BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2023-05-29 Mo
Giving guilty Trump voters permission to keep voting for Trump; managing the engagement of humans vs. technology; ancient multi-tools; Campos on making poor people poorer as Republican job #1, Wolf...
…on sortition, Wilkinson on neofascism in small-town America, Catalist on what really happened in the 2022 election…
MUST-READ: MOAR Things Þt Cross My Desk Þt I Simply Do Not Understand:
Whatever did happen to Clive Crook?
I mean, he used to be a semi-normal someone whom I thought could be persuaded that Clinton-style neoliberalism was much better than Reagan-style, Thatcher-style, or George W. Bush-style neoliberalism—that we left-neoliberals had much more in the way of technocratic chops and could produce much faster-growing and more equitably-distributed incomes than those whose first priority was always and everywhere cutting taxes on the rich, eliminating regulations everywhere, making the poor poorer, stopping the growth of renewable energy, deporting immigrants, and making sure that women remained second- (or third-) class citizens.
Never happened.
IIRC, Crook was for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama…John McCain over Barack Obama… George W. Bush over John Kerry… George W. Bush over Al Gore… Bob Dole over Bill Clinton… George H.W. Bush over Bill Clinton… George H.W. Bush over Mike Dukakis… Apparently he shut up about Donald Trump vs. Hillary Rodham Clinton… and Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden: “Both parties trapped in a cycle of error and extremism” appears to be his current post-2016 shtick…
And now, this spring, on the one hand he says that Trump’s supporters are really deplorable:
Clive Crook: Where the American Left Went Wrong: ‘[Fred] Siegel’s endorsement of Trump in 2020… [is an] act of nihilistic despair. The claim that Trump stands up for middle-class values is preposterous. He stands up, and proudly, for nothing but himself…
On the other hand, he says that it is shocking and anti-democratic for the American “left” to say that Trump’s supporters are deplorable:
Clive Crook: Where the American Left Went Wrong: ‘American liberalism[‘s]… respect for ordinary Americans has often, even typically, been a feint. Lately, liberals have been unwilling even to fake it. Hillary Clinton thought a good way to defeat Trump in 2016 was to call half of his supporters deplorable. President Joe Biden is apparently choosing to campaign not just against Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, but against “MAGA Republicans” — essentially the same tried-and-failed strategy. How can you be firmly committed to democracy yet disgusted by the manners, mores and political preferences of so many voters? You can’t…
I can say it, but it is a shocking breach of manners and a sign that you are a contemptible anti-democrat if you say it? Does not compute.
One of my friends proposed that what Crook was saying was that it was true but not effective for a politician to say that Trump’s supporters are deplorable.
But that doesn’t work: for Crook, the main point is that:
Clive Crook: Where the American Left Went Wrong:‘Modern liberals… are instinctively opposed to democracy… contrasted their own enlightenment with the vulgarity and ignorance of the masses…. economists, physicians and chemists… liberalism [has] raised these bustling arrivistes to the new nobility and licensed them to demand due respect…
Is there evidence? Aside from one word from HRC “deplorables” and two words from Biden “MAGA Republicans”, Crook quotes H.L. Mencken, Henry Adams, and Herbert Croly.
Asked whether H.L. Mencken, Henry Adams, and Herbert Croly were liberals, Bing-AI tells me:
Mencken “admired Friedrich Nietzsche… was not a liberal in the modern sense of the word. He was more of a libertarian or a classical liberal… cynical and skeptical about human nature and democracy, and held some controversial views on race and ethnicity…”
Adams “was not a liberal… was skeptical of democracy, progress, technology, and capitalism. He was also critical of incompetent or corrupt politicians… and of… the Spanish-American War… not a liberal in either the classical or modern sense of the word…”
Croly “was an intellectual leader of the Progressive movement… liberal in the sense of favoring a strong federal government, social welfare legislation… economic regulation… democracy, civil liberties, and international cooperation… influenced contemporaneous progressive thought, shaping the ideas of many… including… Theodore Roosevelt…”
I suppose we can give him 1/2 point out of 3 for Croly…
What flummoxes me: Who is the intended audience for this? I can’t see one.
Others tell me it might be intended for Trump supporters who feel somewhat guilty, and so want permission to keep voting for Trump—even though he has tried and keeps trying to end American liberal democracy, as we have known it.
ONE VIDEO: Managing þe Next Round of Humans vs. Modern Human Engagement-Attracting Information & Communications Technologies:
I think continuing to call it “AI” is a major category error. So I am going to call it: “modern human engagement-attracting information and communications technologies”.
And while I have very little tolerance for the woo-woo that is “modern human engagement-attracting information and communications technologies might take over and make us extinct!”, there is a great deal of wisdom in the observation that our “first contact” moment with modern human engagement-attracting information and communications technologies:
was social media—and humanity lost. We still haven’t fixed the misalignment caused by broken business models that encourage maximum engagement. Large language models (LLM) are humanity’s ‘Second Contact’ moment, and we’re poised to make the same mistakes…
So do watch Tristan Harris and Aza Rankin on “The AI Dilemma”:
ONE IMAGE: Multi-Tools Are a Good Idea:
Very Briefly Noted:
Ozge Akinci & al.: Measuring the Financial Stability Real Interest Rate, r**…
Mohamed El-Erian: The stark ‘de-risking’ choice facing economies: ‘Nations must seek to strengthen multilateralism or they will end up embracing economic decoupling…
Gillian Tett: We should all be worried about the ‘financialisation’ of our world: ‘When debt and asset prices have surged before, it has typically produced political implosions…. Can we adjust our minds to an era where asset prices do not always rise? What will be our future “normal”?…
Jessica Wildfire: Life at 2030: Real Talk: ‘A response to climate minimizers: Like me, you’ve probably spent some time wondering what your life will look like by the year 2030. Well, let’s consider what’s happening now…
Doug Saunders: ‘Startling… American exceptionalism…. The “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” quadrant would be very full, possibly the largest, in most other English-speaking countries. In USA it’s almost empty…
Ken Goldberg: @TEDxOakland: ‘AI: Threat or opportunity?…
Ken Goldberg, interviewed by Frieda Klotz: How AI Can Amplify Human Competencies: ‘Advanced systems will continue to help people do their jobs better instead of replacing them.
Amber Dance: The neurons that make you feel hangry: ‘Brain area that stimulates appetite could be a target for eating-disorder therapies….
Yasemin Saplakoglu: Is It Real or Imagined? How Your Brain Tells the Difference: ‘New experiments show that the brain distinguishes between perceived and imagined mental images by checking whether they cross a “reality threshold.”… Perky asked participants to picture fruits while staring at a blank wall. As they did so, she secretly projected extremely faint images of those fruits — so faint as to be barely visible — on the wall and asked the participants if they saw anything. None of them thought they saw anything real, although they commented on how vivid their imagined image seemed…
Umair Haque: America’s Becoming a Suicide Pact: ‘How Do You Have a Functioning Democracy With…Red States?…
¶s:
Paul Campos: We won’t crater the world economy if you let us make a few million poor people slightly poorer: ‘I mean that’s a pretty reasonable offer, if you think about it, and are also a Randian/Calvinist sociopath…. The fact that the social science research on this subject demonstrates unambiguously that work requirements for SNAP and Medicaid users don’t increase employment levels among the poor—and also save essentially no money—is a matter of indifference to the GOP ghouls who push this stuff, because this is all nothing but a cruel symbolic politics, not some sort of rational public policy choice. I recommend people read books like this $2 A Day and Evicted to get a real sense of what the costs are of creating yet more bureaucratic barriers to poor people in this country getting any sort of government help…
Martin Wolf: Citizens’ juries can help fix democracy: ‘Western polities are ailing—deliberative assemblies would revivify them: “Brexit has failed.” This is now the view of Nigel Farage…. The question is why the country made this mistake. The answer is that our democratic processes do not work very well. Adding referendums to elections does not solve the problem. But adding citizens’ assemblies might…. Elections are necessary. But unbridled majoritarianism is a disaster. A successful liberal democracy requires constraining institutions: independent oversight over elections, an independent judiciary and an independent bureaucracy. But are they enough? No. In my book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, I follow the Australian economist Nicholas Gruen in arguing for the addition of citizens’ assemblies or citizens’ juries. These would insert an important element of ancient Greek democracy into the parliamentary tradition…
Francis Wilkinson: ‘We Just Want Someone Sane’: What Happens When a Small Town Goes MAGA: ‘Washington County, Pennsylvania, was never known as Crazytown. Then election deniers decided to run for local office…. Dave Ball… Washington County Republican Party chairman… gained national notoriety… when he lashed out at Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania…. “We did not send him there to vote his conscience,” Ball said of Toomey. “We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said he was doing.”… Given Ball’s… dismay over candidates whose flaws—nincompoopery, deception, self-service—are quintessentially Trumpist, I asked Ball if recent experience had made him rethink his support for Trump himself….. Trump, after all… spread lies, stoked rage, amplified division…. continues to pledge vengeance…. Wasn’t Trump directly responsible for the degradation of the party and the nation?… “You know, I have a hard time getting too excited about that when I’m looking at Biden’s lies.” If America succumbs to self-delusion and slides into authoritarian, buffoonish and terminal decline, Ball’s evasion would be an apt epitaph. Yes, that’s what did it. “Biden’s lies”…
Catalist: What Happened in 2022: ‘Democrats won in the majority of heavily contested races, with electorates in these contests looking more like the 2020 and 2018 electorates than a typical midterm…. Gen Z and Millennial voters had exceptional levels of turnout, with young voters in heavily contested states exceeding their 2018 turnout by 6% among those who were eligible in both elections. Further, 65% of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 supported Democrats, cementing their role as a key part of a winning coalition…. Extreme “MAGA” Republicans underperformed…. Women voters pushed Democrats over the top in heavily contested races…. Turnout and support among voters by race, education, gender, and other demographic factors remained relatively stable in heavily contested races. Such stability does not usually occur between presidential and midterm years…. Democratic support among Black voters rose in Southern states with heavily contested elections, but fell in less contested states…
Clive Crook's claim that ‘Modern liberals… are instinctively opposed to democracy…" is a bit bizarre.
- When Left liberals are unhappy with election results, their first instinct is to work hard to convince more people to vote and to expand the voter rolls.
- When Conservatives dislike election results, they tend to respond by working hard to limit voter participation.
It should be quite clear that it is the Right who are anti-democratic, not the Left.
WIldfire's piece reminded me of Ehrlich's 1968 book, The Population Bomb, except her time horizon is a decade, not half a century. A lot of people have been dishing Ehrlich lately, but he was largely on the mark even though a lot has been done to mitigate and delay disaster.
The last time we had fiscal conservatism and social liberalism was under LBJ, and he was noted for his guns AND butter budgets. He even pushed through an income tax surcharge to pay for the extra guns needed for Vietnam. Nowadays, talking about raising tax rates is political suicide. If you want to make things better, you have to press social improvements and keep quiet about funding them. This has nothing to do with voters. It has to do with political tactics. It's no surprise that the US has such an empty quarter. To be honest, I'd be surprised if any nation has that quarter well occupied. No one offered an example.