Whiskey Fire

Breaking! Must Credit Breitbart!!!

by Ripley

 

 

Look, it's tough, I get it. The election is long gone and things didn't go they way we wanted. But, like it or not, Donald J. Trump is the new Vice President of Russia.

I'm going to keep going to work and do my best. I'm going to love my lady and try to laugh and enjoy Life. We just have to keep keeping on, nyet?

Rip -

 

 

The House Is Divided; Can't Stand It

Lithwick is important on the Sessions nomination. He'll be confirmed, because the modern GOP is opposed to letting black people vote, and his whole job today was to not say that out loud, and the whole historical point of the Senate is to drape pomp over bigotry: he didn't say anything egregiously true, so yay a win for him and Bilbo's ghost, and God fuck us all. 

But then there's this:

Whitehouse suggested that lists were already circulating suggesting there might be purges or demotions of certain career appointees in the Justice Department. Whitehouse wondered whether Sessions would have a problem with career lawyers “with secular beliefs,” having in the past criticized department attorneys for being secular. Sessions replied that he has used that language about secular attorneys to differentiate between people who recognize objective “truth” and those who take positions “in which truth is not sufficiently respected.”

Whitehouse replied, with a leading, and perhaps slightly conclusory question: “And a secular person has just as good a claim to understanding the truth as a person who is religious, correct?” At which point Sessions responded, “Well, I’m not sure.” For a few seconds the Senate chamber seemed to go completely silent.

Fucked up, to be sure.

But good.

Let's call the question. Should these United States be a secular democracy, or... this disgusting Trumpenstein nightmare of rapacity, authoritarianism, lying, hypocrisy, nonsense, and graft, all apologized for if one is sufficiently "churched"? 

I keep trying to game out how the US survives as a nation adhering to even vague approximations of liberal democratic norms in, say, my children's lifetimes. Or else the next time I want coffee. Fucked if I can solve that pancake. 

A Salty Salute to the Russian General

So this is now a thing, From Russia with Pee. 

I'm cautious about reports that cannot be corroborated, because I'm a Trained Scholar, etc. And there is, yes, far more substantially damning-if-true stuff in the document than the urinating prostitute anecdotes.

But in terms of estimating lasting political damage, this particular allegation seems bound to inflict far more bloody schrapnel than the facts in the public record: which, in a more perfect world, one would imagine would be widely considered sufficiently disgusting all on their own -- the motherfucker settled a $25 million dollar fraud lawsuit just in November! And that's just for pussy-grabbing openers. I'm sort of reminded of what annoyed me so much about the "Bush planned 9/11" conspiracy garbage back in the day. Why did we even NEED conspiracy theories about 9/11? The public record was already damning for Bush on its own. Likewise, one hardly needs to Siberian spelunk for Trumpian character flaws. 

Which is not to say that the pee-claims and everything alleged about Trump and the Russkies might not be true. I frankly believe that they are, but that's just a guess, and I'm as susceptible to confirmation bias as anyone else (except I'm smarter than YOU, of course, you neoliberal redsnouts). It's just to say that who knows? Only the Russkies, and you can't trust 'em.

But this has nothing to do with the stone fact that Americans, like everyone else, don't care about graft or treason, but they are liable to be endlessly amused by prostitution stories involving urine. If anything gets this fucking creep impeached, it'll be the pee. For human reasons that J. Joyce, as usual, correctly diagnosed in regards to the tale of Buckley and the Russian General:

Buckley, [Joyce] explained, was an Irish soldier in the Crimean War who drew a bead on a Russian general, but when he observed his splendid epaulettes & decorations, he could not bring himself to shoot. After a moment, alive to his duty, he raised his rifle again, but just then the general let down his pants to defecate. The sight of his enemy in so helpless & human a plight was too much for Buckley, who again lowered his gun. But when the general prepared to finish the operation with a piece of grassy turf, Buckley lost all respect for him & fired.

Bigly School

There have been a few things published about what the Sir Lout Administration means as regards higher education policy. But as it happens, nobody knows. We knew a lot about what Clinton wanted to do, but basically all we know about Sir Lout is that he is all about "the opposite of that nasty woman," what congressional Republicans want to do, and this ghastly thing from last May. 

Sam Clovis, the national co-chair and policy director of Trump's campaign, outlined for Inside Higher Ed the ideas that the presumptive GOP nominee is preparing to put forth. While final decisions have not been made on when the ideas will be formally unveiled, not to mention many details worked out, Clovis said the Trump campaign expects higher education to be a major issue in the fall general election.

It wasn't. But anyway, here's Clovis, who I guess is still going to have something to bray about as regards the Sir Lout Official Higher Education Strategy, insofar as Sir Lout can even be bothered to consider it. The May IHE piece is, I'm sure, destined to become something of a historical curiosity to show. Have a drink first. I did.

First off, Clovis made clear that the Trump campaign will fight and not endorse Hillary Clinton's proposal for debt-free public higher education or the Bernie Sanders plan for free public higher education. The response on those ideas will be "unequivocally no," Clovis said. "How do you pay for that? It's absurd on its surface."

Further, Trump will also reject President Obama's proposals for a state-federal partnership to make community college free for new high school graduates. Community colleges are "damn near free" now, and "almost anyone can afford community college," he said.

You could pay for it pretty easily, and ha ha ha no, not almost anyone can pay for community college -- even with existing governmental assistance programs. 

Many of the ideas on which the Trump campaign is working involve a complete overhaul of the federal student loan system, moving the government out of lending and restoring that role to private banks, as was the case before President Clinton partially and President Obama fully shifted loan origination from private lenders to the government. "We think it should be marketplace and market driven," he said. Local banks should be lending to local students, he said, but colleges should be playing a role in determining loan worthiness on factors that go beyond family income.

This is basic GOP ideology, and also nuts. There are no such fucking thing as "local banks" anymore. Public colleges cannot and should not run credit checks on 18-year-olds -- that is a massive transfer of cash to the private sector. It's a huge mess for private schools as well. The reason for ending the private lending system in the first place was that it was a predatory system that failed. So, par for Sir Loutism.

Oh, and "factors that go beyond family income" is code. 

Further, he said that all colleges should have "skin in the game" and share the risk associated with student loans. Many in Congress (and not just Republicans) have voiced support for that idea. But many Democrats have argued that some institutions -- historically black colleges or community colleges, for example -- should be exempt, given their histories of educating many students from low-income families who may not have the financial resources of others. But Clovis said that the principle of colleges sharing risk must apply to all institutions.

The message to community colleges and HBCs? You're fired.

Further, he said that the risk needs to be substantial enough to change the way colleges decide whether to admit students, and which programs they offer.

So much for open admission. 

And this is fun:

And these reforms would make it legitimate for colleges and banks to make decisions in part on students' prospective majors and their likely earnings after graduation, he said.

"If you are going to study 16th-century French art, more power to you. I support the arts," Clovis said. "But you are not going to get a job."

A college should factor that in when deciding on a student's loan eligibility, and the requirement that colleges share the risk would be a powerful incentive to do so, Clovis added.

Oh my sweet Irish buttocks. If you can read 16th-century French and can competently discuss the culture of that place and time, you are one very smart motherfucker and would be hired in one fucking second by any company desperately needing someone highly literate in two languages who is capable of very advanced critical thinking. You will be turning down jobs, probably because you will have no desire to listen to cretins all day.

And Clovis said this does not mean the Trump campaign is against the liberal arts. "The liberal arts education is the absolute foundation to success in life," Clovis said, adding that he hoped business and engineering and health professions and education students would include liberal arts courses in their college educations. But it is a different thing altogether, Clovis said, to focus on such fields. "If you choose to major in the liberal arts, there are issues associated with that."

Indeed. If you choose such a major, you might just learn how to spot obvious logical fallacies. And what good would THAT do you. Of course, it is different for the swans, as opposed to the ducklings:

There may be colleges that decide they are comfortable backing loans for students who study the liberal arts. A prestigious college could legitimately decide that anyone it graduates -- regardless of major -- will do well in life, and so go ahead with approving the borrowing. "If you go to Harvard, you can major in anything you want, and once you get in the door, you'll be OK," Clovis said, so such a college might be fine with its students borrowing to study the liberal arts. "But not all colleges are in the same system," he said.

Right.

You know, I thought I had as many "fuck yous" stockpiled as I'd imagined I'd ever require. But now I fear a shortage. 

Potions, Pills, and Medicines

One of the blessings of not paying attention to bloggy shite has been not knowing anymore what internetty sewage has plummeted from Glenn Reynold's poop sluice. But now I'm back and so I risked a peek at the motherfucker's prattling about why it's great we elected a fascist shithead, and Great Snot! what a dick.

Here are the Insta-blessings of the Trumpanista regime: It

(1) Killed off dynastic politics, at least for now. If Hillary had won, 4 of the last 5 presidents would have come from two families. That’s not healthy.

Donald Trump will free us from malignant dynastic politics? DONALD FUCKING "I INHERITED EVERYTHING AND WENT REPEATEDLY BROKE" TRUMP will do this? Even as he nurses his own loathsome brood on the fell meats of their privilege?

Also there is a difference between a "wife" and a "son" as regards how "families" work.

(2) Kept Hillary out of the White House. She’s amazingly crooked even by DC standards, and amazingly inept even by DC standards as well. Debacles galore have been prevented by keeping her out. Plus, a Clinton presidency would have allowed the completion of the Obama Administration’s weaponization of the federal government and possibly ensured one-party rule for decades. And at the very least, it would have allowed the sorry gang that Obama and Clinton brought in (go read the Podesta emails!) to bore in for four to eight more years.

This would be insane, untrue, and bullshit even if the GOP had nominated someone other than a man who SETTLED A MULTIMILLION DOLLAR FRAUD CASE the day after the fucking election.

Those two reasons were reason enough to back Trump. But now let’s look at what’s happened since election night: (3) The Mattis appointment. In one swoop, a big start toward fixing the military that Obama turned from warriors into social-justice warriors. Plus, a big blow to PC culture in general.

This only makes sense to idiots.

(4) The Carrier deal. Sure, everybody hates it — except for the voters. But it’s a promise kept, and one that makes American working-class folks feel like, finally, somebody cares. And it’s rich to see people who didn’t bat an eye at Solyndra going ballistic about $7 million over 10 years.

"Libertarians" always "bat eyes" at authoritarians. Without fail. (Solyndra! Holy shit.)

5) Crushing the media’s sense of self-importance: They thought they were going to hand this election to Hillary. Now they’re realizing just how few people like or trust them, while Trump bypasses them using Twitter and YouTube. As I’ve said before, in the post-World War II era, the press has enjoyed certain institutional privileges based on two assumptions: (1) That it’s very powerful; and (2) That it will exercise that power responsibly, for the most part. Both assumptions have been proven false in this election cycle. Like many of the postwar institutional accommodations, this one will be renegotiated under Trump. It’s past time. After getting spanked in 2004 over RatherGate, the press realized with Katrina that if they all converged on the same lies they could still move the needle. Now they can’t.

This is an absolute load of shit.

(6) China. Obama’s foreign policy has been disastrous. Trump has served notice to China that we’re not abandoning our allies on the Pacific Rim. That will be noticed elsewhere, too.

Hooray for belligerent ignorant Twitter diplomacy. Does Trump even know what a "Pacific Rim" is? Sad!

(7) The transition. It was supposed to be “chaos,” but it’s been smooth and obviously well-planned. This bodes well and, among those willing to pay attention beyond SNL sketches, is changing minds.

It is instructive to note the degree to which "Instapundit" demonstrates the truth that "libertarianism" is, always, ""Republican party propaganda," and nothing else.

Radical

Here's what kills me.

At a certain moment this last fall, I promised my 12-year-old daughter that a person who bragged about groping a woman without her permission could never become the president of the United States.

Fuck.

 

Marinus van der Lubbe, You're on in Five

Among the most predictable events of the next two years is a terrorist, or "terrorist," attack on a Trump property somewhere in the world, perhaps even in America.

The intention behind this attack will be the destruction of American democracy.

It will probably work, too.

If I were evil, that's how I'd play it. 

 

 

Electoral Cartilage

Just to point out something fundamental.

The Electoral College does the following:

1. It provides a structural advantage to rural states with majority white populations.
2. It elects the president, completely irrespective of the outcome of the popular vote.

Both of these points need to be kept in mind. 

Because you cannot say that the Electors are bound by the final Electoral Vote, and accept the basic logic of the Electoral College. Electors are as free to reject the Election Day outcome as regards the electoral vote as they are the popular vote. 

Hey, what was the original purpose of the Electoral College again? 

To prevent a hideously unqualified foolish demagogue in hock to an inimical foreign power to achieve executive power in such a fashion that it renders the entire constitutional apparatus of checks and balances irrelevant, antique, and useless?

Look back at every argument in favor of the Electoral College at the time, and suppose the principals were contemplating Donald Trump. 

This is piquant.

Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? 

A wildly corrupt fool, of whom there exists ample evidence of obeisance to a foreign power, is about to become president. 

I don't think this post will make any difference, but I will insist that if you argue that the EC needs must ratify the Election Day results, that is Some Bullshit. 

 

 

Whale

I grew up in NYC in the 1970s, and any whale in the Hudson back then would have surely developed evil superpowers from the toxic sludge and have mutated into an enigmatic quasi-villain character from the animated The Tick series (deep cut!).

But it appears activism and good government policy can in fact achieve good things.

For two years in a row, Dr. Dubroff said on Tuesday, she has spotted a whale swimming outside her living room window. Last year, she didn’t quite believe the sighting was real. But she saw a whale again on Saturday — and in the same spot again on Sunday — and news reports confirmed her hunch: The Hudson River has a resident humpback.

“It was general excitement and shock,” Dr. Dubroff, 39, said, “and how thrilling that a whale can be in the Hudson, based on what we see float by sometimes.”

Indeed, the Hudson, as scenic as it is, does not scream “whale habitat.” But experts say cleanup and conservation efforts have led to cleaner waters and an abundance of fish, amenities that have attracted at least one humpback whale to the river waters off Manhattan this month.

So that's nice.

Speaking of sewage, my return to the long, hard blog would not have been complete without the reminder that there exist on the Internet horrible psychotic assholes, and sometimes they link to you. I've always despised this idiot, who back in the day would regularly link approvingly, until one day I said that in Putin's Russia, gays get beat up. Then I was no longer fuckface's idea of a Good Leftist. Oh well!

Do the Collapse

Everything systemic and substantial and strong seems like it will last forever, until precisely the moment it all goes to shit. This is as true for ice sheets as it is for nation states.

So what would it take for the United States of America to fall apart, for the last trappings of democracy and civil society to shred and give way to anarchy or brute authoritarianism?

Probably not much, at this point.

I'm so old I remember 9/11. We as a nation did not react very well to that bad thing. We had the torture and the dumb wars and the overall lunacy.

In the immediate aftermath though I had a Dark Thought: suppose after the Towers fell and the Pentagon got hit, and etc., small groups of terrorists, you wouldn't need more than a score, did something incredibly easy -- legally bought some AR-15s or some similar shit, and then went around shooting up soft targets like shopping malls, synagogues, churches, main streets, regional airports, train stations, schools, you name it.

That sort of a tactic, I imagined, would have been devastating. The overreaction would have been fierce and overwhelming.

We would have fallen apart.

So surprise! In 2016, it turns out, you didn't need terrorism, you just needed the threat of a lady president for it to all go to shit.

Which is to say, a single act of terrorism on US soil under Trump, and that's all she wrote for the USA. We already don't have such pretty toys as majority rule or checks and balances. Are we as a nation mature enough to endure any external shocks?

Look at the person in the White House, at least part-time. Motherfucker thinks he won a reality show, his advisors are pig-ignorant fascists, there are no institutional checks on these maniacs, and the fucking W Bush administration looks like Weimar.

Oh, and also climate change.

There is no hope. None.

Fifty Eyes

On "Participation Trophies"

My stepdaughter is in her mid-twenties. She never got a "participation trophy." When she was a kid, she didn't really fit in -- oh boy, do I have stories. Turns out, gay kids had it rough.

My oldest son graduates high school this year. Honors in math and engineering. Was nearly driven to suicide his first year in our very nice local high school because he is who he is, geeky and gentle; he got into an alternative school and blossomed, and if you see him and his nerd girlfriend together now your heart will just melt from the cute. He never got a "trophy."

The "participation trophy" lie is all about "bring the pain to the weird kids."

Fuck you.

I want to say a little something that's long overdue/ The disrespect to women has got to be through

There are things that break your heart, things you don't see coming, and you can't even explain exactly why your gut got punched. This just makes me sad.

The latest visual manifestation of Trump's America comes from Adam Yauch Park, a playground named for the late Beastie Boy in the neighborhood he grew up in, Brooklyn Heights. On Friday afternoon a few photos surfaced on Twitter showing two swastikas painted on the children's playground equipment, along with the words: "Go Trump."

City Councilman Brad Lander tweeted a photo, adding, “Yet more hatred & anti-Semitism from Trump supporters." Lander says the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force and the Parks Department were on-site immediately, and the equipment will be repainted tonight.

We have reached out to the Beastie Boys and the Parks Department for further comment and will update if we hear back.

There have been a number of swastikas seen around the nation since Donald Trump was elected president, including at the New School earlier this week.

However this story plays out, it just brings home to me that America is sick, the bones of our nation are sick to the marrow.

There is a whole world of shit raining down, and I'll surely swing back soon to fury, but right now give me a day or so for grief.

 

 

Return to Normalcy

The President-elect of the United States of America bragged about his ability to grope women's genitals without their permission. 

That is a sentence that is true. 

Hey Darling

So I guess we're getting the band back together.

The GOP has all branches of government, except for a SC that is for the moment balanced, but won't be for long, because of a principle that would have not at all shocked the Founders, "Only White Guys Get to Decide." This is when I started writing on the Internets, the last time these shitful planets collided.

Whiskey Fire has existed since 2006. Before that it was Whiskey Ashes (this still holds up, I think, in spite of the r-word, which I'm embarrassed by), and before that, it was Metacomments. And before that it was Eschaton comments and a lot of hi-jinks that to my surprise actually attracted attention. 

The thing is, the world has changed. 

I don't suppose it is a surprise to anyone who has stuck around this long, but me, "Andrew Haggerty," is not exactly "Thers." "Thers," who started in the 1990s on various message boards as "Thersites," was deliberately foulmouthed, scabrous, uncharitable, and unpleasant. I can be all of these! But I can also be other things. The major problem in that moment, as I saw it, was that especially after 9/11, it was considered by Polite Official Culture, including Media Culture, that it was Shocking and Rude to point out that these patriarchal Republican authorities were bugshit nuts and proposing obviously doomed and destructive horseshit. 

As I said at the time, I am perhaps the only person who has ever said "fuck" on the internet as a conscious attempt to apply the lessons of a French sociologist, namely Pierre Bourdieu in Language and Symbolic Power, who observed that if you're excluded altogether from Official Discourse, you are "condemned to shocking outspokenness," so you might as well make the most of it. 

And back in the day, that had some efficacy.  

But I don't think that will work this time. 

What is the point of the strategic employment of vulgarity or obscenity in opposition to Trumpism? Trumpism is vulgar and obscene. 

So I guess I'll be spinning my wheels a bit until I find my new rhetorical footing here. But I think "Thers" has to go. He is me. I love him. I will be too lazy to change him as my byline. But he is from the last battle. I'll have to adapt for the new conditions, to find the new place from where I can write my resistance. 

So from here on...

Call me "The Editors."

(KIDDING! Call me Andrew.)

 

 

It was a look/ That has driven me/ From the parade/ Left me alone/ Stinking and unafraid

Last night MollyI, who has been taking this shite harder than I have, because (1) she is a nicer person than I am, and (2) because she knows from being a highly competent woman getting shafted from jobs for which she is eminently qualified solely because of yahoo sexism, told me that she's worried about going down to DC for the Million Woman March. This is because that protest is scheduled for the day after the inauguration, and "the city will be full of Brownshirts."

She's not so much worried for herself.

Since we raised her right, my step-daughter of course wants to go. She's 26, wants to march with her gay homosexual partner, and is mouthy and feisty and pissed off. Then our daughter, who is 12, wants to go, because she is already mouthy and feisty and pissed off -- because she's in fucking middle school and already every girl her year knows not to put anything on the floor of her locker, because some snotty little boy will ass-grab. And that snotty little boy will get away with it. And Donald Fucking Trump is now president.

The boys want to go because even if they would sooner gargle hot lead than admit it, they love their mom and sisters dearly, and also it would be an Adventure, and also because they are shrewd enough to know they will get fed and might have a day off school.

But this is the rub:

MollyI is terrified because she might not be able to protect her kids, if we go.

This is not an unreasonable fear.

Trump rallies are indeed Brownshirty. It is known. Trumpite fanatics are rapacious and currently feel themselves uncorked. This is clear.

And you'd have to be even dumber than a Trumpite Facebook troll to think the police would keep you safe.

On the other hand, well, we went to the Iraq war protests; we knew those would not have any effect, but what was the alternative? Sometimes, as an American, your duty is to stand up and say "no." You can't just stay home. And as Americans, you can't just stay quiet because of the threat of physical intimidation. As soon as THAT happens, well, the trigger on the fascist gun has just been pulled, hasn't it? And if that happens, well, they're coming for you anyhow. 

So there's two sides.

Or not.

If we are in nation where one can very sincerely fear for the physical safety of their 12-year-old daughter as regards taking her along with you to a peaceful political event...

Why, we're fucked already!

Your Favorite Democracy Sucks

Well, fucknobble.

A lot of ink and other fluids have already been spilled over the reasons we now have to put up with this shite, but clearly it is mostly because I got busy with work and stopped updating. Whoopsie sorries all around.

I am not especially surprised at this outcome. Annoyed, sure. Aggrieved. Maybe a tad depressed! But not surprised. See, I've always firmly believed in American Exceptionalism, and here we have that particular concept pretty well frickin' crystallized. Other nations have been led by similar mean-spirited ignoramus angry sexist racist homophobic buffoons, but none of them so far have had the capacity to launch multiple nuclear missiles because someone called him a dickhead on Twitter. Yay us.

I could catalogue the other ways we're fucked, but you know these.

As to who on the Democratic side, or the Left, is to blame, I'm only going to say this once, and then we're going to just let it go.

It was your fault.

You fucker.

It was my fault.

Me fucker.

FUCK ME. This was our job, and whatever it is we tried to do, we fucked it up, even if most Americans broadly agree with us. This is not to say there weren't and aren't major structural obstacles. The Electoral College is a big one. Was this in YOUR top ten list for the last eight years? Wasn't on mine. Black voter suppression? I didn't do enough. The outrageous refusal to even consider a sitting president's Supreme Court nominee? I was kind of mum.

And when I say "we," and "me," I mean YOU TOO, fellow Online Left. And by that I mean my cohort, the community and ethos that was the nascent and then burgeoning and then strong Left Blogosphere during the last Idiot Interregnum. What the fuck happened to us?

Treat that as a Discussion Question for the comments: but here is a rule. The spirit of Whiskey Fire has always been "fuck you," but for this post, start with "fuck me."

If you call yourself a liberal, leftist, whatever -- start your comment with FUCK ME. Like I did, above. This is not about donning a goddamn hairshirt-- it's about what comes next. Feel free to give hell to someone else, but not until you've raised it on yourself.

If you are NOT a liberal, leftist, whatever, well, bite me. You idiots have just made the White House a dumpster; liars of Trump's caliber produce outcomes of Trump's caliber, namely, failure. The past is prelude, and Trump will leave behind a smoking crater and you'll be signing him checks you can't understand. So fuck off. But feel free to comment, who cares.

Nino Dead

So Antonin Scalia is dead, and fuck him, that ancient unpleasant angry-assed bigot.

And there's this:

So...

GOP TO BLACK VOTERS: THE BLACK PRESIDENT IS NOT ALLOWED TO NAME THE REPLACEMENT FOR A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE WHO VOTED TO MAKE IT LEGAL TO SUPPRESS THE BLACK VOTE.

I predict massive black voter turnout this year, whoever gets the Dem nomination.

 

I Got Bulldog Skin

Here is some ripe poop from the WaPo. Headline:

Conspiracy theories aren’t just for conservatives

It's gonna suck... subhed:

Who doesn’t love a good conspiracy theory? Liberals, that’s who.

It's gonna suck so very hard. Here are quotes. They are dumb.

Take Princeton economist Paul Krugman who ominously warns that:

Unlike the crazy conspiracy theories of the left—which do exist, but are supported only by a tiny fringe—the crazy conspiracy theories of the right are supported by important people: powerful politicians, television personalities with large audiences.

Krugman makes a fair point: in moderation conspiracy theories may show healthy skepticism, but in excess they can erode the trust needed for states to fulfill their basic functions and warp the respect for evidence necessary for sound decision making.

Yet Krugman is mostly wrong that nuttiness is found mainly among conservatives, and his misperception actually reveals a great deal about U.S. politics.

The "Krugman makes a fair point" line is bizarre, because it has no relation to Krugman's actual point, which has nothing to do with "moderation" as regards "conspiracy theories."

Krugman's point, which is rather self-evident, is that only one major US political party, and the social and cultural institutions that cradle it, is energetically opposed to a very specific branch of scientific inquiry: climate science. (Embarrassments as regards evolution are here also rife.) Is there a parallel as regards the leadership of the Democratic Party, its leaders, its "important people," its "powerful politicians," its "television personalities with large audiences" in relation to a specific branch of scientific inquiry, to what "powerful GOP politicians" have to say about climate change if they want to get elected to office and stay there?

No. There is fucking not.

The authors of this abominable article are smug little shits, very pleased with themselves that they are not icky like Krugman, who has chosen a side, the beastly little man. "Nuttiness"? All people who have a particular point of view are prone to "nuttiness"?

People of all political persuasions believe their views are objectively right and others hold positions that are arbitrary and asinine. Daniel Kahan finds that partisan commitments make people look for evidence to justify their conclusions. Even when, say, liberals come up with a correct answer, it may not have been because of their high esteem for evidence. They just got lucky. The implication is that people use data like drunks use lampposts: more for support than illumination. Columnist Ezra Klein concurs with Kahan, although he points out the large numbers of Republicans who refuse to accept climate science and wonders whether there is a liberal equivalent to climate change denial.

Oho, Daniel Kahan has "found" things out, by my stars and left shiny testicle.

Go ahead -- click that "they just got lucky" link up there. Read the following text. Enjoy Daniel Kahan coming across like a twerp and dickhead. And not addressing the point that of the two major political parties, only the one towards the left has a political and social leadership not hostile to scientific analysis. And beyond that... Christ, even Young Ezra figured this out. 

So let's look at the idiotic social science in the WaPo article.

So are all Americans created equal when it comes to fearing collusion and conspiracies? Our recent research suggests that they are. As part of a 2012 national survey, we asked respondents about the likelihood of voter fraud as an explanation if their preferred presidential candidate did not win. Fifty percent of Republicans said it would be very or somewhat likely, compared to 44 percent of Democrats. This contradicts claims by Jonathan Chait that Republicans believe in electoral conspiracy theories far more than Democrats do.

This is breathtakingly stupid. Only one party has decided to go out of its way to pretend that "voter fraud" is a serious issue, and has thus decided to press for strict "Voter ID laws." And given these conspiratorial pressures... damn fucking straight the GOP is systematically launching an attempt to suppress the voting rights of students, blacks, and the poor. Denying that is, in fact, irrational, Indeed: it is FUCKING irrational.

But here is the punchline.

In our survey, we also measured respondents’ underlying propensity to believe in conspiracy theories — that is, the general mindset that leads people to accept or reject conspiracy theories. We asked respondents whether they agreed with four statements:

• “Much of our lives are being controlled by plots hatched in secret places,”
• “Even though we live in a democracy, a few people will always run things anyway,”
• “The people who really ‘run’ the country are not known to the voters.”
• “Big events like wars, the current recession, and the outcomes of elections are controlled by small groups of people who are working in secret against the rest of us.”

... The upshot: near symmetry between left and right.

Yeah. Because all of those statements are pretty much accurate, and are accepted facts among grownups.

But then of course we ultimately get the reversion to the mean bullshit:

We have to wonder what would happen to liberals’ belief in climate science if the solution to climate change were freer markets and smaller government.

Yeah, you would sort of have to wonder that, because it's fucking wrong. As regards, like, the facts.

....

At the moment, the human beings in the world at whom I am most incensed are the "reason" and "Reason" and faux-reasonable peddlers of smug bullshit who are gleefully -- or, at best, mindlessly -- wailing out about how SCIENCE shows that people who believe in things are stupid, and therefore, they themselves are great and smart ha ha.

But from a cold, rational point of view, if you know jack shit about science, you should vote Democrat. Specifically because that is the rational decision.

Which is not to say there are not problems with the Democratic Party. There are. Serious ones. But again, you should only vote for a Republican if you believe in bullshit.

As regards science education in general, I hope everyone concerned in the preparation and publication of this Washington Post article is murdered by wolverines. Also there is far too much social science "research" like this that is glib horrible garbage and is just fucking not scholarship and that sucks.

Are You Unreadable II

Someone else on the Internet sees bad social science.

According to two sociologists, Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, our moral culture recently underwent a seismic shift. Rather than upholding appropriate standards of honor and dignity, we now inflate trifling slights into allegations of victimization. Minor grievances of all sorts are showcased in cyberspace in an effort to garner sympathy and support. This “new species of social control,” they maintain, threatens an America where weakness suddenly rules....

Typically, Campbell and Manning’s evidence is anecdotal and relies on conflating substantively different forms of dissent. They lump together hunger strikes, hate crime hoaxes, protest suicides and microaggressions as comparable illustrations of this cultural turn. More importantly, microaggressions, trigger warnings and even the controversy over Woodrow Wilson’s legacy are not the ultimate target of this critique.

This Campbell and Manning paper is all sorts of dreadful. Details to follow, but if you want a taste now, here is something fun from the 14th footnote:

Gender studies scholar Hugo Schwyzer, in an essay critical of this phenomenon, complains that “too many of my students insist on writing essays that I can only describe as ‘narratives of suffering.’

Yeah, that would be this Hugo Schwyzer.

Comical, and minor, but symptomatic: this is a remarkably glib article.

Again, more to follow.

Spy Frame Mind

Mainstream Social Science has disproved the existence of microaggressions. Keep that in mind.