Countdown to Extinction: The 2016 Presidential Election

[mc ukrneal]

Back on topic: The Gray Lady maintains its high journalistic standards.

The four hour courses they talk about allow you to prevent points from being accumulated (which could affect insurance premiums for example). 4 over 17 years isn't so terrible, but 13 over the same period seems quite a bit to me.

[Todd]

The four hour courses they talk about allow you to prevent points from being accumulated (which could affect insurance premiums for example). 4 over 17 years isn't so terrible, but 13 over the same period seems quite a bit to me.

Well, at least now I know of one person who thinks traffic citations are a meaningful campaign issue.

I wonder which candidates may have kicked a pet in the past.

[mc ukrneal]

Well, at least now I know of one person who thinks traffic citations are a meaningful campaign issue.

Oh? Who's that?

[Pat B]

And I qualified it: by Socialism I mean what was practiced in the Socialist Republic of Romania. I safely presume you have not the slightest idea about  what it means, other than what I have written.

Regardless of what you meant by "socialism," you asserted that it and freedom are the only choices. So which of those two choices does your guiding principle of "as much liberty as possible, as much constraint as necessary" fit into?

[Florestan]

Regardless of what you meant by "socialism," you asserted that it and freedom are the only choices.

No, no, and no! You are twisting my words!

I state it again: Socialism as practiced in the Socialist Republic of Romania is incompatible with freedom. If you take issue with this statement, please feel free to do so --- but I strongly doubt you have the personal experience which would allow you to do it.

[Ken B]

Just as true as "governments work, but they don´t work perfectly." That´s why we need both.

That's why we get along Andrei: we split the work. You advocate for more government control of everything and everyone, and I against it. 

[Florestan]

You advocate for more government control of everything and everyone

Pușchea pe limbă!

[Pat B]

No, no, and no! You are twisting my words!

I state it again: Socialism as practiced in the Socialist Republic of Romania is incompatible with freedom. If you take issue with this statement, please feel free to do so --- but I strongly doubt you have the personal experience which would allow you to do it.

Ah. Now I understand what you meant, and I don't take issue with that.

("A is incompatible with B" is different than "A and B are the only choices. Tertium non datur.")

[snyprrr]

anyone talking "election" is naive

how am i wrong?

[Rinaldo]

It is true that the recognition of the right being a little bit out to lunch — maybe even a touch out of step with the mainstream of the country — is very recent. In fact, up until just a couple of years ago, the political establishment maintained the fiction that "America is a conservative nation" which furthermore was extremely hostile to liberalism. This belief was pretty much based upon one election held three decades ago in which it was excitedly observed that certain white Democrats decided to vote for Ronald Reagan because they just couldn't stand those hippies anymore.

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/04/the_medias_most_destructive_meme_why_we_need_to_admit_that_the_gops_extremism_is_virtually_unprecedented/

Thoughts? From an outsiders point of view, this

(the GOP)..had become "ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

seems especially obvious.

[Todd]

Thoughts?

It's an op-ed from Salon.  Salon is partisan.  The op-ed is a variant of a standard lefty narrative that stretches back decades: Republican obstructionism.  Actually, one could go all the way back to Henry Cabot Lodge and see how indignant Progressives were even then when a dastardly Republican dared to (successfully) defy them.  Now, of course, the analysis is all science-y.  I didn't click the links in the article, but without too much hunting, you can find nifty charts showing the shift to the right of Republicans over time, and the further right they go, the more obstructionist they become.  And as everyone knows, if a social scientist generates a chart, it must be true.

But currently, such serious, objective, scientific, or at least science-y analyses tend to go back a certain period of time.  To about the time that Reagan started gaining ground, as it turns out.  Republicans have shattered the post-war consensus, you see.  There was a time, a beautiful time, when the two parties toed the same line, pursued the same policies, and so forth.  It's a nicely self-contained analysis, and one that ultimately lends itself to prudent, sensible policy options.  Clearly, controlling campaign finance is one such policy option that can be used to contain extremism.  But that is not enough.  It will probably be necessary to curb when certain types of ads can be run.  (True, that used to be law and was struck down, but it's worth another try.)  Then the media that can be used can be legislated - no over-sized billboards perhaps, or maybe some limit on TV expenditures.  Best of all, the government could fund all elections.  This has been the Progressive dream since long before I was even born.  A government of the government, by the government, and for the government, that's the ticket.

Op-eds like that in Salon also serve another purpose.  They obviously paint Republicans as extremists.  You can't deal with extremists.  Everyone knows that.  As such, it becomes easier to ignore policy issues they may bring up, or better yet, to label the policies extremist so they can be ignored altogether during the legislative process and turned into campaign issues. 

[kishnevi]

It's an op-ed from Salon.  Salon is partisan.  The op-ed is a variant of a standard lefty narrative that stretches back decades: Republican obstructionism.  Actually, one could go all the way back to Henry Cabot Lodge and see how indignant Progressives were even then when a dastardly Republican dared to (successfully) defy them.  Now, of course, the analysis is all science-y.  I didn't click the links in the article, but without too much hunting, you can find nifty charts showing the shift to the right of Republicans over time, and the further right they go, the more obstructionist they become.  And as everyone knows, if a social scientist generates a chart, it must be true.

But currently, such serious, objective, scientific, or at least science-y analyses tend to go back a certain period of time.  To about the time that Reagan started gaining ground, as it turns out.  Republicans have shattered the post-war consensus, you see.  There was a time, a beautiful time, when the two parties toed the same line, pursued the same policies, and so forth.  It's a nicely self-contained analysis, and one that ultimately lends itself to prudent, sensible policy options.  Clearly, controlling campaign finance is one such policy option that can be used to contain extremism.  But that is not enough.  It will probably be necessary to curb when certain types of ads can be run.  (True, that used to be law and was struck down, but it's worth another try.)  Then the media that can be used can be legislated - no over-sized billboards perhaps, or maybe some limit on TV expenditures.  Best of all, the government could fund all elections.  This has been the Progressive dream since long before I was even born.  A government of the government, by the government, and for the government, that's the ticket.

Op-eds like that in Salon also serve another purpose.  They obviously paint Republicans as extremists.  You can't deal with extremists.  Everyone knows that.  As such, it becomes easier to ignore policy issues they may bring up, or better yet, to label the policies extremist so they can be ignored altogether during the legislative process and turned into campaign issues.

And of course go to most conservative media and find the mirror process by which any liberal ideas are turned into mere communist agitation.

[Todd]

And of course go to most conservative media and find the mirror process by which any liberal ideas are turned into mere communist agitation.

Absolutely.  Depending on the type of conservative, and the hot topic, just how imminent the crisis of government takeover of everything is ranges from some nebulous, distant point in the future to it has already happened.  Gun nuts are some of my favorites in this regard.  Obama is going to take away the God given right to own an M16, don't you know.

[Rinaldo]

Interesting, thanks for the reply! I don't share your sentiment about the article playing that kind of a cynical agenda, though. While I know where Salon's place is on the political map, I think you overestimate the 'lefty' partisanship of a piece like this, while underestimating how Republicans paint themselves extremist by their bullheaded stance against science for example. From this side of the ocean, the GOP really seems like a party that has gone 'off the cliff' as the op-ed mentions.

[Ken B]

Interesting, thanks for the reply! I don't share your sentiment about the article playing that kind of a cynical agenda, though. While I know where Salon's place is on the political map, I think you overestimate the 'lefty' partisanship of a piece like this, while underestimating how Republicans paint themselves extremist by their bullheaded stance against science for example. From this side of the ocean, the GOP really seems like a party that has gone 'off the cliff' as the op-ed mentions.

http://reason.com/archives/2012/08/20/the-wrong-side-absolutely-must-not-win

[Todd]

I think you overestimate the 'lefty' partisanship of a piece like this

If anything, I'd say I underestimate it.  The propensity of some lefties to attempt to cloak their political and politicized analyses of political trends in the sober, serious, and irrefutable language of science and statistics, even more than righties with their Heritage Foundation types and such, hints at the views and goals of some.  The march of science and progress is unstoppable.

[Ken B]

Interesting, thanks for the reply! I don't share your sentiment about the article playing that kind of a cynical agenda, though. While I know where Salon's place is on the political map, I think you overestimate the 'lefty' partisanship of a piece like this, while underestimating how Republicans paint themselves extremist by their bullheaded stance against science for example. From this side of the ocean, the GOP really seems like a party that has gone 'off the cliff' as the op-ed mentions.

I recall one Australian commenter here being mocked for her pronouncements on Europe. And she lived there! But where was I? Oh yes ...
In any case it is not true that the gop is more antiscience than the dems. It depends on the science, and you can dig up quite a lot on both parties. Anti vax is generally a liberal disease here, as is the widespread rejection in some circles of sociobiology, nuclear power, and GMOs.  Examples abound. The gop oppose stem cell research to cure diseases and the dems oppose golden rice to prevent them.
The selective approach to science is quite widespread. In Canada the Green Party platform endorsed homeopathy.

[NorthNYMark]

I recall one Australian commenter here being mocked for her pronouncements on Europe. And she lived there! But where was I? Oh yes ...
In any case it is not true that the gop is more antiscience than the dems. It depends on the science, and you can dig up quite a lot on both parties. Anti vax is generally a liberal disease here, as is the widespread rejection in some circles of sociobiology, nuclear power, and GMOs.  Examples abound. The gop oppose stem cell research to cure diseases and the dems oppose golden rice to prevent them.
The selective approach to science is quite widespread. In Canada the Green Party platform endorsed homeopathy.

It's quite a surprise to hear that the anti-vaxers are from the left.  I've actually not seen any figures, so I assume you must be right.  But anecdotally, most of my friends and acquaintances are left-leaning, and they are universally, and often quite vocally, pro vaxers (or anti-anti-vaxers, to be more specific).  I would have imagined the anti-vaxers to have a lot of overlap with homeschoolers, who I also thought tended toward the right-leaning. In general, it would seem to fit in with the whole "federal government is out to take your guns and subject you to tyranny" attitude of the right. 

With anti-nuclear power, that does seem to be more of a lefty issue, but I'm not sure that it counts as anti-science--just concern that the risks of complete annihilation in the case of potential accidents might outweigh the benefits (which they generally don't deny).  It's not as if they are denying that nuclear power exists--have all (or most of) the nuclear scientists concluded that nuclear power plants are completely immune to accidents or terrorist attacks, and their waste can be disposed of without consequence?  Only if that is the case could I see opposition to nuclear power being construed as "anti-science" in the way that climate change denial can.  I think there is a difference between being anti-science--not believing in certain scientific claims simply because they contradict a religious text or are inconvenient--and being against a particular use of a particular technology (where the underlying science is agreed upon by all parties).  That doesn't make it any more or less right, but I think it is a different conversation.  I can see a bit of science denial from the left on the GMO issue, in that there seems to be little scientific evidence that they are dangerous--on the other hand, my sense has been that there is a lot of scientific uncertainly about the long-term affects of some of that experimentation.   

[Jo498]

Sure, but "anti-science" sounds much better than "against unquestioned use of dangerous technologies not sufficiently tried out or with a track record of environmental desasters and unsolved problems for dealing with waste products". The latter obviously applies to nuclear energy and while debatable it is not absurd to claim that the former applies to genetic engineering.

(I agree that "anti-vaxxing" and some other things do merit the label "anti-science")

The US presidential election is probably the most fuzz about tiny political differences imaginable. If that guy Sanders was a serious candidate I would understand some of the fuzz. But Hilary against a centrist Republican? Seems like the choice between creamy and crunchy peanut butter not between peanut butter and pate de foie gras.

[Rinaldo]

I recall one Australian commenter here being mocked for her pronouncements on Europe. And she lived there! But where was I? Oh yes ...

That's why I'm curious about opinions from within the US, to get a sharper picture of what's going on. I'm just stating how it looks from over here, folks.

In any case it is not true that the gop is more antiscience than the dems. It depends on the science, and you can dig up quite a lot on both parties. Anti vax is generally a liberal disease here, as is the widespread rejection in some circles of sociobiology, nuclear power, and GMOs.  Examples abound. The gop oppose stem cell research to cure diseases and the dems oppose golden rice to prevent them.
The selective approach to science is quite widespread. In Canada the Green Party platform endorsed homeopathy.

As Jo498 pointed out, it's not about discussing nuanced topics like nuclear power or GMOs (I'm pro-both, just to be clear), I mean the outright dangerous stuff: lying about climate change being something scientists are divided about, support of schools choosing to teach creationism.. stuff like that. It paints a picture of a party pandering to the dumb.