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Don’t take offense

Don’t take offense

October 24, 2019

schmidt

In the middle of my career I was given a gift. The nurse I had worked with for a long time told me she would need to be leaving the office at 4PM each day to deal with family issues. She said she could arrange for someone to cover for the last couple hours of the day. I thought about it long and hard and said, OK, I will see my last patient at 4, then with finishing dictation, paperwork and hospital rounds I could be home by 5-530. Prior to this I’d get home by 630-7 on days I wasn’t on call.

But with this new schedule I was able to get home and have dinner with my wife and four daughters most nights. It was a generous gift. It cost me money, but I gained in memories and time with my family.

My oldest daughter was by then in Junior Hi School, the youngest in grade school. It was expected that we all sit around the table, pass the food and have conversation. One prolonged conversation I remember had to do with one daughter reacting to another with the loud declaration, “I am offended that you would say that!” The conversation usually stopped for a while after such a declaration.

As the pattern kept being repeated I intervened. “Taking offense is something you have control over. You are not in control over what comes out of your sister’s mouth. If you want to have a conversation, it’s fine to feel offended, but you cannot expect the person you are conversing with to guess or know what might offend you. Take control of your own offense. Share your feelings if you chose, but when you take offense and react with anger, the conversation is probably over. We can do better.”

You can imagine with school-age daughters this took some practice.

This last week we had our President’s Chief of Staff tell us all to “Get over it!” when reporters questioned him on our president seeking aid from a foreign leader for his own political benefit. In fact, he acknowledged that the president withheld appropriated military aid to incentivize cooperation, though President Trump has declared, “No quid pro quo!”

The Chief of Staff’s “Get over it!” declaration sounded like we, or the reporter might have taken offense at a politically incorrect utterance. Indeed, the Trump for President campaign now has embraced the slogan “Get Over It” with a fund-raising t-shirt.

When a conversation is the goal, it is important to “get over” one’s strong feelings to further understanding. But when one needs to be making judgements about another person’s character or indeed actions, I think of another phrase I ran across in medical residency training. Residents are new medical school graduates. We had four years of medical school and limited patient care and management but now we staffed hospital wards, emergency rooms and clinics under the supervision of teaching attending physicians. The phrase I heard that stuck with me was from good teachers who ultimately would decide whether we residents would graduate to the position of practicing physicians. It was: “Forgive and Remember”. Mistakes occur, some can be severe; forgive those mistakes, but remember them and look for patterns, because some patterns can prove to be fatal for patients when a physician is independently practicing. If these patterns cannot be corrected, the resident should not be graduated.

My interpretation of “Get over it!” was our President’s chief of staff calling for us to either dismiss shaking down a foreign leader as unimportant, or just forget that it might be an illegal bribe.

I understand that many are offended by our President’s demeanor, his tweets, his untruths, his policy decisions and actions. We should “Get Over” our feelings of offense. But we should remember his actions, his cumulative behavior, his abuse of power and then make some judgement about his fitness.
 

Alternative facts

October 23, 2019

politicalwords

“Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
► Chico Marx (Usually attributed to Groucho Marx as, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” The Groucho-attributed version scans better, but he may not actually have said it.)

When President Trump’s Counselor Kellyanne Conway appeared on Meet the Press on January 22, 2017, she was asked about the president’s press secretary’s recent description of the size of the crowd at the recent inaugural.

Host Chuck Todd asked why he would “utter a provable falsehood” (which it was, as photographic evidence soon showed).

Conway responded that he was delivering “alternative facts.”

Todd: “Look, alternative facts aren’t facts. They’re falsehoods.”

One actual fact is that this conversation took place; it was watched live by many people, and video evidence of it exists. Another apparent fact is that Todd was correct. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines fact this way: “In contemporary use, fact is generally understood to refer to something with actual existence, or presented as having objective reality.”

Conway tried to walk back her statement, indicating that the press secretary was referring to additional facts which had not yet been included in the discussion. But “alternative facts” is a modified version of “fact.”

As in, a modified version of “truth.” (It might barely fit the Stephen Colbert coinage of “truthiness.”)

One of the top Twitter has tags, #AlternativeFacts, was swiftly born.
But as one Psychology Today article4 points out, the concept at least is not new: It derives from the same stream, and uses the same structuring, as the messaging of the totalitarian state in the George Orwell novel 1984 – “newspeak.” Newspeak, among its other features, is designed to avoid “negative” words; these ideas instead are conveyed by using modifiers of “positive” words. The word “bad” would be made over, for example, into “ungood.” Similarly, “falsehood” or “lie” is translated into “alternative fact” – not a negative in sight.

Just place a modifier in front of “fact” – which choice of modifier almost does not matter – and you get the same effect, both as a matter of language and in real world practice.

If you do need an actual (real) alternative, try fict.

Used (invented?) by Greg Jenner, a history consultant at the British Broadcasting Corporation, a fict “is a falsehood that is widely believed to be true.” This sounds like a commonplace word waiting to be unleashed.
 

Selling out the Kurds

Selling out the Kurds

October 22, 2019

jones

It broke my heart when South Vietnam fell to Communist forces on April 30, 1975. It was sickening to see the television footage of terrified Vietnamese trying to grab onto evacuation helicopters from the top of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. The debacle was a giant stain on the honor of this wonderful country.

I did not object to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. But it was shameful that we flat failed and refused to keep our solemn word to the Vietnamese to supply them with arms and air power to ward off a major assault by Communist forces. They trusted us and we unceremoniously dumped them.

This betrayal hit me hard because I knew that many of the Vietnamese soldiers I had lived and served with in 1968-1969 would be murdered by the Communists. They were Catholic refugees from North Vietnam and their village had been in armed conflict with the Communists since the early 1950s. The whole village had moved south in 1954 to escape persecution. The Communists had been trying to wipe out the village ever since.

The U.S. has once again betrayed trusting friends by giving the autocratic Turkish ruler the green light to kill our Kurdish allies in Syria. After the Kurds suffered over 10,000 casualties fighting and defeating our Islamic State (ISIS) enemies in northeast Syria, we are deserting them to face a genocidal onslaught. Not much thanks for doing the necessary dirty work that would have cost many American lives.

The President has portrayed the withdrawal of U.S. military personnel as a favor to the troops. These personnel had been embedded with our Kurd allies to advise and support them in our fight against ISIS. I imagine our 1,000-strong military contingent in Syria is sick at heart because of the chaotic retreat. They were the tip of the American spear in Syria, doing important work for the security of our nation. What could be more fulfilling than performing such critical work with such remarkable success?

I had the rare privilege of working together with Vietnamese military forces to do a job I was told was critical to the country. Like our troops recently doing that kind of work with the Syrian Kurds, it would have been incomprehensible to be slapped with an order to precipitously abandon my friends. Perhaps someone who studiously avoided military duty could not understand that this was service of the highest order.

Many Vietnam veterans, including myself, are haunted by the fact that our service appeared to be largely in vain. I would suspect that many of our troops who served in Syria will come to feel the same way. The successes they achieved will be undone. Most importantly, their Kurdish partners have no choice but to leave 11,000 ISIS fighters unguarded so that they can protect their own families from the Turkish attack. That will give ISIS the opportunity to regroup and once more threaten our homeland.

General Joseph Votel, who had overall command of our fight against ISIS until last March, said in an October 8 op-ed that the President’s withdrawal of support for the Kurds threatens “to rapidly destabilize an already fragile security situation in Syria’s northeast, where ISIS’s physical caliphate was only recently defeated.” He continued, “This policy abandonment threatens to undo five years’ worth of fighting against ISIS and will severely damage American credibility and reliability in any future fights where we need strong allies.”

Senator Risch argues that “America needs to get behind the commander in chief” on this disgraceful sellout. I strongly disagree. As citizens, we should weigh in with our Congressional delegation and let them know it is not acceptable to remain silent or frozen in the headlights as this tragedy unfolds. It is too important to America’s honor and credibility in a dangerous world. Where our national security is at stake, it is dead wrong to sit on the sidelines. The Kurdish blood will be on the hands of both those who caused it and those who allowed it.
 

Family values criminals

Family values criminals

October 21, 2019

rainey

Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen many Republican politicians arrested, charged, found guilty and hauled off to jail. So many, in fact, it makes one wonder why.

Oh, there’s an occasional Democrat here and there. But, the majority of the felonious miscreants come from the GOP. So, again, why?

Here in our Arizona desert desolation, we have a doozy. The guy’s name is Paul Petersen. He’s our Maricopa County Assessor - at least that’s his day job. Maricopa County is some 4-million souls. But, Petersen has not been around much lately. A check of the pass for his private spot in the Maricopa County parking lot shows its been used only 59 days this year.

Republican Peterson is now hidden in a federal slammer somewhere looking at 60 felony charges in three states - Arizona, Utah and Arkansas.

The litany of charges reads like this: smuggling 70 women from the Marshall Islands to the above states for private financial gain; aiding and abetting the same; wire fraud; committing federal visa fraud and money laundering. And, he charged each of the women $40,000 for his services!

As I said, county assessor seems to be only his day job.

By education, Peterson is an attorney. So, too, was his father, David. We’ll get to David shortly.

In sum, the 62 counts arise from Paul’s apparent scheme of finding pregnant women in the Marshalls, convincing them to come to the states ( charging $40,000 each), having babies and putting them up for adoption. Then, he charged the parents-to-be a separate fee which, according to indictments, brought his take to several million dollars.

He had a couple of women accomplices; one in the Marshalls to do the scouting and lining up the mothers-to-be and another, stateside, to make medical admissions in the three states and find applicants for the baby sales. We’re told the pregnant women were kept in private houses under very crowded and unsanitary conditions. Near as the feds can tell, this has been going on for about nine years!

Then, there’s David Peterson, the pater. David, another Republican, got himself into the Arizona State Senate, representing Mesa in the ‘90's and rose to the rank of majority whip for a term or two. But, his day job was running a non-profit called Family Services Committee which sponsored - wait for it - adoptions. David even got several bills passed into law that speeded up the Arizona adoption process and got taxpayer dollars to recruit adoptive families.

Then, David was elected State Treasurer. He sent his son, Paul, to college to get his law degree and Paul decided his specialty would be - wait for it again - adoption law.

Father David was also running Arizona Communities of Character Council and Arizona Character Council Foundation where he managed to secure more taxpayer dollars, according to the state’s largest newspaper, The Arizona Republic.

David fielded calls and faxes from his State Treasurer’s office and clocked many hundreds of miles for what he called “community updates” representing his non-profits mixed with some legitimate state treasurer’s business. He kept his personal involvement in the “non-profit” business a closely guarded secret. The Republic described him as a “ pitchman who didn’t understand boundaries between state and personal business.”

After several years, David Petersen’s double life leaked out and he was forced to resign from public office.

Meantime, son Paul became a fixture in state GOP politics, holding several positions before running for - and winning - the Maricopa County Assessor’s office. And he, too, had this “little non-profit business” on the side. Also, “unknown to nearly everyone,” we’re told.

Martha McSally, one of our current U.S. Senators also had run-ins with legal authorities when, in the Arizona Legislature, she messed around with campaign funds for something other than campaigns. She lost her race for the Senate but our GOP Governor appointed her to fill in the remainder of the late John McCain’s term, regardless of the previous voter rejection.

Current U.S. GOP Congressman Duncan Hunter of California, was re-elected in 2018 despite several federal indictments for using campaign dollars for lavish living. Chris Collins, a House member from New York, also was re-elected in 2018 regardless of his guilty plea to insider stock trading. He resigned just before going to jail.

There are other Republicans who’ve been charged with felonies or have otherwise been forced from federal or state offices. As previously noted, there’s been a Democrat or two but the GOP is way ahead in miscreant body count.

It’s also worth noting the national GOPer’s in or headed to the hoosegow. Manafort and Ryan are only the best known of the convicted. There are others. Some have served their sentences. Others await the judge’s decision. Looks like Rudy G. may possibly be headed to involuntary confinement, too. Along with a couple of his co-workers in this country and abroad.

And, who can forget our President. The top Republican himself may be headed the same way. Hard to tell these days with so many details breaking so quickly. The next few weeks and months will largely determine his fate.

Meantime, the federal lockup where Paul Petersen is being kept is a law enforcement secret, I’m told David still resides in the Mesa area. Might be worth one of your famous phone calls, DT. Professional courtesy.
 

The jig is up

The jig is up

October 20, 2019

richardson

With a possible few exceptions, Republicans in the House and Senate have known from the get-go that Trump is a walking time bomb, a well-lit fuse that could explode at any time on any given day.

But the ubiquitous polls told them Trump had an iron grip on his base. So they pretended otherwise. They may have pretended so well that they actually convinced themselves.

No matter. The jig is up.

In the aftermath of a single phone call with Turkey strongman Erdogan, Trump abruptly announced that the U.S. would be leaving town, abandoning the Kurds who -- in the thousands -- had died to help us defeat ISIS. Never mind that the Kurds had trusted us, that we had promised to protect them in exchange for their sacrifice, and that we were leaving them defenseless, vulnerable to almost certain slaughter.

Trump walked away from our allies as easily as if he were stiffing a room full of building contractors.

Trump has repeatedly bragged that he is a "very stable genius," who knows more about everything than anyone. Someone with his “great and unmatched wisdom” didn't need to consult with anyone at the Departments of State or Defense, or leadership of germane congressional committees, or our international allies. He could do what he damn well pleased. And it pleased him to make Erdogan and Putin happy.

But the bull in the china shop routine proved disastrous, and now Trump’s enablers in Congress are clutching their pearls and acting aghast at the unfolding tragedy in Syria. These folks need a big dose of reality; something like this was always on the verge of happening in Trump world; it was only a matter of time.

Now Mike Pence, with his practiced look of wounded pride, tells us that the Trump Administration did not "green light" Turkey's attack on the Kurds. The hell it didn't.

The Republicans in the House and Senate crossed their fingers and hoped against hope that they could get through Trump's first term without a foreign policy catastrophe. They can uncross their fingers; their hope was to no avail.

The only silver lining to this foreign policy mess was that Trump’s foolhardy trust-my-gut and go-it-alone action didn’t involve the nuclear option – at least not this time, at least not yet.
 

Blood on the floor

Blood on the floor

October 19, 2019

johnson

On April 6, 2017 President Donald Trump ordered a cruise missile strike on airfields in Syria in response to Syrian dictator Basher al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Idaho Senator Jim Risch immediately praised Trump’s action as “a game changer” that signaled a new American approach to the entire Middle East and would impress the international community.

“The airstrikes of April 6 were a good first step,” Risch wrote the next day in piece in TIME, “but the United States must go further to push back against Assad and his allies, Russia and Iran. This will require a more comprehensive strategy toward Syria.”

Risch went on: “We also need to build and support a coalition that can effectively ensure the safety of Syrians at home and ensure neither Assad nor the Islamic State can destabilize the country. This would include working with our Turkish allies and Syrian opposition, and supporting Kurdish forces fighting on the ground against both the Islamic State and Assad’s forces.”

The senator, now the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, assured us that the “Trump Administration has proven to the people of Syria, and the world, that the United States is once again willing to confront growing instability and inhumanity.”

Of course, Risch could not have been more wrong as events of the last week gruesomely prove. In fact Risch has displayed a stunning combination of ignorance and arrogance over the last two and half years in his unconditional support for the administration’s persistently failing foreign policy.

Not only has Risch been wrong about Syria, but also about Iran, North Korea, China and a dozen other places where the chaotic and feckless Trump foreign policy has produced one disaster after another, fracturing what is left of U.S. global leadership, strengthening Russia, creating the opening for a revived ISSI, weakening NATO and leaving America increasingly without dependable friends in the world.

Perhaps never before in Idaho political history has one member of the state’s congressional delegation been in such a position of potential power and influence at such a perilous time and squandered it all in subservience to a failed president. It is simply a shocking display of political and moral misconduct.

Risch has made much of his access to the president, regularly bragging about his phone calls, briefings and ability to influence Trump. As Risch told the Idaho Press’s Betsy Russell recently he intends to maintain influence with Trump by never uttering a public criticism. Well, if Risch’s logic is correct and he is only able to exert influence over U.S. foreign policy by not exercising independent leadership then he also owns the outcome of Trump’s disastrous policy.

We should assume that Risch is in the group that David Sanger, the New York Times national security correspondent, wrote about this week. “Mr. Trump ignored months of warnings from his advisers about what calamities likely would ensue if he followed his instincts to pull back from Syria and abandon America’s longtime allies, the Kurds. He had no Plan B, other than to leave.”

Among the many Trumpian disasters arising from the precipitous decision to cut a run on the Kurds in Syria is the opportunity it affords Vladimir Putin to obtain what every Russian leader since Stalin has desired – a lead role in the Middle East.

“Putin continues to get whatever he wants and generally doesn’t even have to do much,” said a NATO official quoted by the Washington Post. “He got to sit back and watch the Turks and the Americans unravel five years of success and not only did it not cost him anything, he didn’t even have to try to make it happen. Small wonder he’d interfere on Trump’s side in an election.”

And here is Martin Indyk, a two-time U.S. ambassador to Israel, writing this week in Foreign Policy: “The Trump administration likes to see itself as clear-eyed and tough-minded, a confronter of the hard truths others refuse to acknowledge. In fact, it understands so little about how the Middle East actually works that its bungling efforts have been a failure across the board. As so often in the past, the cynical locals are manipulating a clueless outsider, advancing their personal agendas at the naive Americans’ expense.”

“So, Turkey and the Kurds have been fighting for hundreds of years,” Trump said this week. “We are out of there.” That may well turn out to be “the Trump Doctrine.”

For days the junior senator from Idaho said exactly nothing beyond an innocuous, boilerplate statement of “serious concern” about Turkey’s invasion of Syria in the wake of U.S. troop departures. By week’s end he was promising to introduce “soon” legislation to sanction Turkey, but without acknowledgment that the president himself had made such legislation necessary.

Meanwhile, daily revelations about Ukraine continue, a scandal that one commentator reduced to its essence: “The president’s personal lawyer was paid by crooked businessmen from a foreign country, and then the president gave him authority over American policy toward that country. This is precisely what the founders meant by ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’” Risch has not answered a demand from Democratic members of his committee that he hold hearings on this debacle and he dodges questions about his views.

When Boise State Public Radio reporter Heath Druzin attempted last week to ask Risch about the appropriateness of an American president asking a foreign leader to gin up dirt on a political opponent, Risch refused to engage. “I’m not going there,” he said before walking away and then adding “Don’t do that again.”

In a subsequent interview with KBOI Radio’s Nate Shelman, a venue where conservatives comfortably expect to be offered up softballs, Risch fell back on the oldest and most discredited line in American politics. Shelman asked Risch if pulling U.S. troops and green lighting Turkish attacks on the Kurds was correct. “I’m not in the position right now to criticize,” Risch said, “what I want to do is get behind our troops and get behind our commander, and where we are right now and get us to a better place.”

Trump has facilitated a wholesale disaster in Syria that will ripple and roll across the region for years. American credibility has never been lower or our security so abruptly and catastrophically threatened.

But politically Jim Risch relies up on the same thing Donald Trump counts on – the credulity and partisanship of supporters, each man hoping they can get away with fomenting a catastrophe because, well, in the name of Trump they can do anything.

Little wonder Risch wants to avoid answering legitimate questions about the president. He’s like a guy caught at the scene of a crime that wants you to believe he’s had nothing to do with all the blood on the floor.

—–0—–

(Note: Since this piece was written a “cease fire” was agreed to by the Turkish government. Senator Risch applauded that move – without referring to the president – and said the situation remains “very fluid.” But as Eric Schmidt and David Sanger wrote in the Times: “The cease-fire agreement reached with Turkey by Vice President Mike Pence amounts to a near-total victory for Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who gains territory, pays little in penalties and appears to have outmaneuvered President Trump.”)
 

The sensible and the difficult

The sensible and the difficult

October 18, 2019

stapiluslogo1

We may see soon where excellent intentions and well-crafted proposals run up against the wall of Idaho politics. Or will those intentions this time blast through it?

The story leading up to this began in mid-April, when the on-line East Idaho News published a series of articles on collection of medical debt in the area, under headlines such as “Medical debt nightmare: Why a local woman could end up paying over $5,550 for her $294 doctor’s visit” and “Medical debt, collections and the fees you’ve probably never heard of.” The stories were detailed and apparently well reported and, while not especially surprising to many people who have been snagged in the medical debt system, they may have shocked a number of people less familiar with the situation.

The report wasn’t wholly negative; some people reported good experiences in working with collectors structuring payments on what they owed. The articles focused on a local company called Medical Recovery Services, which it said differed from many of its counterparts in its approach to supplemental attorneys’ fees. These are fees beyond basic court costs which the debtor often already is on the hook for. One article noted, “Once the debt and prejudgment fees are paid off, you may think that would be the end of it, but that’s not always the case. Idaho Code 12-120 allows attorneys to continue seeking post-judgment or supplemental attorney fees to pay for continued efforts by attorneys to pursue a debt. And these requested fees are typically much higher than prejudgment fees.” And the can mean the costs of appeal to the Idaho Supreme Court.

The articles got the attention of Frank VanderSloot, chief executive of Melaleuca at Idaho Falls and reported to be the wealthiest man in Idaho. One reported case involved a Melaleuca employee who owed a medical debt of $294 but then - after MRS got into the case - was socked with $5,864.25 in legal fees.

After the articles ran, VanderSloot wrote in an open letter that he and his wife, “decided that we simply cannot stand by and allow our neighbors to go through the kind of financial duress and emotional pain that is apparently being perpetrated by MRS.” He backed that up with $500,000 toward a defense fund aimed at helping the medically indebted. Costs in this area being what they are, that money burned through quickly, and VanderSloot recently added another $500,000 to the cause.

That’s been a fine public service and no doubt has helped quite a few people. But VanderSloot also evidently recognized that one person’s (even one wealthy person’s) contribution isn’t enough to solve the problem. So this month, at a gathering of well-connected Eastern Idaho leaders (including a large share of the Idaho Legislature), VanderSloot said he was backing legislation to change medical debt collection law in Idaho.

The measure would, the Idaho Falls Post Register reported, “put limits on attorneys’ fees in medical debt cases; to require health care providers to send out bills and notify patients of services rendered within 30 days; and to require, within another 30 days after that, that a hospital or other health care facility send a patient a consolidated notice containing the names and contact information of all health care providers that are billing them.”

It reads like an injection of simple fairness into the system.

But then VanderSloot said: “I can’t imagine very much objection to this, given every single family is affected by this one way or the other.” Though he’s of course right about the given, objections likely will be there nonetheless. This is the kind of consumer regulation action that for years has had a hard time gaining traction in the Idaho Legislature.

And that’s not all. MRS is tightly associated with and represented by the law firm, Smith, Driscoll & Associates; the top name partner is Bryan Smith, a former candidate for Congress who has been deeply active in the upper reaches of Idaho Republican politics. One of the attorneys in that firm, and MRS’ registered agent, is Bryan Zollinger, a state representative. MRS, in other words, is pretty well connected too.

Remember: The income streams of a number of people are at stake here. What looks like sensible and humane reform to many (likely most) people will look like a threat to others.

VanderSloot may prevail at the Statehouse. But when he arrives he should be ready for a battle, because he’ll likely get one.
 

Social studies homework

Social studies homework

October 17, 2019

schmidt

“You ready?” Blanche called back to Dennis. “C’mon, I want to get to Walmart. Bring your homework, you can do it there.”

Dennis came out in his sweatshirt and ball cap. He grabbed his school backpack as he passed the kitchen table.

On the way into town Blanche asked him, “You know what you’re supposed to do?”

“Yeah, remember, I told you last night. You even had me practice on you.”

“I didn’t know nothing, did I?” Blanche and Dennis laughed.

“No, you didn’t. But at least you didn’t yell at me.”

“So that’s what’s got you worried. Now if you are polite and talk to people straight, not mumble people will be polite to you. Oh, and always remember to smile.”

Dennis still seemed worried. Blanche thought it was a pretty odd homework assignment. She asked, “You know all the answers to them questions?”

He nodded. “I got an “A” on the test.”

Blanche whistled. “Ain’t you something.”

They parked in the Walmart parking lot and the early Saturday shoppers were in full force. “You know,” Blanche offered, “You could offer to help them out with their groceries and ask them the questions then.”

Dennis nodded. Blanche clapped him on his shoulder. “Well, you get at it. I’ll go shopping.”

Blanche went in the doors and Dennis got out his clipboard.

“Excuse me sir, can I ask you some questions? I have a homework assignment.”

The grey-haired man grinned as he slowly pushed his cart into the lot.

“I won’t be getting you in trouble if I help you with your homework, will I?”

“No sir, you see, that’s the assignment, to ask you some questions. It’s for my social studies class.”

“Well you go right ahead.”

Dennis started reading from his clip board, pencil in hand. “Do you live in Latah County?”

“Yup” Dennis checked a box.

“Do you vote?”

“Always” Dennis checked another box.

“Do you know who represents you in the Idaho legislature?”

“That’s a tough one. I think it’s that Risch guy and maybe there’s a new guy, I think it’s Fullmer.”

Dennis frowned and studied his sheet.

“How about who the Governor of Idaho is.”

“Oh, that’s easy, Butch.”

Dennis frowned again, not sure what to write. “Is that his last name?”

“No sonny, it’s Otter, Butch Otter.” The old man grinned. “He’s been for a long time, you know that.”

“OK, thanks. Can I help you with those bags?”

Dennis had a sheet of paper for each interview, so he slid out a new one as he approached the mom with three small kids. She was frowning so he smiled, then she did too. “Can I ask you some questions for my homework?”

“What kind of questions?”

“It’s for social studies.”

“Well, you go ahead.”

She said she didn’t vote but it turned out she knew two out of the three state legislators and three of the four Idaho congressmen. “Hope you get a good grade,” she called to him as she belted in a toddler. “You sure are brave to be out here asking questions.”

“Yes ma’am. Thank you.”

He ran into some folks from Washington so he had to excuse himself. Then he asked the older woman with a near empty cart. He offered to help her and she agreed to answer his questions.

“Oh yes, I vote, always vote straight Democrat.” She smiled absently. She couldn’t name a single representative at the state level or in Congress, but it didn’t bother her a bit. “I don’t read the paper anymore, I just watch the TV. Can you believe that Trump character?” Dennis helped her put the bags in the trunk.

Blanche asked him on the way home, “What did you learn?”

Dennis frowned. He wasn’t sure how he was going to write his report.

“It seems to me some of the folks who vote shouldn’t, and some of the folks who don’t ought to.”
 

Blame-shifting

October 16, 2019

politicalwords

Just a joke? Sounds like gaslighting to me.
► internet meme

A Google search results for blame-shifting also brings up the phrase “blame-shifting and gaslighting,” which suggested that an opening word about gaslighting also is in order.

It entered our common vocabulary in 1944 with the movie Gaslight, a thriller in which a treasure hunter who has committed murder is at risk of being found out by his bride – who he attempts to manipulate by adjusting her perception of reality to the point that she begins to doubt her own sanity. (The “gaslight” here is a reference to his ploy of turning up or down the light, then denying it had happened, leading the bride to think she was misunderstanding reality.)

Wikipedia lists these as the most common strategies a gaslighter may use:

“Hiding: The abuser may hide things from the victim and cover up what they have done. Instead of feeling ashamed, the abuser may convince the victim to doubt their own beliefs about the situation and turn the blame on themselves. Changing: The abuser feels the need to change something about the victim. Whether it be the way the victim dresses or acts, they want the victim to mold into their fantasy. If the victim does not comply, the abuser may convince the victim that he or she is in fact not good enough. Control: The abuser may want to fully control and have power over the victim. In doing so, the abuser will try to seclude them from other friends and family so only they can influence the victim’s thoughts and actions.”

The concept has been richly mined over the years, mostly in fiction (it was even turned into an episode of the old Dick Van Dyke Show), but it has become a significant factor in politics. As an article in Vox explained, “The term ‘gaslighting’ has gotten thrown around a lot over the past year, mostly in reference to political campaign tactics – when candidates claimed something had (or hadn’t) happened, and refused, when confronted with contradictory evidence, to acknowledge otherwise. Lauren Duca most famously wrote about the term for Teen Vogue in a piece titled ‘Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America,’ for which she caught some heat and also raised the profile of Teen Vogue.”

Blame-shifting, an age-old device in human personal relationships, adds a small twist into the concept.

In this version, the viewpoint of the victim (or observer) is changed not only to disorient, but to shift guilt from the actual perpetrator to someone else – often the victim. This too increasingly has come to the fore in politics. A definition (from the psychopathfree.com) on the personal level: “Blame-shifting is when a person does something wrong or inappropriate, and then dumps the blame on someone else to avoid taking responsibility for their own behavior.” The article lists five techniques – tactics for this mental jujitsu – including playing victim, minimizing feelings, arguing about the argument, telling self-pitying stories and “the stink bomb” (a major, loaded, counter-accusation).

All of this has clear political application; look around many ideological web sites and you’ll find larger or smaller examples of it.

One such case was raised by Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, after the Senate hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, when his accuser Christine Blasey Ford fielded criticism from Kavanaugh’s defenders:

“Right-wing male politicians such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) have the audacity to declare that Ford has been victimized … by Democrats. (Maybe ask her?) Even if you thought that, why would anyone say such a stunningly condescending thing? Telling someone who has said she is the victim of a sexual assault whom she should and should not hold responsible for her pain represents a new low in Senate Republicans’ twisted exercise in blame-shifting.”

On any given day, check the political news out of Washington and count the instances of blame-shifting. You may be surprised at the number. (Warning: Don’t try this as a drinking game.)