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Americans' One Advantage

From a Yale history professor’s powerful guide to defending democracy under a Trump presidency:

Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so.

It’s not that long, and it’s great stuff. Read the whole thing.

I’m chronically behind in my media consumption: podcasts and magazines, especially, pile up until I finally get to them long after they’re new anymore. This makes it interesting sometimes, when I listen to a soccer podcast, say, the week after the game the hosts are predicting has already been played.

And it’s been especially interesting to read some of the coverage from before election day. An amazing example, which is suddenly all the more relevant since the CIA’s public assessment of interference, is this Atlantic article: How Twitter is Changing Modern Warfare. There’s a lot in there; it’s fascinating and worth reading the whole thing. But, some excerpts that struck me as especially notable:

After lingering in the shadows of Russian military planning for decades, Soviet-style “information warfare” entered a period of renaissance in the past decade. Russian officials felt increasing pressure from the forces of Western liberalization and internet technology as they watched “color revolutions” engulf many nations of the former Soviet bloc. So they set out to harness the power of the internet to their own ends, controlling it at home and using it to divide foes abroad. An association of nearly 75 education and research institutions was devoted to studying the finer details of how the internet works, coordinated by the Russian Federal Security Service—the successor to the KGB.
…Beneath the surface, Russia maintains a vast digital network of bloggers and paid social-media commenters, many of whom do not advertise themselves as Russians at all.

…Many of the real people behind these fake accounts are young and chic—aspiring writers who show up each day to work in “troll factories,” darkened office buildings nestled in the suburbs of Moscow and St. Petersburg. They manufacture dozens of online personae, working 12-hour shifts. From cramped cubicles, they vent fog into discussions about geopolitics, NATO, Ukraine, American elections, and everything in between. As a European Union official who studies Russia’s propaganda put it, “The aim is not to make you love Putin. The aim is to make you disbelieve anything. A disbelieving, fragile, unconscious audience is much easier to manipulate.”

Remember, this article was published in early October.

All of these efforts share the same two broad objectives. The first is to overwhelm the state’s adversaries, be they foreign or domestic, with misinformation: to challenge the very basis of their reality. But the second is just as important: to mobilize their own citizens and supporters and bind them to the state. The power of social media is used to intensify nationalism and demonize the enemy. In this strategy, homophily is not something to be feared or avoided. It is the goal.

The article ends with the author wondering what might happen with social media in the event of a full, large-scale conflict. (Really, read it all.) It’s a chilling thought, not least because that kind of situation is now easier to imagine than ever.

An Endless Bad Dream

Since the election, I’ve been really torn about what to think of Trump’s crazy tweets. The baseless Hamilton cast attacks, the New York Times fight, and now the deranged claims of millions of “illegal” votes. On the one hand, it seems like an attempt to distract from more substantive issues: the Trump U lawsuit settlement, his giant pile of conflicts of interest, his string of terrible cabinet appointments, etc. But on the other hand, though the substance of his attacks seem petty and trivial, they also represent, I believe, grave threats themselves.

For the person heading to the White House to accuse some Broadway performers show for being “very rude”, and then to call the show itself “highly overrated”, that is petty and trivial, certainly. But it’s also an attempt at a horrible chilling effect. It says: if you cross me in the slightest, I’ll use my bully pulpit to directly attack your character, even your livelihood.

So, which is it? Or, put another way: how should the media cover those statements? Ignore them as ridiculousness that they shouldn’t be distracted by? Or take him to task for real, actual bad behavior?

I think this article from ThinkProgress nails what’s really going on here (though it didn’t make me optimistic about how to fight it): Trump’s lies have a purpose. They are an assault on democracy. Some key quotes, but as always, I hope you read the whole thing.

If Bush and Rove constructed a fantasy world with a clear internal logic, Trump has built something more like an endless bad dream. In his political universe, facts are unstable and ephemeral; events follow one after the other with no clear causal linkage; and danger is everywhere, although its source seems to change at random. Whereas President Bush offered America the illusion of morality clarity, President-elect Trump offers an ever-shifting phantasmagoria of sense impressions and unreliable information, barely held together by a fog of anxiety and bewilderment. Think Kafka more than Lord of the Rings.

Thinking of it this way, even the “good” news out of his camp contributes to the confusion. Changing his mind about the wall, about Obamacare, about trying to jail Clinton, it all helps muddy the waters. The more he can make people say, “wait, what??” – whether they’re relieved or outraged at what he said – the better.

When fake news becomes omnipresent, all news becomes suspect. Everything starts to look like a lie.

There’s been a lot of discussion, and hopefully there will be more, about fake news. It’s a real thing (no irony intended), with a variety of issues, angles, and enablers. So fake news sites that are engineered to go viral and drive clicks and all of that, that’s one thing, but the key here is that first as a candidate, now as President-elect, and soon as President, everything Trump says is automatically “news” (e.g., his ranting about millions of illegal votes).

When political actors can’t agree on basic facts and procedures, compromise and rule-bound argumentation are basically impossible; politics reverts back to its natural state as a raw power struggle in which the weak are dominated by the strong.
That’s where Donald Trump’s lies are taking us. By attacking the very notion of shared reality, the president-elect is making normal democratic politics impossible. When the truth is little more than an arbitrary personal decision, there is no common ground to be reached and no incentive to look for it.

Lastly, this is the kicker, for me. This is a grave undermining of our entire society. Thanks, Trump.

Shifting Baseline Syndrome

The first thing that’s been normalized for me since November 8: how much the words “normalized” and “normalization” are being used. Here are a few links, with key quotes from each, that struck me as worth pointing out, worth remembering, worth coming back to in the months and years to come.

First, from Liel Leibovitz in Tablet Magazine: What to Do About Trump? The Same Thing My Grandfather Did in 1930s Vienna.

Refuse to accept what’s going on as the new normal. Not now, not ever. In the months and years to come, decisions will be made that may strike you as perfectly sound, appointments announced that are inspired, and policies enacted you may even like. Friends and pundits will reach out to you and, invoking nuance, urge you to admit that there’s really nothing to fear, that things are more complex, that nothing is ever black or white. It’s a perfectly sound argument, of course, but it’s also dead wrong: This isn’t about policy or appointments or even about outcomes.
This isn’t a political contest—it’s a moral crisis. When an inexperienced, thin-skinned demagogue rides into office by explaining away immensely complex problems while arguing that our national glory demands we strip millions of their dignity or their rights, our only duty is to resist by whatever means permitted us by law. The demagogue may boost the economy, sign beneficial treaties, and mend our ailing institutions, but his success can never be ours. Our greatness, to use a tired but true phrase, depends on our goodness, and to succeed, we must demand that our commander in chief come as close as is possible to reflecting the light of that goodness.

Next, from a series of nine tweets by Iranian-American Roja Bandari that was Storified with the title: What It’s Like To Live Under a Religious Dictatorship:

Some things about what it was like to live in Iran under a religious dictatorship: 1) It felt normal. People had jobs, friends, school, etc

A minority bears most of the pain: most vulnerable and those who defend them, plus any journalists and intellectuals who are out of line.

Everyone else moves on with their lives, jobs, families, problems, vacations, etc. Humans adapt quickly.

There is no ominous music playing in background in dictatorships. So if you in the US are waiting for a sign, there will be none.

It becomes harder and the risk gets higher the longer one waits before realizing something is not right. Because more people adapt.

Faith Has an Agenda

I followed a link to this post from Twitter, and found it to be really profound: After the Election: Wrestling the Angel of Fear. As usual, I recommend you read all of it, as I have a half-dozen times just today. I normally wouldn’t quote this much, but there’s a lot that’s good here. I hope(!) the author won’t mind.

To give up hope is not to accept things as they are. I am appalled by the president-elect and the renewed license for intimidation and violence that has shown itself since the election. But I also must accept that things are as they are. As I drove down the road years ago, screaming at [President Bush], I was having a moment of non-acceptance, propelled by fear that turned quickly to despair. I was insisting that George Bush be different from the man he had always shown himself to be, and I was furious to be living in a country that would make him president. And I responded as if personally betrayed, as if it wasn’t fair, an outrageous violation of some law by which such things are not supposed to happen.

It makes sense to feel overwhelmed in the face of [Trump's win]. We are only human, after all, and we have not been prepared. Instead, we have, for generations, been encouraged to see ourselves as passive consumers rather than active citizens, our minds distracted and pacified and colonized to accept the status quo or to pin ourselves to the hope for something better.
We have been trained to be easily overwhelmed and immobilized, dis-couraged with little awareness of our responsibility or power.

We have been desensitized to the pain of others, and hypersensitized to our own, taught to see pain not as a message, a wake-up call, but as something noxious to be escaped, silenced, anaesthetized.

But we cannot afford to be overwhelmed or swallowed by despair. Like the parent of a desperately ill child, we don’t get to disappear into not knowing what to do. For a day or two, perhaps, but then we have to step in and give it up and reacquaint ourselves with the courage of faith.

At first I thought the usage “dis-couraged” was a typo, or misplaced hyphenation. But on subsequent readings I decided it was purposeful, with a meaning like, “removed courage”.

[It] occurs to me that being able to choose between hope and despair comes of the freedom to sit on the sidelines and watch from the relative safety of being white. And when things go badly and we sink into despair, hope comes riding to the rescue, promising to lift our hearts, that things will work out, somehow, someday, against the odds. Whether we do anything or not.
Hope is better suited to feeling than action, for it does not so much galvanize as soothe, a refuge from despair, that does not hold us to account.

Faith, on the other hand, comes of having to wrestle the angel of fear, whose power faith would harness into action. Faith is what turns a crowd of individuals into a march and then a movement. Where hope is passive and content, faith has an agenda and makes demands.

Echo Chambers and Bubbles

As we settle in to this new reality, this world where Donald Trump is the President-elect, I’ve been reading and thinking more about the echo chambers, or “bubbles”, that I mentioned in my previous post.

One article was from The Guardian: Bursting the Facebook bubble: we asked voters on the left and right to swap feeds. I recommend you read the whole thing, but here are some key quotes:

“Twelve people have shared a story with me about the Hillary Clinton bus dumping human waste into the sewer system,” said [conservative] Trent Loos, a farmer and radio host from central Nebraska. “I never see positive stuff about Hillary Clinton. I didn’t know that existed.”

Meanwhile, I don’t even know what that bus-sewer story was, that he saw a dozen times.

“It’s like reading a book by a fool,” said [liberal] Pines. “It’s hard to read something you know is a lie.”
Another liberal, Nikki Moungo from St Louis county, Missouri, went a step further: “It’s like being locked into a room full of those suffering from paranoid delusions,” she said.

…Andra Constantin, a conservative project manager from Westchester County, New York, was frustrated by “this whole big brainwashing push to save the world from the horrible climate change”.

This is maybe a little unfair to juxtapose that third statement with the first ones, but it makes a point. I found it tempting at first to think of the conservative-liberal dichotomy they’ve set up here in terms similar to the “both sides” school of non-partisan journalism (an approach I believe is unhelpful in many cases). That is, in the same way journalists try to present “both sides” of news stories, lending at least some credence to each, one might think that getting an equal amount of information from both of these bubbles would be ideal.

But here’s the thing, which the climate-change denier cited there underscores: there aren’t always two valid sides to present. Human-caused climate change is an absolutely certain thing. It just is. 2016 is expected to be the hottest on record, breaking the record set by 2015, and before that, 2014. She’s just wrong. (And her making accusations of brainwashing is pretty rich).

But it wasn’t only the liberals who found the experience painful.
“I’m seeing a lot more hate from the liberal side,” said Constantin. “It’s all about how much of a horrible, fascist, racist, misogynist Trump is.”

“Honestly, I hated it,” said Janalee Tobias, a longtime conservative activist and member of Mormons for Trump from South Jordan, Utah. “I’m seeing a psychiatrist trying to get over the shock and the hate from the left,” she joked. “I thought this would be easier for me to handle, because I’m considered pretty open minded.”

This blew my mind. It reminded me of some of the things that Trump said about Clinton in the debates, which I found puzzling even then: in the second, he said something about her “having so much hate in her heart”, and in the third he made the infamous “such a nasty woman” comment. And for all the criticism of Clinton that one could make – which I’ll say, I believe a lot of is overblown, at best – but I just would never have imagined that a characterization of her as mean, hateful, or nasty would resonate like that.

There was the “basket of deplorables” comment, of course, but she apologized for that, and honestly, I didn’t feel it was far off the mark. (I know, I know: bubble. My point is, it didn’t strike me at the time as mean or hateful.) But as the first woman said, the liberal attacks on Trump were for being “a horrible, fascist, racist, misogynist”. Which brings me to this Vox article, Research says there are ways to reduce racial bias. Calling people racist isn’t one of them. This is also worth reading in its entirety (especially the Virginia-Gustavo conversation, which is beautiful), but here are the key parts I want to point out:

Most Americans, white people included, want to think that they’re not capable of racism — particularly after the civil rights movement, overt racism is widely viewed as unacceptable in American society. Yet racism, obviously, still exists. And when some white people are confronted with that reality, whether it’s accusations of racism against them personally or more broadly, they immediately become very defensive — even hostile.

And, earlier in the article:

“Telling people they’re racist, sexist, and xenophobic is going to get you exactly nowhere,” said Alana Conner, executive director of Stanford University’s Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions Center. “It’s such a threatening message. One of the things we know from social psychology is when people feel threatened, they can’t change, they can’t listen.”

That’s crucial information to understand. But I think this is another example where the both-sides-are-valid approach doesn’t really hold up. There might be some fine lines and complex aspects in some discussions of what’s racist and what’s not. But I don’t think there’s a good argument that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is one of those discussions. He was endorsed by the KKK, and didn’t renounce it. A core part of his platform includes halting immigration of as well as deporting Muslims. Perhaps most damningly (so far): there’s been a spike in spontaneous hate crimes since the election, many explicitly linked to Trump’s win. (Note: that’s not the “liberal” mainstream media reporting that; that’s the SPLC, a nonprofit founded 45 years ago specifically to protect civil rights and fight hate crimes.)

But although I believe the campaign included an alarming (one might even say deplorable) amount of racist rhetoric that clearly resonated with some Trump voters, the lesson I take from the Vox article is that having an understanding of how those supporters perceived that rhetoric, and the criticism of it, is also important.

In my previous post I said, “Maybe I should be stronger and more open to diverse voices, but I’m not and I don’t.” What I’m realizing is, that isn’t good enough. I think we should hear more from them, even though what I’ve written here is still pretty dismissive, sounding like I still think “they” are “wrong”.

Because actually, you know what? That’s about right, after all. This upcoming presidential term is different. If Jeb Bush were the President-elect, then this would be a more typical conservative vs. liberal situation. It would be what a lot of people are saying: the pendulum swung the other way this time, it’s the Republicans' turn for a while, the course of history is a winding one, yadda yadda yadda. I won’t go into all the details here, but I do believe that the changes caused by Trump’s campaign and his upcoming presidency – even at their mildest and most normal – will be as significant as they are harmful.

In the meantime, I’m going to try to venture out of my bubble a little more. I’m going to start with this “thoughtful conservatives” Twitter list, and see how it goes. I’m already finding it kind of hard to stand, but maybe that’s a sign of how important this is.

Postscript: the evening after I wrote this, Vice-president-elect Mike Pence attended a showing of the musical Hamilton. Reports say that some in the crowd booed him, a response that was popularly supported in my Twitter timeline. Then I saw several audience-filmed videos of the cast’s statement, addressing Mike Pence literally from the stage at the end of the show. From a wire report:

"We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir," Dixon said.
“But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. All of us.”

Hamilton, Dixon told Pence, was performed by “a diverse group of men, women of different colors, creeds and orientations.”

The response to this incident from President-elect Trump on Twitter is jaw-dropping. One tweet: The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!"

And another: “Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!”

First, that the cast were rude is simply untrue. It may have been an unusual move, and it certainly put Pence on the spot. But it was a totally polite and respectful way to acknowledge his attendance, and to make a public statement of concerns and values that are shared by many. Pence had already been booed by the audience before this, so if anything, the cast’s statement was a mature, polite way to settle things down, to quell the audience’s rudeness.

Second, what kind of leadership is this? The man who would be President petulantly demanding apologies on social media? This was in no way “harassment”, these were totally respectful and sane statements, made by performing artists using their platform to amplify their voices, but “this should not happen”? It simply boggles the mind (and chills the blood).

And lastly, back to my topic: what does this do for the bubbles inhabited by Trump supporters? It’s pure red meat, whipping up antagonism, reinforcing negative stereotypes, and beating the drum of confrontation and adversarial feeling. And it’s coming – intentionally, I believe – from the very top of their bubble.

The Message from Silence

Some recent stories in the news:

Denounce the Hate, Mr. Trump (New York Times, Nov. 10)
Tell Donald Trump to reject hate and bigotry (SPLC, Nov. 11)
Why Hasn’t Donald Trump Denounced The Spike In Hate Crimes Since His Election? (Huffington Post, Nov. 12)
Slate’s Jamelle Bouie Calls On Trump To Denounce Post-Election Intimidation And Violence Against Minorities (Media Matters, Nov. 13)

A parallel between the story told by those links and the world of soccer occurred to me today: Trump’s silence is like the ref who “lets the players play”. Early in a game – the higher the stakes of the game, the more crucial this is – players will experimentally make some rough plays, some tougher tackles than they might otherwise make. They’re testing the waters, trying to find out how much they can get a way with. And if the ref “lets them play”, the result is usually a game that gets out of hand: play is ugly, injuries are more likely, the ref later may have to give a flurry of yellow and red cards to try to regain control.

Leave aside the question of what politician ever in history wouldn’t at least make some kind of feel-good statement – less than a week after the election! – about healing our divides, unification, etc. My point is that President-elect Trump, in failing to do literally the least he could do in the face of these terrible acts, will have the same damaging effect as those lenient refs.

Only I worry in this case, the message being sent isn’t accidental.