Notes

This is what the Internet does: You have all these moments where you discover X and think, “How could I possibly have gone so long without knowing about X?”

Today my X is George Monbiot. I was introduced to his work by this provocative snippet on Massimo Pigliucci’s Rationally Speaking:

“If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you’re likely to go to prison. If born to a rich family, you’re likely to go to business school.”

So I read the linked article (which is also on Monbiot’s blog). It’s fascinating and it strikes where I have been privately ruminating. But agree or not, it’s worth your time if you want a good brain-tickling on an important problem.

Now here is someone who truly does not get it:

[I]n Arizona, voters turned out of office the chief architect of that state’s controversial anti-immigration law. State Senator Russell Pearce, a Republican power broker and a former sheriff’s deputy known for his uncompromising style, conceded the race Tuesday with a look of shock on his face.

“If being recalled is the price for keeping one’s promises, then so be it,” he said. Mr. Pearce, the president of the Senate, was a hero to the Tea Party movement, and apart from his anti-immigration efforts, he had introduced numerous bills to nullify federal laws.

You weren’t elected to keep campaign promises, Mr. Pearce; you were elected to represent the people in your district. And representing people is not the same thing as keeping campaign promises.

This is where I get annoyed by people on both sides of the political spectrum. An election is not a message in a bottle, where your letter remains sealed inside until the bottle is opened. An election is more like a wedding, where you pledge to remain loyal to your partner even as things change around you. The only thing that must remain constant if you want to be a good representative is loyalty to your constituents. Those “campaign promises” are just an impressionistic snapshot of your personal outlook, not a contract. If you went into a marriage expecting to remain stubbornly unchanged in how you live your life, then you’d probably get voted out of that, too.

Maybe this is why I find myself with more sympathy for candidates who are (or have been) practicing attorneys, with real clients. Do that for a while and you learn what it means to “represent” someone.

I just found this piece by Andrea Kuszewski from a couple months ago: “Your Brain on Politics: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Liberals and Conservatives.” (It came to me by way of a guest post from Chris Mooney on Climate Progress, where you can find more links to similar stuff, and a plug for his upcoming book on this topic.)

Here’s a bit from the conclusion:

[I]t’s clear that there are group differences in party thinking style. When a party is trying to rally its base and speak to their own, they will use those communication styles that work for them, which makes perfect sense. Liberals will rally with data and strong, logical arguments, and conservatives will hammer away about family values and stability. This works really well for strengthening your in-group. But it doesn’t do any good trying to cross party lines with those same tactics, because the other side just isn’t as receptive to those arguments and communication styles as you are.

So you know what this means? Yep—each side is going to have to recognize that not everyone thinks like them, processes information like them, or values the same types of things. Each party is going to have to think of,  i) what idea they are trying to communicate, ii) how that other group responds best to presentation of information (what turns them on or off), and iii) how to present it to that other group in a way that is both meaningful and non-threatening.

So maybe the Occupy Wall Street people need to spend more time pointing out that more equitable distribution of incomes is all about family values and stability. Having so much income go disproportionately to such a small number promotes economic instability and leads to crises like the recent one. And ensuring that ordinary families are able to capture an equitable share of our growing national prosperity will help them do things like purchase health care, educate their children, and look after each other.

Responding to the latest appellate decision on the Affordable Care Act (and the second one upholding it), Jack Balkin makes a good observation about “conservative” judges:

Professor Balkin said [that] conservative legal theory runs deeper than politics, with two schools of thought. The one that emerged in Tuesday’s decision [upholding the Affordable Care Act] “is about judicial restraint and respect of political branches of government” to make broad policy decisions like the ones in the health care bill. The other school, he suggested, “is about the athletic assertion of constitutional values that conservatives hold dear: federalism and individual liberty.”

Those two schools of thought are good to remember when you’re talking about “conservative judges” and “judicial activism.” You can’t just assume those things are opposites.

My brother brought this to my attention: Highland Park, Michigan, can’t pay its electricity bill. To address the problem, they’re not just turning off the street lights; they’re pulling out the light poles. I guess they’re not very optimistic about a recovery.

But if you’re a libertarian, the real story here is that “there are fewer slaves available to fund the government’s rotten shenanigans.”

Tell you what, though, my wife and I sure appreciated the rotten shenanigans of the City of Fresno when we went for a walk after dark last night.

Prompted by the suggestion of a reader, I have written up the policies I use to moderate comments. Most of these polices were already in effect; now you can read them yourself. For future reference, see the link above, to “Comment Policy.”

Saw this on a social network. Lifted it. Enjoy, if you can.

Andrew Bacevich, suggesting that “American exceptionalism” is more like “American obliviousness and hypocrisy”:

“When America is strong,” Romney declared, “the world is safer.” The post-Cold War era, with unquestioned U.S. military preeminence going hand in hand with widespread disorder, offers little to substantiate this proposition. Even so, an insistence that American military power and its application are conducive to peace remains one of the Third Testament’s central tenets. So, whereas a single Chinese aircraft carrier poses a looming danger, a dozen American aircraft carriers make the U.S. Navy a global force for good. A brief Russian incursion into Georgia threatens peace; protracted wars resulting from the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan advance it.

I read Bacevich’s The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism a few years ago and highly recommend it—if you want a hard, challenging look at the world.

Maybe I’m a bad person for it, but I sure had fun watching this video.

I think the kid at the end, in the red pajamas, has a good chance of growing up to be an attorney. Notice how, in the middle of making his case, he even manages to induce his little brother to say that two plus two equals five.