Much as I tried and failed to love my first girlfriend, I have tried to love you. I took you at your word, and trusted you to be a news aggregator. Maybe you really were an aggregator at some point, and maybe you will be again, but I’m not sure I’m willing to take that risk. It could be that you have become “FOX News for the Left” on accident, but I don’t think this is the case.

I realized today that underneath your simple exterior and closed-minded politics, you are nothing more than a private club. I can tolerate an open social network that happens to be like-minded, but a hive mind is too much for me to bear. If you don’t agree with this characterization, I ask you to look at what happens to stories from the other end of the political spectrum.

Normally, I would just stop coming by, but I think it is important the club realize what they are doing, and I would guess I am not alone in my concerns. Far left news stories are posted all day long, and pushed to the front page. The message is clear, Republicans are evil, George Bush is a dictator, Dick Cheney is the antichrist, and the United States is doomed if it does not elect Barack Obama. The problem is, instead of aggregating news, you have started filtering the news, and what is left behind paints a bleak picture of stolen elections, voter fraud, martial law, and unending financial crisis. You are breeding fear by not allowing participation from those with differing opinions that could moderate the debate.

You know as well as I do that fear is the enemy of reason. The biological systems that are enhanced by fear have little or nothing to do with one’s ability to think, though they often assist us in making the correct decision during times when our choice is binary. The problem is, fear often takes situations where the decision is not yes or no, or fight or flight and eliminates all our options until the problem seems binary.

A recent example is the rabble that grew from stories of imminent martial law. Those stories of course changed to martial law being used in November to steal the election, then morphed again into martial law being used by President Bush to hold authority after Barack Obama wins. In a matter of days you ran the full spectrum of fear – it’s happening now, it’s happening soon, it’s going to happen eventually. My concern is you stripped away the context. It is October in a presidential election year, and news stories of this kind are not a new invention.

Worse, just like FOX news you make no apologies for your fear mongering. There is no accountability. By the time a story is fully debunked, you have moved on to a new way that Republicans are going to destroy the United States. What happened to the horrible calamity on October 7^th? What happened to the imminent bombing of Iran? What happened to the New Great Depression? You can say they will happen eventually, but that is true of most things if the timeline is long enough. Where are the news stories that could mediate such fears by putting them in context? I thought the more liberal individuals in America were supposed to be the more intelligent and reasonable individuals. I thought liberals were open minded and believed in nuance.

When you do attempt to offer context, it is only context to further my fear. And when there is a day that doesn’t lend itself to trashing everyone who ever cast a ballot in a Republican Primary, you dig up stories about election fraud in Ohio four years ago. I know the report just came out, but if you were so worried about it, you could have read a book on the subject, instead of waiting until it aided your goal of agitating and unnerving liberals. Additionally, when you post a story that is nothing more than an interview sharing one person’s opinion, it isn’t actually news.

I understand that the other guys have been in charge for eight years, and that a lot of things have happened which give you cause to feel concern; however, if you look back to 2000, there was widespread panic among Republicans that President Clinton would not leave office. FOX News unearthed a scenario where he could keep his office in the case of a contested election, and pushed the idea that he most certainly would do so because Al Gore was his vice president.

You see, the bigger problem is filtering your media this way only hurts the participants. The reason Republicans have been acting so unhinged over the last two weeks is no different. They are afraid of what will happen in an Obama presidency, and they only get their news from special sources that filter out any conflicting opinions. In some cases, you do us a great disservice by not taking the next step and posting competing ideas. There are concepts of value in other’s opinions even when one does not agree. The men who wrote the United States’ Constitution did not agree on most anything while they worked on that document. They had heated debates, and felt disgusted with one another’s views, but they listened to each other, and the final result was stronger because of it.

Instead of agitating people about martial law, post stories that explain how martial law is a low percentage possibility, and explain what can be done. There are options besides fighting or fleeing in the event of President Bush completing his coup d’état. The easiest thing we can do is ensure we have enough food to last for a few months (provided we ration it), and some bottled water in case of service disruption. Should Martial Law be implemented, the most effective means to ending the action is a work stoppage. It will take a lot less than three months for corporate America to pressure the government into restoring some semblance of freedom, and that small amount of freedom allows us to organize and implement new plans to peacefully take back our country.

This is practical information that may actually be helpful in the event of disaster and that is why it would never end up on your front page. Someone posted a story that wasn’t pro-Obama, and the response was nearly immediate that it be pushed down into no man’s land where even the worst of your junkies could not find it – because your search feature sucks. (Yes, I know that google will allow me to do a site search, and I do so occasionally, but it seems odd that a solution to this problem be so unattainable). Worse than the negative voting system you use to keep people with differing opinions from joining the discussion, is the way you treat moderates who visit. One of the comments to a recent non-left story basically said “take it to free republic, we’re not stupid here.” When you react in this way, you lower the discourse to a significant degree, and do all of us a disservice.

Mostly, I just wanted you to know, that I have tried to love you, but it isn’t working out. No matter how much you try to cater to my viewpoints, I need third party information and opinion if I am to be an informed citizen. Maybe in the future, after the election is over and Bush is dethroned, we can hang out again, and see how it goes, but . . . I guess that what I am saying is we can still be friends, Reddit, but I want to see other aggregators.

Sincerely,

D.pH

P.S. Would you please quit acting like Ron Paul is the last honest politician and sole protector of the Constitution? It is annoying, and makes you look uninformed.

A while back, I posted about faux-outrage on the part of Pentecostal leaders and parishioners who were all wound up about a political cartoon. The cartoon actually painted the Republican Party in the position of “those who should be laughed at,” but reason has never been the religious right’s strong suit and they took offense anyway. In my attempt to show why it was absurd and unreasonable for them to be offended by a joke of such little importance, I offended at least one more of them, leading to the following comment¹:

You are an ignorant bigot who is probably going to hell. I say probably because as a CHRISTIAN (follower of Christ) I know only GOD knows whats in your heart. It is totally unfair for you to attack these MEN OF GOD for exercising their freedom of speech just because you hate that they are happy and secure in JESUS. And it is even worse because you don’t do it to their face. You do it BEHIND THEIR BACK so they can’t defend themselves. You should stop doing the devil’s work and come to GOD before its too late.

The odds of this being a troll are probably quite high, though something about the wording makes me think it was written by a female, a gender with a much lower troll to human ratio. Regardless, it should be said that this is exactly what I was talking about in those posts, and the commenter has made my point nicely. Epidemic in religious “debate” is this idea that whoever does not agree with the church is ignorant. This is even worse than the subjectivism that is rampant in our culture, because instead of arguing that all opinions are equally valid, or that “we will have to agree to disagree,” it argues that only one person’s opinion is valid while the other is apparently not an opinion at all.

As for the claim that I have done anything behind anyone’s back, I have to say I don’t know what evidence there is for such a claim, but want to assure the anonymous author that I linked to the religious fanatic’s blogs and left trackbacks. If they want to see what I said about them, they only have to click. The rest of the comment is inarguable because there isn’t any substance to it, but I would like to ask what the point of this random capitalization is². Also, it would be nice to know if the apostrophes have been left out accidentally, or if it is a stylistic choice. Either way, I appreciate the reader’s concern, and will seriously consider not doing the devil’s work anymore.

On to real news:

It seems that every day there is a new story of police corruption or misconduct occurring somewhere in this country, and I have long been an advocate for more oversight of those to whom we give great authority. However, this week brought along two law enforcement stories of a different nature. The first discusses a police officer who actually does his job, and upholds the law.

Sheriff Thomas J. Dart in Cook County Illinois has decreed that his department will not take part in any further eviction proceedings until the banking industry gets its act together. A growing problem across the country, many tenants who are paid up on their rent are being evicted because their landlords have fallen behind on mortgage payments:

“These poor people are seeing everything they own put out on the street. … They’ve paid their bills, paid them on time. Here we are with a battering ram at the front door going to throw them out. It’s gotten insane,” he said.

Mortgage companies are supposed to identify a building’s occupants before asking for an eviction, but sheriff’s deputies routinely find that the mortgage companies have not done so, Dart said.

“This is an example where the banking industry has not done any of the work they should do. It’s a piece of paper to them,” Dart said.

“These mortgage companies … don’t care who’s in the building,” Dart said Wednesday. “They simply want their money and don’t care who gets hurt along the way.

“On top of it all, they want taxpayers to fund their investigative work for them. We’re not going to do their jobs for them anymore. We’re just not going to evict innocent tenants. It stops today.”

Dart said he wants the courts or the state Legislature to establish protections for those most harmed by the mortgage crisis.

I applaud Sheriff Dart’s attitude and approach to this issue. It is about time we started protecting our citizens before our corporations. The legal issues involved here are more complicated than this approach can effectively deal with, but it is a start.

Momentarily sticking with the topic of landowners before returning to police, this week brought us a man who has a subdivision he cannot sell due to the economy tanking so magnificently, and is electing to take his anger out on one of the few people who actually bought one of his overpriced tract houses. John Trumbo reports on Chick Edwards, the developer of a 47 lot subdivision in Kennewick, WA who is attempting to take legal action against the owner of a home that does not have proper landscaping. The homeowner, Lt. Burke Jensen, is an “involuntarily mobilized reservist” currently overseas Kuwait and has apparently let his yard work slide:

“I really don’t give a [expletive] where he is or what his problem is . . . It doesn’t matter to me,” said Edwards, who insists Jensen has violated terms of the homeowners-association covenants requiring that landscaping be completed within one year after an occupancy permit is issued for a home.

“[Jensen] doesn’t have the right to walk away from his obligation,” said Edwards, who as the developer is the only member of the homeowners association. “I have most of the property still, so I am the homeowners association,” he said.

Being a reasonable man, Jensen has stated a desire to find a renter for the property to handle upkeep while he is gone. Likewise, his neighbors have stated they don’t mind the appearance of Jensen’s property. Edwards is unmoved:

Edwards said [renting] would be a commercial use not allowed by the homeowners association. “He’s not going to rent it,” said Edwards,. . .an attorney who has reviewed the covenants agrees.

“This is a contract. I don’t like the way his property looks. This clown gets to do what he wants, and I’m as mad as hell,” he said.

Apparently the prospect of becoming a “have not” has the “haves” a little upset these days. Or, Edwards may just be certifiably insane. While clearly irrational, I think the developer’s last quote is the most telling: “This clown gets to do what he wants, and I’m as mad as hell.” Yes, I’m sure Lt. Jensen, the involuntarily mobilized reservist, was dying to go live in a hostile wasteland.

The second law enforcement story that caught my eye this week centers on Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott who made headlines when he referred to the democratic candidate for President as Barack Hussein Obama at a Palin rally in Florida. It is hard to tell whether the Obama supporters are more upset about the Sheriff’s use of their guy’s middle name, or the fact that he was in uniform when he introduced the Republican VP hopeful. Half of them are shouting Hatch Act! While the rest scream Smear! The entire thing is beyond me.

I hate to break it to everyone, but Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussein. America already knows. Early in the campaign this might have been an issue, as certain conservatives used the name as a subtle attempt to tie terrorist ideals to the frontrunner, but does it really matter if the Sheriff uses Obama’s middle name, when Palin is going to open her speech by saying outright that he hates America and sympathizes with terrorists? Supporters on both sides have become increasingly sensitive to attacks as the campaigns wind down, and I think all of us have lost sight of what we’re really fighting about. Liberals: you don’t need to fight the name game anymore, that ship has sailed.

When she isn’t inciting conservatives to assault presidential candidates, Palin stays busy making rape victims pay for their own evidence collection kits, abusing her office’s authority, and advocating abstinence instead of actual sex education. I have previously stated my case that no one has ever been better protected from sexual consequences by having less information. This week brought us a fantastically entertaining example of this principle at work, 17 year old Jamie Lynn Spears, C-list television star and sister of former pop-star Britney, is once again pregnant. It seems Ms. Spears didn’t know you could get pregnant if you were breast feeding. Maybe we should have given her some of this basic anatomical information instead of telling her to “just say no” to sex.

On the bright side, despite being fired by Nickelodeon for her pregnancy
unspecified reasons, Ms. Spears may not be out of work. If PETA has their way, her breast milk will be a valuable commodity. In a move to clarify that they have lost their minds, the animal protection agency began advocating the use of human milk rather than cow milk in the production of ice cream. Apparently, keeping cows for milk is cruel, but keeping women is okay. Good to know white slaving is alive and well. Or did PETA not consider that the women who volunteered for this duty would have to be constantly monitored to ensure that they were not ingesting or injecting substances that would affect milk quality?

Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream was actually pretty sporting about the whole thing, saying “We applaud PETA’s novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child.” To which the udderly utterly humorless psychotics replied “Hey, guys, that’s our point: Cow’s milk is for baby cows.”

Wow. The only thing funnier than that is this old video of Bill O’Reilly losing his mind because he doesn’t understand colloquial English*:

That’s the trash. See you next week.

D.pH

___________________________________

1 – Spelling and grammar has been left as it was in the original, which I deleted due to it being posted anonymously. I assure you that censorship was not my goal; rather, anonymous comments are tacky and have since been disabled – If you can’t bother to include an online identity, or first name and city (or state if you live in a small area), I can’t be bothered to give you a forum. However, it was my fault that the comment had to be taken down, so I am reprinting it in the trash and will reply posthaste.

2 – The capitalization does have an interesting and Freudian quality to it, when one considers the phrases and words chosen to be emphasized. CHRISTIAN, MEN OF GOD, JESUS, and GOD all appear in this format. They share the trait of being words unique to religion. Outside the context of Christianity, nearly all of them are meaningless, with the exception of god, (provided one uses a small “g”). At the same time a phrase primarily used to denote hypocrisy, BEHIND THEIR BACK, shows up in the same style. I’ll let everyone draw their own inferences.

* – Almost as funny is the Brokers with Hands on their Faces photo blog, but nothing measures up to O’Reilly.

]]> http://digitalphrett.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/taking-out-the-trash/feed/ 0 Digital.pHrett http://digitalphrett.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/desperate-and-afraid-liberals-fall-back-on-half-truths/ http://digitalphrett.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/desperate-and-afraid-liberals-fall-back-on-half-truths/#comments Thu, 09 Oct 2008 02:23:25 +0000 Digital.pHrett http://digitalphrett.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/desperate-and-afraid-liberals-fall-back-on-half-truths/ ]]> News of financial collapses around the world has me nervous lately. It isn’t just the United States any longer. Now Iceland, France, Tel-Aviv, and Italy are in the mix, with the United Kingdom only a few days away from a collapse of their own. Beyond the tangible trouble my country is in, there is another kind of storm brewing. Our military has been put on active duty inside our borders, the senate started a spending bill in direct violation of the constitution, and rumors are rampant that the presidential election is going to be stolen again. The doomsday scenario some people are spouting has President Bush’s administration refusing to step down after the election, and invoking martial law to keep his power structure in place. How credible any of these ideas are, I don’t know. Mostly I mention them to offer context, so anyone who reads this will know I understand the anxiety they are feeling. Things have gotten out of control, and all of us are afraid that nothing will ever be “normal” again.

Context is a recurring theme in American politics, and it is important we establish that it doesn’t excuse poor behavior. When we act out of fear or intolerance, we act incorrectly. There may be such a thing as people functioning at a high level under pressure, and there may even be some functioning that improves when one is in a state of fear. However, no one’s reasoning skills perform at a high level during times of crisis. Eight years ago, John McCain used a racial slur. He used it and attempted to justify it with context. Earlier this year, Barack Obama’s supporters attempted to revive the story, and today it showed up on news aggregators again. I would argue the context I described in the open of this post explains why.

First, here is an excerpt from the original story, courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle and dated February 18, 2000:

Arizona Sen. John McCain refused to apologize yesterday for his use of a racial slur to condemn the North Vietnamese prison guards who tortured and held him captive during the war.

“I hate the gooks,” McCain said yesterday in response to a question from reporters aboard his campaign bus. “I will hate them as long as I live.”

McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent five years in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp, was questioned about the language because of a story last month in the Nation magazine reporting his continued use of the slur.

Since then, reports of McCain’s language have been circulating on Internet chat sites and e-mails among Asian Americans, many of whom find the the term offensive and inappropriate for an elected official.

McCain’s appeal to voters has been as a wartime hero and a feisty politician who speaks his mind and damns the consequences. But his comments on the eve of the key South Carolina primary show the candidate’s vaunted “straight talk” in another light.

“The use of a racist slur can’t be acceptable for any national leader, regardless of his background,” said Diane Chin, executive director of the San Francisco-based Chinese for Affirmative Action. “For someone running for president not to recognize the power of words is a problem.”…

McCain made no apologies yesterday.

“I was referring to my prison guards,” McCain said, “and I will continue to refer to them in language that might offend some people because of the beating and torture of my friends.”

McCain made it clear that his anger extends only toward his captors. As a senator, he was one of the leaders of the postwar effort to normalize U.S. relations with Vietnam.

Campaign officials do not expect the controversy to hurt McCain, either in tomorrow’s South Carolina primary or later in the campaign.

“If people understood the context, they wouldn’t be upset,” Mike Murphy, a senior adviser to the campaign, said last night.

But the racial slur used by the senator has a long, painful history that is felt by many Asian Americans…

I agree with Mr. Murphy that some American’s would not be upset by what was said after hearing it in context. Unfortunately for him, whether or not Americans get upset is not an indicator of how true or correct one’s actions are. Still, this story is a nonstarter for a number of reasons. It’s eight years old, it isn’t big enough to change McCain supporters’ minds, it makes Democrats look petty to undecided voters, and it has already been resolved.

Any proponent of Barack Obama who supported this ridiculous attempt to revive a story nearly a decade gone, was speaking from a place of fear. Those who supported re-circulating the links to this story today were writing from a place that only makes sense in the context of being horrified at the state of their nation and terrified by the idea of John McCain staying the course four more years. However, this context no more ameliorates the pointless nature of this attack on John McCain, than being a POW excused the Senator’s attack on Asian Americans. Democrats claim to want an elevated discourse, and improved debate about issues that matter, but they regularly fall back on the very tactics they decry.

What is worse, not one person attempted to get all the information before they weighed in on this issue. A quick search on Google turns up the following story from asianweek.com, dated 6 days after the incident:

. . .after APIs [Asian and Pacific Islander] blasted his unabashed use of the highly derogatory term that has historically been used against Asians and Asian Americans, the campaign made an apology after announcing that McCain would no longer use the racial slur.

“I will continue to condemn those who unfairly mistreated us,” McCain said in a statement released Feb. 21. “But out of respect to a great number of people for whom I hold in very high regard, I will no longer use the term that has caused such discomfort… I apologize and renounce all language that is bigoted and offensive, which is contrary to all that I represent and believe.”

John McCain may be racially insensitive, and what he said was inappropriate, but he apologized, and leaving that detail out of your posts on reddit and dailykos is the worst kind of intellectual dishonesty. If you cannot even be bothered to check the facts of what has you outraged, you don’t deserve a forum.

One does not deserve to participate in the debate if he is not going to make an effort toward finding all relevant information before proceeding to rouse a rabble. It is politicking of this style that drives a wedge between Americans and undermines the objective conception of truth. Every time some liberal gets a hard-on to trash John McCain with petty half-truths, he makes it considerably easier for moderate Republicans and undecided voters to ignore his party’s legitimate positions on the grounds that they can’t be trusted. I understand that fear may cause one to leave his better judgment unused; however, If truly afraid of where our nation is headed, one may want to take an extra minute before posting eight year old garbage and consider the consequences of those actions on his social movement.

For a nice illustration of this principle at work, please watch the first minute or two of this video featuring McCain/Palin supporters spouting half-truths from right-wing media, and see how much it makes you want to vote for the other guy. By arguing with information that is so easily refuted, any good which could come from their platform is drowned in stupidity, and their cause is lost.

Embeded:

This week Zeitgeist Addendum was released. I have made the video available here, though you can also get it through their website. If you have not seen the first film, please watch it before continuing to the addendum. While the addendum could theoretically be watched as a standalone production, it offers a much stronger case when you have all of the background information presented in the original. For those who have seen the first, the key difference between it and the addendum is the authors have attempted to offer solutions this time around. I don’t know that they are plausible, but it is nice to see the effort put into them. Full reviews of both films will be posted prior to Election Day.

[1 The eventual winner, who fell victim to a coup d'état but went on to do more good for the country and the world in the next eight years than the man who was propped up as National Figurehead during that time.]

The point is I drank the Kool-aid. I was in the bag for McCain eight years ago, called him a maverick, and believed he was the right choice for America going forward. In 2004, I watched him sell out and campaign for George W. Bush, but didn’t write him off, because I didn’t feel qualified to evaluate his motives. There is a place for loyalty to one’s constituency, but helping the Bush re-election plan in a race that came down to only one state² is a horrible piece of the McCain legacy. As the 2008 primaries began I was a true undecided voter. I wasn’t leaning toward any candidate from any party. I was wary of Senator Clinton, hopeful about Senator Obama, and curious about Senator McCain. I didn’t know who I would support.

[2 Ohio, where it now seems a second coup d'état was taking place as voting machine vendor, and Republican supporter, Diebold engaged in vote rigging.]

In the end, it took only one Republican debate to see that I would not be voting GOP this year. The John McCain running this time around is not the same man I supported in 2000. The new McCain is surly, and what once manifested as thoughtfulness now seems to indicate slow-wittedness. Instead of getting older, he got old. He is also less principled, less certain of his opinions, and more prone to double talk. Watching him say he didn’t “know as much about the economy as [he] should” was painful³.

[3 As a four-term Senator, who also served in the House of Representatives, and sits on the commerce committee it is nearly inexcusable he not have a working knowledge of our economic system.]

The longer Senator McCain’s campaign continues, the less attractive he becomes as a candidate. Not because his healthcare plan involves taxing benefits, or his energy plan involves increased drilling for oil, or even because he has shown himself to not fully understand economic issues. The shine is wearing off as he lets the party leaders handle him, mold him, modify his ideals, and hijack his first executive decision by pressuring him to select Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Eight years ago it was clear that being a prisoner of war did not uniquely qualify someone to be the President of the United States of America, but it was an indication of his dedication to service, dedication to country, and personal character. When joined with an apparent willingness to tell the truth in all situations, be honest with the electorate, and follow personal convictions regardless of party affiliation it was a nice punctuation mark to the Senator’s qualifications. In some ways it was the glue that held his persona together.

It is equally clear today that being a prisoner of war does not qualify John McCain to be president. Worse still, Senator McCain’s time as a prisoner of war no longer punctuates anything positive about his character. In July of this year, John McCain sold all rights ever held to the title of war hero when he lied about his time as a captive in the hopes of drawing the blue collar vote in Pennsylvania. First, the report from ABC News via KDKA [full video] in Pittsburgh:

Asked what first comes to his mind when he thinks of Pittsburgh, McCain chuckled, “the Steelers. I was a mediocre high school athlete but I loved and adored the sports but the Steelers really made a huge impression on me particularly in my early years.”

And then McCain told a rather moving story about his time as a P.O.W. “When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the pressures, physical pressures on me, I named the starting lineup, defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron mates.”

“Did you really?” asked the reporter.

“Yes,” McCain said.

“In your POW camp?” asked the reporter.

“Yes,” McCain said.

“Could you do it today?” asked the reporter.

“No, unfortunately,” McCain said.

Here’s one reason he likely couldn’t do it today — the Steelers aren’t the team whose defensive line McCain named for his Vietnamese tormentors. The Green Bay Packers are. At least according to every previous time McCain has told this story. And the McCain campaign just told ABC News that the senator made a mistake — it was, indeed, the Packers.

For those who are curious, McCain actually put the story in writing for his book Faith of My Fathers, writing:

“Once my condition had stabilized, my interrogators resumed their work. Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate. Eventually, I gave them my ship’s name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant. Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron. When asked to identify future targets, I simply recited the names of a number of North Vietnamese cities that had already been Bombed.” – pg 194 [isbn 0-375-50191-6]

To be clear, I don’t think there is anything wrong with McCain discussing his time as a POW if he feels comfortable with it. However, in the full video of the interview it becomes painfully obvious that the interviewer was not angling for a discussion of the Senator’s time in Vietnam. To volunteer the story makes McCain look desperate for votes, and cheapens a genuine and personal tragedy to the level of television movie of the week⁴. Moreover, it cheapens the Senator’s very character that he would pander to blue-collar, swing-state voters by changing the team from Green Bay to Pittsburgh.

[4 Actually, they did make a movie of the week about Senator McCain's time in the "Hanoi Hilton" and it was the Green Bay Packer's starting offensive line in the movie version too*.

*Hanoi Hilton is the term used by Senator McCain, see page 190 in the hardcover edition of Faith of My Fathers.]

I missed this story when it first broke in July, and I know it seems petty to many people. It isn’t. The campaign’s official statement was the Senator made a mistake. I don’t believe them. I have never experienced such horrible treatment as those in POW camps, but it seems unlikely McCain would suddenly forget what team he revealed under torture, particularly having told the story for eight years, and written it in a book. What is worse, this petty little lie undermines his testimony against torture. Again from ABC:

Explaining why he thinks torture can result in erroneous information, McCain wrote in Newsweek in 2005, “In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear–whether it is true or false–if he believes it will relieve his suffering. I was once physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members of my flight squadron, information that had little if any value to my enemies as actionable intelligence. But I did not refuse, or repeat my insistence that I was required under the Geneva Conventions to provide my captors only with my name, rank and serial number. Instead, I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse.”

Looking at the interview and reading McCain’s original account is particularly upsetting for me. Perhaps the Senator doesn’t realize that when he tells his supporters something, and then lies about it for votes later on, it makes all of us them look uninformed and foolish. Perhaps he doesn’t care. Either way, John McCain has lost the right to campaign on his military service. Using it as a political tactic in such a calculated way brings dishonor to the thousands of soldiers who endured similar horrors while prisoners of an unwinnable war, and makes me ashamed I spent my time and money supporting a man I believed to be a hero who was really nothing more than an opportunist.

[1. Worth noting is the unofficial total of M-words* used tonight, which appears to be seven; five from Governor Unqualified-Yet-Not-Disqualified, and two from Senator Delaware.]

[*For a more complete discussion of the M-word please see my previous post "McCain Loses Debate and Dignity; National Discourse Just Loses"]

Contrary to appearances, it was never my intention to have a political blog. I don’t even really like politics. I like the philosophies behind systems of government, and enjoy seeing how personal philosophies can clash in the national debate, but I don’t care for party affiliations. Most of this is due to the fact that neither party has gotten it right yet, nor do they actually represent most Americans. While one may be mostly Democrat or mostly Republican in his beliefs, it is unlikely that the entire platform of either group speaks to his values. What political parties are best at is giving people another arbitrary justification for believing irrational things. Christians tend to vote for Republican candidates because the party platform panders to their religious beliefs and eliminates their need to consider the ramifications of various political actions. Similarly, homosexuals tend to vote for Democratic candidates because they perceive Republicans as intolerant of changing social norms, and believe the Democratic platform is more open to their participation.

This voting methodology isn’t entirely incorrect, but it lacks elements crucial to any decision making process. Philosophically you could argue that Platform X better suits your values than Platform Z, but that argument doesn’t justify voting in a given way. It is merely the course of action we have been left, the path of least resistance in a system we have been taught only allows binary choices. Our system of politicking is fallacious. It implies that conservatives are best served by voting Republican in every election, regardless of where the country is metaphorically headed².

[2. An adaptation of this line of reasoning explains why I wouldn't vote for Senator McCain this year, but would have in 2000, and why I likely won't vote for Senator Clinton in 2016, though I would have this year (with reservations). Every presidential election happens against the backdrop of a nation with ever-shifting problems and priorities. This year calls for a more liberal approach to politics, because the extreme conservatism of past years has left the nation out of balance. In eight years it is unlikely that this will still be true, and a liberal candidate like Senator Clinton will no longer be the best person for the job.]

The lie behind this line of reasoning is clear when we consider the example of a country where the Republican party wins every presidential and congressional election during a forty year span. That isn’t a republic, it’s a monarchy, and it doesn’t serve the best interest of American citizens. The knock against Democrats is they are too liberal, charge ahead too quickly, and effectively force the culture of the United States to change before the majority of people are prepared. Conversely, the knock against Republicans is they are too conservative, their values are antiquated, and their slow approach to cultural reforms often delays changes that Americans desire. In the first case, forty years of victory would leave this country imperiled because liberal politicians would have no choice but to “out liberal” one another. Necessitating the platform move so far left as to be unrecognizable. In the second, forty years of conservative politics leaves us with no place left to regress. Are we going to go back in time, remove women from the workforce, repeal Roe v. Wade, and completely eliminate taxes? How many tax breaks can a party give if no one ever raises them back to previous levels?

This is the absurdity of American Politics. Whereas in a parliamentary democracy, the voters are always trying to strike a balance of many diverse groups which fairly accurately represent the populace, our republic requires us to vote along party lines, supporting people with whom we have nothing in common because it is the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately, this is the only system we have, which necessitates our participation, and leaves only the question of how we can most responsibly fulfill that obligation. The easy answer is we all need to be more informed about (and more critical of) our candidates. It is incredibly unlikely that we will see other political parties rise to prominence and share the national stage, but we can create the same effect of options by ignoring party affiliations and utilizing a different system of evaluation for those seeking office.

There is a style of advertising that is generally used for products which have a great deal of competition in the marketplace, but without much variety. Rather than try to make the case that their product is superior because of an unique property, these companies highlight an option or quality that all of their competitors have, while acting as though it is unique. Aquafina runs ads telling you that drinking their product will result in you feeling better than if you drank a soda. This is equally true of Dasani and Evian, but the ad campaign is designed to focus your attention away from the other brands, causing your mind to process the information as “drinking Aquafina makes me feel better” rather than “drinking water makes me feel better.” Political campaigns are much the same.

Taking the system back requires us to get past some preconceived ideas which govern the way we perceive political problems. When Republicans campaign on the fact that they will keep you safe from terrorism, it is easier to vote for them and defend the decision on grounds that you would never endanger your family, than take a step back and say “Am I supposed to believe that the Democrats don’t want to keep my family safe?” In this light it is clear that national security cannot be a political issue because it is a value shared by all people in a given nation. There is no scenario where one candidate wants a safe country and the other wants a dangerous country. This being the case, opinions on national security should carry very little importance in how we vote. It seems counterintuitive that something so large as the defense of a nation is of only mild importance, but it’s true, and recognizing the real differences between candidates is crucial to the solution of using a weighted system for evaluating how different each candidate’s values are from our own.

Going forward, this concept of taking back our political system through use of reason and logic becomes a bit muddled, but shouldn’t be unnecessarily complicated. I certainly don’t advise anyone’s system be even as complicated as what I am about to use in my example; however, I have no choice but to use a rigid framework for purposes of explanation.

If we take major political issues currently facing the United States and put them in a table we would have something which starts like this:

In this example we have a person who tends to be conservative, please bear in mind that the net values of each issue should vary from voter to voter. The maximum net value is five, meaning if two candidates are polar opposites that category has a value of five, while issues they only mildly disagree on are valued at one. If the voter in our example was only concerned with these four categories, she would be leaning toward Obama, provided new information did not emerge about the candidates’ positions on these topics.

[3. Here national security is only worth one point because our voter believes John McCain will take action to keep America safer from outside aggression on domestic soil than Barack Obama, but isn't certifiably insane, and recognizes Obama does not desire a terrorist attack, nor want her family to suffer. In this particular case abortion is valued at three, though without Palin on the ticket, it is probably only a one or two. Both McCain and Obama support limits on abortion, and neither has supported criminalizing it. McCain did say he believes life starts at conception during a church forum, but never indicated that to be his belief prior to this campaign. However, Palin believes that abortion should be criminalized even in cases of rape and incest, making it a more divergent issue and pushing its value to three.]

However, if this voter becomes interested in other aspects of our present political climate, loyalties may change:

Here we see this individual hasn’t taken a science course recently and believes global warming to be an unproven hypothesis, rather than a proven theory. She is concerned her husband’s job building automobiles will be jeopardized if Senator Obama is allowed to institute his environmental reforms. Because McCain and Obama are nearly opposite on this issue, it is valued at four, and swings her vote to McCain despite her general approval for Obama’s plan to push for new energy technologies and avoid drilling in protected wildlife conservatories (perhaps her husband’s plant makes E85 ethanol vehicles and she knows McCain has voted against the subsidy each time it came up).

Let’s assume that as the election progresses the unbelievable happens and our economy begins to collapse, while our voter becomes more interested in Federalism after hearing Palin’s interview with Katie Couric. The new chart looks something like this for her:

Apparently, our voter realizes that McCain was in favor of every deregulation bill that came through the Senate on his watch, and still supports deregulation of the healthcare industry, while Obama has a history of supporting responsible oversight. Furthermore, she has learned that McCain is in favor of letting states decide certain controversial issues independent of the federal government, but worries Obama will expand the government slightly with his new healthcare plan. The new chart of nine categories shows that without a major change in the national issues before Election Day this conservative should actually vote for Obama⁴.

[4. Unless she thinks supporting a party is more important than supporting her beliefs.]

Certainly, there will be cases where people who have long thought of themselves as Democrats will end up supporting McCain, and many more instances where people of each party find that every issue is in “their” candidate’s column, reinforcing what they’ve always believed. However, evaluating our individual beliefs is important for other reasons. It allows us to take a divided nation and move toward common ground. Your neighbor who supports Obama need not be thought stupid because only John McCain can protect you from terrorism. Likewise, McCain supporters need not be denigrated for supporting rampant greed on Wall Street.

I would argue that we all use a system similar to the one illustrated above without realizing it. The evaluations happen very rapidly, and our opinion takes shape with enough speed that we never need write anything down. Where we generally fail is by assuming those evaluations are foolproof, and have not been influenced by preconceived ideas such as “Democrats raise taxes,” or by choosing to watch media because it reinforces our opinions instead of challenging them⁵. Furthermore, we tend to assume that each issue is of equal importance from election to election, when the state of our nation should actively modify the approaches we support. With the state of our deficit, tax cuts for any income bracket except those below the poverty line may not be the best idea. This year economic collapse has perhaps necessitated lower taxation continue, but if our economy were strong, we would be fools to not support increased taxation (along with lower spending) to reduce the deficit.

[5. This is a large problem in its own right, and I've already gone on too long, but much of this has to do with the rise of talk radio and cable news. For how the advent of both has affected the national discourse, please see part 2 of "Why the United States are now only America".]

Regardless of what your political beliefs are, it is incredibly important that we stop looking at party affiliations and start looking at the actual platform of those we support. To do otherwise only strengthens the existing system and propagates the idea that a binary political system accurately represents our individual philosophies – both of which eventually lead to ruin.

Back to Main Page

See Recent Posts

In a poll sponsored by CBS News, respondents were asked which candidate they thought won the debate:

Obama     39%

McCain     25%

Draw         36%

A similar poll from CNN asked respondents which candidate “did better” in the debate:

Obama     51%

McCain     38%

Unsure/Draw     11%

Another poll, this time sponsored by USA Today and conducted by Gallup asked which candidate “performed better” in the debate:

Obama     46%

McCain     34%

Staying with the USA Today/Gallup poll, respondents were asked which candidate had “the best proposals to solve the country’s problems”:

Obama     52%

McCain     35%

Another question from USA Today/Gallup surveyed respondents regarding which national leaders they thought had handles the “Wall Street crisis” appropriately. This question included leaders not currently running for office and was not strictly related to the debate.

Senator Obama is the only national leader to receive a net positive response, with 46% saying he handled it appropriately and 43% saying he did not. (For all candidates, the remainder was unsure, felt neutral, or did not respond). On the contrary, 37% felt McCain had handled the crisis (he helped create) appropriately, while 58% felt he did not.

The Gallup poll also singled out Independents and Undecideds during their surveying. Among this group, 37% said they were less confident McCain was the right choice for president while 23% said they were more confident. The remaining had no change of opinion.

Staying with undecided voters for minute, CBS News did a poll of 483 undecided voters after the debate and found that McCain did little to improve his standing with those who haven’t yet chosen a candidate, while Obama may have won many of them over to his candidacy. I will include a sample here, but those who want the full picture should go to the .pdf version of the CBS news results. There were categories where McCain is rated higher than Obama (such as the Iraq War), but the largest differences came from the following questions:

When asked if McCain “Understands their needs and problems”:

41% say YES

When asked if Obama “Understands their needs and problems”:

79% say YES

When asked if McCain will “Make the right decisions about the economy”:

42% YES 57% NO

When asked if Obama Will “Make the right decisions about the economy”:

66% YES 33% NO

Undecideds polled before and after the debate also showed a likely change in final voting behavior. Of course, it is still possible these voters will change their minds. Before the Debate, Respondents were asked “If the election were held today, who would you vote for”:

Obama / Biden    36%

McCain / Palin    34%

It Depends¹ 29%

Third Party        01%

Same Question After the Debate:

Obama / Biden    41%

McCain / Palin    29%

It Depends        29%

Third Party        01%

[1- It seems to me that anyone unable to decide who he would vote for, were the election held today, is too stupid to vote. Being in a relationship with one of these people must be hell. They have truly mastered the art of being withholding. I wonder if it makes them feel smart and powerful, as though they truly cannot be categorized, or if they merely haven't been to church recently and can't remember who their reverend told them to support.]

Returning to the CNN poll, respondents were asked who would “better handle terrorism,” a category that has long favored Senator McCain, but his lead is apparently slipping even here as voters get a chance to hear more of Senator Obama’s ideas.

McCain     49%

Obama     45%

On the question of who would “best handle the economy”:

Obama     58%

McCain     37%

The CNN poll reflected similar numbers on the question of who would best handle the current economic crisis, but exact percentages were not available as of this writing.

Anyone who believes these results are indicative of a tie falls into the same category as those who said “It Depends.” Had one poll shown Obama winning, while another showed McCain winning, and a third showed it being a statistical dead heat we would have a tie. When all three show Obama winning, it means Senator John McCain lost Ω.

Of course, there is no shame in losing a debate. Particularly when you finished 894^th in a class of 899, while your opponent graduated significantly higher, and was editor of the Harvard Law Review. Where McCain first managed to lose his dignity when he hit the trifecta, twice mentioning he had not won “Miss Congeniality” in the Senate, letting everyone know that another politician once called him “The Sheriff,” and dropping the “M word” in reference to himself, in case someone watching hadn’t yet figured out what he was talking about.

Though no longer a supporter, I cringed when Senator McCain said: “I was called the sheriff, by the — one of the senior members of the Appropriations Committee. I didn’t win Miss Congeniality in the United States Senate.” It’s embarrassing to watch a man that once stood for something sell out every one of his principles in pursuit of power. Still, I couldn’t help but smile when he went back to the dry-well and did a bit of verbal slapstick that would have made Buster Keaton jealous.

McCain: “It’s well-known that I have not been elected Miss Congeniality in the United States Senate nor with the administration. I have opposed the president on spending, on climate change, on torture of prisoners, on – on Guantanamo Bay. On a — on the way that the Iraq War was conducted. I have a long record and the American people know me very well and that’s as independent and a maverick of the Senate and I’m happy to say that I’ve got a partner that’s a good maverick along with me now.”

Saying you are a maverick is a little like saying you are mysterious, it works as irony, but doesn’t shape people’s perception of you in the way you might have hoped. Stephen King doesn’t go around telling people he is a best-selling author, Michael Jordan doesn’t go around telling people he is the greatest basketball player of the modern era, and Governor Sarah Palin doesn’t tell people how under-qualified she is. These are things you let people learn for themselves.

On the other hand, I may be misinterpreting the intentions of Senator McCain. Where I think he’s using the first definition of the word, and showing us what an independent thinker he is by letting us know he has been reading his own hype and believing it, he may be using the second definition as a kind of coded warning to the electorate.

It seems that the way we use maverick today evolved from the idea of not belonging to anyone. My dictionary puts it this way:

2. unbranded animal, especially a calf that has become separated from its mother and herd.

By convention it can become the property of whoever finds it and brands it.

Now I understand. McCain is warning those of us who supported him in 2000 that he is no longer rogue, but has been branded by a convention of Republican neo-conservatives, making him their property. Suddenly, his changing positions on social issues, and reliance on rhetoric rather than substance, don’t seem so strange². He has a new herd now, and we would all do well to remember it.

[2 - This may also serve to explain why he would offer the vice-presidential nomination to a woman he had only spoken with for half an hour. Ever. In his entire life.]

One could also argue that it is more than a little undignified to treat your opponent in the way McCain treated Obama during the debate, but I suppose that has been satisfactorily beaten to a bloody mess by the mainstream media. All I will say on the matter is this: someone running on the platform of experience should act like he’s been on that stage before. To do otherwise is humiliating to your supporters³.

[3 - I've noticed that most politicians like to look their opponent in the eye while they lie about him, as is only appropriate. It seems Senator McCain cannot even muster that much respect for the Senator from Illinois. Perhaps this is just an inferiority complex and McCain feels bad enough without me piling-on, but it seems that a man who claims to always "put country first" would want to elevate the discourse rather than denigrate it.]

The real issue is voters were once again lied to in the pursuit of soundbites, while facts and issues were often left out in the Mississippi night. Early in the debate, McCain told a nice story about Eisenhower writing two letters (which may or may not be true depending on who you believe), then finished by saying: “Somehow we’ve lost that accountability. I’ve been heavily criticized because I called for the resignation of the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. We’ve got to start also holding people accountable, and we’ve got to reward people who succeed.” This is the sort of intellectual dishonesty I attempted to discuss in my last post. McCain was not criticized for wanting accountability as his statement implies, he was criticized for saying the President should fire a man whose employment he has no authority over. He was criticized for running on experience, and not knowing the limitations of presidential power. He was criticized because it was the second time he had gotten it wrong, (originally calling for the resignation of the FEC [Federal Election Commission] chairman), before he gave another speech and got it wrong in a whole new way. He was not criticized for believing in accountability, and it is an absolute lie to imply anything different.

The national discourse relies on each voter being given accurate information, and Senator McCain did not uphold his end of that agreement. At one point he went so far as to imply that Senator Obama intends to raise taxes for average American families. This is so far outside the realm of truth; it can hardly be spoken of without one of McCain’s (trademark) debate-giggles. There is a chart available that details the findings of an independent organization which ran the numbers for the tax plan of each senator. It seems the much vaunted Senator from Arizona once again showed himself to be a liar, a man who when the opportunity arises will say whatever is necessary in the pursuit of power, a war hero who is willing to flush his legacy down the drain for an outside chance at sitting behind the Resolute Desk. Obama is not going to raise taxes on average citizens, and McCain knows it. In fact, Obama will be giving a tax cut to every household with a combined income of less than 250,000 dollars. Conversely, Maverick gives his largest tax cuts to those making more than 250,000 dollars.

As a sort of cover for this bit of intellectual dishonesty, the pride of Arizona continued by interweaving business tax numbers in a discussion of personal taxes (an excerpt of the transcript covering the entire tax issue can be found here). McCain’s new approach included mentioning that business taxes in Ireland are only 11% while business taxes in the United States are the highest in the world at 35%. Unfortunately, this cover for previous intellectual dishonesty is also intellectually dishonest⁴. What McCain has actually done is use a pre-deduction rate as though it is the rate actually being paid. To Obama’s credit, he called McCain out on this and made note that U.S. businesses don’t pay anything close to 35% income tax. In fact, two-thirds of all U.S. companies haven’t paid any income tax for the last seven years and possibly for as long as five years previous to that. (Sources here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here)⁵.

[4 - And I thought calling yourself a maverick was wacky! This piece of debate threatens to tear a hole in the space-time continuum. (Not literally, but in the same way that religious people fake outrage, and John McCain thinks for himself. You know, the make-believe way).]

[5 - To be fair, there is always the possibility that McCain didn't know he was being dishonest. There is a lot of information out there and he can't be expected to track it all down on the internet that he doesn't know how to use. Unfortunately, this excuse holds up like a prostitute's looks – better if you don't look too close. It seems that there were two studies of corporate and business tax revenue done in the last ten years, and both were done by… Oops, the federal government… while McCain was a member of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce. Ouch, like most people who play loose with the truth, this leaves the Senator in an untenable position: He lied, or he doesn't read reports crucial to his position in government. This being the case, he can either stop campaigning on the experience issue or the honesty issue—or save us all some time and just stop campaigning.]

If Senator McCain wants to impress the undecided voters, or generally redeem himself with those of us who once believed he was the last good guy in the United States Senate, he should try a campaign of transparency. He should admit to dropping the ball on the economic bailout, lying about why he suspended his campaign⁶, and being dishonest in his positions during the debate. He should explain that he got bad advice from his far-right Republican handlers, never should have gone along with selecting Governor Palin for VP, and has gotten too close to oil interests to be objective about the energy crisis facing America. I still won’t vote for him, but I might respect him again, and I’ll definitely believe him when he says he puts country first.

[6 - It seems that after suspending his campaign it took Senator McCain nearly 24 hours to get to Washington D.C. This wouldn't be so outrageous if he didn't have a private plane. Also, saving the economy makes a better excuse if it doesn't turn out you actually killed the deal that already had general approval from congress. For more on this see Andrew Romano's piece for Newsweek (complete with video and nicely written).]

[Return to Main Page]

The connection between politics, a divided America, and ethical relativism may not be immediately apparent, but this is only because ethical relativism didn’t show up in the media until after it had already infiltrated our daily lives, and the national discourse was likely too far gone to recover.

In the United States of America, ethical relativism began in the educational system. The public colleges and universities of the country were largely liberal places, which gained a reputation for elitism, snobbery, and anti-American sentiment during the Vietnam War Police Action. Whether or not this characterization of the institutions was accurate is not for me to say, the important thing is that the social stereotype of university students belonging to an elite sub-section of the population caught on in the national psyche¹.

As the stereotype of those with an education being elitist liberals persisted, the liberals graduated and some of them became teachers. This new group of educators came from a culture where having attended college meant a lot of things, and mixed into those meanings and expectations was the idea that one thought he or she was better than other people. It is not possible to know whether what happened next was intentional, or merely subconscious overcompensation deriving from having been labeled a snob, but a new school of teaching began to develop. The new school said that teachers should be unfailing in their encouragement of students, that all students had the potential to be whatever they most desired, and that education was not the bastion of the white and wealthy any longer.

Had the first two items been true, and the last item actually been made a reality, this wouldn’t have been a problem². Unfortunately, the academic establishment was so focused on proving they weren’t elitist, they forgot to be discerning. Students who previously would have been encouraged to attend a vocational school, or earn a diploma so they could work in manufacturing, food processing, mechanical engineering, or building were now pushed toward four-year universities. As a consequence, programs of study that had long been considered glorified pseudo-science experienced growing enrollment. Among these was sociology³, which preached a mix of cultural tolerance and equality of ideas, but more importantly was the first major course of study in which one couldn’t actually be wrong.

The success of this new subjective course of study eventually spilled over into the other humanities⁴, and the practitioners of such social sciences began using claims of race and gender bias to bring disagreeing departments in line. If an inflexible science based on empirical reasoning released a study that disagreed with sociology’s core principles it was likely to be dismissed on the grounds that it reflected only the scientist’s perception of the world through their chosen course of study and could not begin to speak for people who came from other cultures⁵.

The end result of this wrangling was ethical relativism, the idea that some things are true in Situation X that may not be true in Situation Y, becoming ethical subjectivism, the idea that some things are true for Person X that may not be true for Person Y.

This transition began in education, but spread quickly as an ideal way to limit uncomfortable debate in polite company. Where it had once been a mark of manners and good upbringing that one could civilly discuss controversial issues over dinner and drinks with logic and reason being the only moderators necessary, it became impolite to discuss such things at all because everyone was suddenly “entitled to their opinion.” It did not matter if the opinion was illogical, malformed, and false, you were not allowed to explain their rational misstep because it offended their system of beliefs about the world, beliefs that had been nurtured by a Liberal academic institution that allowed everyone to be right because the idea was progressive and provided them cover for charges of snobbery⁶. As with most incorrect decisions, the move to subjectivism served to accomplish very little⁷.

Once the idea of relativism caught hold, it opened up a new way for media to interact with the population. Talk radio hosts and editorial writers could now say anything they pleased. They didn’t need facts or statistics to back their argument, only the proper amount of self-righteous rhetoric and moral indignation⁸. As the national discourse took on an unsophisticated and uninformed tone, the unsophisticated and uninformed began to get involved. Politics had always been a dirty game, but there had once been rules. You could lie all you wanted about yourself, but had to be honest about your opponent. Nixon said “I am not a crook,” not “McGovern is a crook;” however, in the new culture, politicians were free to claim anything they wanted about their opponent, so long as it didn’t offend their base and they didn’t admit they were wrong when actual facts got involved.

The end result of this shift in the political paradigm was a nation that had long been generally united, began to divide. In 1984, Ronald Reagan took every state except Mondale’s home Minnesota, and won nearly 60% of the popular vote⁹. By 2000, the nation was divided nearly evenly, with Gore winning the Northeast and West coast, while Bush took the Midwest and south (except for New Mexico which went to the Democrat).

Such a dramatic change in so short a period of time is likely to have many causes; however, it seems the key was American’s could no longer be swayed by debate. Any political discussion was suddenly subject to ending in a stalemate of “we’ll just have to agree to disagree,” a clearly absurd idea that necessitates two opposing ideas be equally true. As this is impossible, the disagreement need only last until the two opinions can be subjected to logical evaluation and one be found superior. Unfortunately, even truth was becoming relative in the new culture.

There are three basic ways to understand truth. The first is as a statement of what properties a given item does or does not have. This relates to theoretical and observational properties, but also makes room for one’s personal experience by acknowledging that observational properties should not be confused for empirical evidence. This is the classically defined truth in which a “true” claim represents the world the way it is, while a “false” claim represents the world in a way which it is not.

With relativism and subjectivism come two other versions of truth which appear sane on the surface, but don’t hold up to thorough investigation. The philosopher Dr. Russ Payne writes about the second kind of truth as “a claim about belief.” Saying something is true in this case is only to say you believe it to be true. This is a valid usage of true in cases where two people believing opposite ideas are able to do so without one infringing upon the other¹⁰. If you say it is true that summer is the most beautiful time of the year, and I say summer is not the most beautiful time of the year, we have clearly not staked anything on the outcome of the debate. Our disagreement will not result in there being no summer, and a subjective truth does no harm. We can agree to disagree without concern, because we are not actually discussing truth, we are discussing belief with a very sloppy terminology that uses words to mean things they don’t actually mean.

This second kind of truth is primarily dangerous only because it leads directly to the third kind of truth, which I call Truth via Equivocation¹¹. Just as equivocating in a debate requires that one pivot his argument by changing how a word is used between two premises, equivocation in daily life allows one to call a belief truth in benign circumstances, and then use the word truth when he means belief in more important discourse. If his opponent challenges him and points to the fact that he means belief (opinion) and not truth (fact), the lazy debater simply moves to “what’s true for you isn’t necessarily true for me” effectively ending debate¹².

Conversations similar to this are probably familiar to anyone who discusses politics with friends or family. Perhaps they have always been common in the way that one who won’t listen to reason isn’t necessarily a poor friend, and cease-fires are good for maintaining relationships. However, never before have they been part of the national media’s discourse. Where we could once trust the media to report hard facts verified by multiple sources, we have been left with only a series of relativist and subjectivist propaganda machines. Even media outlets which attempt to sustain rational reporting have faltered in recent years, reporting “Democrats claim new policy will result in higher taxes for working poor” when they mean “looking at the tax plan and doing the math shows it will result in higher taxes.” News is now nothing more than a series of position papers and talking points. Full-disclosure no longer means you have to deliver all of the facts, only that you have to cite the sources of unreliable opinion you report as fact. Fair and balanced no longer indicates an attempt to objectively show all sides of an argument, rather it shows one is willing to report a given side’s position regardless of merit.

The relativist school of thought on matters of truth has become epidemic over the last decade, and taken down into the muck a nation that was once united behind the principle of settling differences and moving toward consensus through rational discussion. Truth can no longer be used as an arbiter of debate, and the end result has been a transition in all aspects of American life to inauthentic posturing.

The only way out of this propaganda-grown wilderness is to hold one another accountable. It does not matter if it is a coworker, friend, relative, or stranger, when a half truth is propped-up as fact, or a belief is put forward as truth we all have an obligation to our country to call that person a liar. There has been a lot of talk about patriotism over the last decade, and even more name calling, but patriotism has nothing to do with magnetic ribbons or American flag lapel pins. Patriotism is telling the truth about your nation and being unashamed, even when it is unflattering, because you know everyone you live with is trying to do better, trying to put country ahead of self, trying to tell the truth. Only then will we overcome what began as a metaphor describing our inability to agree on public policy, but become a literal condition: Only then will Americans be able to find common ground.

____________________________________________________

1. As with most arguments, this explanation is oversimplified, though the construct is true. While there is some debate about how the three (liberalism, elitism, and education) came to be so intertwined, it is fairly safe to say it has something to do with conservative men from poor families going to fight in Vietnam (and their parents needing to believe that it was for something more valuable than pissing off Russia) while wealthier individuals who could afford secondary education, or were bright enough to gain scholarships, got to stay home and protest the very conflict to which conservative youth were sacrificed. It didn’t help matters that when the soldiers returned, they were often treated hostilely by those who had not served*.

*I am way off topic here, but I feel compelled to say that much as conservatives justified the war because they couldn’t bear the idea that their child was dying without cause, young liberals condemned the war in part because they felt immense guilt at not having served. This is not to say they didn’t also believe that it was unjust and unnecessary, only that their actions were more complicated than being unpatriotic or anti-American.

2. While not the topic of this post, it is necessary to note that even present day admissions statistics for universities do not reflect full assimilation of certain minority ethnic groups into the academic framework. I hope to see this change in my lifetime, and in no way intend to indicate that I blame the inclusion of minorities for the eventual liberalization of schools. If anything, universities have not become liberal enough in matters of ethnicity. Please also bear in mind I am not arguing for or against affirmative action policies, which are an incredibly complicated topic regardless of how the subjectivist media portrays them. For more on this last item you may want to start with Jonathan Kozol’s The Shame of the Nation: The restoration of Apartheid schooling in America. I can’t say I always agree with Kozol, but he lays out a variety of arguments on the topic without requiring one to invest much time.

3. A guess and check “science” if there ever was one, sociology has the unique distinction of being the only subject I ever tried to receive a poor grade in. The episode I best remember involved me writing a paper on “the looking-glass self” in which I butchered the actual theory and literally wrote a paper comparing American society to Alice in Wonderland, drawing tenuous comparisons, and using every buzzword I could find in the glossary of my textbook regardless of whether it made any sense. The professor returned my paper with a written comment to the effect of: “I’m not sure you entirely understand this concept, but I like the way you have addressed the affect of culture on your world – 100/100!” All subsequent papers were of the same poor quality and my final grade was a 4.0. Color me unimpressed.

4. Most notably into English literature courses, though composition courses and low level faux philosophy courses such as Contemporary Moral Problems were not left unscathed by the changing trends. The last was primarily hijacked by religion which imposed it’s opinions and beliefs as facts on issues like abortion, capital punishment, and separation of church and state (philosophically, of course, not in the legal sense where they long ago lost but can’t seem to get over it).

5. This does not necessarily reflect the ideas of principled sociologists in the world, and may be taken as a perversion of its actual beliefs. However, this is generally how the college of sociology is administered at the undergraduate level. It reflects the idea that Person A and Person B will see the same event but have different opinions of what has happened based on unique prior experience that cannot be duplicated. The unfortunate fact is Norwood Russell Hanson never intended for his ideas about the theory-ladeness of observation to be used against science. Rather, Hanson put forward such theory to help remove personal experience from the equation of scientific study. Once one recognized that all present experience is informed by past experience he would (theoretically) be able to reduce his bias toward certain results before attempting his experiment or disseminating his research. For an accurate depiction of sociology’s origins I would recommend a text specializing in the French Revolution, check the index to see that Comte, Saint Simon, and Durkheim are listed.

6. Though it did manage to drive the same wedge in academia that had previously only existed in politics. I have been on more than one college campus where the professors of social sciences refuse to communicate with the professors of empirical sciences, and vice versa. It isn’t so much that they dislike each other or don’t respect one another, rather it is too hard to shift gears from a world of numbers and logic into a world where nothing is certain (or move out of the comfort of all one’s ideas being correct into a discussion where there is an objective answer which cannot be disputed).

7. In the last twenty years American colleges have turned out millions of subjectivist thinkers, but they are still considered elitist institutions by those who feel it serves their political ends. Worse, those subjectivists (or ethical skeptics if you prefer) have gone on to raise children in an arena of permissiveness unrivaled in the modern world. By insisting that everyone could be equally right, we managed to institutionalize stupidity in this country^*.

*The funny thing is, everyone agrees that the majority of people in the United States are less than stellar thinkers, but no one believes they are in the majority.

8. A good example of this is the idea that President Clinton’s administration was comprised of “tax and spend liberals” who were going to destroy the economy and leave behind a record deficit. There are some who still believe that was what happened in Washington D.C. between 1992 and 2000. In reality, the Clinton administration presided over the greatest period of economic growth in two decades and left a huge budget surplus for the incoming Republican administration. The larger point here is that while the public was able to cite a source for their opinion of President Clinton, their source was not able to cite anything other than his opinion. The level of discourse had been undermined at the primary level, one step removed from view.

9. While the concept that American’s were more unified in their ideals during the 1984 election holds true, there is also something to be said for the fact that Mondale quite likely destroyed any chance he had of mounting a challenge before he even began campaigning. At the Democratic National Convention, Mondale famously said in his acceptance speech: “Let’s tell the truth. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.” It was an obvious attempt by the underdog to come across as the honest candidate, but was not well received. I posit that the reasons for this are two-fold.

A) American’s do not like to hear you are going to raise their taxes, and particularly don’t like to hear you use it as a means of gaining favor.

B) Mondale broke the rules of civilized politics when he said Reagan was lying about not raising taxes in his next term. He would have been better off saying he wasn’t going to raise taxes, and doing it behind the voter’s backs if he got elected. We were used to being lied to that way, but calling your opponent dishonest was just uncouth.

10. To clarify, Dr. Payne is one of the most intelligent people I have ever met, and in no way does he endorse the view that truth as only a claim about belief is valid. He specializes in biomedical ethics, the philosophy of science, and logic. Abstract truth does not enter into his work. I hope to write more about universal and scientific law at some point in the future to more adequately address how even scientific-sounding laws of truth may actually be nothing more than accidents of nature and not true universal laws relating to empirical findings about our world. For now I would direct you to Karl Popper’s work on the Verificationist’s Theory of Meaning and the Demarcation Problem.

11. The most common illustration of equivocation goes something like this:

P1: A feather is light

P2: Things which are light cannot be dark

C/ Therefore a feather cannot be dark

While this is a valid argument, it is not sound. By changing the active definitions of the words light and dark from premise to premise one is able to take a logically valid syllogism and create a fallacious argument. In the above example it is easy to spot how this has been done, but more subtle equivocations (religious people like to equivocate arguments on the usage of “perverse”) it can be hard to stop the conversation and convince your opponent or the audience that their point is invalid.

12. With thanks to Dr. Payne for the previous wording, this attempt to end debate is not necessarily malicious by nature. It is equally possible that one finds discussing such things emotionally upsetting and is using the subjectivist argument to prevent undue stress. However, it is still not an excuse for the behavior. If you want to talk about the value of democracy you have an obligation to take part in the process, and civilized discourse is key.

Back to Main Page

The way we use words says a lot about how we interact with each other. When we say “I don’t buy it” it is generally because we feel, on some level, that the person is trying to sell us something. When we say “I wasn’t born yesterday” we may mean “don’t take me for naïve,” but likely want to convey something more along the lines of “don’t talk to me like I’m a child.” These secondary meanings are unimportant in daily conversation, but as terminology within a given culture changes, one can expect the popular culture to follow suit.

This being the case, one has to ask what happened in this country to end common usage of the word “united” when describing the states in which we live. Certainly politics and religion have become more divisive as time passes, yet it seems possible that such developments are not the causes of our discontent, but the symptoms. While religious groups became part of the political landscape, bringing their moral absolutes along for the ride, politicians were forced to move further left or right. It was suddenly nearly impossible to fundraise if you didn’t take a hard line on every issue.

The abortion debate was suddenly about whether one was a baby killer or proponent of women’s rights. It was no longer acceptable to be a moderate on the issue. One could not opt for a rational approach such as admitting that abortion is no longer a political issue but a legal one¹. Similarly, social security required one either support privatizing accounts or raising taxes and reducing benefits. No Democratic candidate could expect to raise money while giving speeches that said “I believe we need to take a conservative approach to this liberal social program,” and no Republican candidate could expect to stay in the race by arguing that he was in favor of lower taxes – but only after the budget was trimmed to avoid a horrendous deficit which would be passed on to our children.

[1. After Roe v. Wade, all politicians were left with no power to further protect or dispute abortion rights. The precedent would be best explained by a lawyer; however, there isn't one handy so I'll do my best. The principle of Stare Decisis allows that once a legal precedent has been set by a high court, that court is ethically (though not legally) bound to exercise judicial restraint when similar cases are being decided. What this means in the abortion debate is that even if the Republican Party was able to pass legislation which criminalized the procedure, the Supreme Court would be obligated to strike down the legislation regardless of whether or not they believed abortion to be morally right. This is why having a Republican majority in the House and Senate, as well as a Republican president from 2000 – 2006 didn't result in new legislation to outlaw abortion. All legislators know that such a law will be immediately struck down by the Supreme Court, and it is much more profitable to keep the "issue" around for direct-mail fundraising. How do you rally the fundamentalist voting bloc without being able to call the other guys baby killers? Likewise, how do you rally the female vote without being able to decry interference from old, white, Republican men when it comes to making decisions about their bodies?]

People needed absolutes. They needed to know if you were with them or against them, and if you were in the middle, they weren’t interested. The sentiment of the day was “why would I vote for someone if I’m not absolutely positive what they will do when faced with every kind of legislation.” We substituted a binary system for the nuance of times past because we could no longer trust people to make good decisions based on rational discourse regardless of how many elements of the platform would be mildly affected by such a decision. Put another way: We didn’t want a president who would select the best Supreme Court justices for the nation; we wanted a president who would select the Supreme Court justices that agreed with our stand on one or two issues².

[2. And we wanted it for all the wrong reasons. The argument generally pivoted on the fact that Supreme Court justices serve for life, so we need someone who agrees with us because they are going to rule on a lot of legislation. The problem with this school of thought is it ignores the obvious fact that anyone who serves on the bench that long will be serving in a very different world at the end of their career than at the beginning. This being the case, it is much more valuable to have someone who is flexible in their arguments and infallible in their logic. As an example, justices appointed in 1960 would have been vetted on issues like abortion, the draft, and civil rights. Justices appointed today are vetted on abortion, homeland security concerns, and rights to privacy. Unfortunately, someone who agrees with you on civil rights does not necessarily arrive at your conclusion by the same set of reasons. If we appoint people who reach conclusions based on thorough and rational discourse in which they allow all parties to fully state their case, before subjecting the argument to rigorous logical evaluation, it will not matter what case comes before the court. We will always be able to trust our justices to take actions which best serve the nation.]

However, the politicization of religion was merely the symptom of our country’s newfound problems, and polarizing political figures were only the symptom of religion mixing with government. The actual problem was the emergence of ethical relativism via academic subjectivism³.

[3. It should be clarified here that Academic Subjectivism may not be the most commonly used term for what I am discussing here. Others call it Liberal Arts, which is a nice way of saying permissive academics which allow for all opinions to be correct. Think sociology, social psychology, and the humanities in general.]

No one wants to hear that their political views were responsible for the decline of a nation, so I will tread carefully here, and do my best to be objective. This movement in academics to a school of thought which allowed for a more free interpretation of information and events was the fault of Liberals. At the same time, they did not act alone. Much of the transition to subjectivism in education came about as a response to Conservatives decrying the educational system as elitist⁴.

[4. I have opted to use capital-L Liberals and capital-C Conservatives as indication that it was not Democrats and Republicans working alone to create this quagmire of unrelenting public disagreement. Libertarians, Nationalists, Socialists, Fascists, Moderate Republicans, and Moderate Democrats were all involved fairly equally (If not in number, then in their interpretation of what appropriate action would be).]

Regardless, the people with the most opportunity to stop the slide toward a world without absolutes, populated only by unsolvable ethical and moral divisions, generally held left-of-center political ideas. They believed that there was no such thing as a stupid question, and that every child could be anything they wanted to be. Rational thought was left at the door.

Continued On Sunday: How the idea that two opposite opinions may be equally valid brought down the last world superpower.