A Night In El Paso, TX

A man walked by wearing a sleeveless denim jacket with a rendering of a grim reaper on the back. The staff of the reaper’s scythe was an AK-47, the blade an American flag. He stopped briefly to inspect the merchandise. I asked Gaudet and Thompson how, as self-employed entrepreneurs, they got their healthcare.

“Right now I don’t even have healthcare,” Thompson said.

“I go to the emergency room,” Gaudet said, laughing.

“I just go to the emergency room,” Thompson agreed.

I asked if they would support higher taxes for millionaires if it meant that people like them would get free healthcare. Gaudet didn’t hesitate. “No, because one day we might be the millionaires.”

As I walked back to the Coliseum parking lot, I heard [Senator Ted Cruz’s] disembodied voice introduce an idea that is, perhaps, one of the more diabolically brilliant pieces of political propaganda conjured in some time. Trump needs to be re-elected, Cruz said, because he “needs time to finish the wall”.

This was the first time this idea was introduced, the idea that the wall did not need to be begun. It did not need to be built. It needed to be finished.

Why Donald Trump could win again, by Dave Eggers, The Guardian, 2 March 2019

Democracy Drowns in Bullshit

Social media appears to be better suited to dividing than uniting, at least when it comes to politics. The glut of information, impossible to sort through for the ordinary citizen, shakes people’s understanding of the world and causes them to retreat back to their own biases. Social media, in the way it’s used now, objectively favors authoritarians.

How social media platforms enable politicians to undermine democracy, Zack Beauchamp on Vox, 22 January 2019

Kevin Rudd on Australia

These are my views on the core elements of a vision for our country’s future today. Its unapologetically a vision for a Big Australia because I do not believe we can safely guarantee the nation’s future in this deeply uncertain world unless we become much bigger than we are… This is an Australia big enough and bold enough in its national vision to dream on a wide canvas, rather than simply contenting ourselves be a small and provincial place, of what Manning Clark once called the “narrowers and straighteners.” Instead, ours can be a strong Australia, a competitive Australia, an inclusive Australia, a compassionate Australia and a sustainable Australia. Neither conservative, nor neo-liberal nor the blind socialism of the utopians… It is a vision for an Australian social democracy that is capable of bringing the nation with us as we navigate the difficult challenges and complex world of the future.

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, 4 February 2019

It’s long, but I encourage you to read it in full. I don’t agree 100% with everything he says in this essay, but he provides what is sorely lacking in our age of short attention spans and perpetual outrage, a coherent vision for where we could be going as a nation, to preserve and strengthen our democracy in an increasingly volatile and uncertain world.

Conflict vs Mistake

Conflict vs Mistake

Today’s article was originally published by Scott Alexander at Slate Star Codex on 24 January 2018. Sharing it here on its first anniversary because I lowkey reckon this is one of the most important piece of political writing of this decade.

The Political Compass is wrong. The fundamental divide of politics and society today isn’t between left-wing and right-wing, nor between authoritarians and libertarians. It’s not even the one between anti-establishment populists and the globalist elites, as many have suggested.

The fundamental divide, I now firmly believe, is the roaring mental chasm that separates conflict theorists and mistake theorists.

I think both mentalities have their place. But as for how we go about bridging that chasm, well…

Excerpts:

Mistake theorists treat politics as science, engineering, or medicine. The State is diseased. We’re all doctors, standing around arguing over the best diagnosis and cure. Some of us have good ideas, others have bad ideas that wouldn’t help, or that would cause too many side effects.

Conflict theorists treat politics as war. Different blocs with different interests are forever fighting to determine whether the State exists to enrich the Elites or to help the People.

Mistake theorists think racism is a cognitive bias. White racists have mistakenly inferred that black people are dumber or more criminal. Mistake theorists find narratives about racism useful because they’re a sort of ur-mistake that helps explain how people could make otherwise inexplicable mistakes, like electing Donald Trump or opposing [preferred policy].

Conflict theorists think racism is a conflict between races. White racists aren’t suffering from a cognitive bias, and they’re not mistaken about anything: they’re correct that white supremacy puts them on top, and hoping to stay there. Conflict theorists find narratives about racism useful because they help explain otherwise inexplicable alliances, like why working-class white people have allied with rich white capitalists.

Mistake theorists think that free speech and open debate are vital, the most important things. Imagine if your doctor said you needed a medication from Pfizer – but later you learned that Pfizer owned the hospital, and fired doctors who prescribed other companies’ drugs, and that the local medical school refused to teach anything about non-Pfizer medications, and studies claiming Pfizer medications had side effects were ruthlessly suppressed. It would be a total farce, and you’d get out of that hospital as soon as possible into one that allowed all viewpoints.

Conflict theorists think of free speech and open debate about the same way a 1950s Bircher would treat avowed Soviet agents coming into neighborhoods and trying to convince people of the merits of Communism. Or the way the average infantryman would think of enemy planes dropping pamphlets saying “YOU CANNOT WIN, SURRENDER NOW”. Anybody who says it’s good to let the enemy walk in and promote enemy ideas is probably an enemy agent.

Mistake theorists naturally think conflict theorists are making a mistake. On the object level, they’re not smart enough to realize that new trade deals are for the good of all, or that smashing the state would actually lead to mass famine and disaster. But on the more fundamental level, the conflict theorists don’t understand the Principle of Charity, or Hanlon’s Razor of “never attribute to malice what can be better explained by stupidity”. They’re stuck at some kind of troglodyte first-square-of-the-glowing-brain-meme level where they think forming mobs and smashing things can solve incredibly complicated social engineering problems. The correct response is to teach them Philosophy 101.

Conflict theorists naturally think mistake theorists are the enemy in their conflict. On the object level, maybe they’re directly working for the Koch Brothers or the American Enterprise Institute or whoever. But on the more fundamental level, they’ve become part of a class that’s more interested in protecting its own privileges than in helping the poor or working for the good of all. The best that can be said about the best of them is that they’re trying to protect their own neutrality, unaware that in the struggle between the powerful and the powerless neutrality always favors the powerful. The correct response is to crush them.

Deeyah Khan on fighting extremism

This filmmaker spent months interviewing neo-Nazis and jihadists. Here’s what she learned.

Excerpts:

I’ve been an anti-racist campaigner pretty much most of my life, having experienced racism from childhood. It’s personal to me, and I’ve responded in all sorts of ways — being angry at racists, shouting at them, confronting them, protesting against them, self-righteously shunning them. I’ve done all that, and I’m not sure what difference it made.

A lot of people misunderstand me when I say that I believe in engagement and dialogue. I’m not saying this is the only way to counter extremism. What I’m saying is that this has to be an option on the table if we actually care about reducing extremism.

Most of these men get so much attention once they do something horrible, or once they say something horrible. Before that, they’re invisible. And I think there is something really powerful in that, and perhaps that says more about us as a society than it does about them. But it ought to give us pause when we shower extremist groups with constant media attention.