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.

Cyber Warfare: The Battle for American Minds

One need only look at the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom or the outcome of the 2016 presidential election to see the growing risks of foreign cyber warfare inducing societies to be deceived into taking self-destructive actions. American intelligence agencies expect things to get even worse in the future as Russia and other opponents intensify their efforts.  Who is the most vulnerable to fake news and deception on social media?  Older voters who ought to know better but who are duped into promoting falsehoods at far higher rates than Millennials. The answer as to why such is the case is still elusive although it may in part be due to Millennials' greater experience with social media and the Internet age.  It may also be that they do not carry with them the accumulated prejudices that seemingly plague older voters, especially so-called "conservatives" who are predisposed to believe outlandish propaganda.  Personally, I have seen Republican "friends" share shockingly untrue information without ever questioning the source or the information since it fits with their prejudices. A piece in The Atlantic looks at the situation.  Here are highlights:  

Congress’s annual worldwide-threat hearings are usually scary affairs, during which intelligence-agency leaders run down all the dangers confronting the United States. This year’s January assessment was especially worrisome, because the minds of American citizens were listed as key battlegrounds for geopolitical conflict for the first time. “China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasingly use cyber operations to threaten both minds and machines in an expanding number of ways,” wrote Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. Coats went on to suggest that Russia’s 2016 election interference is only the beginning, with new tactics and deep fakes probably coming soon, and the bad guys learning from experience.

For years, studies have found that individuals come to faulty conclusions even when the facts are staring them in the face. “Availability bias” leads people to believe that a given future event is more likely if they can easily and vividly remember a past occurrence, which is why many Americans say they are more worried about dying in a shark attack than in a car crash, even though car crashes are about 60,000 times as likely.

In an information-warfare context, we need to understand not just why people are blind to the facts, but why they get duped into believing falsehoods. Two findings seem especially relevant.

The first is that humans are generally poor deception detectors. A meta-study examining hundreds of experiments found that humans are terrible at figuring out whether someone is lying based on verbal or nonverbal cues. In Hollywood, good-guy interrogators always seem to spot the shifty eye or subtle tell that gives away the bad guy. In reality, people detect deception only about 54 percent of the time, not much better than a coin toss.

The second finding is that older Americans are far more likely to share fake news online than are younger Americans. A study published in January found that Facebook users 65 and older shared nearly seven times as many fake-news articles as 18-to-29-year-olds—even when researchers controlled for other factors, such as education, party, ideology, and overall posting activity. One possible explanation for this age disparity is that older Facebook users just aren’t as media savvy as their grandkids. Another is that memory and cognitive function generally decline with age. It’s early days, and this is just one study. But if this research is right, it suggests that much of the hue and cry about Millennials is off the mark. Digital natives may be far more savvy than older and wiser adults when it comes to spotting and spreading fake news.

The landscape may seem bleak—we’re a deception-ready species, it seems—but I have come across a touch of good news. Even as trust in institutions—including governments, media, and universities—is declining, researchers have found that trust in people is increasing. Looked at one way, such trusting behavior makes us more vulnerable to deception. But trust isn’t a one-way virtue: It often leads to trustworthy behavior—the more we trust others, the more they earn our trust. This suggests that, over time, societies can become less deceitful. There’s hope out there.

This much is clear: It will be far easier to shore up our technical defenses against information warfare than to fix our psychological vulnerabilities.

For those fearful of thinking for themselves and inclined to believe myths and falsehoods - think evangelicals - the risk of being duped increase exponentially.  Yet, these people seemingly are the last to grasp that they have been played for fools. 

Homeland Security Will Collecting Data on Journalists

In follow up to the previous post and the growing dangers of a revival of fascism, Bloomberg has a piece reporting on a new operation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  In a move that could have legitimate benign purposes yet is also reminiscent of what the Bolsheviks did following the October Russian Revolution and what Hitler did during his rise to power, the Homeland Security will start collecting data on hundreds of thousands of journalists, media outlets and even bloggers.  While useful in identifying anti-American foreign efforts and Russian derived "fake news," the action is fraught with potential abuse.  Yes, the effort could be useful to even identify terrorist operatives, it could also be used to harass, censor or silence those simply reporting the truth and/or those critical of Der Trumpenführer regme which describes any critical pieces as "fake news" regardless of their accuracy and truthfulness.  A fress press is the number one threat to would be dictators.  Here are article highlights: 

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security wants to monitor hundreds of thousands of news sources around the world and compile a database of journalists, editors, foreign correspondents, and bloggers to identify top “media influencers.”

It’s seeking a contractor that can help it monitor traditional news sources as well as social media and identify “any and all” coverage related to the agency or a particular event, according to a request for information released April 3.

The data to be collected includes a publication’s “sentiment” as well as geographical spread, top posters, languages, momentum, and circulation. No value for the contract was disclosed.

“Services shall provide media comparison tools, design and rebranding tools, communication tools, and the ability to identify top media influencers,” according to the statement. DHS agencies have “a critical need to incorporate these functions into their programs in order to better reach federal, state, local, tribal, and private partners,” it said.

The DHS wants to track more than 290,000 global news sources, including online, print, broadcast, cable, and radio, as well as trade and industry publications, local, national and international outlets, and social media, according to the documents. It also wants the ability to track media coverage in more than 100 languages including Arabic, Chinese, and Russian, with instant translation of articles into English.

The request comes amid heightened concern about accuracy in media and the potential for foreigners to influence U.S. elections and policy through “fake news.”

The DHS request says the selected vendor will set up an online “media influence database” giving users the ability to browse based on location, beat, and type of influence. For each influencer found, “present contact details and any other information that could be relevant, including publications this influencer writes for, and an overview of the previous coverage published by the media influencer.”

A department spokesman didn’t immediately return a phone call and email seeking comment.

I have no faith in the current Trump/Pence regime not to put such information to nefarious uses.

Study: "Conservatives" Got Played by Russian Trolls 30 Times More than "Liberals"

Russian troll factory near St. Petersburg, Russia

Republicans and "conservatives" - which in today's political atmosphere equates to white supremacists, white nationalist and evangelical Christian extremists - like to claim that they are the "real Americans" and the true American patriots.  All this despite their allegiance to a man who, in my mind, likely committed treason during his campaign and who is doing severe harm to America, both domestically and internationally.  All that is needed to win such people over is incendiary - and generally untrue - information that attacks their favorite targets: immigrants, blacks, gays, liberals, etc.   Thrown this bait, these "conservatives" seemingly will believe anything.  As a new study reveals, Russian efforts to throw the 2016 presidential campaign to Trump knew this and played Trump supporters for fools (not something too difficult) and these folks retweeted Russian trolls thirty (30) times more than political "liberals."  That's the findings of a new study.  Here are highlights from a piece that looks at how Russian trolls duped mindless and/or bigoted "conservatives":

Over the past two weeks, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and three companies for interfering in the 2016 presidential election. The spotlight fell on one company, the Internet Research Agency and its so-called Russian trolls, who wrote fake news articles, impersonated Americans on social media and worked to manipulated people to promote certain agendas.

Now, a band of computational social scientists at the University of Southern California has measured the influence of those faceless trolls and bots in the Twitterverse.

They report in an early-release study that American conservatives shared tweets and content from Russian trolls about 30 times more often than liberals right before the 2016 election.

Badawy’s team looked at 2,752 now-deactivated Twitter accounts owned by Internet Research Agency trolls and found that 221 of these accounts showed up in their dataset.
The team found 40,000 different American users retweeted Russian trolls more than 80,000 times. And though some tweets showed bias toward both liberals and conservatives, pro-Trump and conservative-leaning messages made up a majority of the messages. Most of the retweets of Russian trolls came from two southern states — Texas and Tennessee. Texans shared more than 26,000 Russian tweets and Tennesseans shared nearly 50,000. The issue here is how much we believe what we read,” Badawy said. “There is going to be a lot of content that we’re not sure of anymore, and this problem opens up more room for doubt in American politics and politics around the world.”

“These manipulations and sharing of fake news affects the free and open exchange of information in the market,” Menczer added. “And democracy rests on the assumption of a well-informed citizenry. If others can manipulate how information circulates, then they’re able to manipulate our democracy.”

Sadly, most of the "conservative" news outlets - think Fox News and Breitbart among others - specialize in fake news and/or carefully edited and propaganda that are the antithesis to having a well informed citizenry.

The Role Evangelical in Our Post-Truth Society

I often lament that the Republican Party has transformed from a political party where knowledge, learning, science, and logic were valued to one where ignorance and a rejection of knowledge and science is celebrated.  Personally, I have long blamed this transformation on the rise of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians within the GOP.  I left the GOP when it became clear that the party could no longer separate right wing religious belief from the civil laws and sought to intertwine the two. I was hardly alone.  Many other moderates fled the party and those who remained tried to convince - delude might be a more apt word - themselves that the party had not fundamentally changed.  Now, even some of those hold outs have fled the insane asylum.  Yes, it is Easter weekend, but I could not help but note a piece in the New York Times that lays the post-truth agenda of today's society square at the feet of where it belongs: evangelical Christians whose fear of having to think objectively based on scientific facts threatens the nation..  Here are highlights from the Times piece:

THE arrival of the “post-truth” political climate came as a shock to many Americans. But to the Christian writer Rachel Held Evans, charges of “fake news” are nothing new. “The deep distrust of the media, of scientific consensus — those were prevalent narratives growing up,” she told me.

Although Ms. Evans, 35, no longer calls herself an evangelical, she attended Bryan College, an evangelical school in Dayton, Tenn. She was taught to distrust information coming from the scientific or media elite because these sources did not hold a “biblical worldview.” . . . “Part of that was that climate change isn’t real, that evolution is a myth made up by scientists who hate God, and capitalism is God’s ideal for society.”

[T]hey believe that their own authority — the inerrant Bible — is both supernatural and scientifically sound, and this conviction gives that natural human aversion to unwelcome facts a special power on the right. This religious tradition of fact denial long predates the rise of the culture wars, social media or President Trump . . .

That innocuous phrase — “biblical worldview” or “Christian worldview” — is everywhere in the evangelical world. . . . . Ever since the scientific revolution, two compulsions have guided conservative Protestant intellectual life: the impulse to defend the Bible as a reliable scientific authority and the impulse to place the Bible beyond the claims of science entirely.

The first impulse blossomed into the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Scripture became the irrefutable guide to everything from the meaning of fossils to the interpretation of archaeological findings in the Middle East, a “storehouse of facts,” as the 19th-century theologian Charles Hodge put it.

The second impulse, the one that rejects scientists’ standing to challenge the Bible, evolved by the early 20th century into a school of thought called presuppositionalism. The term is a mouthful, but the idea is simple: We all have presuppositions that frame our understanding of the world. Cornelius Van Til, a theologian who promoted this idea, rejected the premise that all humans have access to objective reality.

The conservative Christian worldview is not just a posture of mistrust toward the secular world’s “fake news.” It is a network of institutions and experts versed in shadow versions of climate change science, biology and other fields . . .

We all cling to our own unquestioned assumptions. But in the quest to advance knowledge and broker peaceful coexistence in a pluralistic world, the worldview based on biblical inerrancy gets tangled up in the contradiction between its claims on universalist science and insistence on an exclusive faith.

By contrast, the worldview that has propelled mainstream Western intellectual life and made modern civilization possible is a kind of pragmatism. It is an empirical outlook that continually — if imperfectly — revises its conclusions based on evidence available to everyone, regardless of their beliefs about the supernatural. This worldview clashes with the conservative evangelical war on facts. . . 

“cynicism and tribalism are very closely related. You protect your tribe, your way of life and thinking, and you try to annihilate anything that might call that into question.” Cynicism and tribalism are among the gravest human temptations. They are all the more dangerous when they pose as wisdom and righteousness.

Whether these folks want to admit it or not, the Bible is NOT inerrant and much of it is simply not true.  Mental gyrations to avoid the reality that one has built their life on lies does not change the end result.  It is far past time that these people be ridiculed and rejected in decent society.  They are a cancer that threatens the nation's future. 

Trump is Losing His War with the Media

Thankfully, polls continue to show that Der Trumpenführer's popularity is continuing to drop like a stone and that his efforts to wage war on the media appear to be failing.  True, there is still a minority - probably Fox News viewers and Rush Limbaugh listeners - who cling to America's version of Emperor Palpatine, but the majority believe the media over a man who seems incapable of telling the truth.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the welcomed poll findings. Here are excerpts:

It's pretty clear what President Trump is doing by going after the media. He sees someone who is tough on him, with a lower approval rating, and he sets up a contrast. It's like making yourself look taller by standing next to a short person.

Except maybe it's not really working.

A new poll from Quinnipiac University suggests that while people may be broadly unhappy with the mainstream media, they still think it's more credible than Trump. The president regularly accuses the press of “fake news,” but people see more “fake news” coming out of his own mouth.
 The poll asked who registered voters “trust more to tell you the truth about important issues.” A majority — 52 percent — picked the media. Just 37 percent picked Trump. . . . . voters are even more critical of Trump's treatment of the media, with 61 percent disapproving and 35 percent approving.

Even 23 percent of Republicans say Trump is mistreating the media, and independents disapprove 59-35.

Trump called the media “the enemy of the American people” in a tweet Feb. 17, drawing widespread condemnation from journalists and defenders of the free press. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) even compared Trump's tactic to what dictators do to undermine it.

In addition, Trump may have gone a little too far by proclaiming the media the “enemy of the American people.” A 2013 Pew poll showed broad, bipartisan support for the media's role as a watchdog of politicians. Fully two-thirds of Republicans, Democrats and independents said the press keeps political leaders from doing things they shouldn't. 

Trouble for Trump: Strong Bipartisan Affirmation of Findings on Russian Hacking

Like another former Republican blogger that I know and follow, my suspicion is that the reason that Donald Trump is striving to blow of the intelligence community's finds on Russian hacking efforts to swing the 2016 election is because he and/or his campaign not only knew about the hacking efforts by collaborated with them.  How else to explain Trump's embrace of Julian Assange - a man in hiding in a foreign embassy in London rather than face rape charges in his own country - and rejection of the combined findings of the CIA, FBI, NSA and other agencies? Oh, and as for Trump's claim these agencies were wrong about WMD's in Iraq, the error was not on the part of the agencies in question but rather the lies initiated by Dick Cheney, a liar and authoritarian after Trump's own heart.  Trump's real fear I suspect is that there will yet be information that links his campaign to the Russian actions.  Can we then say the word treason?  A piece in the New York Times looks at yesterday's U.S. Senate hearings.  Here are highlights:

A united front of top intelligence officials and senators from both parties on Thursday forcefully reaffirmed the conclusion that the Russian government used hacking and leaks to try to influence the presidential election, directly rebuffing President-elect Donald J. Trump’s repeated questioning of Russia’s role.

They suggested that the doubts Mr. Trump has expressed on Twitter about the agencies’ competence and impartiality were undermining their morale.

“There’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement,” James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, said at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Russian hacks. He added that “our assessment now is even more resolute” that the Russians carried out the attack on the election.

The Senate hearing was the prelude to an extraordinary meeting scheduled for Friday, when Mr. Clapper and other intelligence chiefs will repeat for Mr. Trump the same detailed, highly classified briefing on the Russian attack that President Obama received on Thursday. In effect, they will be telling the president-elect that the spy agencies believe he won with an assist from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Then Mr. Trump will have to say whether he accepts the agencies’ basic findings on Russia’s role or holds to his previous contention that inept, politicized American spies have gotten the perpetrator of the hacking wrong. That would throw the intelligence agencies into a crisis of credibility and status with few, if any, precedents.

Early next week, the public will get its fullest information to date on the evidence the agencies have to support their contention that Mr. Putin’s government used the hacked emails to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign and help Mr. Trump’s. Mr. Clapper said he would “push the envelope” to include as much detail as possible in the unclassified version of the intelligence agencies’ report on the Russian operation.

The hacking, he added, was only one part of that operation, which also included the dissemination of “classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news.”

The Senate hearing on Thursday, devoted to foreign cyberthreats, was unusual as much for its context as its content — a public, bipartisan display of support for the intelligence community that seemed aimed, at times, at an audience of one.

Though Mr. Clapper and most Republican senators were careful to avoid antagonizing the president-elect directly, the hearing spoke to the rift Mr. Trump has threatened to create between the incoming administration and the intelligence officials assigned to inform it.

Mr. McCain and his colleagues seemed to undercut Mr. Trump’s past messages of support for Russia, and for Mr. Assange of WikiLeaks.  “Do you think there’s any credibility we should attach to this individual?” Mr. McCain asked.  “Not in my view,” Mr. Clapper said. Another witness at the hearing, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency and United States Cyber Command, said he agreed.

Senator Joe Donnelly, Democrat of Indiana, told Mr. Clapper that in the conflict between the intelligence agencies and Mr. Assange over Russian responsibility for the attack, “We’re on your side every time.” He asked Mr. Clapper to convey his level of confidence in attributing the election attack to Russia, rather than “someone in his basement.”  It’s, uh, very high,” the laconic intelligence director replied.

At one point, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, wondered aloud “who benefits from a president-elect trashing the intelligence community.”

No Republican lawmakers embraced Mr. Trump’s remarks casting doubt on the intelligence conclusions, though some were more conspicuous than others in their efforts to distance themselves.

[Lindsey] Graham issued a warning for fellow Republicans who might be inclined to brush off any attack on an opposing party. “Could it be Republicans next election?” he asked. “It’s not like we’re so much better at cybersecurity than Democrats.”

The thing to remember about Donald Trump is that he cares nothing about anyone but himself and his inflated view of himself.  He doesn't give a rat's ass about average Americans and those who voted for him thinking that he does were played as utter fools. The man is a clear and present danger to America and the world and needs to be exposed and driven or removed from office as soon as possible.