Notes

Here is Robert F. Kennedy, speaking in 1968 and observing, essentially, that our ideas about success, as a people and as a nation, are completely disconnected from reality:

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.  Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product—if we judge the United States of America by that—that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.  It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.  It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.  It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.  It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.  Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.  It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

Unfortunately, aside from the dollar amount in the second sentence, which now can be revised upward significantly, his observations remain true. Meanwhile, caught in the grip of a terrible economic crisis, we are still latched to dangerous ideas like the “problem” of “consumer spending” being too “low.” And even though Allstate pretends that people are “back to basics” (and one commentator cynically observed, “Home and auto insurance, apparently, are among the basics”),  I have not heard anyone seriously suggest that we want to stay with those basics for long.

While I am not an economist and have only a smattering of knowledge about economics, I suspect more strongly every day that the main reason we are in this “economic crisis” is because we have staked our sense of well-being on things like “consumer spending” and “gross national product.” Making, selling, and buying more stuff—any stuff will do. Have an idea for a “product”? Any product will do. Just make a lot of them, or sell a lot of them, and turn a hefty profit: you are now “successful”! Have no skills but need a job? Learn “sales,” which is the profession of selling stuff—any stuff will do—to people who probably don’t need it (or why would anybody pay you to convince them otherwise?).  There’s nothing remotely thoughtful, healthy, or sustainable in that approach, but that’s what we Amurricans have been all about for a long time.

Is there a better way? Surely. But I am not confident that we, as individuals, as communities, or as a national or global society, have the discipline to free ourselves from what will only continue to be the long cycle of “boom and bust” that has characterized U.S. history right from the start. Some people  like to tout “Western civilization”—with the United States at the apex of that development, of course—as not just a unique phenomenon in world history (it is), but as the best phenomenon in world history (it may be). I question their judgment, not just in the Churchillian worst-except-for-all-the-others way, but in the implicit twin conclusions either that we Westerners or Americans can do no wrong, or that non-Westerners or non-Americans can never do better. The first of that pair is the weaker, obviously erroneous, and would probably be a straw man if pursued. The second is more insidious because it may seem, especially to some “conservative” minds, more rational, perhaps more supportable, but really it’s just another way of expressing the first.

Sophisticated partisans of the Western-is-Inherently-Better view are careful never to state those conclusions outright, however, but leave them to implication. Here’s one I saw in the newspaper recently, dripping with sarcasm:

Here [in a discussion of Islam in history] we see the omnipotent influence of Obama’s multicultural creed: Western civilization is unexceptional in comparison with other cultures, and history must be the story of an ecumenical, global shared brotherhood.

The obvious message behind the eye-rolling is that Western civilization is exceptional in comparison with other cultures and that history is not the story of an “ecumenical, global shared brotherhood,” but the story of a superior, paternal West and its children around the globe.

But we have ourselves turned inside out. We measure our lives and our accomplishments by standards that are not only disconnected from the basic reality of our humanity, but which are probably detrimental to our well-being. Our obsession with “development” and “production” and always more stuff—any stuff will do—has made us think that more factories producing more products (even the word itself flaunts its indiscriminate meaning) for more people to buy and put in more—and bigger!—houses that are further from our jobs convincing other people to buy things they don’t need that we must have more cars to drive further every day and create new externalities and new risks that need to be insured against with policies from companies like Allstate. How far down to the foundation for that house of cards? Welcome to the Western way of life. Cash, checks, and credit cards accepted.

Robert Kennedy had a good point in 1968 and someone else needs to keep making that point in 2009 because few people appear to have been listening 41 years ago.

Bonus points if you can spot the goofy pop-culture allusion in the title of this post and the geeky medieval philosophy allusion that’s embedded with it—and how both of them relate to the body of the post!

The problem of people making abusive comments on newspaper websites is not restricted to Fresno. They have this problem in Las Vegas, too. But there federal prosecutors demanded the identities of people who wrote the abusive comments because they “might be construed as threatening to jurors or prosecutors.”

The ACLU disagrees with the request and thinks that disallowing anonymity would have a “chilling effect”:

“The right to speak anonymously about politics is older than the Constitution,” [staff attorney Margaret McLetchie] said, alluding to the Federalist and anti-Federalist papers, which were published under pseudonyms.

Right. Has anybody at the ACLU actually read the Federalist and the anti-Federalist papers? Do they read the comments that people leave on newspaper websites? Have they bothered to note the enormous difference in quality, both of thought and writing, in those two sources? Comparing the lunacy spewed in the comment sections on newspaper websites to the Federalist and the anti-Federalist papers is either the same kind of irresponsible enabling that people are alleging commentators like Bill O’Reilly committed before the murder of Dr. George Tiller, or a profound insult to the authors of those historical documents.

The authors of the Federalist and anti-Federalist papers did not use anonymity to lob irrationality, insults, and abuse at people. They wrote closely reasoned arguments. Theirs was precisely the kind of speech that the First Amendment was intended to protect. What is the social value in allowing people to hide behind a mask of anonymity, then go on newspaper websites—or any other websites, for that matter—and hurl unreasoned abuse at identified or identifiable individuals?

To be clear, I agree with the California Court of Appeal, Sixth Appellate District, which held last year in Krinsky v. Doe that an anonymity-piercing subpoena (a court order requiring a website to reveal the identity of an anonymous commenter) should overcome a motion to quash only where the plaintiff can show that the anonymous statement is actually libelous. In other words, where anonymity is allowed by a website, court process should not be allowed to overcome that policy unless there is a viable claim at stake.

Quoting the United States Supreme Court, the Krinsky court observed that “the fact that society may find speech offensive is not a sufficient reason for suppressing it. Indeed, if it is the speaker’s opinion that gives offense, that consequence is a reason for according it constitutional protection.” Quoting another United States Supreme Court case, the Krinsky court further observed:

The decision in favor of anonymity may be motivated by fear of economic or official retaliation, by concern about social ostracism, or merely by a desire to preserve as much of one’s privacy as possible. Whatever the motivation may be, at least in the field of literary endeavor, the interest in having anonymous works enter the marketplace of ideas unquestionably outweighs any public interest in requiring disclosure as a condition of entry. Accordingly, an author’s decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.

While that rationale looks good on paper, I am skeptical of that “[w]hatever the motivation” part, especially since the court is talking about “literary endeavor” and “the marketplace of ideas.” But the law in the United States, as it currently stands, is that the First Amendment protects the right of people to go online, refuse to identify themselves, and spew insults, abuse, and irrationality at others, many of whom are openly identified or identifiable. But it only protects them from restrictive government acts, like subpoenas.

So I see no reason why newspaper websites, or newspapers themselves, should automatically favor an anonymity policy in the first place. A better policy would be to make a real-world identity the usual requirement, but then allow anonymous publication only after editorial review. To put it another way, the First Amendment protects free speech, which includes anonymous speech, but does not require newspapers to allow anonymous commenters. Rather, if newspapers and other online publishers believe they have some duty or responsibility to foster free and open debate (and, to add another layer of complexity to my view, I am not convinced they do have such a duty or responsibility), then they should seriously consider the effects of allowing anonymous publication.

Summing up, the First Amendment is good and should protect free speech, even when it’s published anonymously, even when it’s irrational and insulting, and sometimes even when it’s abusive, depending on the circumstances (i.e., when it’s not defamatory). But not because anonymous publication somehow always equates to the Federalist papers or the anti-Federalist papers. That’s just inane. And newspapers, especially ones where there is vigorous community debate going on in the comment sections, as with The Fresno Bee, should carefully monitor the quality of the comments. An anonymous commenter who is opinionated and articulate but not abusive or insulting should be tolerated, but anonymity in itself should not be treated like some quasi-First Amendment right that requires newspapers, absent any other state action, to facilitate the publication of irrationality, insults, and abuse.

And, also, to be fair, I haven’t seen anybody arguing that newspapers are required by the First Amendment to publish anonymous insults and abuse. My beef is really with the argument, apparently advanced by the ACLU, that anonymity in publishing is an automatic good, to be protected in itself, without regard to the content of the anonymous speech.

Yesterday I lamented the horrible state of discourse on The Fresno Bee letters website, which is mostly due to the poor behavior of people who rant insanely against “liberals” and “democrats” and “socialists.” There are a few irate, slogan-slinging left-wingers, too, but the anti-left is the main source of the problem. But even “anti-left” is not really accurate; they are viciously against anyone who disagrees with their views, which are basically xenophobic and religious and characterized by systematic intolerance. I just can’t bring myself to call them “right-wing” or “conservative,” which are labels that ought to be reserved for people who, while taking a certain political position, are not unreasonable about it.

Now today I read Paul Krugman’s column titled “The Big Hate.” He writes:

Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions resemble those in the early 1990s — a time marked by an upsurge of right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Conservatives were outraged. The chairman of the Republican National Committee denounced the report as an attempt to “segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration” and label them as terrorists.

But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.

Read the rest of the column. He suggests that we may be on the cusp of an extended period of extremist violence, facilitated, in part, by the so-called “conservative” media outlets, and people like Jon Voigt who declared President Obama to be a “false prophet.” Huh? Again, I just don’t think “conservative” is the right word for these people. “Insane anarchists” maybe?

I’ve also been reading a book on Weimar Germany. In case you’re unfamiliar, the “Weimar Republic” is the name often given to the period in Germany between the two World Wars. There was a flowering of culture and liberalism, but, of course, the outcome was Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party, rising from the simmering sludge of angry anti-liberals.  Here is a paragraph from pages 75-76 the book:

Ludwig Finckh, a conservative Swabian author, loudly proclaimed, “Berlin is not Germany.” The capital was inhabited by “visionaries, dreamers, and adventurers . . . [who] live in a delusion.” They call for the brotherhood of all peoples while Germany’s adversaries laugh away. The Social Democrats “teach respect for every opinion,” and are thereby at best indecisive, at worst traitorous, while the military renounces the reason for its existence by failing to use force. Finckh even called for a new German capital, one that would evoke “the spirit of Germany” against the “spirit of Berlin.” Similarly, the conservative journalist Wilhelm Stapel complained about the “cesspool of the Republic, the spoiler of all noble and healthy life.” Even worse was the desire of small-town residents to replicate it, to make “every little rathole in all of Germany . . . a microcosm of Berlin.” Stapel did not refrain from voicing the deepest fear of conservatives—deracination: “All too many Slavs and all too many altogether uninhibited East European Jews have been mixed into the population of Berlin. It is an embarrassing mixture; it determines through sheer quantity the character of this city.”

Sure sounds a lot like  our anti-left today, especially in California. Just change “Slavs” to Mexicans, “Jews” to gays and the godless, “Berlin” to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and maybe even Sacramento. We’d best be vigilant.

Over at The Fresno Bee, they post letters to the editor on their website. These are the same letters that are published every day in the printed newspaper, under the following guidelines:

Please include address and daytime phone number for verification, and limit to 200 words.

The Bee does not publish anonymous letters, open letters, form letters or poetry.

That text is printed next to the letters in the newspaper every day, with addresses for both email and physical mail submissions. You can also submit letters through an online form. Oddly, the text next to that form is different:

Your comments will be sent to the editorial staff at The Fresno Bee, for possible use in the printed and online edition of The Bee. Your first and last name, as well as your phone number are required for letter verification. If those are not present, your letter will not be considered for publication. Please refer to our letter policy for more detailed guidelines.

Letters must be no more than 200 words.

And, inexplicably, the words “refer to our letter policy” are not a hyperlink. I have never been able to find their “letter policy” either, even after a Google search with these terms:

site:fresnobee.com “letter policy”

Those things—the two different texts for the same purpose, the absent “letter policy”—are not really a big deal, but they indicate that The Bee does not care about details, has no clue how to run a good website, or both.

At any rate, the letters printed in the newspaper are just like letters in most newspapers: if you want to respond, you need to write your own letter. I am only guessing about this based on my experience, since the “letter policy” remains safely concealed, but it appears that The Bee will print only one layer of responses to a letter. In other words, they might print fifteen responses to one letter, but it seems they won’t print responses to any of those letters.

Once the letters are published on the website, however, the Bee allows registered users to post comments, much as they might on a blog. This leads to long and unruly threads, mostly populated by some of the most irate, ignorant, and inarticulate people on the internet. Most of these commenters remain anonymous, using cryptic usernames instead of real names. And even though The Bee allows these registered users to create “profiles,” few of them provide any identifying information.

So I try to be different. My username is “peter_j_wall,” while my profile includes a photograph of me, says I am an attorney, and names the firm where I practice. I try to keep my comments substantive, nonpartisan, and reasonable. After all, with the information available on my profile, anybody who wants can look up this blog, my State Bar profile, the website for the firm where I practice, my brother’s blog (he also comments on the letters), and probably plenty of other information.

Despite all that, I dropped in on a comment thread earlier today to discover one of the other commenters—someone who goes by the username “Joe_Smith_60″—calling me a “lieyer.” And it was clear that he had not read or not understood the comment he was responding to, or maybe had no intention but to grind his own axe at my expense. I have no idea if “Joe Smith” is his real name, or if he is the Joe Smith who, according to Classmates.com, graduated from Bullard High School in 1963. (If the “60″ is supposed to be indicative of age, the numbers would be about right.) Who knows? His profile gives no more information and has been listed as “currently being reviewed by the editors” for quite a long time.

Fortunately, I suppose, The Bee allows you to “Report abuse” for various reasons: “Obscenity/vulgarity,” “Hate speech,” “Personal attack,” “Advertising/Spam,” “Copyright/Plagiarism,” and “Other.” So I reported, chose “Personal attack”—it seemed the most appropriate—and explained that, while I recognize the popular animosity against lawyers (there is even a recent book called Lawyers Are Liars), it is not appropriate for someone in that kind of forum to refer to me personally as a “lieyer.” (And it may even be defamation in the form of libel, though certainly not worth litigating.) The comment was removed, and now there is only placeholder text: “Joe_Smith_60′s comment is abusive and has been removed.”

But the reporting hardly seems worthwhile and the removal is little more than a token gesture. The real problem, I think, is anonymous commenting. When you write a letter for publication in the newspaper (and now online), The Bee requires authenticating information and demands editorial control. Lots of irritatingly stupid letters still get through, however, and I almost agree with Ed Brayton: “Letters to the editor are quite often some of the most depressing things one can read.” Reading the online comments on the letters printed by The Bee is even worse.

When the local newspaper offers an online forum for citizens to discuss the issues raised in letters to the editor, I fail to see why that discussion should not be held to standards just as high as those for the letters themselves. Require some authenticating information. Prohibit anonymity.

There is a difference between readers of a local newspaper using the web to discuss politics and a bunch of strangers worldwide using the web to discuss, say, the Star Wars movies. The whole point of going online to discuss the minutiae of the Star Wars universe, just to stay with that example, is to escape and inhabit a fantasy world, for fun and recreation. Anonymity is almost necessary there. But when people want to talk about pressing political issues with fellow locals, what good is anonymity? It only promotes rudeness and idiocy, from what I can tell.

According to my brother, who has been in contact with one of the editors at The Bee, they are “working on a number of things that [they] hope will keep the bad behavior to a minimum while keeping the comment system as open and freewheeling as possible.” I hope they succeed, but I’m not holding my breath.

Nevertheless, I still wonder about some of these commenters. Their comments are bizarrely worded, poorly spelled and punctuated, devoid of substance, but angrier than anything, mostly about “liberals” and “democrats,” which seem to be codewords for anybody who fails to agree with them. But I don’t even feel comfortable calling these people “conservative” because they seem too far removed from reality and decency and plain sense. A better label would be “seventh graders.”

I’ll keep trying to bring some stabilizing reason to the discussions over there, but I doubt the possibility of making a real difference. When being a lawyer means I spend almost every waking moment (and too many sleeping ones) trying to be honest and wondering if I have screwed something up, to have some quasi-anonymous jerk call me a “lieyer” can pretty much ruin my day. Joe_Smith_60 should hold himself to the same high standard and The Bee should refuse to put its imprimatur on a system that does not require people to strive for that standard.

The Bee’s editors are right: we should have “freewheeling” public discourse on important issues. But real public discourse should never be confused with the useless cacophony that spews from shrill partisan drones in echo chambers.