Forget The Dog Whistles

This political season, the racism is blatant and unembarrassed. For those of us who had naively thought America was emerging from that particular form of mental illness, the willingness to appeal for votes on the basis of bias–the number of MAGA political commercials identifying the candidate as an “out and proud” bigot–has been astounding.

And heartbreaking.

Here in Indiana, gubernatorial candidates have accused each other of–gasp!–sympathy for Black Lives Matter, which they insist has called for the killing of police. That accusation has been repeatedly debunked–but interestingly, none of the rebuttal ads have defended the organization. Mike Braun, who has been the target of most of those accusations has responded with ads highlighting his support from law enforcement organizations–not by defending the organization against a nasty and purposeful lie. The linked article from the BBC traces the origin of that lie to (where else?) Fox News, and reports on the response from Black Lives Matter:

“We’re targeting the brutal system of policing, not individual police,” the statement reads. “We seek a world in which ALL Black lives matter, and racial hierarchy no longer organizes our lives or yours. This is a vision of love. As Black survivors of White supremacy, our hearts go out to all victims of violence.”

Attacks on Black Lives Matter are, rather obviously, thinly-veiled efforts to paint all Black folks as murderous beasts–and a message to bigoted voters that the candidate making the accusation is one of them. But it isn’t simply the sudden willingness of MAGA candidates to shed any pretense of civility and/or anti-racism. It’s also the creepy identities of those providing the candidates with funds and other support.

Turning Point USA has been in the news several times; it is a far Right advocacy organization that has most recently been identified as a major supporter of Bernie Moreno, the MAGA nominee for U.S. Senate in Ohio.

Moreno wrote that he was “honored to be endorsed by Charlie Kirk and Turning Point Action.” Moreno said that “[f]ew have done more to fight back against the radical left than they have,” and he looks “forward to working with them to defend for our America First conservative values in the US Senate.”

In 2023, Kirk repeatedly featured Moreno as a guest on his popular podcast and consistently promoted Moreno’s candidacy to his 2.9 million followers on X. At the end of 2023, Kirk donated the maximum legal amount of $5,000 to Moreno’s campaign through the Turning Point PAC.

At the same time, Kirk, known for his embrace of fringe views and conspiracy theories, launched a sustained attack on Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and legacy. At a December 2023 convention hosted by Turning Point USA, Kirk said that King “was awful” and “not a good person.” Kirk’s critique extended not just to King himself but to the civil rights movement itself. “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s,” Kirk declared, trashing the legislation that outlawed segregation in public places and many businesses.

In his convention speech, Kirk blasted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as an effort to “re-found the county” and “get rid of the First Amendment.” He criticized courts for enforcing the law, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. “Federal courts just yield to the Civil Rights Act as if it’s the actual American Constitution,” Kirk complained.

The article continue with a description of Kirk’s continued and highly publicized crusade against King, against the MLK holiday, and against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And this is the man and organization from which Moreno “proudly” accepted endorsement.

Turning Point’s crusade against King and the civil rights movement did not appear to impact his relationship with Moreno. On March 14, 2024, Turning Point Action donated $100,000 to the Buckeye Values PAC, Moreno’s Super PAC.

Nor is there any remaining question of Moreno’s own racial opinions:

Moreno himself has also had controversies involving racial issues. When he launched his campaign for Senate, Moreno floated the idea of reparations for white descendants of Union soldiers that were killed during the Civil War. “They talk about reparations. Where are the reparations for the people, for the North, who died to save the lives of Black people?” Moreno said. “I know it’s not politically correct to say that, but you know what, we’ve got to stop being politically correct.”

Bottom line: Every voter casting a ballot for a MAGA Republican this year is either explicitly endorsing racism or indicating that the voter does not consider the “out and proud” racism of the MAGA movement to be disqualifying.

They’re no longer hiding behind dog whistles.

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Don’t Confuse Me With Facts!!

During a recent get-together, discussion turned to a predictable topic: what on earth explains support for Donald Trump? How can (presumably rational) citizens look at this obviously mentally-ill buffoon spouting bizarre word-salads and facing 92 indictments, and come away thinking “Yep, that’s the guy I want to put in charge of the nuclear codes”? 

A recent essay on a seemingly unrelated issue may point to at least a partial answer.

In an article about recent efforts to revitalize local news media, Doron Taussig of the Columbia Journalism Review reported that Republicans are as mistrusting of local news outlets as they are of national media outlets.

She began by citing arguments from proponents of local news asserting that– while national media sources are increasingly seen as partisan– local news enjoys widespread trust. “After all, what do high school sports and Girl Scouts building a sensory garden for shelter dogs have to do with Joe Biden and Donald Trump?”

The data doesn’t support that argument.

But if money and energy are going to be poured into local news with the assumption that local journalists are and will remain trusted across partisan lines, we’re going to be in for an unpleasant surprise. Yes, polling shows that local news is more trusted across the political spectrum than national news, but only 29 percent of Republicans surveyed by Gallup in 2021 said they trusted their local news, down from 34 percent in 2019. This is consistent with what I’ve heard from journalists who work for local outlets (mostly but not exclusively in Pennsylvania) and conservatives who read or have stopped reading them. In fact, the striking thing when you examine the relationship between local news and conservative audiences is that, in spite of all the differences between the Bucks County Courier Times and the New York Times, their alienation from conservatives sounds dishearteningly similar.

It would seem that MAGA Republicans have adopted Earl Landgrebe’s infamous position, uttered during the Watergate hearings: “Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind’s made up.” He went on to say “I’m going to stick with my President even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot.” (The next day, Nixon resigned.) (Landgrebe was, sadly, a product of Indiana, a state that’s been described as so Red, voters will elect a rutabaga if it has an “R” next to its name.)

Clearly, in order to continue supporting Donald Trump, it’s prudent to shield oneself from information, facts, and reality.  

That allergy to inconvenient information, however, has multiple negative consequences–and those consequences aren’t limited to ongoing support for a lunatic would-be autocrat. People who refuse to engage with probative information are ripe targets for propaganda, as Heather Cox Richardson recently reported.

Richardson cited a Washington Post article on a secret 2023 document from Russia’s Foreign Ministry calling for an “offensive information campaign” and other measures that attack “‘a coalition of unfriendly countries’ led by the United States.”

Those measures are designed to affect “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres” of Russia’s perceived adversaries. 

The plan is to weaken the United States and convince other countries, particularly those in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, that the U.S. will not stand by its allies. By weakening those alliances, Russian leaders hope to shift global power by strengthening Russia’s ties to China, Iran, and North Korea and filling the vacuum left by the crumbling democratic alliances (although it is not at all clear that China is on board with this plan).

Russian propaganda aims to bolster the most isolationist right-wing and extremist forces in America, “to increase tensions between the U.S. and China over Taiwan,” and “escalate the situation in the Middle East around Israel, Iran and Syria to distract the U.S. with the problems of this region.” 

That effort has been particularly successful with the looney-tunes GOP flank elected to the House thanks to gerrymandering. As Richardson reports:

Earlier this month, both Representative Michael R. Turner (R-OH), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, warned about Russian disinformation in their party. Turner told CNN’s State of the Union that it is “absolutely true” that Republican members of Congress are parroting Russian propaganda. “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.” When asked which Republicans had fallen to Russian propaganda, McCaul answered that it is “obvious.” 

What it takes to support Trump, echo his “Big Lie,” and parrot Russian propaganda is chosen ignorance–a rejection of all contrary information by folks who don’t want to be confused by the facts.

There are a lot of them.

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Whose Economy Do We Measure?

What can be done about persistent malfunctions of an essential institution? An informed citizenry is critical to democracy–and it’s undermined by our fragmented and inadequate media environment.

I’ve posted numerous times about the multiple ways in which the proliferation of media sites on the Internet have encouraged readers to indulge in confirmation bias–if you really, really want to believe in X, a google search will take you to “journalism” that confirms the existence and accuracy of “X.” That same fragmentation practically invites propaganda from domestic and foreign sources that are increasingly adept at confusion, misdirection and out-and-out lies.

All of the problems aren’t the result of intentional misrepresentation, either. A recent academic study pointed to a feature of contemporary journalism that I had not previously considered. Titled “Whose News? Class-Based Economic Reporting in the United States,” the research was a “deep dive” into economic reporting in the United States.

The abstract explained the nature of the inquiry and the research conclusions.

There is substantial evidence that voters’ choices are shaped by assessments of the state of the economy and that these assessments, in turn, are influenced by the news. But how does the economic news track the welfare of different income groups in an era of rising inequality? Whose economy does the news cover? Drawing on a large new dataset of US news content, we demonstrate that the tone of the economic news strongly and disproportionately tracks the fortunes of the richest households, with little sensitivity to income changes among the non-rich. Further, we present evidence that this pro-rich bias emerges not from pro-rich journalistic preferences but, rather, from the interaction of the media’s focus on economic aggregates with structural features of the relationship between economic growth and distribution. The findings yield a novel explanation of distributionally perverse electoral patterns and demonstrate how distributional biases in the economy condition economic accountability.

The researchers recognized the powerful role played by news media in forming citizens’ beliefs about the performance of government, and especially about the state of the economy.  (Economic performance is an area in which they point out that direct experience is generally of “limited relevance”). Assessments of the economy are particularly important to voters’ electoral choices.  This particular study was concerned with a question that has received very limited scholarly attention: whose material welfare the economic news reflects. In other words, “how responsive is economic reporting to developments affecting different income groups? When voters turn to the news media for an assessment of economic performance, does the signal that they receive reflect the fortunes of most households or of those located at particular points in the income distribution—whether the middle, the bottom, or the top?”

We argue in this paper that the economic news in the United States has, over the last 40 years, painted a portrait of the economy that strongly and disproportionately tracks the welfare of the very rich. Analyzing a vast, original dataset of news articles in 32 high-circulation US newspapers over this period, we uncover clear evidence that reporting on the US economy is descriptively class-biased. Footnote1 Specifically, the evaluative content of economic news becomes more positive (negative) in periods in which the incomes of the very rich grow (shrink) and is largely uncorrelated with change in the incomes of less well-off Americans, once growth in incomes at the top is taken into account. Put simply, good economic news tracks, above all, the fortunes of the most affluent.

The research attributes this phenomenon in large part to the fact that government and media track economic performance in the aggregate–and averages, as we know, can be misleading. (If you average Bill Gates wealth with that of a fast-food worker, you are going to get a result that is pretty meaningless–or, as the paper puts it, class-biased economic news “tracks the ups and downs of the business cycle in the context of an economy that distributes income growth in powerfully class-biased ways.”)

The results suggest an explanation, for instance, of why incumbents presiding over sharp increases in economic inequality in the United States have not been penalized at the ballot box.

The study has particular relevance to the current disconnect between voters’ impressions about economic performance and the data that tracks that performance. Data from a variety of sources suggests that working class folks have been doing considerably better during the Biden Administration than they were previously, and that most are unaware of that fact due to the relative lack of economic reporting focused on wage-earners or on the policy changes that have begun reducing the gap between the rich and the rest.

As the paper points out, journalists need to focus more on “distributional dynamics.”

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What “Let the States Decide” Ignores

There are a number of legal and practical objections to Republicans’ recent, deeply misleading efforts to convince Americans that leaving abortion restrictions to the states is a “moderate” position. The most obvious is that fundamental constitutional liberties are just that–fundamental. Legislators don’t get to vote on whether to allow freedom of speech or religion within their states (a good thing, if you live in places like Indiana, where the GOP super-majority would undoubtedly limit those civil liberties).

Practical objections are numerous: legislative bodies are conspicuously devoid of medical expertise, and ideological lawmakers have demonstrated that they have no understanding of the real-world complexities of the decisions involved; laws that require women to travel long distances for critical medical care discriminate against low-income patients…Most of you reading this post can supply a number of others.

But it wasn’t until I read a recent opinion essay in the New York Times that I had a small epiphany: leaving the issue to the states–despite the pious rhetoric emphasizing voting– is also profoundly anti-democratic, and not just in states like Indiana where citizens lack access to initiatives and/or referenda. Successful gerrymandering–partisan redistricting–ensures that “the people” lack the means to make such decisions.

As Jamelle Bouie writes:

Nearly everywhere Republicans hold power, they fight to rewire the institutions of government in the hope that they will then generate the desired result: more and greater Republican power.

And so we have the North Carolina Legislature gerrymandered to produce Republican majorities, the Ohio Legislature gerrymandered to produce Republican supermajorities, the Florida Legislature gerrymandered to produce Republican supermajorities, and the Florida Supreme Court overhauled to secure and uphold Republican priorities.

The states’ rights case for determining abortion access — let the people decide — falters on the fact that in many states, the people cannot shape their legislature to their liking. Packed and split into districts designed to preserve Republican control, voters cannot actually dislodge anti-abortion Republican lawmakers. A pro-choice majority may exist, but only as a shadow: present but without substance in government.

Polling on the issue of abortion proves his point. Even in deep Red states, pro-choice voters outnumber forced birth supporters by considerable margins, as we’ve seen in states like Kansas and Kentucky where voters have the means to mount constitutional referendums.

In states that lack those mechanisms, as Bouie notes, Republican legislators or jurists unwilling to concede to majority opinion (or constitutional precedent) can respond with the dead hand of the past.

Both the federal courts and the Arizona Supreme Court have conjured a past that smothers the right to bodily autonomy. Anti-abortion activists are also trying to conjure a past, in the form of the long-dormant Comstock Act, that gives government the power to regulate the sexual lives of its citizens. As Moira Donegan notes in a column for The Guardian, “Comstock has come to stand in, in the right-wing imagination, for a virtuous, hierarchically ordered past that can be restored in a sexually repressive and tyrannically misogynistic future.”

This effort may well fail, but the drive to leash the country to an imagined vision of a reactionary past should be seen as a silent confession of weakness. The same is true, for that matter, of the authoritarian dreams of the former president and his allies and acolytes….

Put a bit differently, a confident political movement does not fight to dominate; it works to persuade. It does not curate a favorable electorate or frantically burrow itself into our counter-majoritarian institutions; it competes for power on an even playing field, assured of its appeal and certain of its ability to win. It does not hide its agenda or shield its plans from public view; it believes in itself and its ideas.

That last paragraph is a succinct description of where we are as a nation right now. In far too many states, very much including my own state of Indiana, the GOP has “curated a favorable electorate.” Republicans have also benefitted mightily from counter-majoritarian institutions that have bestowed extra electoral clout on rural voters and low-density populations.

Regular readers of this blog are well aware of my periodic rants about the pernicious and anti-democratic effects of gerrymandering, but I didn’t understand until I read this essay that the practice is also an essential tool for depriving American citizens of their bodily autonomy and other civil liberties.

Gerrymandering is a critical part of the effort to return America to the past of GOP wet dreams…..

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Virtue Is Non-Binary

I often find myself quoting David French, a lawyer/author I read and respect. Despite the fact that I deeply disagree with certain of his positions, I find him thoughtful, civil and willing to concede the legitimacy of those with whom he differs–attributes entirely missing from the MAGA Rightwingers with whom, until recently, he shared a political party.

French recently published an important opinion piece in the New York Times on masculinity and in the process of that discussion, he made an (implicit) point that should be widely shared. The essay centered on current concerns over the perceived “crisis” in masculinity and the status of men and boys.

To understand the state of men in this country, it’s necessary to know three things.

First, millions of men are falling behind women academically and suffering from a lack of meaning and purpose. Second, there is no consensus whatsoever on whether there’s a problem, much less how to respond and pull millions of men back from the brink. Third, many men are filling the void themselves by turning to gurus to guide their lives. They’re not waiting for elite culture, the education establishment or the church to define manhood. They’re turning to Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson and a host of others — including Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson — to show them the way.

French describes the various “remedies” prescribed by these particular individuals, and dismisses them:

It’s as if an entire self-help industry decided the best cure for one form of dysfunction is simply a different dysfunction. Replace passivity and hopelessness with frenetic activity, tinged with anger and resentment. Get in the weight room, dress sharper, develop confidence and double down on every element of traditional masculinity you believe is under fire.

Yes, men are absolutely feeling demoralized, as Richard Reeves put it in his brilliant book “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It.” But what is the influencer advice in response? Lash out. Fight. Defy the cultural elite that supposedly destroyed your life.

After pondering various definitions of masculinity, and considering their positive and negative attributes, French makes an incredibly important  point–the observation that led me to use the term “non-binary” in the title of this post. (Non-binary isn’t simply a description of one type of sexuality–it refers to matters that cannot be reduced to an “either/or” proposition.)

Can we sidestep the elite debate over masculinity by approaching the crisis with men via an appeal to universal values rather than to the distinctively male experience? In other words, is there a universal approach to shaping character that can have a disproportionately positive impact on our lost young men?

French quotes Jeffrey Rosen for the classical definition of “pursuit of happiness,” which–to the nation’s Founders– did not mean “pursuit of pleasure” but instead meant pursuit of virtue: being a lifelong learner, self-mastery, flourishing and growth. In this reading, the pursuit of happiness is “a quest, not a destination, in part because we are always a work in progress, even to our last days.”

And what are these classical virtues? Benjamin Franklin’s list included temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity, chastity and humility. I prefer the shorter and simpler formulation in Aristotle’s four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance and courage.

French argues–persuasively–that the pursuit of these virtues, aka a “virtue ethic,” is far preferable to America’s prevailing “success ethic,” which measures manly success by materialistic metrics. He argues that the current obsession with an ideal masculinity diverts attention from the urgent need to provide children with “a purpose that is infinitely more satisfying than the ambition and rebellion that define the ethos of the gurus who are leading so many young men astray.”

What struck me about this conclusion is something French didn’t say: that the pursuit of virtue is ultimately non-binary. It is not the exclusive province of either males or females, but an aspiration appropriate to humans generally.

Discussions of masculinity and femininity are all well and good; I’m not blind to the biological and/or psychological differences between cis men and women. But a great deal of current male resentment–not to mention misogyny and homophobia– is a result of efforts to emphasize those differences and ignore the much larger human commonalities between (among?) the genders.

Franklin and Aristotle identify human virtues. We need a culture that elevates pursuit of virtue to a status that is at least equal to pursuit of material success, and avoids emphasizing what makes the genders distinctive rather than the human characteristics they share.

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