The Closed Conservative Mind

Being a "conservative" nowadays is something far different than twenty or thirty years ago when the Republican Party clearly stood for Democracy.  Now, in order to retain power, the Party will resort to all kinds of efforts to undermine democracy rather than change its agenda.  Worse yet, its current leader clearly wants to be an autocrat or monarch.   Adding in all of this is the aversion to objective facts and modern knowledge that studies indicate is a characteristic of the conservative mindset.  In contrast, the same studies show that liberals are open to new ideas and willing to change opinions based on facts and happenings. The division within America isn't only political but also in the very way facts and information is processed which leaves so-called conservatives far more likely to fall victims to true fake news, con-artists and conspiracy theories. One might say that conservatism is a mental condition, not just a political outlook.  A column in the New York Times looks at the closed nature of the conservative mind.  Here are excerpts:

In the continuing debate over whether liberals or conservatives are more open minded, whether those on the left or the right are more rigid in their thinking, a team of four Canadian psychologists studied patterns of “cognitive reflection” among Americans.

They found that a willingness to change one’s convictions in the face of new evidence was robustly associated with political liberalism, the rejection of traditional moral values, the acceptance of science, and skepticism about religious, paranormal, and conspiratorial claims.

Conversely, the authors — Gordon Pennycook of the University of Regina, and James Allan Cheyne, Derek J. Koehler and Jonathan A. Fugelsang of the University of Waterloo — found that an aversion to altering one’s belief on the basis of evidence was more common among conservatives and that this correlated “with beliefs about topics ranging from extrasensory perception, to respect for tradition, to abortion, to God.”

In their forthcoming paper, “On the belief that beliefs should change according to evidence,” the authors develop an eight-item “Actively Open-minded Thinking about Evidence Scale.” People taking the test are asked their level of agreement or disagreement with a series of statements.

Pennycook and his co-authors concluded: People who reported believing that beliefs and opinions should change according to evidence were less likely to be religious, less likely to hold paranormal and conspiratorial beliefs, more likely to believe in a variety of scientific claims, and were more politically liberal in terms of overall ideology, partisan affiliation, moral values, and a variety of specific political opinions.

In other words, there is one more item to add to the constantly growing list of factors driving polarization in America: Those on the left and right appear to use substantially different cognitive processes to interpret events in the world around them, large and small.

[I]n “Combating Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action,” a research report released in May 2017 by Harvard’s Kennedy School and Northeastern University: “While any group can come to believe false information, misinformation is currently predominantly a pathology of the right.” Some conservative voters “are even suspicious of fact-checking sites,” the report continued, leaving them “them particularly susceptible to misinformation.”

Liberals, they write, “perform better than conservatives on objective tests of cognitive ability and intelligence” while conservatives “score higher than liberals on measures of self-deception” and “are more likely than liberals to spread ‘fake news,’ political misinformation, and conspiracy theories throughout their online social networks.”

Separate studies of the language used by presidents — both “The Readability and Simplicity of Donald Trump’s Language,” and an analysis of the language used by the last 15 presidents on the blog Factbase — concluded that President Trump speaks at the lowest level of all those studied, . . . .

Stenner makes the case that the authoritarian revolution began in the 1960s: “Once the principle of equal treatment under the law was instituted and entrenched by means of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act,” traditional conservatism — “fidelity to the laws of the land and defense of legitimate institutions” — took a back seat to authoritarianism “as a factor driving expressions of racial, moral and political intolerance.”

Trump is determined to use authoritarian means to restore race to the core of his campaign.

Last week, Trump sent dozens of armed federal forces in camouflage to quell Black Lives Matter protests in Portland.

On July 19, Trump responded to a direct question from Chris Wallace of Fox News about whether he would “accept the election” win or lose. Trump answered: “I have to see. Look, you — I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no.”

And on July 20, Trump threatened to send more armed troops to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland to quell dissent, noting that these cities’ mayors were all “liberal Democrats.”

Put another way, Trump plans to echo George Wallace and take his stand in the schoolhouse door or, even more ominously, to use urban America as his Alamo.

How To Respond To Friends Posting False Conspiracy Theories?

Since the 2016 presidential election I have observed many otherwise sensible and decent people - many wealthy Republican women - re-posting and sharing some of the most insane and untrue things on Facebook and other social media platforms.  During the 2016 campaign many of these falsehoods ultimately were traced back to Russian sources working to cause hate and division among Americans and to aid Donald Trump.  For some, no conspiracy seems too far fetched.   In some cases I unfriended individuals since I simply did not have the patience to see the endless parade of batshit crazy stuff they posted and in another recent case I stopped following  the individual.  Now, with the coronavirus pandemic there has been an upsurge in false conspiracy theories being backed by groups ranging to far right billionaires to white supremacy groups to foreign disinformation sources.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at how one should deal with friends who continue to post false materials.  The BBC also has a piece on stopping false "news" some online friends should read. The advice in The Atlantic suggests more patience than I can at times muster perhaps since I work in a profession where facts and logic matter.  Here are article excepts:

[P]olitical scientists Joseph E. Uscinski and Adam M. Enders observed that the coronavirus has created an environment dangerously conducive to conspiracy theories. “We have a global pandemic, a crashing economy, social isolation, and restrictive government policies,” they wrote. “All of these can cause feelings of extreme anxiety, powerlessness, and stress, which in turn encourage conspiracy beliefs.”

This past week, a widely discredited video—a 26-minute clip from a slickly produced documentary called Plandemic—circulated online. It promotes a number of harmful and false ideas, including that wearing a protective mask can make people sick and that the novel coronavirus most likely emerged from a laboratory. (Facebook, YouTube, and other companies are trying to scrub it from their platforms.)

If someone you care about sends you a link to this video—or any piece of media that pushes a conspiracy theory about the pandemic—how should you respond? I put that question to experts on conspiracy thinking, public-health risk communication, and psychology, and their responses converged on some basic guidelines.

Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami and a co-author of American Conspiracy Theories, made an important preliminary distinction: Some people are sharing links to videos like Plandemic because they are curious and uncertain about the claims being made, but others are doing so because they’re already deeply convinced. If you know someone is a “true believer,” to use Uscinski’s term, you probably can’t do much to sway them. You’ll have a better chance of getting through to the curious and the uncertain.

Whatever camp someone falls in, though, the general principles are the same. “It’s always important to respond in a way that doesn’t suggest that the other [person] is foolish, naive, or gullible, as much as you think they may be,” said Joshua Coleman, a psychologist with an expertise in family relationships.

After setting an empathetic tone, Coleman suggested continuing with something like this:
That video might be right, but I've been reading a lot these days that goes counter to that. Do you mind if I send you an article or video about that? It would be good for us to look at both and see what we think.

“First validate” the fears people might have about the pandemic “and then pivot,” Rachael Piltch-Loeb, a fellow at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, recommended. Along those lines, she suggested something like “I’m glad you brought this up. Those are some scary claims in that documentary. I am skeptical, though, because a lot of the things mentioned don't jibe with what I have been reading. Here’s an article that I found to be more helpful at explaining these issues, and I feel more comfortable with the science behind it.” John Banas, a communication professor at the University of Oklahoma, advised avoiding the implication that the other person’s faith in the video is “a personal failing.” You could instead point out the flaws in the current information ecosystem, he said, maybe with a reminder like “During this pandemic, there are people who want to take advantage of people's fears and all of the uncertainty surrounding the situation.” You might also try, when having conversations with other friends and family members, to preempt any curiosity they may have about Plandemic or its ilk by warning them about the existence of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. “People need to be prepared to resist harmful persuasion,” Banas said, “just like our bodies need to be prepared to resist harmful viruses.”

Malignant forces are behind these conspiracy theories.  I wish more "conservatives" would stop taking the bait and allowing themselves to be played for fools to further the agenda of others, be they members of the Trump regime or other bad actors.

Sanders Plays the Blame Game for His Decline

As the returns stand currently from "Super Tuesday 2.0" it appears that Joe Biden is going to subject Bernie Sanders to near across the board defeats.  It will be interesting to see if the youth vote and new voter surge that Sanders has continually predicted failed to materialize yet again. As noted in a prior post, Sanders is Trump-like in that his misfortunes are never of his own making and a group of conspirators is supposedly lurking in the shadows to cause his demise. A column in the New York Times (which is a must read) looks at this phenomenon while another Times column looks at how Sanders has missed key aspects of the Nordic economies that he says he would emulate.  Here are excerpts from the first piece:

To Senator Bernie Sanders, there is plenty of blame to go around when it comes to his recent reversal of fortune. For everyone but him and his campaign.

The “corporate media” didn’t pay attention to his agenda.  The Democratic Party establishment aligned to block him from winning its presidential nomination.

And the young voters he counted on to power his campaign didn’t come through for him.

Political candidates are not generally given to self-criticism. And as Mr. Sanders has seen his fortunes slide after a 30-point South Carolina loss to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., followed by Mr. Biden’s unexpected strength across Super Tuesday, he has cited a number of factors that portray him as an aggrieved outsider.

It comes at a time of particular weakness for Mr. Sanders. Through 18 states, his theory of the election has not proven true. The surge of new voters in the Democratic primaries has featured mostly older people, moderate suburbanites and African-Americans disinclined to support his campaign.

Mr. Sanders, his team and his supporters have come up with explanations for his loss of momentum that deflect the responsibility onto others.

So when Pete Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the race and endorsed Mr. Biden, to the Sanders camp it wasn’t because they’d won next to no support from black voters and run out of money, it was part of an establishment plot. And Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris were simply joining the effort to block Mr. Sanders when they backed Mr. Biden this week.

The 2016 campaign established Mr. Sanders as the Democratic Party’s foremost practitioner of grievance politics. Like Donald Trump in that year’s Republican primary, Mr. Sanders tapped into populist anger to upend a major political party.

Now the Sanders campaign says the policies he’s pitching as a democratic socialist — “Medicare for all,” free public college tuition and other proposals — represent an existential threat to powerful operators that have prompted an unusually coordinated effort to block his rise.

Even among those ideologically inclined to back Mr. Sanders, he has engendered little sympathy in recent days. Adam Jentleson, a close ally of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s campaign — who has not been shy about expressing his own grievances about perceived outside forces that limited her campaign — said Mr. Sanders does himself little good in arguing others are responsible for his shortcomings.

“Blame-shifting is pointless because nobody swoops in and hands you the nomination; you have to win it,” Mr. Jentleson said. “The nominee needs to be the leader of the whole party and Bernie’s job was to convince people he could be that.”

An even more telling column is the second one in the Times that looks at how Sanders' ideology and agenda is not at all in keeping with the economics of Nordic nations like Denmark which are highly capitalistic while having a generous social safety net (paid for by strong capitalism and high taxes).  Here are column highlights:

Bernie Sanders often cites Denmark as the kind of country he would like America to be under his ideology of “democratic socialism.” Well, here’s a news flash: Bernie Sanders, with his hostile attitudes toward free trade, free markets and multinational corporations, probably couldn’t get elected to a municipal council in Denmark today. Ironically, Joe Biden, with his more balanced views on trade, corporations and unions, probably could. And therein lies a column.

I can explain this best by starting with a few questions that I’d love to ask Sanders about his democratic socialism, beginning with the most basic one: Senator Sanders, where do you think jobs come from?

To listen to him (and his surrogates) is to listen to someone who seems to believe that the American economic pie just miraculously appeared and exists on its own. He never discusses where that pie came from, how to bake it or how to enlarge it. His only interest is how to redivide it.

Third, Senator Sanders, do you believe the free enterprise system is the best means for growing jobs, the economy and opportunity — or do you believe in more socialist central planning? I ask because I have often heard you praise Scandinavian countries, like Denmark, as exemplars of democratic socialism. Have you ever been to Denmark? It’s democratic but not socialist.

Denmark is actually a hypercompetitive, wide-open, market economy devoted to free trade and expanding globalization, since trade — exports and imports — makes up roughly half of Denmark’s G.D.P.

Indeed, Denmark’s 5.8 million people have produced some of the most globally competitive multinationals in the world, by the names of A.P. Moller-Maersk, Danske Bank, Novo Nordisk, Carlsberg Group, Vestas, Coloplast, the Lego Group and Novozymes. These are the very giant multinationals Sanders constantly rails against.

The Nordic model is an expanded welfare state, which provides a high level of security for its citizens, but it is also a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish.”

It is through these engines of capitalism, free trade, economic openness and globalization that Denmark has managed to become wealthy enough to afford the social safety net that Sanders rightly admires — as do I: access for all to child care, medical and parental leave from work, tuition-free college, a living stipend, universal health care and generous pensions.

But there is nothing free about these services. According to Investopedia, Denmark’s progressive income tax tops out at 55.8 percent, and the average individual pays 45 percent.

In short, Sanders cherry-picks Denmark. He stresses what he loves — all that the Danish state provides — and then he ignores two things: one obvious and important and one less obvious and even more important.

The obvious and important one is the relentlessly entrepreneurial capitalism that generates Denmark’s prosperity and that is celebrated there. The less obvious, but more important, feature of Denmark’s success is the high-trust social compact among its business community, labor unions, social entrepreneurs and government. That’s the real secret of Denmark’s sauce.

Obviously, in a small, largely homogeneous country of 5.8 million people, it is a lot easier to generate that kind of social trust than in a diverse nation of 327 million. But the point is, no one was demonizing others as “corrupt” by the very fact of who they were — whether labor organizer or corporate titan or someone of wealth.

They understood that it was the balancing of all their interests that made Denmark’s economic growth and generous social safety net possible.

This reality is lost on Sanders and his followers.

Republican Climate Denial Is Even Scarier Than Trumpism

Living on the sea coast in Southeastern Virginia, one is very conscious of the ocean and sea level - and the rising sea levels.  Places such as Norfolk, Virginia, and Miami, Florida, now somewhat regularly experience street flood at high tide on clear sunny days.  Add a severe northeaster or a hurricane to the mix ad the problems skyrocket. One need not be an oceanographer or climate expert to notice that something is indeed happening. Yet, Republicans representing not only coastal areas threatened by rising sea levels but also mid-west regions suffering from significant changes in weather patterns (and the adverse impact of Trump's trade wars) refuse to utter the words "climate change" or, if they do, it is only in the context of claiming it is a hoax alternately being pushed by scientists with an agenda or, if one believes Der Trumpenführer, China.  In the process, they are threatening both America's log term security but also that of the entire world. A column in the New York Times looks at the corruption and dangerous nature of the GOP in its current form.  Here are excepts:

The most terrifying aspect of the U.S. political drama isn’t the revelation that [Trump] the president has abused his power for personal gain. If you didn’t see that coming from the day Donald Trump was elected, you weren’t paying attention.

No, the real revelation has been the utter depravity of the Republican Party. Essentially every elected or appointed official in that party has chosen to defend Trump by buying into crazy, debunked conspiracy theories. That is, one of America’s two major parties is beyond redemption; given that, it’s hard to see how democracy can long endure, even if Trump is defeated.

However, the scariest reporting I’ve seen recently has been about science, not politics. A new federal report finds that climate change in the Arctic is accelerating, matching what used to be considered worst-case scenarios. And there are indications that Arctic warming may be turning into a self-reinforcing spiral, as the thawing tundra itself releases vast quantities of greenhouse gases.

Catastrophic sea-level rise, heat waves that make major population centers uninhabitable, and more are now looking more likely than not, and sooner rather than later.

Why, after all, has the world failed to take action on climate . . . .  one factor stands out above all others: the fanatical opposition of America’s Republicans, who are the world’s only major climate-denialist party. Because of this opposition, the United States hasn’t just failed to provide the kind of leadership that would have been essential to global action, it has become a force against action.

[C]limate denial was in many ways the crucible for Trumpism. Long before the cries of “fake news,” Republicans were refusing to accept science that contradicted their prejudices. Long before Republicans began attributing every negative development to the machinations of the “deep state,” they were insisting that global warming was a gigantic hoax perpetrated by a vast global cabal of corrupt scientists.

[S]ome of those responsible for these abuses are now ensconced in the Trump administration. Notably, Ken Cuccinelli, who as attorney general of Virginia engaged in a long witch-hunt against the climate scientist Michael Mann, is now at the Department of Homeland Security, where he pushes anti-immigrant policies with, as The Times reports, “little concern for legal restraints.”

But why have Republicans become the party of climate doom? Money is an important part of the answer: In the current cycle Republicans have received 97 percent of political contributions from the coal industry, 88 percent from oil and gas.

However, I don’t believe that it’s just about the money. My sense is that right-wingers believe, probably correctly, that there’s a sort of halo effect surrounding any form of public action. Once you accept that we need policies to protect the environment, you’re more likely to accept the idea that we should have policies to ensure access to health care, child care, and more. So the government must be prevented from doing anything good, lest it legitimize a broader progressive agenda.

[I]t takes a special kind of depravity to respond to those incentives by denying facts, embracing insane conspiracy theories and putting the very future of civilization at risk.
Unfortunately, that kind of depravity isn’t just present in the modern Republican Party, it has effectively taken over the whole institution. There used to be at least some Republicans with principles; . . . But those people have either experienced total moral collapse (hello, Senator Graham) or left the party.

The only way that either American democracy or a livable planet can survive is if the Republican Party as it now exists is effectively dismantled and replaced with something better — maybe with a party that has the same name, but completely different values. This may sound like an impossible dream. But it’s the only hope we have.

The GOP Died This Weekend; A Preview of A Trump Presidency

Try as I might, it is impossible to not write about the never ending lies and misogyny of Donald Trump and a political party, the GOP, which has demonstrated that morality and common decency no longer matter.  I remain utterly convinced that Trump is a threat to America and its constitutional form of government.  The man is a demagogue of the worse order and utterly unscrupulous as the countless contractors and/or victims of Trump university can painfully recount.  Even more frightening is the abuse of power that can likely be expected should Americans commit collective political suicide and put Trump in the White House.  Two op-eds in the Washington Post look at both the GOP's suicide and then another outlines what we might expect under a Trump presidency.  Here are highlights from the first by a conservative columnist that looks at the death of morality in the GOP:

Those Republicans mortified by the presidential nomination of Donald Trump have been pondering a series of questions over the past few months:

• Have Republicans put party above country in backing Trump?

• Can the GOP survive Trump?

• Should the center-right let bygones be bygones after the election?

The answers have become clear over the past few days. Trump’s campaign put out an egregiously false statement on Thursday claiming Trump “ended” the birther controversy in 2011 and blaming Hillary Clinton for starting the racist smear. Trump, without explanation or apology, on Friday announced the president was in fact born in the United States. A series of surrogates, including Kellyanne Conway, Gov. Chris Christie and vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, fanned out on Sunday to double down on the lies, reiterating this was all Clinton’s fault and insisting, despite Trump’s multiple utterances since 2011, that he had not fanned the racist fires and built his political image on birtherism.

It is noteworthy that NBC’s Chuck Todd, CBS’s John Dickerson, CNN’s Jake Tapper and ABC’s Martha Raddatz all grilled — and in some cases decimated — the Trump surrogates, demonstrating that responsible journalists do not abandon the topic when Trumpkins try to deflect but press and press again for answers.  They remind us this must be front and center at the debates, and moderators should not move on until Trump answers their queries.

Also. let’s not forget that in a second stream of deplorable rhetoric Trump has also suggested violence might come Clinton’s way. This weekend he declared that her security detachment should disarm and we will “see what happens.”

To top it off, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus , who has carried Trump’s water and defended his egregious remarks, on Sunday threatened “penalties” would be enacted on the Republican nominees (e.g., Ohio Gov. John Kasich) who refused to endorse the racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, pathological liar.

No matter what Hillary Clinton’s faults — and they are many — it is hard to seriously argue that a man who would lead a racist conspiracy  theory and then try to blame his opponent is fit to be president. Trump, like a small child caught misbehaving, simply denies the evidence or blames someone else or lashes out in anger.

As for the fate of the GOP, the evidence mounts that it cannot go merrily on its way after the election. A party that would sanction people who call out a racist deserves to go out of business. A party whose congressional leaders remain supportive of a nominee who incites violence, perpetuates racism, blatantly, and traffics in conspiracy theories loses the moral authority to govern.

All very well said.  As noted, yet another column cautions what could happen under a Trump presidency where lies and conspiracy theories would likely flourish and the nation could well face a constitutional crisis unlike any other to ever confront it.  Here are excerpts from this piece:

It’s important to acknowledge when you’ve been wrong, and I’ve probably never been so wrong as I was in an op-ed published on April 13, 2010. At the time, I was stunned by a terrible tragedy: the crash of a plane that had carried the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski. He had been flying to the Russian city of Smolensk to visit the memorial at Katyn, where Stalin murdered 20,000 Polish officers in 1940. Several dozen senior military figures and politicians were also on the plane, many of them friends of mine and colleagues of my husband, who was then the Polish foreign minister.

In the sweep of emotion that followed the crash, comparing the event to Katyn, I wrote this sentence: “This time around, nobody suspects a conspiracy.” As an excuse, I offer the fact that the tragedy initially seemed to bring people together. 

But my optimism was premature. The president’s brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski,  . . . . like Donald Trump, he saw that a conspiracy theory could help bring him to power.

Much as Trump used birtherism to inspire his core voters, Kaczynski, in the years that followed, used the Smolensk crash to motivate his supporters, that minority of the Polish population that remains convinced that unnamed secret forces control the country, that the “elite” is manipulated by foreigners and that everything that has happened in the country since 1989 is part of a sinister plot. And it worked. 

But there is just no evidence of one at Smolensk. Within hours of the crash, Polish forensic experts were on the ground. They immediately obtained the black boxes and transcribed them meticulously. The cockpit tape can be heard online, and it makes the circumstances painfully clear. The president was late; he had planned a live broadcast from Katyn. When Russian air traffic controllers wanted to divert the plane because of heavy fog, he did not agree. . . . . “Be bold, you’ll make it,” he told them. According to the official report, written by the country’s top aviation experts, the plane hit a tree, then the ground, and then broke up.

In the wake of Trump’s grudging renouncement of birtherism, the insidious, racist theory that gave rise to his political career, it’s worth pondering what happened when Law and Justice came to power. Within days of taking office, the new government removed the official report from its website. (It’s still available online.) More recently, police and prosecutors entered the homes of the aviation experts who testified in the original investigation, interrogated them and confiscated their computers.

A new (and well-paid) government commission was formed, containing a group of cranks and “experts” — including an ethnomusicologist, a retired pilot, a psychologist and other people with no knowledge of air crashes. . . . . None of these theories has ever been accompanied by the slightest hint of genuine evidence. . . . As in communist Poland, a fictionalized version of history, one that suits those in power, could eventually be on the curriculum.

One of the first things Law and Justice officials did upon taking power was launch an open attack on Poland’s constitutional court, and to re-politicize the independent prosecutor’s office. At the same time, they have put all of the country’s secret services in the hands of a man who has been convicted of fabricating documents, and whom they then pardoned. They might have had many motives for making these changes. But if nothing else, they could use these tools to “prove” one of the ludicrous theories using faked evidence at public show trials, another communist innovation. 

Trump, like Kaczynski, pushed a patently false conspiracy theory hard for many years, despite the utter lack of evidence. Last week, he found it expedient to discard that theory, but once he is president, he might find it expedient to adopt it again — or perhaps to push one of the many others he has championed. As president, he can then use the state — the Justice Department, the security bureaucracy, the FBI — to pursue them. A Trump administration could make birtherism the excuse for fake investigations, hearings and even trials that would do terrible and irreversible damage to U.S. politics and the rule of law.

It all sounds unthinkable, of course. But if you’d asked me five years ago, or even one year ago, I would have told you that the transformation of the Smolensk conspiracy theory into state ideology was unthinkable, too. And yet it has come to pass. 

 Far fetched?  Perhaps, but a year and a half ago, Trump running for the presidency was a laughing matter.  Yet, through calls to hate and bigotry and conspiracy theories he rode the ugly elements of the GOP base to win the GOP nomination.  I for one believe it is too dangerous to risk seeing what the man could do with the powers of the FBI, Justice Department and other agencies to harass or prosecute opponents.  The man is amoral and a narcissist of the first order.  He is DANGEROUS and must be defeated.

The Dangerous American Love of Conspiracy Theories

For a political party that once upon a time largely valued knowledge, science, education and purportedly personal responsibility, the GOP has morphed into something very ugly.  Now, ignorance, victim-hood, open bigotry are all the norm for the majority of the GOP base.  Worse yet, much of the base seems only to ready to embrace whatever conspiracy theory that fringe elements of the far right might float.  In response, some Democrats have shot back with their own conspiracy theories, although most have a least a shred of reality to support them.  A piece in Politico looks at the conspiracy theories plaguing the 2016 elections.  Here are highlights:

This weekend, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Fox News Sunday viewers that Hillary Clinton was seriously ill. The media, he said, “fails to point out several signs of illness by her. … Go online. Search for ‘Hillary Clinton illness.’ Take a look at those videos for yourself.” The idea that Clinton is secretly wrestling with some unknown illness is just the latest conspiracy theory to go mainstream in an election season chock full of them. Conspiracy theories, which I’ve studied for the past seven years, have always been part of American politics, but they’ve tended to pop up in the dark corners of our political discourse, serving mainly as sideshows to more important political disputes. Not so this year; I’ve never seen a time when they so dominated the mainstream debate—and when they had the potential to do so much harm.

Whether it was witches colluding with Satan during colonial times, Freemasons nefariously controlling the government in the 1800s or communists coopting the State Department during the Red Scare, Americans have always been drawn to the idea that certain people or organizations are working in secret for their own benefit against the public good.

Despite this, the United States has not gone off the conspiracy theory cliff because our elite politicians and mainstream news sources generally eschew this type of heady theorizing. A few politicians or news sources might allege a plot from time to time (think Sarah Palin and her Obamacare death panels), but these are usually a result of overheated partisan rhetoric and they tend to receive intense backlash. That was, until now. Donald Trump, one of two people likely to be president next year, has been propagating, and now creating, conspiracy theories as a major theme of his campaign. There’s an obvious reason for this: Donald Trump has branded himself an “outsider.” In my research, I have found that conspiracy theories tend to work best when they are employed by outsiders, electoral losers and statistical minorities. These “losers” have to use conspiracy theories to justify their outsider status, explain away losses and call accepted practices into question.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with conspiracy theories. They have their positive attributes: Sometimes they turn out to be true (think Watergate, for example), and sometimes they bring new information to light (such as securing the release of many documents pertaining to the Kennedy assassination). But too many can distort ourperception of reality, squander precious government time and resources and endanger lives—especially when they move out of the fringes of political life and become the currency of the truly powerful.

Here are the five most dangerous conspiracy theories of 2016 . . . . . 1. Mexicans and refugees are murderers, rapists and terrorists  Danger: Violence - Donald Trump has accused Mexican immigrants of being pawns in a Mexican conspiracy to send murderers and rapists to America. He also has accused refugees, fleeing their tattered homeland and shattered lives, of working against the government as ISIL agents.

In this case, however, the typical model is reversed: The strong (a man running for U.S. president with the backing of a major political party) is accusing the weak (refugees and minorities). This is a more dangerous type of conspiracy theory because those in power can actually act on their wild hunches, sometimes with deadly consequences.

2. “There’s something going on” Danger: Mass paranoia - A favorite go-to conspiracy theory of Trump’s, used in different circumstances at different points during the campaign, these four words suggest that our governmental institutions and our institutions for disseminating information are not only malevolent, but also engaged in a cover-up of epic proportions.

This conspiracy theory is useful for Trump because it lets him avoid specifics; it’s also dangerous because it’s open-ended, leaving Trump supporters plenty of room to connect their own dots. What is, in fact, “going on”? . . . these four words suggest that everyone is in on it, we need to watch our neighbors, keep an eye on the government and watch the president’s body language like a hawk.
This style of conspiracy theorizing—leaving the details for people to figure out on their own—is advantageous because it gives people less to disagree with.

3. Trump/Clinton is a Manchurian Candidate Danger: Institutional distrust, political polarization - Criticizing Clinton for her mishandling of classified emails, Trump suggested that the Democratic nominee is now beholden to the Obama administration, which decided not to prosecute her. Trump also suggested that other countries now have evidence to blackmail or control Clinton, given that they have been able to hack her private email server. Shooting back, the Clinton campaign put out an ad suggesting that Trump is an agent of powerful Russian interests. Americans of all political persuasions should be able to trust that the two candidates who could lead the national government aren’t pawns to other interests. When they start to doubt their leaders’ loyalty to the country, institutional distrust can skyrocket.

4. Vast right-wing conspiracy Danger: Lack of accountability - There are conspiracy theories; and then there are conspiracy theories about conspiracy theories. This particular one was born during the height of the investigations into then-President Bill Clinton’s business practices and personal life. During a Today Show interview, then-first lady Hillary Clinton dismissed the burgeoning Monica Lewinsky scandal: “The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it,” she said, “is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.” Conspiracy theories aren’t reserved for Republicans. Hillary Clinton has held on to her conspiracy theory that the right wing is in league against her and her family to this day; in fact, she claimed this election cycle that the conspiracy is “even better-funded” now.

5. Everything is “rigged” Danger: Disenfranchisement and alienation - The campaigns of Trump and Sanders repeatedly alleged during the primaries that the nomination process is rigged. Earlier this month, Trump claimed that in states without voter ID laws in place, fraud will be rampant and people will be voting “15 times.” And he asserted that the only way the Clinton campaign can win Pennsylvania is if “they cheat.”

We’ve seen what can happen when people seize on conspiracy theories about fraudulent and rigged elections—despite there being no evidence of mass voter fraud. Over the past few years, similar beliefs have led state legislatures across the country to enact restrictive voter ID laws. But rather than fix a system that wasn’t broken to begin with, these efforts have been shown to disenfranchise minority voters. This year, if Trump deploys supporters to polling stations across America to monitor for fraud and challenge voters’ legitimacy as he is promising to do, the results could be similar.

But such claims about election fraud pale in comparison to the larger allegations that the entire system is rigged.

Far from being helpful, this sort of rhetoric is dangerous. First, it allows for scapegoating (“my lot in life is the fault of the 1 percent”) and indictment (“the rich and powerful have gotten that way only through illicit means”). It also brings about hopelessness and alienation—the feeling that we have been locked into an unfair and degrading system by a few people who wish to abuse us. These sorts of conspiracy theories also serve to depress the vote, as those who believe that elections and governmental processes are rigged will most likely stay home; this weakens our democracy.

Texas Governor Panders to Idiots On Possible U.S. Takeover of Texas

I mentioned in passing the extreme insanity in Republican circles in Texas where conspiracy theories are running a muck and the mentally and reality challenged members of the Texas GOP base believe that Barack Obama is about to call on the U.S. military to invade and take over Texas.  Such is the debased nature of today's GOP that such utter batshit crazy fantasies are main stream.  Indeed, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz have pandered to the lunatics spreading such utterly insane and ridiculous rumors.  Candidly, we are fast approaching a point where to admit that one is a Republican is tantamount to admitting that you suffer from mental illness.  Talking Points Memo looks at the craziness and the few lone voices calling out those who are pandering to the most insane and irrational elements of the GOP base.  Here are highlights:

A former Republican state lawmaker wrote a scathing letter to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Thursday that slammed him for "pandering to idiots" who believe that a planned U.S. military exercise is cover for a forcible takeover of the state.

In a letter obtained by the Dallas Morning News, Todd Smith, who served in the state legislature for 16 years, wrote that he was "livid" about Abbott's request for the State Guard to monitor the military's upcoming training exercise, dubbed "Jade Helm 15."

"I am horrified that I have to choose between the possibility that my Governor actually believes this stuff and the possibility that my Governor doesn’t have the backbone to stand up to those who do," Smith wrote.

"I am appalled that you would give credence to the nonsense mouthed by those who instead make decisions based on internet or radio shock jock driven hysteria," he added. "Is there ANYBODY who is going to stand up to this radical nonsense that is cancer on our State and Party?"

As I have noted before, if one tracks the decline in the sanity and loss of respect for education and intelligence  in the Republican Party, it directly correlates with the rise of the Christofascists within the party.  Todd Smith has it right.  These people are a cancer in both the GOP and the nation.  They need to be driven into the political wilderness and treated as lepers by decent moral people.

Is Hillary Ready for the GOP "War on Women"?

Even before she has publicly announced her bit for president, the GOP has been trotting out slurs and conspiracy theories that drag back to the 1990's.  While those story lines continue to play well among the Kool-Aid drinking set that is today's GOP base, out in the reality based world, they don't play nearly so well.  Indeed, many simply yawn at the continued batshitery from the GOP. Where the GOP needs to tread carefully, however, in the view of a number of political consultants is how they treat Hillary in the context of their war on women - a war fueled by the demands of the Christofascists in the party base that are obsessed with womb control although they don't give a damn about children after they are born. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the issue.  Here are excerpts:

[W]hat the GOP hasn’t figured out how to tackle yet is something that may be even more important than Clinton’s record: the fact that if elected, she would at last break that glass ceiling and become the nation’s first female president.

Until this week, both Democrats and Republicans have been approaching the subject warily. For the GOP, anything approaching gender politics is fraught with peril. In 2012, their hopes of retaking the Senate were doomed when candidates on the campaign trail mused aloud about “legitimate rape” and whether children conceived from sexual assault were divinely sent.

For Democrats, the election season to keep in mind has been not 2012 but 2014, when their turbo-charging of rhetoric over the GOP’s “War on Women” led to charges of pandering. . . . But no more. This week, just as the uproar over her deleted State Department emails was growing deafening, Clinton took to Twitter to blast Republicans over a sex trafficking bill that included abortion provisions, and for their delays in approving the nomination of Loretta Lynch for attorney general, calling the moves “the Congressional trifecta against women.” 

In the last month Clinton, has appeared at a gala for Emily’s List, released a report through the Clinton foundation about women and global leadership, and spoken at a United Nations conference on the status of women and girls worldwide.

In Washington, D.C, meanwhile, Concerned Women for American—a religious counter to the liberal National Organization for Women—convened a number of top Republican female leaders to declare the “war on women” officially over.

“What do most women do every week? Do they fill up the gas tank and the grocery cart?” asked GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway. “Or do they get an abortion?”

Women make up a majority of voters. In 2012, in the wake of a series of Republican efforts to limit reproductive health access and the aforementioned campaign gaffes, Barack Obama racked up an 11-point victory over Mitt Romney . . .

Democrats, meanwhile, say that they don’t much have to bring up Clinton’s gender—they are confident that Republicans will do it for them, more often than not in boneheaded ways that end up driving female voters their way.

Democrats have built a vast infrastructure around monitoring media for just such kind of GOP outburst, and will be on hair-trigger alert for any statement made on the campaign trail or on cable news that could be construed as sexist toward Clinton. On Thursday, there was already a taste of what the next 20 months could be like when an email that an aide to Rick Perry’s SuperPAC wrote in 2011 in which he questioned whether a female head of state would be in “God’s will” made the rounds on social media.

The aide backtracked from the comments, but Clinton has been such a steady target of boorish commentary by conservative men that many Democrats are already preparing to pounce.

Republicans, said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, will find themselves in a few months “competing for a very small percentage of the vote that really dislikes Hillary. And those kind of over-the top comments are more likely to get made and they can be very damaging. It’s exactly that kind of thing that will reignite the ‘War on Women.’”

I tend to agree - I cannot see the loons of the far right not providing the Democrats with lots of fodder.  I also hope that staff at closed door GOP function s record some of the choice remarks that will be made when they the knuckle draggers think the media isn't listening.  Can you really see someone like Ted Cruz holding his tongue?

Will GOP Efforts to Compare Hillary Clinton to Nixon Backfire?

The GOP and right wing noise machines are always on the attack against Hillary Clinton and now, in addition to seemingly never ending conspiracy theories, the attacks seek to compare Hillary to Richard Nixon.  There is certainly no lack of irony in the GOP now comparing Hillary to one its own who won two terms at the polls only to ultimately resign.  But then again, since the party lacks any real positive agenda attractive to most sane Americans (e.g., those outside  the lunatic Christian Right and new Gilded Age robber baron who endorse the GOP's reverse Robin Hood campaign), the GOP must attack anyone who might have a different vision for governing.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the GOP effort to turn Hillary into a modern day Richard Nixon.  Here are excerpts:

The comparison to Clinton [to Nixon] can certainly be overplayed. By all accounts, she lacks Nixon’s personal awkwardness and strangeness. But a portion of the characterization “Nixonian” is a compliment: hardworking, untiring, relentless. While another portion — wary, secretive, ruthless — can lead down some dark alleys.

Right now, Clinton is generally benefiting, not suffering, from this reputation. The next president, from either party, will need to provide a contrast of strength and purpose to President Obama’s foreign policy of disengagement that has resulted in disaster and led to inadequate, ad hoc responses. Despite her association with the failed “Russian reset,” Clinton is generally positioned to Obama’s interventionist right on foreign policy (especially on Syria). She is a Democrat who would be seen as a tougher, more responsible alternative to her former employer.

And this reputation is also helping Clinton within her party. Her pre-campaign has been rusty — her awkward book tour, her claim that she left office “flat broke,” her exorbitant speaking fees, her foundation’s acceptance of donations by foreign governments. Democratic concerns about her skills are real, but criticisms are rare and mild. Some of this reflects Clinton’s position as a prohibitive front-runner, but some is also the intimidating effect of her style of politics. No Democrat wants to be on the wrong list.

Clinton is not unbeatable, but the effort to label her as Nixonian will not beat her. Republicans face a difficult electoral map; their party is still viewed more negatively than the alternative; they have alienated large numbers of working-class and minority voters; and all of their prospective presidential candidates are losing to Clinton by double digits.

If the next election is viewed by Republicans as a referendum on Hillary Clinton’s scandals — and this distracts from the task of reconstituting the Republican message and appeal — then Clinton may take the Nixonian path to the Oval Office.

The GOP continues to alienate gays, woman, younger voters, Hispanics, and other religious and racial minorities.  Yet rather than admit that pandering to a shrinking demographic of aging far right religious extremists and vulture capitalists, the GOP prefers to find a conspiracy under every bush and ignore America's changing demographics.

Blame the State Department, Not Hillary

As stories arise of millions of e-mails having been "lost" during Chimperator George W. Bush's regime, that Jeb Bush used private e-mail while governor, and now that the State Department long had no system to save and archive e-mails, the  "scandal" over Hillary Clinton's private e-mail usage seems to be falling largely apart.  Not that the Hillery haters or lazy members of the media will let go of the story anytime soon given their refusal to drop conspiracy theories about Benghazi even though GOP controlled committees have found no "smoking gun."  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the crumbling story line.  Here are excerpts:

What began life two weeks ago as another “Clintons play by their own rules” mega-scandal is now pretty clearly devolving into a “what do you expect, it’s the government” saga that is about as dog bites man as it gets.

The Times headline, on A1 Saturday, proclaimed: “Emails Clinton Said Were Kept Could Be Lost.” The article, co-bylined by the reporter who broke the original story and another, reported that the State Department did not start automatically archiving the state.gov email traffic of deputies until February of this year. This bit of information came from department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who discussed this at her daily briefing the day before (i.e., last Friday).

Clinton had said at her UN press conference last week—that even though she used a personal address, everything she wrote to her deputies’ state.gov addresses was archived: “The vast majority of my work emails went to government employees at their government addresses, which meant they were captured and preserved immediately on the system at the State Department.”She’s right that they were captured, but that doesn’t mean they were archived, according to what Psaki said Friday.  

If you read farther down into the article—and certainly, if you read the transcript of Psaki’s Friday briefing—the picture that is very clearly beginning to emerge here is one of a lumbering department (is there any other kind when it comes to matters like this?) taking a long time (shocking!) to get itself into compliance with regulations and laws.  

[S]omebody asked, again naturally enough, why not sooner. “I’m sure,” she said, “if we had the technical capability to, we would have, and it’s just a process that takes some time.” And then later: “This has been a process that’s been ongoing, and obviously, it’s not only time-consuming and requires a lot of effort on the part of employees to do it in other ways, but they have long been planning to do this. It’s just something that it took some time to put in place.”

You get the idea. Anybody shocked to hear those words? A government agency got a directive, and it’s taking a long time to implement it!

[A] lot of what has happened here would probably have happened no matter who was secretary of state. If the secretary had been John Kerry then or Dick Holbrooke or whomever—why, even if it had been Clinton scold Maureen Dowd!—the department would almost surely have operated exactly as it did in terms of regulatory compliance. So, if some of these records weren’t preserved, it wasn’t a Clinton thing. It was a State Department thing.

[H]ere’s what we’ve learned. On March 2, when the story broke, this was dynamite—a scandal that might prevent Clinton from even getting in the race. Then it emerged that the original Times report overstated things a little. Then it emerged that all kinds of other former secretaries of state and cabinet officials do more or less what Clinton did (some quite a bit less). Then it emerged that Jeb Bush took seven years to release all his emails and chose which ones to put out just like Clinton did. Then it emerged that other Republican candidates also have transparency issues at least the equal of Clinton’s. And finally, it emerged last Friday that the State Department performs certain administration functions rather slowly.

And remember, the only reason we’re going through all this anyway is that the Republicans, who’ve investigated Benghazi six ways to Sunday and come up with nothing on her, are now taking rocks they’ve already turned over and turning them back over. The whole Gowdy committee is nothing but a capital-P Political sting operation. It’s clearer than ever now that this is a committee to investigate Clinton that has one job and one job only: find something, anything, that might keep her out of the White House.

GOP Senator Inhofe's Grand Climate Conspiracy Theory

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) surrounded by reported at the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark Virginia Mayo/AP

Outright insanity and a refusal to accept modern knowledge has become de rigueur in today's GOP.  And not just among the party's increasingly ignorant, bigoted, religious extremist base.  It infects even high elected officials such as Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.)  who will be taking the helm of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee next month.  Like much of his party's base, Inhofe wears ignorance as a badge of honor and is only too ready to see a conspiracy under every bush, especially when it comes to climate change.  Mother Jones looks at Inhofe's lunacy and the danger he poses.  Here are excerpts:

The recent news on the front page of the New York Times was stark. As thousands of diplomats were gathering in Lima, Peru, to work on an agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, scientists and climate policy experts were warning

that it now may be impossible to prevent the temperature of the planet's atmosphere from rising by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. According to a large body of scientific research, that is the tipping point at which the world will be locked into a near-term future of drought, food and water shortages, melting ice sheets, shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels and widespread flooding—events that could harm the world's population and economy.

But with an effort under way in Lima to protect the difference, as the newspaper put it, "between a newly unpleasant world and an uninhabitable one," one fellow in Washington is readying himself to prevent any progress toward a climate accord: Sen. James Inhofe. The 80-year-old Republican from Oklahoma is one of the most notorious deniers of human-induced climate change. He has contended that God controls the Earth's climate, not Homo sapiens, and he has quoted the Bible to make this point: "As long as the Earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night." And Inhofe, thanks to the recent elections, is in line to chair the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee when the Republicans assume control of the Senate next month.  He has vowed to do all he can to block regulations aimed at cutting emissions.

In December 2009, the United Nations hosted a global gathering in Copenhagen to hammer out what some participants hoped would be a binding accord that would compel a reduction in emissions around the world.  . . . [Inhofe] slithered in and out of the cavernous media filing center, ever at the ready to speak to reporters looking for the other side quotes denigrating the proceedings, claiming that climate change was no more than a hoax, and celebrating the summit's failure to produce a binding and comprehensive treaty.

I said [to Inhofe], spreading my arms wide. There are thousands of intelligent and well-meaning people in this gigantic conference center: scientists, heads of state, government officials, policy experts. They believe that climate change is a serious and pressing threat and that something must be done soon. Do you believe that they have all been fooled?  Yes, he said, grinning.

That's some hoax, I countered. But who has engineered such a scam?  Hollywood liberals and extreme environmentalists, Inhofe replied.  Really? I asked. Why would they conspire to scare all these smart people into believing a catastrophe was under way, when all was well? Inhofe didn't skip a beat: To advance their radical environmental agenda. I pressed on: Who in Hollywood is doing this?
The whole liberal crowd, Inhofe said. But who?  Barbra Streisand, he responded.

Did this senator truly believe Barbra Streisand was the devious force behind a completely phony global campaign to address climate change? He seemed to.

In his 2012 book, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, Inhofe does mention Streisand—but only once, lumping her together with Leonardo DiCaprio and John Travolta as celebs whose environmental "alarmism" had to be debunked. But his book did not shy away from clearly identifying the charlatans and hoaxers who have hornswoggled the planet: "environmental activist extremists," Al Gore, MoveOn.org, George Soros, Michael Moore, and, yes, "the Hollywood elites."

The man belongs in a mental institution, not the U.S. Senate.   This man is down right scary.  And he's the face of today's Republican Party.