNzXoabg [19 min]

You already know about the debates and rallies where this part of him is not so much in evidence. Many of us consider this "more's the pity", but it takes all kinds of voters voting for you to win in today's elections.

Another basically pro Trump essay that tries to balance his pluses and minuses is:

https://tomklingenstein.com/kamalism-will-destroy-america/

Even George Washington was not revered by all of the people in his time as the perfect politician and leader, although I have come more recently to understand he was actually more involved and influential in his way than I had been led to believe from my childhood history classes.

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It's not that hard to google "false statements by Donald Trump". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump

Your comment is a striking example of the red tribe epistemic polarization that this post talks about. I read through the Klingenstein essay, it's hardly a fair and balanced discussion of Trump's pros / cons, it's like 90% right-wing fear-mongering.

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I am probably guilty as charged, and I now have great difficulty trying to stay "objective" about the other side. I don't see much ability or willingness for either side to move to the middle to seek or obtain "reasonable compromise".

But relying on Wikipedia as a neutral unbiased source of information about political topics is also a flawed path to take.

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It does not matter which sources we utilize, when particular audience members just do not care for facts which are not only well documented, but also well known by the general public.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/trump-lies-false-presidency-b1790285.html

Also, my comments above...

"I have begun watching the YouTube video you link. I plan to watch most or all of it..."

"I have also begun reading your already illuminating Quadrant link..."

...contradict your assertion about my moderation, reasonableness, and openness.

Would that Trump were this moderate, reasonable, informed, and open.

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As an observer from across the pond, I am amazed there is even a debate here. When one of the candidates is a convicted criminal and sexual predator who seems to be completely out of touch with reality and has difficulty forming coherent sentences, the other candidate would need to be a serial killer not to get your vote.

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Fair enough - I think we see things differently (e.g. I'm not as scathing of institutions) but I appreciate the comment and perspective.

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"In many ways, he ran a conventional Republican Administration..."

How many of his original Cabinet members were fired by him or quit? How many of those Cabinet members stayed until the end of his term? How does the number of Cabinet officials who were fired / quit compare to previous administrations?

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I did not say he was a good Presidential manager. I am simply arguing against the catastrophising. Indeed, there were so many good criticisms to be made, the resort to the over the top hysteria was and is revealing.

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That’s moving the goalposts. I’m not disagreeing that there was catastrophising. I’m just saying he didn’t run a conventional Republican administration.

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A parallel question is what was the quality of the people at the end of his administration?

I think Pompeo and Grenell were good (and some others I don't recall), and I want to believe Bill Barr was a high quality honest advisor. But I still have to wonder about just how deeply Barr's team really investigated election related issues, looking for flaws, or just trying to avoid any delay in certification of the election if the issue did not raise to the level of changing the net result. Plus if he had to use FBI agents as some of his "hunting dogs" there may have been less than stellar performance from them, too. He was clearly relying on others to reach his final conclusions given to Trump.

If Harris wins, it will be interesting to see how well and how long some of her staffers stick around, given rumors of her exceedingly poor management abilities during her time as VP.

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I don't agree with either Friedman's or Dan William's diagnosis. We seem to be ignoring the elephant in the room here, which is fascism. Yuval Harari said it best: Trump doesn't value truth, because he sees everything as a power struggle. What is true or false is not important, the only thing that is important is who is winning or losing. Harari correctly points out that this line of thought comes from Karl Marx: truth just means the ideology of whoever is in power. But it also corresponds to fascism, the glorification of violence and power. The fraternizing with Nazis, the openly racist lies about Haitians, and Trump's threats of mass deportation - it all becomes quite obvious. So there are two diametrically opposed epistemologies: one is marxist and post-modernist, and it claims that truth isn't an impartial standard, it's whatever the most powerful person says it is at the time he says it. This is the epistemology of the fascist cult, because it implies that the cult followers should just accept the words of the leader because they identify so strongly with him. From the very beginning of his Presidency, Trump made a point of expecting his staff to repeat his lies about crowd size, and later, about a stolen election. No justification, other than he said it was true, so that makes it true. The opposing epistemology sees truth as an impartial ideal, and our knowledge as fallible and in need of correction from empirical evidence. There is no equivalence here. Either you adhere to epistemological standards or you embrace the naked pursuit of power. And the more people choose the latter, the more it leads to the wholesale destruction of human knowledge

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The hegemony of non-thinking acceptance of ideas currently lies on the left

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My experience is the vast majority of the left is bad in that regard, but the right is notably worse.

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Yes there's a lot on both sides. They're different in aspect though- the right is reactionary and obviously rules the roost in certain states but the left is the current hegemony culturally.

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Very interesting. Thought-provoking as always. A couple of them:

1. An important distinction that you point to at the end w/o fully explaining is difference between "trusting the experts" and "trusting the scientific method" (or similar processes and habits of mind in humanistic scholarship). A key feature of the scientific method is that authority never ultimately rests in individuals. Anyone who makes a knowledge claim -- no matter how many degrees they have or how sterling their reputation is -- has to back it up with evidence and arguments convincing to others. And anyone else -- regardless of their lack of credentials -- can debunk a knowledge claim made by an expert if they have better evidence and arguments. Often, too much deference to respected authorities hinders scientific progress. There's an old joke that "science advances one funeral at a time" b/c established authorities who have institutional power and are wedded to outdated theories tend to block progress. And there are also many cases in which "first person naive realists" can correct experienced experts. Scientists can be vulnerable to the Platonic Fallacy in which their theories seem more real to them than messy empirical reality. First person naive realists, unburdened by expert theories, may be more open to new empirical evidence that a scientist would dismiss (often this comes up in debates about how much danger is posed by chemical spills or the lead in the water pipes).

By assuming that everyone is a naive realist who just happens to believe in different authorities, Friedman (per your reading of him) seems to reject the idea that some intellectual habits are more likely to produce knowledge than others. Nevertheless, I believe (unfortunately) that his claim that the American Left "trusts the experts" is more accurate these days than that they "trust the scientific method."

2. Per your analysis, today's anti-Trumpian Left kind of reminds me of the anti-Communist Right during the Cold War. They are correct in their belief that the policies of their opponents would be disastrous, but they lack conviction in their own principles and often betray them in their zeal to defeat the enemy. Did we really need McCarthy's witch hunts, the Viet Nam War, and CIA-funded coups for capitalism to defeat communism? Do we need cancel culture, misinformation witch hunts, ideological purity tests, etc. for liberal democracy to defeat Trumpian authoritarianism. Often, I worry that self-proclaimed defenders of liberal democracy are more dangerous to it than the average citizen just trying to get through the day w/o so much political fervor.

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Thanks John - very interesting thoughts on both counts. The issue of trusting expertise vs trusting the "scientific method" is an important one, and reminds me of Philip Tetlock's work on how non-expert "superforecasters" can outcompete experts by thinking about topics in an extremely rigorous, scientific way. Re. 2: Yes, I can see your point - but I also sympathise with the impulse behind some aspects of anti-Trumpian left, even when I think it's misguided.

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Thank you, extremely helpful, especially for someone from the late golden age trying to figure out what the f**k is going on here. A couple thoughts:

". . transform partisan narratives into sacred beliefs . . " All ideas have material causes, but it seems they can take on a life of their own and become quite unmoored from those causes. I suspect many of the ideas on the far right and far left have morphed into such an extreme form that they are now dysfunctional, counterproductive to their proponents aims.

Immigrants eating pets. An obvious lie, but likely to resonate not so much because of racism but because the open border ideology of the far left is either oblivious or indifferent to the possible harms that could arise from sending 20,000 linguistically and culturally very distinct people to a town not much bigger than that. Unfortunately this one will backfire: it seems part of the market for rationalizations is a market for inoculation, designed to shield adherents from serious critiques posed by the other side. Progressive media and pundits will now focus on pet eating as THE reason for objections to open borders, thus protecting progressives from having to think seriously about immigration policy.

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Thanks - and yes, fair points.

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“the open border ideology of the far left is either oblivious or indifferent to the possible harms that could arise from sending 20,000 linguistically and culturally very distinct people to a town not much bigger than that.”

Are these fair points? Some on the left advocate open borders. The sitting president and vice president don’t. Did anyone send many immigrants to Springfield? No. They were attracted by employment opportunities and a policy promoted by city leaders and employers. Did 20k immigrants arrive at all? The likely number is maybe a quarter of that.

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Sean, these people like lying to themselves. They don't respect themselves, so should anyone else?

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If these points have to be made with obvious lies, then maybe they aren't worthwhile and the people making them are not worth anyone's time.

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It does always bring me comfort to remember that the vast majority of Americans are relatively normal and moderate without insane beliefs. It’s just that the crazy 20% is truly so so loud

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Ha - yes, very true. (Although I think many still have insane beliefs; it is just that they do not map on to partisan politics).

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Yes, the essay acknowledges that it is analyzing a somewhat simplistic premise given that views are a continuum along the line that extends from the poles. That continuum, in fact, exists even within factions. The insanity, I think, is amplified by the need to appeal to a minority in order to win primaries, maintain the loyalty of the base, attract donors and the other absurdities that define the path to power in the US. And yes, you wind up with 20% supporters and 80% crossing their fingers or holding their noses to vote. My view is that the power would more reflect the electorate with open primaries, ranked choice voting, and direct democracy. I think that may level the field between the gamesmen seeking power and the servant leaders seeking solutions.

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Yes but often the people with those divergent views are cowed into silence or enticed into group conformity so it's small comfort.

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Extensive personal experience, the social sciences, philosophy, history, news, wars, nuclear weapons, as well as environmental science research and reporting, all lead me to a different conclusion than yours that the vast majority are "...without insane beliefs."

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I find this article brilliant, but Trump is the critical destabilizing element, because this epistemological crisis never before put into question the institutional system, and the supremacy of democratic elections.

I personally have more sympathy for Republican America, but now it is monarchical America. This is what has turned the problem into an existential crisis.

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Yes - there's a lot of insight in this view. Trump is a singuar (awful) force that shouldn't be discounted.

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I'm impressed you managed to retain some critical distance from Friedman, because based on the little I've seen he's really some writer! It's tough not to dutifully nod your head when someone thinks and writes that beautifully.

These distinctions between "motivated reasoning," "bias," "naive realism" and "ideology" become a bit blurry - especially when they don't operate in isolation - so it could be useful to review the exact differences down the road, maybe even a little glossary of all the terms you've used. Here you take "bias" to mean the path-dependent, iterative aspect, where we are guided farther and farther off course (the way a tide nudges you down the beach without you noticing), and "motivated reasoning" reflects that evolutionary lens you bring in much more than Friedman (including the social and transactional functions of what we perceive as moral and normatively charged). Whereas, naive realism is depicted as a purely epistemological phenomenon reflecting our fundamentally interpretive and mediated thought, i.e. on a more philosophical plane. But in practice, "bias" seems to have become the household term that covers all of these in public conversations, especially where this foregrounds well-known "cognitive biases."

To the extent we fall into "right" and "left" tribes (which I think is an open question, and should always take into account pluralistic ignorance constructing imaginary polarization), your point in the last section about their different-looking failure modes is so key. This is where the tendency to "both-sides" by otherwise thoughtful Heterodox types (Zaid Jilani comes to mind) becomes problematic. Most people aren't strictly on the left or right, or even at all, but there are ideal types that exert their own power. And the toxic, ideological, silly stuff I see on the left is simply not as scary as the toxic, ideological stuff on the right. On the other hand, the left is more annoying. There are real qualitative differences in any respective cultures, which must be constantly parsed. 

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Yes, great point about how terms like motivated reasoning, bias, and naive realism and blend into each other. I'm not sure I used "bias" consistently, actually - after introducing Friedman's usage, I think I then reverted to treating it synonymously with motivated reasoning, which is what I typically do.

Completely agree the right/left tribe is a bit simplistic and ignores possibilities like pluralistic ignorance and imaginary polarization.

"And the toxic, ideological, silly stuff I see on the left is simply not as scary as the toxic, ideological stuff on the right. On the other hand, the left is more annoying." - Ha, yes this is a very important point. I actually think the degree to which the left annoys many people is an understudied psychological and social phenomenon.

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“The Politics Of Annoyance.” Up there with status for aesthetics! Friedman doesn't seem to get into aesthetics.

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Brilliant. I’d subscribe to see more of your writing.

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Great analysis, Dan. I wonder if the idealism and excessive charity you astutely critique in Friedman's essay might not have been in service of his culminating *practical* advice to "put ourselves into the streams of information and interpretation that shape our opponents’ webs of belief". For *that* ('intentional stance'-type) task (versus the *theoretical* task of unvarnished understanding, for which your critical points are completely apt), centering idealism and excessive charity seems apt. In any case, it sounds like he might have been heading in a direction less vulnerable to your critique. Sadly, I guess we'll never know.

"At the time of his death he was just embarking on a new study of Marx’s epistemology, and he was planning another book on a new type of humanism grounded less in human freedom than in our ideational and fallible nature."

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08913811.2023.2248737

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Thanks Rob. Yes - this is a great point, and this practical upshot of Friedman's account is the most important aspect, I think. (In the original draft I went into what I think is so valuable in his analysis at the end but going over 5000 words was too much even for me! I might return to it in the future). I didn't know he was working on those books - it fucking sucks we'll never get to read them.

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Author's utilization of an expletive suggests he is not merely a coldly analytical West World University humanoid bot, as previously and widely suspected, but may in fact occasionally be Homo sapiens in form, feelings, and function.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.edaQi6KNy9XMMru6ccCeSAHaK9%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=64650f7fd8d11cdf08cfd89bdcd3463b22b5c649593abe926ac04178f80870e0&ipo=images

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Excellent essay, really enjoyed reading it.

One important point in relation to the "golden age" era characterised by non-polarisation. Between the end of the Civil War and 1965, the two political parties were "united" because they acted as one party, especially in the South. As the country was already split horizontally between ethnic and racial groups, maintaining one ideological line by suppressing ideological differences was agreed on to at least keep the nation together vertically. This means it was a one-party rule much like authoritarian states around the world as Pildes puts it, and whatever citizens voted for meant no change in policy or basic ideological direction. The complete monopoly involved violence, intimidation, informal manipulation, and fraud during election.

And those who called for more polarisation - to give voters a real choice, which is what democracy is about after all - were called "radicals." It wasn't until the 1990s (which you mention), that a real two-party system emerged.

As I write in my own essay (Only a Visit By Aliens Can Unite the Americans Now), the perception of polarisation is rooted in a flawed logic; there was no unity to begin with.

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Thanks. And yes - that's a big part of the story.

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This take ignores coalitional composition and the very real battle over building the modern administrative state. FDR didn’t threaten to pack SCOTUS because they agreed too much with him, fam.

If anything, it was FDR’s success that created a brief window in the late 40’s into the 1950’s when there truly was an elite consensus, which was what the political scientists of the time were so upset about.

But the era you describe as essentially coterminous with Jim Crow wasn’t one big uniparty; it’s probably better described as a “four factions, two parties” system with frequently changing coalitions. The end of Jim Crow wasn’t the birth of some glorious new truly two-party system, it was the apocalyptic moment when Dixie finally got over its pre-Founding blood feud with Northern Whigs and then built a propaganda machine to export slave-society values across the rest of rural America while letting the Whigs sell out our national industrial base so they could finally rebuild the Gilded Age’s monopolies.

Lee and Davis couldn’t have asked for a more thorough final victory for the Confederacy’s legacy even if they’d known it would only take another 160 years to achieve.

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But why do you focus so hard on parties? To me the astonishing thing is that when Easy Riders was shot in 1969, there was no party for such people. A huge social, cultural movement and no party for it at all. No representation in politics. Engaging entirely in underground politics, so to speak, not elections.

Fast forward to Occupy Wall Street. Did they have a party?

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Really interesting article as usual.

One thing that often goes unsaid is the role of religion. Yes I know many of the world's greatest scientists have been quite religious. But it begs credulity to proffer that a lifetime of training in the group delusion that what are transparently primitive desert tribal myths from 2-4k years ago are the truth has no effect on one's psychology. It shouldn't be surprising that the political tribe where those people mostly reside is more prone to tribal just-so propaganda and hateful tribal myths.

Lots of center left folks like to feel intellectually honest and both-sides their takes on this. But the percentage of people who believe a left version of something so preposterous as the Bible is the literal truth directly from God's mouth to the page -- say, America is an imperialist-capitalist hellscape and only a Leninist revolution can move us towards utopia -- is vanishingly small comparatively. 25% of Americans believe the Bible is literal truth direct from God. Another 25% believe it's the word of God but written by man.

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Another fascinating post on an absolutely pivotal question. How can a political system work in the absence of agreement about what is what? I'm old enough to remember Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan saying (as though it was obvious) that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not to their own facts. How quickly things change. I appreciated the summary of Friedman's thesis too, even if I found myself wanting to know what you -- Dan Williams -- think about the differences between so-called red and so-called blue visions of the world. Being at best a mere diplomatic practitioner (and a former one at that) and at worst a hopeless dilettante, I find I had two main reactions to the post, apart from being deeply impressed with the analysis. The first is that in cases involving pragmatic reality, some things are either true or they're not. For example, X and not Y won the election. They're not really a matter of interpretation. (I understand this assertion becomes debatable once the institutions established to determine such things have fallen into such grave disrepute that a mere rhetorical counter-claim, without reference to contrary evidence, acquires the same weight as the evidence-based one.) Second, as you know better than I do, our political institutions are social constructions (I hate that phrase, and feel pretentious even writing it) and not natural artifacts. As such, they depend on a minimum consensus, which, sufficiently eroded, leaves us in a dangerous vacuum that (as you well know) is greatly abhorred and will be filled by the assertion of de facto power. In that sense, I prefer to see it (as Friedman does?) as a dangerous collapse of consensus reality rather than as an abstract battle of competing (and perhaps equally valid) perspectives -- which would be fine if were only a matter of angels dancing on the head of a pin rather than people living on the earth trying to hash things out in a way that works for as many of us as possible. Do you agree -- or did I plunge down so many logically fallacious rabbit holes that it makes no sense to respond? Keep it up. Alexis

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It seems that most facts (all empirical facts) are socially polarising just on the basis of different interpretations. Some facts are a priori provable, those are few, but empirical ‘facts’ are contingent and always only subjectively apprehended; not provable by any amount of ‘data’. Nevertheless, different interpretations of experiences/perceptions can be evaluated on the basis of systemic, conceptual coherence; some subjective interpretations are simply incoherent with the bulk of our ontological and performative commitments, which renders them false (as assertions about facts, not as subjective ascriptions or preferences). The question of political polarisation is then (charitably speaking) reducible to subjective preferences that are not provably inconsistent with the ‘world as we know it’, are not even truth-apt, but lead to different consequences, and it is in terms of those consequences that they can be evaluated as to their merit. Most of such consequences are impossible to predict, simply due to systemic complexity, but we may be able to learn from them post factum. In that sense I support the idea of giving people enough rope, let them learn through suffering and failure. As someone said (although I am possibly misquoting): “God punishes fools by giving them what they want.”

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I love your commentary here. Your ending "quote" reminds of my favorite entertainment video of any type, and of all time. X-Files, Season 7, episode 21: "Je Souhaite" ("I Wish").

A genie granting wishes is blamed for the subsequent misfortunes of those who initially feel fortunate enough to get three wishes.

Special Agent Mulder:

You know, I think I’m beginning to see the problem here. You say that most people make the wrong wishes, right?

Genie:

Without fail—it's like giving a chimpanzee a revolver.

Always asking for the wrong thing.

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In part because I am *still* haunted by the fourth segment of the 1983 John Landis and Steven Spielberg Twilight Zone movie, starring John Lithgow as a passenger on a plane, adjacent a window seat over a wing, I predict I am really going to appreciate this.

Thank you in advance. I think?

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Isn't the moral of those stories just "Genies are sadistic jerks who will gleefully screw you over, and then add insult to injury by telling you it's all your fault"? What happens if you get a contract lawyer to draft your wish? Can you add a clause "... and consult with me beforehand on every step you will take to execute this wish, allowing me to veto or modify each step". Or at least ask the genie, "If I wish for X, what will you do to grant it, in specific detail?" (if the genie won't tell you, or starts talking like a politician, that's your answer).

Let me second that Twilight Zone episode Michael Kowalik recommended though. It has some interesting psychological depth to it. It's basically a study in the rationalization of doing immoral actions which benefit the person doing them.

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Proportionally the 1964 civil rights act had more support from the Republicans.

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That is probably objectively true, but then the issue becomes how and why is it that the conservatives/ Republicans don't get the credit for advancing and supporting that legislation? I suppose part of the reason is that the Dems followed up with the welfare promoting (and black family destroying?) Great Society. Coupling that with the growing media bias and leftist indoctrination, and possibly the business leadership preferring low cost foreign labor and a cosmopolitan globalist outlook, might have helped create that misperception about our national attitudes and character concerning race. Substantial achievements were in place and advancing further, but the racialist efforts of Obama and Eric Holder, on top of the declining background distortions from Jesse Jackson and "Reverend" Al Sharpton, then moved us back 20 or more years of race related progress.

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The Republican contributions to The Civil Rights Movement are acknowledged by all informed and adequately educated observers.

Despite Nixon's Southern electoral Strategy, his administration desegragated more schools than any other one.

The issue is really t h at we have been living in a particularly intellectually impoverished time.

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People from both political sides give Trump wayyy to much credit.Leftists think him as a machiavelian strategist charming people with strategic lies,when he just says whatever is in his mind like a 5 year old,and always doubles and triples down even when people explain him how he is wrong.Republicans who think he is gonna MAGA and deep state stopped him 4 years ago,should have went for another candidate who can get things done like DeSantis.The problem with Trumps popularity is that most people don't have the will and means to get accurate political information,and Trump seems more relatable than most politicians.The libertarian luxury belief is that publishing books and articles is gonna make the average citizen an expert on economics and foreign policy.Also saddly a part of the crisis alleged here is that people simply don't consider it an issue.Noone in Ukraine will spend more than 2 seconds for an allegedly missing pet,yet here you can get a 5 mill views music yt video in 5 hours.My two cents here,Daniel's brain is a library,always happy we can get a peak

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Ha - thanks Christos, an interesting take.

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"Likewise, the strange coalition between rural, uneducated, white, socially conservative Americans and business elites within the Republican Party illuminates why American conservatism became so strongly pro-market in the late twentieth century."

Are you suggesting that Republicans were not strongly pro-market in the 1920's? That they had no problem with the policy choices made by the New Dealers? I would point our that Democrats controlled the government over 1933-46. In the face of skyrocketing inflation (rising from 3.3% in June to 14.8% in November 1946, on its way to 20%) Americans elected Republicans to Congress. The Republicans, interpreting this result as support of their ideas, attempted to undo elements of the New Deal. The lost both Houses of Congress and failed to take the presidency in 1948. despite the splintering of the Democratic party. When Eisenhower won four years later, he interpreted recent history to mean that attempting to roll back the New Deal was fool's errand.

Republicans had not become ideologically less supportive of unfettered capitalism. They simply were responding to political reality, which is not the same thing as changing your ideology. As soon as the New Deal-created economy stopped delivering benefits to workers in 1973, support for Democrats among whites fell and would never again be what it had been. Democrats lost in 1968 and won in 1976 and 1992, yet the racial split was larger in the latter elections than in '68. For all three election the fact that Democrats had side with blacks was in the background. Democrats were losing an unpopular war and lost as a result in 1968, while Republicans were the unpopular party in the other two elections, and lost both. Yet the racial divide was greater. Why? The reason was the New Deal economy was no longer delivering for working people, white of black. Civil Rights had given blacks a reason to vote Democratic, they had nothing for whites, so minorities favored the Dems to a greater degree, explaining the gaps.

It is true that Republicans worked to create a linkage with evangelicals (see link), but this was *after* 1976, by which time the first racial shift had already happened. It was the abandoning of the white working class without any race-specific offsetting offerings (as they gave minorities) that was the chief factor turning them against the Democratic party.

This development gave Republicans after 1976 an opportunity to implement their preferred free market capitalist policies, which they took advantage of in the *very next election*.

Seems to me Republicans have always been pro-market capitalists when they could get away with it politically.

https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/political-evolution-in-the-us

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