Beyond Reason

Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.
 —Jonathan Swift, A Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately Enter’d Into Holy Orders by a Person of Quality, 1721

How do you form your political opinions? How do any of us?

Depending on where you are on your life’s journey, you may be struggling to work out the right and wrong of every political issue or, if you are older, your positions may well be be encased in concrete.

My sense is that most, if not all, of us like to think we arrive at our opinions sensibly and logically. That we take in all the evidence and arguments and then arrive the right view through reason while applying self-evident moral standards.

Over time, though, when our conclusions repeatedly land in the same place in agreeing with certain friends, politicians and/or a political party (call them your politics peer group), it might become easy to simplify the political judgment process by simply following the lead of those people you’ve come to trust for their political judgment. Or more likely, you may have found news sources that you have come to trust and it so happens that you and your politics peer group usually, if not invariably, have the same reactions to each fresh news report.

What I’ve just described, however, amounts to choosing a side. And once you’ve chosen a side, your reasoning is no longer deductive. It has become inductive. In other words, rather than examining the evidence neutrally and seeing where it leads, you are starting with a conclusion and looking for information to back it up. When it comes to modern politics, there are plenty of news sources and opinion makers to provide that selective information to you—also known as talking points.

Is it even possible to look at political issues neutrally? Probably not. The best we can likely do is to be as aware as possible of our own core values and to use them rigorously as a yardstick against each issue that comes along. The risk in that, though, is that occasionally your conclusions might not perfectly match your politics peer group. In fact, people who are very individualistic and committed to deductive reason will find that they have no ideological home. You may occasionally find yourself disagreeing with people you admire and respect or on the same side as people you don’t like very much.

It can be kind of lonely. People who are very hard-core about their politics—the kind who have litmus tests for friendships—won’t trust you. Worse, reality may trip you up. You will eventually come up against the fact that the question of right and wrong in the real world is often not as clear as we would like.

When I was younger and more idealistic, my position on capital punishment was unyielding. Taking a life was wrong. That is an eminently satisfying position when it came to innocent people on death row purely because of their social and racial circumstances. It’s a bit harder to muster enthusiasm for pushing that position energetically when the person in question is a monster like Ted Bundy or Timothy McVeigh. Things get muddier still when we realize that society makes decisions about human life and death all the time, albeit usually in a more indirect way. And then there’s the flipside to the capital punishment question: abortion. If you accept that a viable fetus (i.e. which would likely survive if prematurely delivered) in the womb is some sort of human life, many if not most people would judge that it can be reasonably sacrificed for any number of reasons, especially if it is to save the mother’s life.

In other words, the position that human life cannot be considered absolutely sacrosanct without exception is not tenable in the real world. Reality requires society to make choices with winners and losers. Once you accept that, things get messy indeed.

Perhaps that is why it is easier for us to concentrate on who we would rather have as winners and losers instead of adhering strictly to moral principles. That won’t stop us, however, from framing our arguments as being based on morality even if they’re really about partisanship.

Atomic Age?

“No scientific subject has ever aroused quite the same mixture of hopes and fears.”
 —Nobel-Prize-winning English physicist Sir Edward Victor Appleton, on atomic energy

One of the first places in the United States where nuclear power was put on the ballot was in the California county where I was born and grew up. It was also the first time U.S. citizens shut down a nuclear plant project with their votes.

Partly in reaction to the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the country had gone on a spree of building nuclear power plants. One was proposed to be built ten miles west of the town of Wasco, which would have put it about twenty miles from my own home town. At first, the project was non-controversial, but as things progressed, opinion divided. My father’s boss was one of the main leaders in the campaign against it.

The area was politically conservative, which should have made it supportive of energy independence and of the cash the project would have injected into the local economy. The concerns, though, were over public safety and, most importantly, the fact that nuclear reactors require huge amounts of water for cooling. Locating it in a place with extremely hot summers and which gets about six inches of rain a year did not make a lot of sense to farmers who, even in the best of times, are in a perpetual struggle for water. In an advisory vote in March 1978, voters rejected the project with a 70-percent majority.

Popular culture has always conspired to make us fear atomic power. The world’s first general awareness of the split atom was two bombs wreaking havoc on Japan in 1945. Nearly every bad thing that has happened in horror and monster movies since the 1950s onwards has been caused by nuclear radiation. In 1979, James Bridges’s movie The China Syndrome, a made-up story about safety coverups at a nuclear plant, put atomic fear in people. That alarm was magnified by the nearly concurrent partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Four years later Mike Nichols’s based-on-true-events film Silkwood, about the mysterious death of a nuclear plant whistleblower, heaped on more paranoia.

Subsequent accidents at Chernobyl in Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) and Fukushima in Japan did nothing to make people more comfortable with nuclear energy. The thing is that, with a little digging, we find that these events are not always exactly as we collectively recall them. No one actually died as a result of the Three Mile Island accident. In the case of Chernobyl, around 30 first-responders died. There was an increase for a time in thyroid cancers among those living near the plant, but few of those were fatal. In Japan in 2011, thousands died, but all fatalities were because of the earthquake and tsunami. No one died from radiation exposure.

Are nuclear plants safe? No source of energy is completely safe, but nuclear is clearly statistically safer than, say, coal. But is it safe enough? I don’t know the answer. Only society collectively can decide what is safe enough and what tradeoffs are acceptable or the least bad. Most people who know a lot about this stuff seem to be saying that, if the world is serious about trying to alter humankind’s contribution to climate change, then the real choice is between mass adoption of nuclear (which emits no carbon) or a serious dismantling of the modern economy. Renewable energy sources like wind and sun are appealing, but there are limits to how much they can provide. Over the summer the European Union quietly designated nuclear fission as green energy. Without a lot of fanfare five years ago, John Kerry (now a special presidential envoy for climate) changed his stance on nuclear from anti to pro.

What European country produces the most electricity carbon-free? Easily, that is Norway. Virtually all its electricity comes from hydroelectric plants. Others with low carbon footprints are Sweden, which gets 30 percent of its electricity from nuclear, and France, which normally gets 70 percent from nuclear. (Due to some problematic maintenance, several French nuclear plants are currently offline.) In one of the worst positions is Germany. In the wake of Fukushima, it began dismantling its nuclear program while also continuing to make itself dependent on Russian gas imports. Now with the war in Ukraine, it depends on coal imports.

One of the most outspoken voices for nuclear, coming from the left, is author/activist Michael Shellenberger, who has twice run for the Democratic nomination for governor of California. He features in a documentary I saw at the recent Galway Film Fleadh and about which I wrote on my movie blog: Frankie Fenton’s Atomic Hope. The film is extremely thought-provoking and well worth seeing for anyone interested in the topic. What is interesting is how the nuclear debate is playing into the climate-change discussion. The movie has been surprisingly well received in some climate activist quarters.

It seems to me that that the nuclear energy alternative more or less forces the hand of climate crusaders. If people truly believe that the current climate trajectory has existential consequences for humanity and that altering human behavior is the only hope of affecting that trajectory, then doesn’t nuclear power have to be considered as possibly the only way to accomplish that without societal breakdown?

Two key questions thus are 1) is the production of nuclear energy reasonably safe enough to adopt widely and, if we’re not certain, 2) do we have enough confidence in climate computer models to take the risk anyway?

Too Big to Concur?

Kavanaugh Burns Down His Home Just To Get It Over With
 —Headline on the satirical newspaper web site The Babylon Bee, June 24

Is the United States simply too big to hold together?

Americans, like most everyone else in the world, tend to take the size of their country for granted, but when you live for a while in a smaller country, you begin to notice things. For one thing, a national consensus seems easier to achieve.

For example, let’s take the abortion issue. Historically, Ireland was predominately Catholic, socially conservative country. Yet when social mores evolved, people went to the polls and voted to legalize the procedure through a change to the country’s constitution.

Is there any possibility something like this could happen in the U.S.? It’s hard to imagine, despite the fact that in the U.S. abortion could be legalized (or banned) nationally simply by an act of Congress. The cumbersome constitutional amendment process would not even be necessary.

One of the arguments for overturning the Roe v. Wade precedent was that abortion is mentioned nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. By contrast, the issue actually was addressed in the Irish constitution. That document’s 1983 Eighth Amendment said, “The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”

Four years ago Irish voters repealed that amendment, making it possible for their elected representatives to legislate on the issue. That was seen as a huge victory for women’s abortion rights. Ironically, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling, America is now in the same situation as Ireland (abortion being a legislative matter), but because of the different context, it is seen as a setback for women’s abortion rights.

Upon the Eighth’s repeal, Ireland’s government promptly legalized abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. That’s pretty standard in Europe. The UK and the Netherlands permit the procedure during the first 24 weeks, and Sweden 18 weeks. Other countries range between 10 and 14, except Malta, where abortion is outlawed altogether, and Poland, where it’s allowed only in the case of rape, incest or saving the mother’s life.

Ireland’s law actually matches fairly closely the general U.S. opinion. Polls have consistently shown Americans favor legal abortion during the first trimester but not in the second or third ones. So why doesn’t Congress or state legislators simply put that into law? Why does the public debate always seem to be conducted between those who either want abortion banned entirely and those who want it guaranteed until the day before a baby’s birth?

Simply put, it’s hard to compromise when your position is tied to your core beliefs about humanity. If you truly believe a zygote has a human soul, then you’re going to consider its elimination murder. That makes it a public matter. If you believe that a woman’s physical autonomy is paramount, then you’ll conclude the fate of a zygote, embryo or fetus is a concern only for the woman carrying it. That makes it a private matter.

How do you reconcile public policy when society is divided between those two world views? Obviously, it happens because we can see that democratic countries, like those in Europe, arrive at legislative solutions—and as it happens, ones not so far off from the polling in the U.S. I mentioned.

Here’s the rub. The overall national opinion in America is not uniform in every geographical sector. Some states already have very liberal abortion laws on the books, while others have laws (old and new) that ban the procedure. (Some of the so-called trigger laws may possibly be revised since Roe’s revocation is now a reality and not merely theoretical.) So, is that the solution? A patchwork of abortion policies decided (ultimately) by the voters in each state? That may satisfy people who look at the issue with a certain legal detachment, but it does not make people happy who have strong beliefs in the human values mentioned above. Living in a state with an abortion policy you agree with is small consolation when people just across the state line have the opposite situation.

To a certain extent, the same is true about how people feel when talking about national borders—but there may be more detachment in that case. I don’t think, for example, Germans fret about the lack of abortion rights in Poland in quite the same way that Washingtonians think about the situation in Idaho. Washington and Idaho, after all, are part of the same country.

Or are they? I mean, in a cohesive, social sense? That brings me back to my original question. Is the U.S. too big to contain its diversity of world views and human values? It all comes down to how strongly people are tied to certain beliefs and how motivated they are to defend them—or impose them on others.

Personal Truth

Study Finds Connection Between Believing Russia Rigged 2016 Election and Believing 2020 Election Was Foolproof
 —Headline on the satirical newspaper web site The Babylon Bee, November 17

Ages ago during my thrifty student days in Europe, I found it beneficial to be open-minded and flexible when traveling.

Transportation was kept cheap by holding out my thumb on the side of a road. For a two-month period I used a Christmas gift from my parents, a Student Rail Pass, for both transportation and shelter by scheduling overnight train journeys whenever possible.

One thing I learned was that a free bed could be had for a night or two if I was willing to undergo a bit of proselytization. My diverse array of friends included young born-again Christians who were firmly convinced I belonged in their community. The problem was that I was raised with no religion and my analytical nature found it impossible to accept one religion over another (or atheism for that matter) without some sort of hard objective evidence. My friends’ response was to recommend various clergymen and lay people who might be able to help me sort out my thoughts. An extra enticement was that some of these people would kindly lodge truth-seekers for free.

I took advantage of a couple of these offers, and to be clear, I did so with a completely open and curious mind. One was an Anglican minister and his wife who had a lovely, large apartment in the city center of Paris between the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. Another was a community called L’Abri which was operated out of the home of its founder, American-born theologian Francis Schaeffer, in a picturesque spot in the Swiss Alps southeast of Lake Geneva. I spent several days there, reading, discussing and asking all manner of questions.

In the end I did not have the life-changing breakthrough my friends were hoping for, but I did come away with a huge appreciation for the science of epistemology. That’s a branch of learning which poses the question, how can we actually know anything? When you start thinking about it deeply, you find it’s a lot harder than you’d think. A lot of what we “know” is really belief accepted on faith. A lot of self-described atheists like to attribute their rejection of religious doctrine to science, but one of the most profound insights I gained from my brief time at L’Abri was the realization that it takes every bit as much blind faith to believe there is no God as it does to believe God exists.

A clear understanding of the limits of knowability is relevant these days when we have media outlets and pundits accusing others of willfully ignoring the truth. In fact, the manner in which some groups, parties or publications proclaim that they are delivering The Real Truth reminds me of nothing so much as the history of my ancestors in 16th-century Europe when the Christian church split into multiple sects, each certain unto death what the nature of God was and what He wanted. As I listen to what passes for political discussion today, I sometimes wonder if we are not in such a time again and if politics is not merely the modern equivalent of religion.

An article I read in The New York Times in February has become stuck in mind. It is a detailed piece requiring 14 minutes to read. It recounts an incident at Smith College in the summer of 2018 when a woman ate her lunch in a lounge of a deserted dormitory. A janitor noticed her in the dormitory, which was closed for the summer, and did as he had been instructed. He notified campus security that he had seen an unauthorized person there.

“A well-known [unarmed] older campus security officer drove over to the dorm,” continues the article. “He recognized Ms. Kanoute as a student and they had a brief and polite conversation, which she recorded. He apologized for bothering her and she spoke to him of her discomfort: ‘Stuff like this happens way too often, where people just feel, like, threatened.’”

The piece goes on to tell how the student, whose family had immigrated from Mali, subsequently made accusations of racism against the cafeteria worker who had provided her with lunch, even though the cafeteria was only supposed to be serving students in a summer camp program at the time; the janitor who had called security; another janitor who whose shift had not yet begun at the time; and the security guard.

After a lengthy investigation the college president “released a 35-page report from a law firm with a specialty in discrimination investigations. The report cleared Ms. Blair [the cafeteria worker] altogether and found no sufficient evidence of discrimination by anyone else involved, including the janitor who called campus police.” The janitor who had made the call had been put on leave for three months. The other one left his job after his photograph was circulated widely on social media. The cafeteria worker was later furloughed because of the coronavirus pandemic and found that notoriety over the incident hindered her search for a new job. Accusations of racism against her continued to be posted by visitors to Smith College’s Facebook page.

The incident is clearly unfortunate for all involved. What struck me was this paragraph from the Times article: “This is a tale of how race, class and power collided at the elite 145-year-old liberal arts college, where tuition, room and board top $78,000 a year and where the employees who keep the school running often come from working-class enclaves beyond the school’s elegant wrought iron gates. The story highlights the tensions between a student’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it.”

Personal truth? I do not judge or question what went through the student’s mind and heart when confronted alone by a man in uniform, but isn’t there a logical disconnect in speaking of “truth” together with “facts that are at odds with it”? If the facts are at odds with it, in what sense is it truth? If something feels deeply and personally true to someone, does that qualify as truth?

These questions are important if, as a society, we are going to get the shared understanding of reality that is necessary to coexist and work out our differences. If The New York Times accepts that something deeply felt is a form of truth, then what are we to say to the 47 percent of voters who told Rasmussen in December that “it’s likely that Democrats stole voters or destroyed pro-Trump ballots in several states to ensure that Joe Biden would win” and, in particular, the 36 percent who said that voter fraud was “very likely.”

Doesn’t that highlight the tension between millions of people’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that may be at odds with it?

The more our politics is based on diverging tenets of blind faith, the sooner we are likely to find ourselves in a new epoch of religious wars.

Searching for Truth

Everyone Who Was Completely Wrong About Election Day Ready to Explain What Happens Next
 —Headline on the satirical newspaper website The Babylon Bee, November 5

Commentators sometimes like wax nostalgic about the good old days when everyone in America got their daily news from a handful of television network news operations which were generally trusted to supply accurate and unbiased information. Why can’t it be like that now? Why have so many news outfits picked a particular political world view and decided to cater to that view’s particular audience—instead of treating the whole country as its audience?

If you think about it, that question more or less answers itself, doesn’t it? Don’t all news consumers with favorite information sources think that theirs is the fair and objective one? It’s the other ones that are biased, right?

This situation was made possible by 1) the size and diversity of the United States and 2) the proliferation of news sources thanks to breakthroughs in technology. The latter cause is key. There was a time not that many years ago when “narrowcasting” to relatively small and geographically scattered audiences was economically impractical. Now, thanks to satellites and the internet, it’s a cinch. Arguably, a politically splintered society is good for corporate business. More than ever before, politics has become a team sport, and we all know how profitable professional sports teams are. Cable news networks even have an advantage that sports broadcasters don’t. In televised politics, when you pick your own channel, your team is always winning—at least the argument if not the election.

Still, people have a basic desire to think the information they’re getting is accurate. This would explain why, after the election of Donald Trump four years ago, The New York Times had an advertising campaign proclaiming simply and emphatically “The Truth,” and The Washington Post introduced the chilling slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” In the media generally there was much bandying of words like “truth” and “facts,” largely in response to questionable assertions by the new president but also as not-so-subtle digs at rival news organizations. Despite all this focus on truth, though, the country is nowhere near a consensus on what is “true” when it comes any major issue.

Here is what seems true to me. If Republicans generally think they are getting the truth—or at least more of it—from Fox News and if Democrats feel similarly about CNN, MSNBC and/or PBS, they can’t both be right. Whatever news you listen to will occasionally omit stories that get played on the other side. Stories reported by both will get different spins and emphases. The only way to make sure you don’t miss something or don’t get misled is to try listening to everything.

That’s time-consuming, though. If you’re busy but still want to be informed, wouldn’t it be nice if, to get back to the lament with which I began, there were one or more news sources that simply reported the major news of the day with some kind of balance and fairness you could trust? Such a news provider might annoy Democrats sometimes, but it would also annoy Republicans sometimes. Is there a market for such a thing?

There are actually people out there who see that gap and are trying to fill it. One that I came across a while back is called Ground News, and it takes an interesting approach. Available through its website or its app, it delivers a stream of news items but also includes information on what other media are carrying the same item. Furthermore it breaks down the other media sources according to where they fall on the political spectrum and gives you a liberal/conservative percentage breakdown on each article’s overall media distribution. If nothing else, it tells you whether the stories you find interesting are mainly being seen by most people or by mainly conservatives or by liberals. They even offer a browser extension that pops up if you’re reading another news site, e.g. The New York Times, and gives you the same media breakdown about the article you are reading there.

The goal is not to eliminate bias but to clearly identify it and label it so that you know where your news falls on the political spectrum. News sources are rated on a scale from the far left (e.g. Palmer Report) to the far right (e.g. The Gateway Pundit). Sources it considers in the center include the Associated Press, Reuters, the BBC and France24. Obviously, not everyone is going to agree on these classifications, but at least it’s some kind of yardstick. The Ground News website is freely accessible, but if you want to support them or get more features, there are a couple of subscription levels. You can also get their weekly “Blindspot Report” email which highlights legitimate news stories missed by sources on both the left and right.

Ground News is based in Canada, which is also the location of another source of serious balanced discussion, the charitable-foundation-run Munk Debates. Originally staged as live events in Toronto, the debates—as well as dialogs and interviews—are now accessible as streams and through a podcast. They highlight topical issues argued by prominent speakers on opposite sides in a congenial environment. Recent topics have included “Be it resolved: Go Green! Go Nuclear!” with University of Michigan professor Todd Allen and former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair Gregory Jackzko and “Be it resolved: The GameStop frenzy is good for investors and good for financial markets” with market traders Tom Sosnoff and Danny Moses. It is a nice change of pace from the usual stacked-deck panel discussions that proliferate cable news.

Another source I came across recently is the five-days-a-week email newsletter Tangle by journalist Isaac Saul whose main job is with the positive-news-focused digital media company A Plus. A 10-to-15-minute read, Tangle concentrates on the major DC political issue of the day—as well as a few briefer items—giving a meticulous examination of the positions on both partisan sides, as well as Saul’s own (generally middle-of-the-road) take. It is pretty balanced, although your own mileage could vary. Tangle is subscription-supported on the Substack platform—an increasingly interesting source of informed commentary for people willing to pay for it—but it can generally be read four days a week for free.

The funny thing about consuming reasonable, balanced and fair news sources, though, is that there always seems to be something missing. Human nature, especially when we are younger, craves the passion of being committed and involved on the right side of a grand ideological struggle. People used to satisfy that craving with religion. Nowadays they fill it with politics. In the current heightened environment, objective reporting can feel strangely bland.

Also, if you’re paranoid—and shouldn’t we all be?—there is the concern that these self-branded objective sources may be trojan horses that are trying to subtly and with sophistication nudge those in the political middle toward one side or the other under the guise of supposed neutrality. After all, can any individual or organization be truly neutral? Short answer: no.

In the end, that is the risk you run in trying to be informed. You might end up having your mind changed.

Corporate Masters?

‘Skynet Is A Private Company, They Can Do What They Want,’ Says Man Getting Curb-Stomped By Terminator
 —Headline on the satirical newspaper web site The Babylon Bee, January 18

So which is it? Does democracy work because society has some kind of collective wisdom that leads it, over time, to elect good leaders who mostly rise to meet the challenges of the time? Or are citizens basically sheep who are led by slick charismatic politicians and campaigns with manipulative marketing techniques?

This question has been turning over in my mind since viewing the fascinating 2012 Chilean film No by Pablo Larraín. (That movie has already been fodder for my other two blogs, so why not a third go?) A fictionalized account of the 1988 referendum campaign that ultimately turned Augusto Pinochet out of power, the film tells its story from the point of view of a mostly apolitical advertising executive. It caused some controversy in Chile because it implied that the No side won mainly because of its slick campaign messaging, that a sober and serious debate of the issues was not sufficient to sway sufficient voters. Critics pointed out that the movie downplayed—if not outright ignored—the major voter registration drive organized by the political opposition.

Usually, it is the losing side in an election making the argument that voters are easily led and manipulated by campaigns with big budgets. When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, many of his opponents sought to explain the inexplicable by blaming his victory on disinformation disseminated on social media, mainly Facebook. Internet bots and strategic Russian advertising buys had swayed politically unsophisticated voters, they suggested. As a result of reporting on Russian election meddling, a lot of Americans were actually under the impression that the voting was or may have been tampered with and that the results were not completely legitimate.

With Joe Biden’s victory in November, the tables were turned. Trump insisted stubbornly—without producing any actual proof—that he was the victim of some kind of massive fraud and that he had actually won. The more rational among his supporters made a more cogent argument. They insisted that the election was essentially unfair because of media suppression of negative stories about Biden and social media companies’ newly aggressive approach to “fake news.” Exhibit A in their argument was suspension of the New York Post’s Twitter account just as it published a front-page article about information found on Hunter Biden’s laptop. The rationale was that the story was unverified and possibly Russian disinformation. Only after the election did the FBI validate the Post’s reporting. (That was in accordance with longstanding FBI policy, something it had disregarded four years earlier in James Comey’s pre-election discussion of Hillary Clinton’s email server.)

Did bias in the establishment media and among social media companies sway the election for Biden? While I think those players did show amazingly extreme bias, I doubt their favoritism tipped the balance. After all, details about Hunter Biden’s dealings with Ukraine and China were well known to anyone who was interested. They were a key revelation out of last year’s impeachment trial. I think voters just didn’t care about the younger Biden’s corrupt but apparently legal dealings—just as they didn’t care about all the salacious revelations about Trump’s dealings in business and with women four years earlier. Still, it was kind of jaw-dropping when a post-election survey showed that significant numbers of voters claimed to be ignorant of the Hunter Biden story and said it might have made a difference in their electoral decision-making.

If the people who believe that citizens are easily manipulated by the media are correct, that presents a huge problem for democracy—especially in a country as large and diverse as the United States. It would give a huge advantage to the side with the most money. In the 2020 election, Democrats (who once campaigned on election finance reform but never talk about it anymore) outspent Republicans by $6.9 billion to $3.8 billion. And those numbers do not include what many Republicans consider a virtual “in kind” donation—biased coverage by all the major corporate-owned media outlets (with the obvious exception of Fox News).

Is the lopsided coverage of the 2020 election an anomaly caused by the unprecedented nature of the Trump presidency? Maybe, but Republicans have been complaining of biased coverage for many, many election cycles. If you are a Democrat, of course, you do not see it as bias. It’s just that reality has a liberal bias, as some people like to say. Still, if big corporations have definitely picked a side and that side has a permanent significant funding advantage, what does that portend for democracy?

It means that we better hope that money and the power of corporate media are not completely determinative in election outcomes. Yes, you may have been quite happy with the outcome of the most recent election, but what about future elections when corporate interests and deep pockets go against what you think is right? Let’s hope that well-reasoned arguments and grassroots organizing still work. Let’s hope that corporate whims cannot silence your voice summarily.

After all, if the president of the United States can be banned from Twitter for all time, what does mean for you when your beliefs are not consistent with the agenda of major corporations?

Expert Advice

“Sorry, Only Seeing This Now…” Government Finally Text NPHET Back After Recommending Level 5 Restrictions 2 Weeks Ago
 —Headline on the Irish satirical newspaper web site Waterford Whispers, October 19

If you watched the original Star Trek series when you were a kid, as I did, then you may have wondered, as I did, why Mr. Spock was not the ship’s captain instead of James T. Kirk.

Spock was invariably cool, calm and in total control of his emotions. He was a brilliant scientist—in fact he was the Enterprise’s science officer—and a rigorous practitioner of logic. While Kirk was frequently distracted by some bit of intergalactic skirt or otherwise being led by his emotions, Spock was completely dedicated to his work and mission. Whenever Kirk had to absent himself and would tell Spock to “take the com,” things always seemed to run much more efficiently, and the leadership decisions were more consistent and clear.

There is an obvious reason why Kirk was the captain and not Spock. It made for better stories. Efficiently run organizations are not inherently watchable from an entertainment point of view. The show’s writers did actually come up with a justification for the Enterprise’s command structure. In the sixteenth episode of the first season (“The Galileo Seven”), Mr. Spock is in a position of command on an away mission. After an emergency landing on the planet Taurus II, Spock’s manner annoys and frustrates his subordinates no end. A desperate attempt is made to escape the planet, but the shuttle cannot escape the planet’s gravity. In an apparent act of desperation, Spock dumps the craft’s precious remaining fuel and ignites it. This seems pointless and foolhardy, but the flare is spotted by the Enterprise crew, which is then able to save the shuttle passengers by transporter beam in the few remaining seconds.

Kirk—and perhaps the writers—think Spock has learned a lesson in leadership because he acted emotionally rather than logically, but wasn’t Spock’s desperate act actually logical? After all, it succeeded. In a last-ditch situation, trying anything, even with near-zero probability of success, is surely more logical than doing nothing. Still, Kirk’s larger point stands. Leadership is more than just technical expertise.

In times when people get frustrated with their political leaders, you often hear voices arguing that governmental decisions should be made by technocrats or “experts” rather than individuals whose strongest ability is climbing to the top of the political ladder. You particularly hear this nowadays as countries struggle with a long-term emergency medical situation. President Trump has been roundly criticized for being dismissive of Anthony Fauci, a lead member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and other medical advisers. Joe Biden, who looks likely to replace Trump in January, says repeatedly that, as president, he would “follow medical experts’ advice.”

For months Irish politicians smugly compared themselves to Trump and congratulated themselves on following the experts. The self-congratulation stopped abruptly four Sundays ago when the press learned that the country’s chief medical officer, on behalf of the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET), had written the government advising that the Republic of Ireland move to Level 5, i.e. the most restrictive set of measures currently available. The following evening, in a television interview, Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) Leo Varadkar defended the government’s decision to go to a lower-than-recommended level of restrictions, saying the medical advice had come “out of the blue” and was “not thought through.” Sixteen days later, under continuing media criticism and deteriorating case numbers, the government went to Level 5.

In his original defense of the government’s hesitation to tighten restrictions, Varadkar pointed out that the government must take into account all manner of economic and social repercussions, while the medical experts’ brief is limited to the spread of the virus. They have the luxury, if you want to call it that, to strive for minimal risk in their recommendations. The government faces serious risk no matter what it decides. The government’s defenders declared that, while NPHET should be heeded, it is not the government.

One of the strongest arguments I have read for not turning experts into autocrats comes not from some right-wing sheet but from an article two years ago in the left-of-center Guardian. In the piece David Runciman of Cambridge University argued against “epistocracy: the rule of the knowers.” It is a detailed and thoughtful article and well worth reading. Here is the nub of his argument:

Epistocracy is flawed because of the second part of the word rather than the first—this is about power (kratos) as much as it is about knowledge (episteme). Fixing power to knowledge risks creating a monster that can’t be deflected from its course, even when it goes wrong—which it will, since no one and nothing is infallible. Not knowing the right answer is a great defence against people who believe that their knowledge makes them superior.

The nature of science is exemplified by experimentation, debate, revision and skepticism. Ironically, many people, usually not scientists themselves, invoke Science as some immutable ultimate authority, not unlike the way religious fundamentalists would try to shut down arguments by invoking the Old Testament.

Such people would have you believe that there is near-unanimity among scientists on a range of critical issues. Worse, they seem at times to believe the anointed experts are infallible. Certainly, following the prevailing scientific opinion in a crisis is the smart thing to do, but it should never be treated uncritically as received truth. Unanimity of opinion is the virtual antithesis of science. You only have to read the October 4 Great Barrington Declaration by professors from Stanford, Harvard and Oxford or a recent letter to the Irish government signed by fifteen doctors, including those on the frontlines, to realize that there is a healthy debate going on about the best way to deal with pandemic.

By all means, you want Mr. Spock on the ship’s deck for his technical expertise and his advice. The captain, though, will want to hear from him and other crew members and then draw upon his or her own judgment before heading out into the great unknown.

Centuries

“I feel great. I feel, like, perfect. I think this was a blessing from God, that I caught it. This was a blessing in disguise.”
 —President Trump on his having contracted Covid‑19, October 7

“I just think is God’s gift to the left.”
 —Actor/activist Jane Fonda, during a Working Families Party online event, October 2

Sometimes it is worthwhile to look back and recall what was happening a hundred years ago.

As it happens, in 1920 the world was enduring the fourth wave of a pandemic. The first wave of the so-called Spanish Flu had occurred in 1918. Also, in 1920 Russia was midway through a bloody civil war. The two things may or may not be unrelated.

At the beginning of the current year, a lot of political analysts opined that President Trump was sailing toward an easy reelection on the strength of the U.S.’s strong financial numbers. These days, however, because of the Covid‑19 pandemic and its effect on the economy, the smart betting is that he will lose to Joe Biden. Did something similar happen with the 1918-1920 pandemic?

Cause and effect are always tricky to prove, but some historians suggest that the flu’s scourge did have a political effect. Europe was already reeling from a devastating four-year war when the pandemic began. In her 2017 book Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World, author/journalist Laura Spinney suggests the flu “fanned the flames that had been smoldering since before the Russian revolutions of 1917 … illuminating the injustice of colonialism and sometimes of capitalism too.”

No doubt it was one more factor in the deteriorating post-war situation in Germany, which would eventually lead to a second world war. On the more constructive side, the ravages of the disease prompted citizens of democracies to press for better healthcare systems, a struggle that continues to this day.

Did the Spanish flu really fan the flames of activism, progressivism and radicalism in the 1920s and 1930s? More to the point, is the current pandemic having that effect in our own time? It is arguable whether the prospective election of Biden would necessarily signal a major leftward shift in the American electorate. After all, Democratic primary voters—and more importantly Dem party leaders—seem to have settled on him precisely because, compared to younger Democratic politicians, he looks downright moderate and not scary to most voters. If he wins, it will clearly be a rejection of the incumbent rather than a ringing endorsement of anything voters heard in the primary debates.

Still it cannot be ignored that the Democratic Party, which is by all measures (except perhaps the Electoral College) is the largest of all U.S. political parties, has moved decidedly leftward in the 21st century. A Democratic President and Congress will certainly come under pressure from progressive factions in terms of the economy, social issues and climate change. Republicans would have you believe that the country will go full-blown socialist if Biden is elected and particularly if Democrats also take the Senate.

Experience suggests that is unlikely. The Democratic leadership can use all the right woke buzzwords, but once the party is in control of government they can act pretty darn moderate, usually contorting themselves in blaming the Republican opposition for a lack of results. Remember the 111th Congress (2009-2011) when Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress? They got through Obamacare—not even the single-payer system progressives had long fought for—and what else? Climate change? President Obama signed a treaty in Paris but then never submitted it for approval to the Democratic-controlled Senate because it was certain to fail. The party’s reward for its one accomplishment, healthcare reform, was a rout in the 2010 midterm elections.

But maybe things are different now? There’s a new generation of voters. There’s better education. People are more politically active. Young people are finally really engaged. The problem is that these are all things we’ve heard during every election since 1968. We’ll find out after November 3 whether things have really changed that much.

More worrying is how activist progressives will react if their political victory falls short of their ideals. Republicans know how that turns out. Four years ago the party saw many of its usual voters give up on the old establishment types and go for a populist firebrand. Will progressives do something similar if they also decide the system is rigged against them?

Here’s something to chew on. The Times of London reported the other day that a survey of nearly five million people found that those born between 1981 and 1996 had less faith in democratic institutions than previous generations. “The collapse of confidence,” said the paper, “is particularly pronounced in the ‘Anglo-Saxon democracies’ of Britain, the United States and Australia. However, similar trends are seen in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and southern Europe.”

The study was conducted by the Centre for the Future of Democracy at Cambridge University. Roberto Foa, its lead author, said, “This is the first generation in living memory to have a global majority who are dissatisfied with the way democracy works while in their twenties and thirties.”

“In western democracies,” reported The Times, “41 per cent of millennials agree that you can ‘tell if a person is good or bad if you know their politics,’ compared with 30 per cent of voters over the age of 35.”

Added Dr. Foa, “The prevalence of polarizing attitudes among millennials may mean advanced democracies remain fertile ground for populist politics.”

One-hundred years ago next month, the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Vladimir Lenin, addressed the Conference of Political Education Workers. He declared, “Each man must choose between joining our side or the other side. Any attempt to avoid taking sides must end in fiasco.”

A century later his words echo strong and clear.

Peacemaker

“He focused on unity and peace and giving that dignity to every person. We should never underestimate how difficult it was for John to cross the road and do what was intensely unpopular for the greater good.”
  —Father Paul Farren, in his homily at the funeral of John Hume, August 5

One major impact the pandemic has had on Irish society is the curtailment of large, public funerals. Along with weddings, christenings and First Holy Communions, the funeral is one of those rituals the define the Irish character and survives even in a time when regular Mass-going has dropped precipitously.

It is a sad irony that, among the many funerals held during this strangely becalmed period, was that of John Hume in early August. If his send-off in his native Derry had been commensurate with his contribution to life on this island, it would have been a massive affair. Instead, like the man himself it was restrained and dignified and somewhat overshadowed by large events. As it was, though, in the spite of the restrictions the attendance was impressive. Mourners included Northern Ireland’s deputy and first ministers, Ireland’s president, Taoiseach and foreign minister, and the UK’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland. Tributes were read out, including those from the Pope, the Dalai Lama, Bill Clinton, Boris Johnson and, inevitably, U2’s Bono.

Appropriately, in the evening on the day of his death, the Irish state broadcaster aired Maurice Fitzpatrick’s excellent documentary In the Name of Peace: John Hume in America. It was a fitting homage to the man, and I would heartily recommend anyone with an interest in Ireland’s history or current affairs to take any opportunity to see it. I was fortunate enough to attend the film’s world premiere at the 2017 Galway Film Fleadh and also attend a panel discussion including the filmmaker and former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who was in office when the Good Friday peace agreement was signed.

Since Hume’s passing, I have done much pondering of what an extraordinary man he was and why we see so few like him in public life. I suppose there are moments when the times require a particular kind of person and they somehow find him or her. When things are going well, such people are ignored in favor of the ambitious and opportunistic.

You could say that Hume was just smarter than other politicians. His strategy led to a peace agreement for Northern Ireland because he saw that there was more chance of success if he got the United States’ leadership on board. Moreover, unlike many politicians, he recognized that there needed to be recognition of legitimate concerns of both sides in the dispute and that an agreement had to benefit both sides. You hear precious little talk like that these days among politicians in Belfast, Dublin, London or Washington.

All that, however, still isn’t the most extraordinary thing about Hume’s achievement. He undertook a course for finding peace in his country, knowing full well that it could doom his own political party and his own career. That is exactly what happened, but he did it anyway because he had his eye on the greater good. Once the peace was secured, unionists and nationalists—whether out of fear or out of a need for retrenchment—abandoned the dominant moderate parties (the Ulster Unionist Party and the Social Democratic and Labour Party) that had negotiated the peace and switched their votes to more extreme parties (the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin). Those two parties have governed Northern Ireland in partnership ever since, while the UUP and SDLP have become shadows of the former selves. The peace process also took a personal toll on Hume, as his health went into decline.

Does the rise of the DUP and Sinn Féin mean the peace accord wasn’t worth it? Hardly. There was not only a persistent drop in the province’s political violence, but we were treated to the spectacle an unexpectedly cordial friendship between bitter old enemies Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness. They became so comfortable with each other that wags dubbed them the “Chuckle Brothers.”

Things have been by no means smooth in Northern Ireland, and things look to get dicey with Brexit looming, but only very sick minds regret the end of the Troubles. That would not have been possible without John Hume and his willingness to put peace and cooperation above his own personal interests. It will not be lost on cynics, however, that the careers which flourished as a result of Hume’s efforts were those of Paisley, who had stirred the fires of sectarianism, and Adams, who had reportedly been an active participant in the violence of the Troubles.

When looking at my own country these days and the increasingly bitter estrangement between those on different political sides, I wonder if there is an American John Hume out there somewhere who would sacrifice his or her political career to bring the two sides together. Sometimes people surprise you, but right now I don’t see anybody on the political scene who isn’t in it for themselves or their own side.

Will things have to get even worse before the times finally produce someone of John Hume’s caliber?

Country Mice, City Mice

“Drink Driving, Grants for TD’s Constituency, Character References for Criminals: Fianna Fáil Are Back Baby!”
  —Headline on the satirical Irish newspaper website Waterford Whispers News, July 8

“A Cabinet Fit for Cromwell,” proclaimed a headline in the County Mayo-based Western People newspaper four weeks ago. That’s no small amount of pique or annoyance for a Connacht publication to express. To this day, one hears the name of England’s 17th-century military leader and Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell invoked with a revulsion so enduring it feels as though the swath his army cut through Ireland occurred only a week ago.

What cabinet sparked such a visceral reaction in a regional newspaper? Was it a ministerial shuffle by Boris Johnson in the UK or perhaps some dodgy compromise in the Northern Ireland Assembly? No, it was directed at the Republic’s new government in Dublin.

How did this happen? To recap briefly, a general election was held on February 8. The vote was split roughly in quarters—one for left-wing/pro-unification party Sinn Féin and one each for traditional centrist parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The rest went to smaller parties and independents. After four-and-a-half months of posturing and negotiations, a government was formed on June 27. Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin heads the government until December 2022 after which Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar will replace him as Taoiseach. The two also alternate as each other’s Tánaiste (deputy prime minister). The third member of the coalition is the Green Party, giving the government the solid bloc of votes needed for a stable majority.

How stable is it, though? No one seems particularly thrilled by this government. Perhaps die-hard Fianna Fáil partisans are, but their numbers shrank drastically after the 2011 election debacle when the party was punished roundly for its role in the country’s financial crash. Notably unhappy is the half of the electorate that voted for Sinn Féin, independents and other left-wing parties and who felt there had been a pretty clear mandate for change. Quite a few Green Party members also seemed unhappy, although in the end members did ratify the party’s participation in the government in surprisingly large numbers.

While the traditional way of looking at the country’s political division would be in terms of the left/right split, it might be clearer to see it as an urban/rural split. The Western People headline above was in reaction to the fact that, for the first time in yonks, the government’s voting cabinet included no TD (member of parliament) from west of the Shannon River. Westerners were particularly sensitive this time around because the government’s aggressive program for reducing Ireland’s carbon footprint, which was pushed hard by the Greens and, more importantly, mandated by the European Union. As mentioned here last time, as a nation less industrialized than other European ones, Ireland can only achieve this through sacrifices from vehicle owners and farmers. TDs in the Dublin area represent mostly people who never go near a farm and who have access to public transportation, while the West will be asked to undergo a radical change to its traditions and lifestyle.

The omission of a western cabinet minister did soon get rectified in classically Irish fashion. In what seemed like a political hit job, a story came out about the new agricultural minister having been caught for drink driving a few years ago at a road checkpoint after an All-Ireland football match. It further emerged that he had been driving on a learner’s permit up until the age of 47. That fellow (brother of the last previous Fianna Fáil Taoiseach, as it happens) was soon pushed out, freeing up a cabinet seat for a TD from County Mayo. This hasn’t placated the wary westerners much, and now it’s the Midlands complaining they no longer have a minister.

Rural/urban divides are common enough in world politics, and no more so in the United States. Non-urban voters in the U.S. have a bit more of an advantage than in most countries, though. Senate voting and the Electoral College give extra weight to states at the expense of the general population. It was a carefully crafted compromise in the Constitution to convince less populated states to stay in the Union and assure them that their interests would not be overridden by people in dense population centers. That old tension has not gone away. After all, that 18th-century compromise made possible the elections of George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

The looming question in both the U.S. and Ireland is what happens if and when people rural dwellers begin to feel that not only are their interests overridden but they themselves are under attack? We can only hope the various political systems will be up to the challenge.

Virtual Government

“Teacher Can’t Wait To Use ‘Calculated Grades’ To F*** Over Prick Student He Hates”
  —Headline (slightly edited) on the Irish satirical newspaper website Waterford Whispers, May 8

Here are a couple of questions that come to mind as the pandemic persists. Is Ireland turning into Singapore? Are governments even necessary?

The first question is prompted by the inevitable police-state-style trappings that accompany emergency situations like quarantines and lockdowns. Of course, in typical Irish fashion, when Taoiseach Leo Varadkar addressed the country via television on March 24, he described a lockdown while at the same time saying he preferred not to use the word lockdown. In other words, we aren’t forcing you to stay home; it’s just a helpful suggestion. With time, though, the shutdown has become more stringently enforced. TV news footage on a bank holiday weekend showed traffic jams on major roads as officers of the Garda Síochána stopped cars at checkpoints to decide on a case-by-case basis whether each car’s travel was essential. Reasonable people certainly support law enforcement breaking up large gatherings and people crowding into public spaces, but anecdotal word-of-mouth accounts have also described gardaí stopping people walking alone on beaches and in uncrowded parks and inspecting people’s groceries to determine if their shopping was essential.

There may be a law-and-order silver lining to all this. Newspapers recount incidences of gardaí catching smugglers of drugs and illegal weapons because of the lockdown-enforcing checkpoints. Another silver lining may be—depending on your point of view—the cancellation of the Leaving Certification, the battery of state exams that graduating secondary school students endure for the sake of college placement. Instead students will be awarded “predictive” points based on past performance and evaluations by their teachers and principals. One hopes this system will work better than predictive text when typing on one’s mobile phone.

Of course, it is only reasonable to expect to have your liberty and economic well-being curtailed in a life-or-death emergency. Previous civilian generations have sacrificed much more in wartime and in the wake of natural disasters. What makes it a bit unreal in the current situation, though, is that the emergency has a strangely virtual quality to it. We mainly know how bad things are because of statistics flashed on a screen or printed in a newspaper. In the visible world around us, nothing seems to have changed except for the way everyone is behaving.

Adding to the Singapore effect here is the fact that the dominant source of news is the state broadcaster. RTÉ is in the tricky dual role of official dispenser of government information and journalistic enterprise. Hosts of all public affairs programs on the TV and radio are clearly expected to be generally supportive of the government’s measures and by extension the medical opinions underlying them. After a while—especially to someone used to the clashing ideological news sources in the US media landscape—it starts to feel a bit Big-Brother-ish.

A further complication is that there is currently no government here. By an accident of timing, the pandemic happened at the same moment as an inconclusive general election. Given the results, forming a new government was always going to be a challenge. Because of the emergency, negotiations are competing with even more serious distractions than normal. So Varadkar continues as a caretaker head of government along with his outgoing ministers, some of whom actually lost their seats in the election. In a Catch-22-like situation, the caretaker government cannot pass legislation because that requires a full Senate, and there won’t be a full Senate until there is a new Taoiseach because only the new Taoiseach can complete the Senate with his own appointments, and there won’t be a new Taoiseach until a new government is formed. I wonder if all those politicians who once talked about reforming or abolishing the Senate wish they had actually done something about it when they had they chance.

As of this writing, the two major parties which have always run the country are in what seem to be final negotiations with the Green Party, which appears riven by the prospect of another go as a minority coalition partner. Not only does a sizeable portion of the Greens look to be alienated by the likely result, so will be a big chunk of voters who gave the major-change party Sinn Féin a plurality of the popular vote.

Reassuringly, the lack of a government has not stopped the caretaker ministers and professional civil service from dealing with the pandemic. Whatever they need to do, they just do—whether by written orders or edict or fiat or whatever. They are also spending (actually, borrowing) a ton of money to get through the crisis. You can’t really blame them. After all, what other choice do they realistically have?

It is, however, what prompts the question I asked above. Are elected governments even necessary?

My concern is for when Sinn Féin eventually finds itself in the position of being able to answer that question.

Life in Lockdown

“As well-armed as the Parliamentary forces were, their deadliest weapon may have been the one they brought inadvertently. People in the town were now dying of a plague that had traveled with the English. Memories were all too fresh of the 1649 plague that had killed well over 3,000.”
   —Excerpt from the 2019 novel The Curse of Septimus Bridge

The above quote is a handy reminder that 1) plagues, endemics and pandemics have always been with us and 2) I actually wrote a novel called The Curse of Septimus Bridge. (For more information on that, as well as an update on my upcoming novel, see my book blog.)

History tells us that armies, explorers, conquistadores, holidaymakers and business travelers have, at various points in time, have helped spread virulent diseases from one territory to another. What is amazing is that, in this age of globalism and cheap-and-easy international travel, such outbreaks do not happen more often. Instead we appear to be going through a once-in-a-century phenomenon with the current crisis evoking mostly recollections of the 1918-1920 so-called Spanish flu pandemic.

That flu is estimated to have infected a third of the world’s population and killed, in the most liberal guesses, as many as 100 million. Then the world was much more defenseless than now. The ventilator would not be invented until several years later, and flu vaccines were decades away.

As the experts remind us, Covid-18 is not an influenza strain and so does not behave like one. That is what makes it scary. We are only learning as time goes on exactly how it behaves and just how dangerous it truly is.

There are signs of optimism if you want to look for them. For those of us in the majority who (as far as we know anyway) have not experienced it, the danger is more theoretical than real. For those who have had a mild or even asymptomatic case, the main concern is for others rather than for oneself. Perhaps the most optimistic sign is that many people’s nerves have relaxed enough that they have already moved past the old-wartime-style-let’s-all-pull-together mentality right to using the crisis as one more political football. I don’t spend much time listening to the White House daily briefings, but based on what I have heard they seem to contain a lot of useful and/or interesting information from government and health officials. When it comes to cable news, the president and his twitter account, though, he and the press corps seem more than content to just carry on the same noisy and distracting game in which they have engaged since the 2016 election.

Here in Ireland the we’re-all-in-this-together spirit still mostly prevails. A lot of that has to do with the fact that news coverage here is led by a dominant state broadcaster that has little space for unsanctioned views or contrarian attitudes at a time like this. There is much collective self-back-patting at the Irish response, frequently drawing meaningless, self-flattering comparisons to other (much larger) countries, particular the UK and the US.

Having said that, there is a growing criticism, or at least collective regret, that the authorities were blindsided by the number of fatalities in nursing homes. With the benefit of hindsight it now seems clear that, while citizens in general were told to hunker down in their homes, not enough attention was given to the vulnerable elder population residing in clusters. This is probably because the planners were watching what was going on hotspots like China and Italy where living and family arrangements are more traditional than here. Ireland has become more like America in that the old folks are more likely to be sent off to a home.

For the average news consumer it is difficult to gauge exactly how bad things are in general. On one hand we see disturbing images of pine coffins stacked on top of each other in a trench on New York’s Hart Island as well as similar photos from Spain and Italy. On the other hand, there is the article in today’s Wall Street Journal about results of hundreds of blood tests taken in Los Angeles. Echoing similar stories from Europe, the emerging picture is that a lot more people than expected have antibodies for Covid-19, suggesting the rate of serious illness and fatalities among those exposed is actually quite a bit lower than previously thought.

I guess that’s a perverse kind of optimism. Another example is the fact that some people are emboldened to go out—against health expert advice—and protest restrictions imposed by authorities. People have marched or found other ways of protesting in such far-flung places as Michigan, Washington, Texas, France, Germany, India and Chile. Others have more cautiously done their protesting online. These are clearly signs of pent-up frustration at the personal and economic restrictions as well as local-issue-fueled discontent. The protestors are willing to test the assertion they risk spreading the disease more widely. In the process, they have become a political litmus test in the debate between those who want everyone to heed government/expert advice/diktats and those who subscribe to the spirit, which was big in the 1960s, of “question authority.”

The other night, protesting fishermen in Dingle, County Kerry, prevented the docking of Spanish-owned trawler for fear of introducing more virus cases. Were they perhaps thinking back a whole century to the Spanish flu?

Going to Extremes

In my last post (discussing the situation in Chile) I once again violated a resolution I keep making and then breaking. I broke my promise to stop using the political labels of “left” and “right.”

The problem is that these labels—along with “liberal” and “conservative”—are just too handy not to use. After all, everyone else uses them, and people generally understand what you mean by them. The older I get, though, the more I wonder whether these labels actually have any real meaning or whether they are merely banners to cluster around—like national flags or the names of sports teams.

Do these labels actually inform our understanding of the day’s politics or do they simply impose a mental filter that keeps us from perceiving the true reality?

A brief recap. The left/right political paradigm goes back more than two centuries. It comes from legislative seating arrangements in the time of the French Revolution. Members of the aristocracy sat in the honored position to the Speaker’s right. Commoners sat to his left. It is worth noting that in those days commoners in the legislature were not peasants or laborers but the rising capitalist class, that is, the bourgeoisie. This is also the roots of our concepts of conservatives and liberals. The former strove to conserve the institutions of monarchy and the established church, while the latter worked to liberate the people from the power of those institutions. That is somewhat at odds with our modern concept of the two words. Nowadays in America a conservative is more likely to be trying to restrain the power of government, while the liberal would be in favor of increasing it.

Of course, individual people’s political opinions do not all fall neatly into two broad categories. There is a huge array of beliefs and positions on issues of the day. For convenience, people place individual philosophies on a broad spectrum, in an echo of 18th-century France, running from left to right. Movements like communism, socialism, centrism, libertarianism, and fascism are placed along a row like colors of a rainbow to help us understand how one might relate to the others. Movements at the extreme ends tend to be authoritarian in character, while those in the center are considered more democratic.

What is interesting, though, is the affinity that those near the center tend to feel for their more authoritarian fellows on their half of the spectrum. Republicans will accept—if not exactly advertise or celebrate—any votes they can get, even if they come from the far right. Democrats, likewise, will not refute votes from hard-core Marxists if it gets their candidates across the electoral line. Why do things work this way? Why is there not more cooperation among those in the middle, even if they belong to different parties? For that matter, why do believers in authoritarianism not cooperate with others who, like them, want the government to exert more control?

The second question is easier to answer. If authoritarians want the government to have more power, it is not simply as a matter of principle, They want the power specifically for themselves or for people who think like they do. That is why you do not see communists and fascists making alliances of convenience.

Actually, that is not exactly true, is it? Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did exactly that with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, although it did not work out well for either of them. In fact, what strikes me about German history between the two world wars is the proliferation of radical movements. They all meant to rescue the country from its post-war state, and they all had authoritarian tendencies. Adolf Hitler’s movement went through several name changes, but they all had the word socialist in the title, including the Nazi party of which the full name was National Socialist German Workers Party. Historians put the Nazis on the right end of the political spectrum, but one wonders why. Because Hitler was virulently anti-communist? Yet that enmity looks to me more like a vicious rivalry among radical autocrats than like movements separated by a vast philosophical gulf.

By placing the Nazis on the extreme right of the political spectrum, though, it makes it easier for Democrats to compare Republican presidents they do not like to Hitler and Republicans in general to fascists. Hitler and Stalin may have ended up as bitter enemies, but did they not have a fair amount in common—at least in terms of disdain for democratic norms? Of course, linking politicians of the present to extremists of the past is not exclusively a Democratic tactic. Republicans unhappy with Democrats’ handling of the current impeachment inquiry, for example, have been quick to compare the closed hearings to Soviet show trials.

What interests me is why politicians in the broad center have a certain amount of tolerance for the extremes on their side of the spectrum. Is it all down to political expediency because it is the only way to get to a majority? Does that lead them to hear only what they want to hear from the fringes? Extremists have a habit of extolling the virtues of democracy in their rhetoric, yet both the hard left and the hard right would be similarly repressive—although in different ways—if they ever came to power.

If we could all get collective amnesia and forget about the well-entrenched left/right political-spectrum concept, I wonder if it would become clearer to moderates of both parties that their interests lie with each other rather than the more extreme elements upon whom they sometimes rely for votes. As it is, though, Democratic voters currently appear to be leaning in a more socialist direction. Moderate Republicans, on the other hand, have worried for more than three years about the direction President Trump is taking their party.

Will the so-called center somehow prevail in spite of all this? Or do politicians, perceiving the country as having an appetite for radical change, doing their best to foster an impression of providing it? In doing so, though, do they risk power ultimately landing with either the nationalist right or the socialist left? And we have seen plenty of examples in history of where that leads.

If it should happen, we can blame (at least in part) that concept of the left/right political spectrum that has been pounded into our brains for the past two centuries.

True Believers

“The believer is happy, the doubter is wise.”
 —Hungarian proverb 

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents … Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”
 —Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951)

When I write fiction, my ultimate aim is simply to tell a good story. To the extent that my own personal world view slips in—or my opinions of political or social issues—they are meant only to serve the story, not to proselytize. Nothing kills the artistic quality of a work quite as definitively as the obvious, crass spectacle of blatantly serving the aims of a particular government, political party, or public pressure group.

Still, it is impossible not to let a little social commentary slip in once in a while. In my latest novel, The Curse of Septimus Bridge, I showed such weakness in the nineteenth chapter, called “Cultists.” A pertinent excerpt:

 Lola fought the urge to panic. “Who are they? Are they demons?”
 “No,” said Septimus, getting to his feet. “They are worse than demons. They are human beings—and the worst kind of human beings. They are cultists.”
 “Cultists? You mean, like the people who hang out at the airport?”
 “Not precisely. The Fiend preys on those with weak minds, and he has no trouble finding simple intellects who can be duped. There are always those who will happily follow the tenets of his false religion and become warriors and agents for a cause they do not understand. There is never a shortage of aimless souls willing to be recruited and follow blindly.”

Five pages later:

 The demon hunter went from one cultist to another, kneeling by each one to whisper something in his ear. One by one, they each stood and plodded—or limped—away.
  “The one good thing about true believers is that they are, by nature, easily open to suggestion.”

This is, of course, a thinly-veiled potshot at people who buy into their religion or politics with a dull, unquestioning loyalty. One reader emailed me to say that, in his experience, an example of such cultists was Trump supporters. I am Trump supporters could read the very same passages from my book and conclude that the real cultists are the NeverTrumpers or some other group with which they disagree.

That is the thing about identifying people who we think are easily led or who are mindless followers. Those people are always someone else. None of us thinks that we are the unquestioning true believer. We know that we arrived at our opinions through reason, experience, and insight. It is that other fellow who is easily manipulated by propaganda and open to suggestions from demagogues.

It was not an accident that Septimus referred to his foes as “true believers.” That was my nod to Eric Hoffer, the philosopher and author who wrote one of the best explanations of fanaticism ever published: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. Writing in the aftermath of World War II, he clearly had in mind such movements as Nazism and Communism. Of such movements, he wrote chillingly, “[A]ll of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and single-hearted allegiance…”

Hoffer was a fascinating character. As a young teenager, I became familiar with him through a 1967 CBS News special in which he was interviewed by journalist Eric Sevareid and which was re-aired two months later by popular demand. Born in the Bronx in 1898 to immigrants from Alsace, he never lost his German accent. After the death of his parents, he wandered for years, worked odd jobs, lived on Skid Row, became a migrant farm worker in California, and also prospected for gold in the mountains. In his 40s, he got work as a longshoreman on the docks of San Francisco. A voracious reader, he acquired a library card wherever he was living. He also wrote, and he came to public attention in 1951 with The True Believer. In his mid-60s, he left the docks to become an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley. He died in 1983.

Given the penchant these days to liken leaders whom one does not like to despots (both presidents Obama and Trump have been compared by their respective detractors to Hitler), it would be a great thing if more people read Hoffer to understand what fanatical movements are really like. If there is any optimism to be gleaned from the tribalistic rhetoric that increasingly fills our airwaves and social media, it is perhaps this observation by Hoffer regarding fanatical movements: “All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action.” Trumpers and NeverTrumpers are all certainly willing to troll and provoke, but are any of them actually willing to die for their beliefs? Probably not. But the danger may be that they inadvertently inspire and influence others who might be.

One final Hoffer quote that particularly intrigues me, from Reflections on the Human Condition (1973): “The Savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.”

Choosing Sides

“Political Scientists Trace American Democracy’s Severe Polarization to F***ing Idiots on Other Side of Aisle”
 —Headline in The Onion, October 31

The actor Liam Neeson found himself in hot water in February while being interviewed for his latest movie. Cold Pursuit was, by many accounts, a pointless remake of a cleverer Norwegian film called In Order of Disappearance, but it was consistent with the vigilante-action-hero persona that has been the Irish actor’s bread and butter the past few years. Perhaps that is why he thought an anecdote about his own misguided flirtation with street revenge might stir interest among his fans.

Neeson was nothing but contrite and self-critical as he explained to The Independent of London how years earlier, after a friend of his had been raped by a black man, he had gone “up and down areas with a cosh, hoping I’d be approached by somebody—I’m ashamed to say that. And I did it for maybe a week, hoping some ‘black bastard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could… kill him.” Subsequently on the Good Morning America program, he said his reaction “shocked me and it hurt me. I did seek help. I went to a priest, I aired my confession, I was reared a Catholic. I had two very, very good friends that I talked to. And believe it or not, power-walking helped me. Two hours every day, to get rid of this. I’m not racist. This was nearly 40 years ago.”

Public reaction in the media, both traditional and social, was brutal. Not only was he widely excoriated for having had those feelings four decades earlier, he was roundly criticized for talking about them in the present. Few seemed inclined to give him credit for honesty in speaking about an extremely emotional reaction to a terrible event in his youth and having learned from it.

My own personal reaction, as usual, was different from the ones I kept hearing and reading about. What Neeson described did not sound to me like racism—at least as I have always understood the word. Here is the Oxford dictionary definition: “Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.” It does not sound as though the actor went looking to get into a fight with a black man because he thought black men were racially inferior. He wanted revenge for a crime and was apparently seized by the notion that, because a black man was the alleged perpetrator, all black men were therefore guilty. That would be tribalism, not racism.

As a native of County Antrim, Leeson should understand the concept of tribalism better than most of us. The six counties of Northern Ireland have been convulsed for generations by antagonism between those who identify as British and those who see themselves as Irish. The latest sad example of these old hatreds was the pointless death last month of activist/journalist/author Lyra McKee, who was struck down by a stray bullet fired by a teenaged member of the New IRA during civil disturbances in Derry. The intended target was presumably the police officers on the scene. Amid the shock and grief that followed, there were hopeful murmurings that perhaps this might be the senseless tragedy that would finally bring people to their senses. If only. My memories are all too vivid of people saying the same thing in 1998 after a bomb killed 18 Catholics and 11 Protestants (including a woman pregnant with twins) in the County Tyrone town of Omagh. The bomb was planted by yet another republican splinter group, the Real IRA.

People who commit such atrocities justify them with notions like justice, revenge, and sovereignty. They are harder to justify when described as what they actually are: murders committed because of hatred for someone else’s tribe.

These days in the U.S. I see a lot of what seems to me to be tribal thinking. Some of it breaks down along racial lines, and I think it is useful to see those divisions for what they are—the tribalistic mindset of us versus them.

What concerns me these days mostly, though, is the country’s political division. It does not seem enough anymore merely to demonize politicians. Their supporters and voters must also be designated as beyond the pale—even evil. You rarely hear officeholders or commentators give their ideological opponents the benefit of the doubt and at least having good intentions. The worst is always assumed.

The other day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was reported as saying that she does not “automatically trust” President Trump to respect the 2020 election result “short of an overwhelming defeat.” Of course, the president’s response would be that many Democrats have yet to accept the 2016 election result and that they have never stopped trying to undo it.

Let us hope that talk like this stays in the realm of partisan rhetoric. When political parties in a democracy become reluctant to hand over power after an election because they do not trust the other party’s intentions or character, we run the risk of finding ourselves on the slippery slope to to overt tribalism. Sadly, there are all too many historical examples of where this leads.

Science Fiction/Double Feature

“Man Who Spent Last 2 Years Drawing Pictures Of Trump And Putin Making Out Beginning To Realize Just How Wrong He’s Been”
 —Headline in The Onion, March 25
“‘There Was No Collusion, We’re Really Just That Stupid’ Confirm Americans”
 —Headline on the satirical Irish newspaper web site Waterford Whispers, March 27

In my previous post a few weeks ago, I wrote about the different through which filters people see things, how two different reasonable and intelligent can look at the same event or piece of information and draw entirely different conclusions about it. The funny thing is that, when it comes to politics, neither of those two reasonable and intelligent people sees the other one as either reasonable or intelligent.

Last time I discussed the different paradigms—movies is a better metaphor for me—through which people in the UK and Europe see Brexit. Now let’s revisit the United States, which is more divided in the way people see reality than I can ever remember. Or does it just seem that way? No, I think it really is that way. And nothing exemplifies this better than the ongoing narrative of President Trump and Russian collusion. Not only has that not changed since Robert Mueller finished his long-awaited report, which was summarized by William Barr, but it looks unlikely to change no matter how much of the actual report itself gets released. Maybe if the whole thing were released unredacted? I’m guessing not, and there is absolutely zero chance it will get released without redactions anyway.

So we will continue along as a two-movie society. Democrats and other never-Trumpers are living in a movie that is a pastiche of All the President’s Men and The Manchurian Candidate. Every piece of information unavailable to them is proof positive that the president is the center of a nefarious, treasonous conspiracy protected by one of the widest-ranging coverups of all time. Trump supporters, meanwhile, are living in a movie with elements of Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View and half the oeuvre of Oliver Stone. In their world, there is an implacable campaign of major influencers in the corporate mainstream media, the Democratic Party and the federal bureauracy out to subvert any exercise of democracy that does not fit in with their own plans for the country.

At one time it looked as though Mueller’s findings would reconcile these views. Despite regular verbal attacks from the president, the special counsel looked like it might be the one thing with the credibility and authority to put this particular division behind us. Ha. It’s like the time in the primary debate when Democrats lambasted Trump for not saying he would accept the results of the election—and then they didn’t accept the results of the election. Now, after saying that Robert Mueller would settle the collusion issue, they say that he hasn’t settled the collusion issue.

Here is what I wrote fourteen months ago: “We have gotten to a really interesting—and kind of scary—place in the whole Trump-Russia drama. There are basically only two places to go from here. If, after all this time, Mueller and his team come up with clear and incontrovertible evidence of subversion of the electoral process, they will justifiably be seen as heroes. If, on the other hand, it turns out that all their time and resources were spent on something inconsequential—or merely trapping a few individuals in ‘process crimes’ that only arose out the investigation itself—while handicapping the first year or so of a duly elected administration, then it will look to many like Mueller and the FBI themselves were participants—witting or otherwise—in the subversion of the electoral process.”

I wrote that with a completely open mind. If Mueller had reported that Trump or someone working for him had laundered money and paid Russians to pull dirty tricks in the election, I would have been appalled but not gobsmacked. It was a possibility that appeared at least credible. If, as he seems to have done, Mueller exonerated the president of collusion, I was not going to find that impossible to believe either. What about obstruction of justice? We will get further detail on that, though probably never as much as the Democrats want. So far it appears the only such indictments have been for actions unrelated to the Trump campaign and presidency. Curiously, Barr’s summary says Trump is not exonerated on obstruction, which is kind of curious since prosecutors never “exonerate” anybody. The closest you ever get to an exoneration from a prosecutor is to not be charged, so I’m guessing there is some venting in the report about the president’s lack of respect for the special counsel’s authority. It will be interesting to see if the released version of the report gets into detail about which team members advocated for and against charges. Will it break down along party lines, thereby showing that even Mueller’s office was riven by the same political forces afflicting the rest of Washington?

Was I at all prescient in writing that, given the apparent result of the Mueller findings, “it will look to many like Mueller and the FBI themselves were participants—witting or otherwise—in the subversion of the electoral process.” Well, yeah, kinda—if by “many” I was referring to people who already felt that way about Mueller and the FBI. That might also include whoever is left in the theoretical persuadable middle. You can count me in that category.

Based on what we know now—and this is always subject to change upon receipt of new information—it looks like the FBI and the special counsel, wittingly or unwittingly, wound up working as a de facto opposition research arm of the DNC and the Clinton campaign. Does that mean that the investigation was not worthwhile? Did not some good come out of it because it answered burning questions and put people’s minds at ease that the democratic process was not subverted by the Trump campaign? That might have been true if the investigation had actually settled the question for the vast majority of the country, but it looks like it hasn’t. So no, if political factions are going to go on believing only what they see in their own particular movies regardless of whatever new information is turned up, then it was just a waste of time and money.

And that also means that, yes, by spying—sorry, I mean, conducting surveillance—on one political campaign based on flimsy information provided by another political campaign, the FBI under James Comey actually did more to subvert the democratic process than anything President Trump has so far been shown to have done. That doesn’t make Donald Trump a better president than he has ever been. It just makes the FBI a whole lot scarier than it has ever been.

Return of the Native

“Elizabeth Warren Disappointed After DNA Test Shows Zero Trace Of Presidential Material”
 —Headline in The Onion, October 15

Have I mentioned that I have reason to believe I am 0.390625 percent Irish?

Feel free to be skeptical. I have not had my DNA tested, so my assertion is unhindered by the existence of chromosome evidence. It is based entirely on non-rigorous personal research into my family history by way of clan anecdotes, an old family Bible, and the conclusive authority of the internet. I have convinced myself that I may be the sixth-great-grandchild of Margaret Lewis, born in County Donegal in 1726. As I recounted on this blog three years ago, I have used this ancestral quest as a pretext for adventures both here in Ireland and in the U.S. state of Virginia. Margaret was a daughter of John Lewis, a second-generation Donegal resident (apparently transplanted from either England or Scotland, for reasons not clear) who fled Ireland after killing his new, young landlord in a dispute. John Lewis wound up in Virginia where, according to his gravestone, he “settled Augusta Co., located the town of Staunton, and furnished five sons to fight the battles of the AMERICAN REVOLUTION.”

So, once apprised of this information, my friends and neighbors here in Eire immediately accepted me as one of their own, right? Well, I have to say that they are indeed all very welcoming and have all made me feel that this country is my home, but no one seriously considers me “Irish.” Not even naturalization confers that identity in any meaningful (as opposed to legal) sense. Yes, newsreaders on RTÉ diligently do make a point of identifying every third-world-born resident and/or citizen in Ireland as “Irish” if they make the news. I have yet to hear them, though, use that term with any naturalized American or Brit. I am pretty darn sure that if I somehow got featured on the main evening news—unless I have won a Nobel Prize or something similar—I fully expect I will be described as “an American residing in Ireland.”

That will not bother me. I certainly do not self-identify as Irish—even though I happen to be the husband and father of Irish women. I do not expect the purchase of a house or the filing of a few papers to change who I am. On the other hand, if people from Ireland—or anywhere else—emigrate to my country and become naturalized, I do consider them fully American and do happily refer to them as such. That is the way I was raised to think, and that is how my country self-identifies: as a nation of immigrants. I truly believe that despite the fact that immigration has become a contentious political issue. From where I sit, the debate is a massive case of cognitive dissonance. One side thinks they are arguing about whether immigrants are good or bad. The other side thinks it’s about whether immigrants should come in legally or not.

Anyway, I understand that most other countries, such as Ireland, see themselves differently than the U.S. Irish-ness is an ethnicity as well as a legal status. What you realize here and in most countries is that the ethnicity is what matters to people. The passport you use is nearly seen as incidental. It is not uncommon, for example, to hear someone described in the news as “an Irish woman holding a UK passport.”

These musings on ethnicity and identity have been spurred, as you might have guessed, by the kerfuffle caused by Senator Elizabeth Warren when she drew attention to the results of her DNA test indicating that, “[w]hile the vast majority of the individual’s ancestry is European, the results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor in the individual’s pedigree, likely in the range of 6-10 generations ago.” In other words, Senator Warren is about the same percentage (or possibly less) Native American as I am Irish.

Senator Warren comes from Oklahoma and, having grown up around a lot of people from that state and other parts of the Midwest, I always noticed how an awful lot of them proudly point to Native American or “Indian” heritage. It is nearly a badge of honor to say, “I am part Cherokee” or “my great-grandmother was Shawnee.” I always saw this pride as a positive thing and a sign of the good old American melting pot. I suppose, though, one could also view it as cultural appropriation. I certainly never felt compelled to ask question anyone’s claims of Native American pedigree or ask them for proof.

The senator’s announcement pretty much backfired, as fellow Democrats criticized her timing (right before the midterms when she is not even running), the usually non-political Cherokee Nation pointedly issued a statement that a “DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship,” and Republicans had a great time pointing out that the percentage of her Native American DNA could well be lower than the average U.S. citizen. CNN and The Daily Beast embarrassed themselves by rushing to proclaim that Warren had been vindicated in her self-identification as Native American. (She apparently once had four recipes published in a cookbook called Pow Wow Chow: A Collection of Recipes from Families of the Five Civilized Tribes: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek & Seminole.)

So why did she do it? She did it because President Trump baited her, and she took the bait. Observers have taken this to mean that she is definitely running for president in 2020. Lots of families have lore that is historically imprecise or apocryphal, so she should not embarrassed about that. (On the nearly-pure Swedish side of my family we used to hear about “a Spanish grandmother,” whom I have been trying to track down for years.) There is no reason to believe that she profited from designated minority status at Harvard, as her critics charge, although it appears Harvard may have used her Native American self-identification to boost its own diversity statistics. It makes no sense for her to behave defensively about a non-issue.

The real issue is what the whole episode says about her character and judgment. Of course, when it comes character and judgment, the current standard seems to be pretty malleable. I mean, look at who is in the White House at the moment. So what may really matter is what the whole #fauxcahontas episode says about the senator’s suitability for the current environment of political hardball and voters’ exhaustion with the old rules of politics.