Category: Political issues

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How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley. Princeton University Press, 2015, 354 pages.

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I was very excited about reading this book when I first ordered it from Amazon, but I was soon disappointed. After a dynamite introduction, the book becomes bogged down in low-level philosophical questions — linguistics and epistemology. Though the book makes a couple of very good and very strong points about propaganda, otherwise I think the book has very little to add to anyone’s understanding of propaganda, even if your interest in propaganda is low-level and philosophical.

The book’s strong points have to do with the factors that make a population susceptible to propaganda. Stanley returns again and again to the question of flawed ideology. Racism, for example, is a flawed ideology. Another example of flawed ideology is elite ideology that holds that elites somehow deserve their power and wealth, while the poor and weak deserve to be poor and weak. This ideology is closely related to the just world hypothesis, which I have written about previously. Stanley also argues, quite convincingly, that inequality is in most cases the basis of flawed ideology. It follows that inequality is at the root of the flawed ideologies that have become an existential threat to the American democracy today. The damage of inequality, then, goes far beyond its economic and political damage, and beyond inequality’s grave threats to justice. Inequality also makes a population more susceptible to lies and to manipulation by demagogues (such as Donald Trump).

What Americans greatly need right now is a practical guide to recognizing propaganda — reverse-compiling it to see what purpose the propaganda serves, methods of immunizing oneself against propaganda, and methods of helping others to see through propaganda. This is not that book. Abstract linguistics and epistemology are of no use to a population that is being saturated with propaganda, in particular a population with our media failure, our sorry levels of education, and the distortions caused by religion. Americans today are sitting ducks for propaganda. But they are getting no help — none! — with practical means of defending themselves against propaganda. This exasperates me.

There is a wicked confluence of danger here that is worth pointing out. The flawed ideology of elites (that they deserve their wealth and power) merges in American culture with the just world hypothesis, which most people believe in (consciously or not). And the just world hypothesis merges with the vilest of theologies that preachers are selling today (because what people want to hear sells well) — prosperity gospels and dominionism (God wants you to be rich and God gave you the earth so that you can exploit it). It is going to be devilishly difficult to knock sense into the American people, because the wealth of so many depends on delusion and exploitation.

I’d like to end with an aside about books from university presses. Probably 85 percent of the nonfiction books I read are from university presses. Most “popular” nonfiction just doesn’t do much for me. Our university presses are a huge and often overlooked resource for the reading public. As I see it (and I regularly harangue my academic friends on this point), academics ought to be having two kinds of conversations. Academics, of course, need to have conversations with other academics, in their own academic jargon, and they do. But academics also have another responsibility, and that’s to talk to the rest of us. University presses, then, have a twofold mission — to print books by academics for academics, and to print books by academics for the public. The Oxford University Press, certainly, understands this very well. How Propaganda Works, judging from the flap copy and by how the book was promoted, was intended as a book of the second type — by an academic for the public. But it fails as that type of book, which is a great pity.

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While doing some reading on “Moral Foundations Theory,” I came across this on-line test for “moral foundations.” I answered 36 sly and somewhat troubling questions, and the test identified me quite correctly as “left liberal.”

The test attempts to measure the relative strength of your “moral foundations” in six categories:

Care
Fairness
Loyalty
Authority
Purity
Liberty

As a liberal, I tested high on Care and Fairness, and lower on Authority, Liberty, and Purity.

Authority? As a liberal and as a heretic, it blows my mind that anyone would see deference to authority as a moral virtue. And though I value liberty, as a liberal I would be greatly offended if liberty trumps, say, fairness. I believe I would prefer the word justice to fairness, however. Still, because I like John Rawls’ approach to justice — justice as fairness — either word will do.

I have to suppose that conservative minds are willing to knowingly tolerate injustice — or at least a certain level of injustice — to preserve authority. I further suppose that a libertarian is willing to tolerate injustice or un-caring (think unfed children, or old people without medical care) to preserve their individual liberty. As for purity, who cares? Purity might be nice if it’s costless, but as a liberal I can’t think of any good thing that I’d sacrifice to purity.

Though according to the Myers-Briggs test I am a perceiving type, not a judging type, I nevertheless judge the living daylights out of both conservatives and libertarians. In particular, I abhor arbitrary authority. And though loyalty and liberty are positive values to me, I would be contemptuous of anyone who would put loyalty and liberty ahead of justice and caring. Unfortunately, this comes up in politics all the time.

In my world, conservatives and libertarians aren’t just inclined to ugly politics. They are morally confused.

This showed up in my Facebook feed with the words, “Powerful photo. We are fortunate to have a man of God back in the Oval Office.”

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I regularly check the logs for this blog. It’s gratifying that many of the blog’s regular readers are outside the U.S., particularly in Europe. In addition to regular readers, there are lots of one-time visits from people who are Googling for some subject or another. For example, my post on the expiration of copyrights for Peter Rabbit is very popular internationally, as are my posts on the Nikon Model S microscope and the repair of classic Peerless speakers.

Though the blog’s firewall log shows that the majority of hacker attacks come from Russia (surprise, surprise), I don’t get many actual readers from Russia. When, a few days ago, the logs showed a reader in Moscow, I naturally checked to see which post the Moscow reader came here for. Interestingly, the post was one of my more prescient political posts, “The ability (and inability) to judge character.”

It happens that I’m about halfway through the 2015 book How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley. I’ll have a post on that book later. But one point that stands out from How Propaganda Works is that a key factor that makes people susceptible to propaganda is flawed ideology. I’ll save Stanley’s arguments on flawed ideology for another day. For now, I’d only like to point out what an incredibly dangerous combination this is:

Flawed ideology
The inability to judge character

If we put racism, primitive religion and Republican politics into the category of flawed ideology, and if we combine that with the right-wing propaganda of the last few years and the candidate the propagandists were pushing, then we’ve got a strong framework for understanding this country’s downward spiral into fascism. One of the things I hear constantly from those who don’t subscribe to flawed right-wing ideology and who do have the ability to judge character is (talking about Trump and those who voted for him), “How can they not see through him?” It’s no mystery that they can’t see through him if you keep in mind the deadly combination of flawed ideology and the inability to judge character.

There is an interesting piece by Eliot A. Cohen in this month’s Atlantic, “A Clarifying Moment in American History.” One of the things that Cohen says is, “[Trump] will fail most of all because at the end of the day most Americans, including most of those who voted for him, are decent people who have no desire to live in an American version of Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, or Viktor Orban’s Hungary, or Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

I beg to differ. I am increasingly irked at being told that we should reach out to Trump voters and try to understand them. What is it that we need to understand about their flawed ideology? We already understand their flawed ideology quite well. What is it that we need to understand about their incomprehensible inability to judge character? Even their most famous preachers tell them that Trump is a man of God whom God has sent to save America. I’m afraid my ideology doesn’t provide a way to square that godliness with all that hatred and the finger photos.

Anyone who has sunk that low, I am increasingly convinced, has forfeited the right to be called decent. Not only did they vote for Trump, but many of them did it with a kind of spiteful glee and vindictiveness (as is communicated by the finger photos). I will never forget that. Unless someone with a more tolerant ideology than mine can convince me that my view is flawed, then my view is that anyone who voted for Trump is not a decent person. In aggregate, they are dangerous. They will get nothing from me in the future other than as much distance as I can muster, a bare minimum of civility, and only the most basic support for their human rights and justice. That is far more than they themselves accord to the people they don’t like. Also, justice cuts both ways. Trump voters have to be held responsible for what they’ve done, once we’ve emerged from the ashes of the coming calamity. Certainly, I would cut some slack for those who ultimately do see through Trump and who ask for some forgiveness for what they’ve done. I doubt that many will be in that category, though.

Of course I have no idea why someone in Moscow would want to read my post on the inability to judge character. However, I can think of two basic reasons: 1. Someone in Moscow is wondering what the hell is wrong with Americans. Or, 2. Someone in Moscow is working on a better understanding of how to deceive Americans with propaganda.

Which do you suppose is more likely?

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Below, the log showing the reader from Moscow

Zack Galifianakis in a scene from the documentary, with one of our locals who lives near a coal-ash impoundment

Readers of this blog know that I love to shoot photos at grassroots political events here in the rural South. It’s a chance to do some casual portraiture — which I love. I also see the photos as essays on progressive and First Amendment activism here in Trump country.

The event was the showing of a new documentary narrated by Zack Galifianakis, “Democracy for Sale.” The documentary is about the right-wing takeover of North Carolina after a flood of outside money bought our state legislature. The 2010 redistricting then gerrymandered these right-wing radicals into their seats. They will be hard to dislodge. But drawing attention to what right-wingers are doing and have done in North Carolina is part of the process. The infamous “bathroom bill,” which almost certainly is what caused the odious Republican governor Pat McCrory to lose his seat, is only a small part of the damage being done to North Carolina by right-wing radicals.

In this documentary, narrator Zack Galifianakis visits our county, which has gotten itself on the map for its fight for environmental justice. “Democracy for Sale” is available for streaming at Hulu, Amazon, and other streaming services.

One thing I always notice among progressives is the kindness and concern in their faces — very different from the pinched, angry, spiteful looks of authoritarian types.

Very little about Americans is amusing these days, but I did have a good laugh this week about right-wing “preppers.” The companies that sell them guns, storage food, and survival items flourished during the Obama years. After all, right-wingers were told that President Obama was going to take their guns away, that the dollar and the economy would crash, that there would be runaway inflation, that FEMA concentration camps were being prepared for them, that Obama would wage a war on religion, etc. If President Obama is going to get all that done, he has two days left in which to do it.

But after the election of Trump, the Economic Collapse blog’s Michael Snyder reported that “it is like a nuclear bomb went off in the prepping community.” The bottom fell out of the market for survival food and survival gear, it seems. The Deplorables feel safe, now that that black family is out of the White House.

But for those of us who live in the real world, we are going to have to pay close attention to events as they unfold. With the Fed starting to raise interest rates, we appear to be approaching the unhappy part of the economic cycle. Trump’s deck is full of wild cards that he is playing into the global geopolitical situation as well as into the domestic situation. When crisis hits — and it will — Trump’s ship of fools and the right-wing radicals in Congress will pull all the wrong levers. It’s time to seriously consider buying survival food while that stuff is on sale.

I have never been terribly deluded about just how awful people can be, but I am still in a state of shock at the display of hatred and delusion that we saw last year. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how to maintain the highest wall possible between myself and the people who bought a ticket on the Trump train. I’m tired of being told that we should reach out to them with our usual liberal compassion. Did we fail to notice the “Fuck Your Feelings” bumper stickers and T-shirts? They are simply not reachable by anything other than the right-wing media and their ugly religion. Maybe four years from now (probably sooner, actually), when their hopes are dashed and their hero billionaire has betrayed them and reminded them just how small they are, they might be in a better mood for some liberal compassion. But not now.

One resolution I’ve made is to do everything possible not to do business with people who don’t like me. Even here in a Republican county, it has been no trouble to locate a liberal hardware store, a liberal plumber, a liberal roofer, a liberal local drug store, liberal landscaping supplies, and so on. I will spend as much of my money locally as possible. We all have to do business with corporations, though, so I’ll pay close attention to the politics and track records of the corporations that I spend money with.

I also will do my best to stay away from people who don’t like me.