Postscript to Minor Rant on Conspiracy Theories

Blog Song for the Moment

Angelo Badalamenti, "Dance of the Dream Man," Twin Peaks (1990)

Perhaps some of the few who read this blog may wonder why I often have a knee-jerk reaction to conspiracy theories of this sort, and why I rarely can keep my satirical scorn in check.  I have been asking that of myself today, and I think I've boiled the answer down to these points.

1) A significant part of my occupation and vocation is research and writing (though I've done more of the former than the latter), as well as passing on my learning about research methods and writing to students.  The conspiracy theories that get passed on to my Facebook page, or that I run across while wandering through the web, violate the rules of evidence and logic that govern my work  (admittedly, not always successfully).  Anecdotal evidence is not sufficient; nor are generalizations from an individual experience.  Claims about this or that should be based on two or more sources.  Sources should be read with their origins and context in mind (not only who produced it, but for what, under what circumstances, for what audience, etc.).  So theories about things such as President Obama's origins, or his intentions, that are based on evidence ripped out of context, or are based on syllogistic logic, won't get the time of day from me.  Actually, I consider them an effrontery.  Fear-mongering without merit.  Hence my mild outrage.

2) An idiosyncratic reason: I immediately discount any conspiracy theory that I've noticed before in the history of our country, e.g., dangerous, diseased, immoral immigrants; a non-Christian fifth column in the country (Catholics, communists, Muslims); the US succumbing to some other power, whether a secretive elite, those Rothschilds, the Trilateral Commission, or the UN.

3) Another idiosyncratic reason: I also tend to dismiss claims made by pundits or bloggers who affix "Dr." before their name, often a PhD not related to their topic at hand, a sign of intellectual insecurity to me, and an effort to legitimize otherwise shoddy reporting and investigation.

4) But more important, these conspiracy theories distract us from real problems and challenges at hand. Think of all the intellectual energy spent on them rather than current issues such as balancing civil liberties with national security (Congress just renewed the Executive's foreign surveillance powers), or assuring long-term economic stability while addressing grievous economic stress in the here and now (the "fiscal cliff"), or reconciling the claims of marginalized groups with the values of the majority (e.g. gay rights).

All that said, it's not just been President Obama's race that has encouraged them (though clearly many of the theories about him share the premise that he's not one of us, not a part of "real America" as Sarah Palin put it).  There have been small cabals of the powerful that have done measurable damage to our polity, economy, and foreign affairs--I'm thinking Vietnam, Watergate, the Savings and Loan crisis, the Iran-Contra affair, the Enron debacle, as well as the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  I imagine some think, well, if that can happen, why not this more grandiose "X" conspiracy theory?  The difference is, though, these were ill-advised or ill-intentioned policy choices, ones challenged rather quickly, though not ameliorated very well at all.

And finally, I realize that there are left-wing conspiracy theories, too, that are equally specious. Off the top of my head--Oliver Stone's JFK assassination as attempted military coup (JFK), the US empire engineers everything bad in the world (e.g., Empire's Workshop), to the alleged sympathy of the Bush II administration towards right-wing Christians advocating theocracy (here, for example).

So, professor that I am, I'm asking those who repeat conspiracy theories--please do your homework.

MoJo's summary of Obama conspiracy theories

Blog Song for the Moment

Tom Waits, What's He Building in There?  Mule Variations (1999)

A couple of months ago, Mother Jones created a venn diagram summarizing all the wingnut conspiracy theories about Obama (below, or you can access the original article here)
 
My favorite: President Obama is actually a "lizard overlord" (just can't believe people buy this--clearly, he's an aardvark).

MJ could have added the viral rumor that the Obama administration handed China "eminent domain" rights in the US as collateral for debt owned by China (another one that's obviously untrue--the evidence is that all the Chinese restaurants are actually the collateral).

Or there's the one about Obama's intentions to give up US sovereignty to the UN (intentions?  It's already happened folks!  We're already duped!  That's the power of Obama.  Don't look into his eyes the next time you see him on TV unless you've covered your head with foil.)

Letter to Governor Snyder: Please Veto SB 59

Dear Governor Snyder,

I urge you to veto Senate Bill 59, recent legislation permitting Michigan gun owners to carry concealed arms in public places.

I teach at Grand Valley State University, and in no way will I feel safer with armed amateurs around me--I'll instead feel more insecure.  The eight hours of extra training proposed in the legislation hardly eases my mind.  The undependable benefit of an armed amateur stopping a mass slaying, itself a minute possibility, does not match the costs of multiplying the chances of accidental or intentional gun violence on campus (I'm thinking: alcohol + irritability over grades or noisy neighbors or just the angst of youth + gun = possible horrible result).  A 2011 New York Times article surveyed the data on the relationship between crime and concealed weapons in states with permissive laws: “...Ian Ayres and John J. Donohue, economists and law professors, concluded that the best available data and modeling showed that permissive right-to-carry laws, at a minimum, increased aggravated assaults.”  As well, the article further reports, loose oversight of the law in places such as North Carolina has resulted in a spate of violence by permit-holders with records of felonies, substance abuse, and mental illness (Michael Luo, “Guns in Public, Out of Sight,” December 26, 2011).

More generally, this law means we both succumb to fear and increase it, hardly the basis for a healthy civil society.  I agree with Jill Leporte's point made in an April 2012 New Yorker piece ("Battleground America"):

Gun-control advocates say the answer to gun violence is fewer guns. Gun-rights advocates say that the answer is more guns: things would have gone better, they suggest, if the faculty at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Chardon High School had been armed. That is the logic of the concealed-carry movement; that is how armed citizens have come to be patrolling the streets. That is not how civilians live. When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left.

Please, Governor, do not give in to those who think the answer to social ills is a gun, to those who have twisted the ideal of liberty into a right to assuage their individual, and often exaggerated, insecurity with concealed weapons, and thereby contribute to public insecurity.

Sincerely,

Andrew Schlewitz

Why, God, oh why another mass murder? Because He's peeved...

In the wake of the news of the horrific mass slaying Friday in Newtown, Connecticut, I saw this image posted on Facebook:

My reaction was to think that whoever was posing as God here must think God's pretty weak and capricious.  Despite his power, he can't get into secular schools, and since he can't, it's people's fault if they suffer a horrific tragedy.  Talk about 'blaming the victim.'  And it seems grotesque to me to think that God would make the killing and traumatization of a school and community--which no doubt included many of his believers--an object lesson for the rest of us.

But maybe I'm wrong.  The author of the universe, the all-powerful God, according to the far-right evangelical, Bryan Fischer, will not go where his invitation has been revoked, not because he's a vampire, but because he's courteous. There is a strict etiquette, after all, governing divine providence:

We kicked God out of our public school system.  And I think God would say to us, 'Hey, I'll be glad to protect your children, but you gotta invite me back into your world first. I’m not going to go where I’m not wanted. I am a gentleman.  You know, I think back to when I was in elementary school, we had prayer in schools, and we...didn't...need...guns. I'm gonna repeat that. Back when we had prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments in schools, we...did...not...need...guns! (you can find this excerpt here, about eight minutes into the broadcast)

A more well-known and sedate evangelical, Mike Huckabee, agreed, in a Fox News interview:

“We ask why there’s violence in our schools, but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools...Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

I suppose I should be used to this by now.  Chatting with Pat Robertson on the 700 Club, the late Jerry Falwell blamed 9/11 on "the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way..."  Pastor John Hagee, infamous endorser of John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, told Fresh Air's Terry Gross that Hurricane Katrina was the "judgment of God" on a city that had a "level of sin offensive to God." And, turning back to the 700 Club, Pat Robertson attributed the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti to a Haitian deal with the devil back during the revolt against the French at the beginning of the 19th century.

So the logic here is that when a people disobey God's will--that is, do not follow fundamentalist Christian tenets--then God visits them with natural disasters or mass slayings, or permits them to occur.  Conversely, then, the more prevalent fundamentalist Christianity is in a given community, or among a people, there should be fewer disasters and mass slayings.  There should be fewer violent casualties in general.

If true, then why do Cubans, under a harshly secular communist regime, suffer significantly less from hurricanes and tropical storms then nearby Guatemala, where evangelicalism is flourishing? (See report on Cuba here, and news story on Guatemala here).  Why do Western European countries, far more secular than the US, experience far fewer mass slayings and gun-related deaths than the US?  As the Washington Post's Ezra Klein noted, "15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last fifty years took place in the United States. . .in second place is Finland, with two entries."  And as is obvious in the numbers below, there's a lot more bloody gunplay in the US than in countries that former presidential aspirant, Rick Santorum, once described as "dead from a faith perspective."

Country                   Homicide Rate by Firearms (per 100,000)
Belgium                     0.68
Denmark                    0.51
England/Wales           0.07
Finland                       0.45
France                        0.06
Germany                    0.19
Netherlands                0.33
Norway                      0.05
Portugal                      0.41
Spain                          0.20
Sweden                      0.41
United States              2.97
Source: The Guardian "Gun Homicides and Gun Ownership by Country"

I suppose, though, that a theology that poses a vindictive divine providence doesn't require empirical support.  After all, there is that convenient rebuttal: God works in mysterious ways.  And it's not a surprise that this kind of perspective on God's character should be prevalent among some Christians, like Fischer and Huckabee, who take a literalist approach to the Bible.  Think about how Moses had to talk God out of destroying his people for their idolatry (Exodus 32: 7-14), or how God helped the ancient Hebrews slaughter tens of thousands in their conquest of the Promised Land (Jericho, among other examples in the book of Joshua).  Or there's Jephthah vowing to God that, in exchange for divine help in the battlefield against the Ammonites, he will sacrifice the first thing he sees when he returns home.  God helps him win, and the first thing he sees turns out to be his daughter.  And he fulfills his vow (Judges 11: 29-40).  Really, the body-count at the hands of God or his human instruments is pretty incredible.

I know, though, that there are other sides to God's character in the Bible--his mercy and lovingkindness extolled in Psalms 145, for example, or his commitment to what today we would call social justice (see my favorite prophet, Amos), and there is, of course, the God of the New Testament, and the repeated lessons in the Gospels and the Epistles about loving one another, and being vehicles of God's love: "A new commandment I give to you, Jesus said, "that you love one another, even as I have loved you" (John 13:34), "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13), "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12: 31), or the well-known passage from 1 Corinthians 13, "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous..."

And I am sure that Christians such as Fischer and Huckabee would not reduce God to moments where his providence allegedly results in slaughter.  I imagine they would agree with this evangelical's take:

It is true that the Bible contains graphic stories of sin, evil, and death. But it also includes the overarching grand story of love, redemption, and grace. It showcases a God who asks us to not criticize Him about His acts of justice, but instead One who kindly encourages us to come alongside Him and grieve over a world that has misused the gift of freedom given it to do wrong instead of right. When that happens, and God acts in His righteousness, the world discovers that consequences exist for evil behavior, which is something the prophet Isaiah speaks to: “At night my soul longs for You, Indeed, my spirit within me seeks You diligently; for when the earth experiences Your judgments the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness” (Isaiah 26:9, excerpt from "Is the God of the Old Testament a Merciless Monster," by Robin Schumacher).

Still, when Christians turn calamities such as the Sandy Hook school massacre into a proof, unverifiable though it is, of their religious critique, I am not chastened, much less edified.  I hear only a self-righteous, smug 'This is what you get and deserve for not agreeing with my particular religion.'

But I am grateful for the many Christians I know who do not share this smugness. I don't share the faith, but appreciate how they live out theirs, and I'll close with words of Paul Duris, a Foursquare pastor and my brother-in-law, posted on Facebook last Friday:

This is a day of mourning for all of us. I feel numb. But I've been thinking about the words from Romans 12:21, "Do not be overcome by evil...overcome evil with good." We can't stop hate, but we can be the ones that do good. We can raise the bar of kindness and love with the next person we talk to. We can be the ones that overcome evil with good.

TWINKIES! Our hope and our despair...

In awe of the many syllogistic paroxysms I've heard and read since the re-election of President Obama, here's my paean to the genre:

The Twinkie was born in 1930--THE SAME YEAR THE NAZIS CAME IN SECOND PLACE IN GERMAN NATIONAL ELECTIONS!  The same year the world was reeling from the '29 crash and the Great Depression.

Now get this.  The Twinkie died in 2012--THE SAME YEAR OBAMA WON REELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY!  The same year the world is still recovering from the 2008 Great Recession.  It's clear, we're about to fall under nationalist socialist rule.  And the fact that so many Blacks and Latinos voted for a redistributive candidate means the commie Chinese are not far behind.

Folks, we are doomed unless we can revive Twinkies.  We are doomed unless our allies in Congress can show that the lack of available Twinkies led to the breakdown of intelligence that permitted the Benghazi attack.  We are doomed unless our allies in Congress show that it was lack of Hostess products that led General Petraeus into infidelity and Ambassador Susan Rice into what we Twinkie-loving people suspect is a Watergate-level affair.

And we all know that Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been stockpiling Twinkies, Ding-Dongs, and Ho-Hos, for years, damn them (fortunately, Colombia has enough Ring-Dings, for now, to hopefully deter the neighboring narco-terrorists).

Speaking of narco-terrorists, I can't seem to find the stash of vicodin that I carefully placed with my last Twinkies.  No doubt Obamacare's to blame. . .along with all those unknown "dozens of black people" that voted in Maine, or maybe it's those 78-80 communists Florida Congressman Allen West has identified as serving alongside him.  Obama won re-election.  My feet are swollen.  Must be a connection...

Republican Sour Grapes

According to the NY Times, Romney told his fund-raisers and big donors that he lost the election because Obama gave huge "gifts" to key constituencies.  Latinos got the 'Dream Act for kids,' the young got healthcare till their 26, young women got contraceptives. . .blah, blah, bullshit.

Give me a break.  Young women voted for Obama just because the Affordable Care Act (ACA) orders access to contraception?  What's the message there to those conservative donors, that floozies sunk Romney's campaign?

The ACA lured minority voters?  This is just a variation on the 47% comment--whining that he can't win because so many Americans don't want Romney's vision, they just want stuff from the government, which the dastardly Obama administration dispenses in exchange for votes.

Mr. Romney lost the youth vote in part because of his antipathy towards the rights of same-sex couples, the vote of many women because members of his party spouted remarkably ignorant things about rape and women's bodies, and he lost many Latinos because he pandered to nativists with talk of self-deportation.

But why didn't he spin a more positive conversation with the money? According to Pew survey data, in comparison to McCain in 2008, he gained some points with whites, men, white Catholics, and Jews.  He even gained among 18-29 year-olds, which makes his comment about losing the youth vote a little strange, but l stopped long ago expecting consistency and accuracy from him.

You say you want a polarization...well, you know...

A recent Pew Survey reports growing partisan polarization over the Bush and Obama years.  That is, over time, a growing number of people identifying as Democrats or Republicans strongly disagree with positions held by those of the other party.  For example, in 1987 23% fewer Republicans than Democrats agreed with the statements "The government should take care of people who cannot take care of themselves" and "The government should help more needy people, even if it means going deeper in debt (social safety net)."  This year there is a 41% difference.

From "Partisan Polarization
Surges in Bush, Obama Years"

And as you can see in the chart to the left, partisan gaps have grown greatly over issues of the environment, and immigration.  These changes result not from growing Democratic support for the environmental regulation and comprehensive immigration reform, but because of sharp declines within the GOP ranks for these positions.

Conversely, the growing divisions over religiosity and social conservatism (i.e. "family values" positions) are due to changing attitudes among Democrats.  For example, in 1987 86% of Demos agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about marriage and family." That number dropped to 60% in 2012.

The survey does not explain why this polarization has occurred.  One reason could be the decline of our two main parties, their weakening ability to pull in new supporters and hold on to their present ones.  Though the numbers bump up and down raggedly over the past twenty years, the percentage of people identifying as Republicans has dropped from 31 to 24% while Democrats has inched down from 33 to 32%.  Independents have surged, from 29 to 38%.

This may mean that those who do join a party, or remain it, are more likely to be stalwart supporters of key party positions--the Pew survey does say that people within each party have become more "ideologically homogenous."  However, majorities in both parties, particularly the Republicans, are unhappy with their party's advancement of their traditional goals (71% of GOPers, and 58% of Demos). What do we make of that--having more like-minded people in the party means a more dysfunctional organization?

CNN pundit Fareed Zakaria blames four things: 1) redistricting, which creates safe seats for many House members, who then need only appeal to their base to get re-elected rather than reach out to the center; 2) small groups of party activists who take over the primary campaigns, pushing candidates to more extreme positions; 3) Congress's "sunshine laws," which opened up committee deliberations to the public, though in practice it opened it to those who pay the most attention to the legislative--well-financed lobbyists, whose carrots and sticks make it hard for bipartisan, compromise legislation; and 4) the new media, which feeds off and fuels polarization.

Sensible reasons, though we've had safe seats for generations--most incumbents win reelection (over 80% since 1964 in House races, see "Reelection Rates Over the Years" at opensecrets.org).  So I'm not sure why gerrymandering matters so much more now.  As for the second reason, I think Zakaria is really talking about the impact of the Tea Party in GOP primaries, and that begs the question (as Zakaria himself says) of what explains the rise of the Tea Party, and whether it's a symptom of polarization, or one of its causes (or both?).  I find his third and fourth reasons more convincing, though people have been able to find media material--conspiracy theory stuff--to support their extremist positions before the internet (think of the anti-Catholic Know-Nothings back in the 1850s, or the John Birchers a century later).  Still, the internet's speed, its delivery of news and opinion that match one's predilections, and its sheer glossiness, probably leads some (or many) to confuse hype with authenticity and content.

I guess where I'm headed here is that I remain mystified over the origins of polarization. Maybe because I am a part of it, and have contributed something to it with this blog which has been very critical of some conservative positions and people, and of Christian fundamentalism, among other things.  It's not that my views have gone further left.  I score the same on political ideology surveys as I did in my early twenties.  And I argued with people I disagreed with back then--it was the beginning of the so-called "Reagan Revolution," accompanied by the rise of the "Moral Majority."  Maybe I'm glossing the past, but I don't remember a lot of acrimony in those arguments. I don't remember the anger, despite, or disgust that I feel today about certain beliefs, movements, and public figures.  I thought as I aged I would mellow, either becoming more centrist and pragmatic along with my fellow baby-boomers, or learning how to deal with political differences with more equanimity, more charity.  But I've become more strident, more disposed to defend my positions and criticize those of others.

I could say that the Bush years radicalized me, including the start of my academic career in a small liberal arts college with numerous vocal neo-conservative faculty and students, in a very conservative part of Indiana. It was if the world around me was daring me not to say anything.

Or maybe I'm just the flip side of the Tea Party folks. Repeatedly disappointed by their party's inability to rein in spending, or move on social issues, they got tired, irritable, especially when the Democrats seemed like a juggernaut immediately after the 2008 elections, taking the presidency and enjoying majorities in both the Senate and House (boy, that juggernaut turned out to be an empty shell).

Similarly, I endured eight years of Reagan and four more of Bush, Sr.  Lots of disappointment during the eight years of Clinton, starting with the failed effort to reform healthcare, and ending with his lies about an affair (though I hardly think that merited an impeachment circus).  And then eight years of Bush, Jr., who for me was far worse than Reagan. The Iran-Contra scandal, as stinky as it was, doesn't stack up to two wars, one in Afghanistan that turned into an ill-advised nation-building exercise; the other in Iraq based on false pretenses (and I'm still flummoxed by all the people around me, especially Democrats, who initially went along with it).  Finally, Obama encouraged high expectations, but ran into the wall of GOP filibusters, and then the turnover of the House to Republicans in 2010.  And though his administration does not use the term "war on terror," it has continued many of the Bush era practices in prosecuting this war.

I realize, of course, that relatively few people share all my views on economic, social, and foreign policy.  And given that I'm far more attached to the ideas of egalitarianism and communitarianism than freedom and individualism, I'm bound to be disappointed in a country that celebrates the latter far more than the former.

Or perhaps I'm just caught up in one of the cycles of US history.  We've had polarized moments before.  There was that civil war.  Strife over labor rights in the decades around the turn of the 19th century.  Vast disagreements over whether to enter what we now call the First World War.  Then the civil rights movement and Vietnam.  Maybe we think our particular moment is unprecedented because we're living in it.  Maybe it's a collective senility--it's never been like this before!

But if it's a cycle, that's cold comfort.  These are noisy, angry times, and disheartening for this political scientist. And I am a part of that noise and anger.  In response to a local Republican candidate's email, I responded: "I will never vote for a party who selected Sarah Palin as a VP, and that panders to anti-science loonies and the Christian far right."  Yeah, I'm polarized, but not happy with how I'm dealing with it.