NY bomb plot suspect Najibullah Zazi

Since World War II we have routinely shared intelligence with the British, even co-locating our efforts in some intelligence facilities.  U.K. intelligence recently alerted US authorities to a terrorist bomb attack plot, which the Telegraph announced was stymied.  Good. Intelligence works as it’s supposed to, and bad guys are caught.

But here’s the troubling comment in that report:

“The British discovery also came at just the right time – the US had threatened to sever intelligence links over the release of Lockerbie bomber Al Megrahi.”

We did what? Because we are officially miffed at the Lockerbie business, we are willing to cut off our noses to spite our faces in regards to cooperative terrorism intel work with the British?!?

As it frequently does, the Telegraph fails to cite sources or authorities for inflammatory facts alleged, so I want to take that statement with a grain of salt. But if the allegation is true, I am outraged.  I understand the game of political brinksmanship and threatening actions that will never really take place in order to make a point or coerce an uncooperative partner.  But sometimes threatened actions take on a life of their own.  That’s a foolhardy place to go if you can’t afford to pay the full price of engagement.

We have no business even thinking about playing this game of chicken with our US/UK shared intelligence. There is too much at stake on many levels, not only the obvious hot spot of terrorism, but especially in that regard given our present need for hypervigilance in the matter.

This is not a time or appropriate manner to threaten to take our marbles and go home.  In spite of ourselves, the Brits saved our butt on this one.

Now, who was that American bonehead who came up with the threat to “sever intelligence links” as part of our official hissy fit over Lockerbie?  He or she needs some basic instruction in Appropriate Leverage 101. And a spanking.

Not necessarily in that order.

Post from: Cogitations

Brits prevent U.S. terrorist attack in spite of our posturing

One of those instances I mentioned was that of the notorious Beltway killers, also called the “D.C. Sniper”, a pair who killed 10 people and terrorized many more with their random, stealthy shootings.

In a footnote to that post, I see a news report this evening that the mastermind of that duo, John Allen Muhammad, is slated to die by lethal injection tomorrow night, Tuesday November 10. It is unlikely he’ll receive any reprieve.

In contrast to so many death row sentences, he is not spending decades awaiting execution, but is being pushed relatively swiftly through our ponderous legal system. (He and his sidekick Lee Boyd Malvo were arrested in 2002).

Wheels grind slowly but exceeding fine, and all that.

Post from: Cogitations

DC Sniper to Die on Tuesday

This singular attack has become a Rorschach test of projected motives and fears of domestic terrorism. The Arab American Institute, an advocacy organization for the Arab American community, is bracing for backlash with their carefully worded homepage message today[1], which emphasizes that thousands of Arab and Muslim Americans serve in the military and have put their lives on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vitriolic spew in countless internet comments and blog posts demonstrate that they are right to be concerned.  Such reminders as the AAI offers will probably go unheeded by fearful, xenophobic Americans looking for a dog to kick.

We have been reaping this bitter harvest most notably since 9/11: persons with Arabic-sounding surnames are pulled aside in disproportionate numbers for security checks in airports, and profiled in other ways by law enforcement agencies.  Arab Americans report a higher incidence of harassment and assault because of their ethnicity since that date. These hate crimes occur even if the person is not Muslim. In fact, only 24% of Arab Americans are Muslim; the vast majority are Christian, but this non-evident fact does not trump the obvious ethnicity of a foreign-sounding name or cast of features. That is sufficient to make this population of over 3.5 million Americans into a target for persons who think terrorism can be predicted on the basis of a person’s appearance or ethnicity.

Real Threat Levels?

Some fear-stricken people and bigots have claimed it is “more likely” we will suffer attack by people who are from the Middle East, since we are at war over there and that is the home of the 9/11 terrorists. Yet in the violent attacks and mass shootings that have occured here since 9/11, none have been acts of terrorism in the sense of “kill random Americans and create fear to send a message in support of a cause.”

We’ve had various unbalanced shooters attack students in such places as Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech, two African American snipers on a killing spree taking advantage of post-9/11 tension to terrorize people, although they were sociopathic killers not literal terrorists. A quick google scan shows too many mass attacks to list here.  We have no lack of tragic killing sprees in this country.

In the realm of real terrorists, the Ft. Dix Six did not actually do any shooting before they were arrested for their plan to infiltrate an army base and kill soldiers in 2007.  Just as virulent and less well covered in the media was the plot by four African American men to “bring death to Jews” by blowing up synagogues in New York this May. That plot, too, remained only a plot. Likewise neutered was a wannabe Dallas bomber snagged in an FBI sting this October. In fact, a string of arrests for actual terrorism plots has happened in 2009, if anything demonstrating that our investigation and enforcement efforts are succeeding.

Mass attacks that have resulted in deaths since 9/11 have been carried out by sociopaths and the psychologically unwell, not jihadists executing a plan in the name of a larger goal.

Shootings like this at Ft Hood are dramatic and tragic. They leave us on edge. But why are so many so quick to cry “terrorism”? It is not merely because we have collectively been waiting for the other shoe to drop since 9/11:  it is specifically because of Hasan’s ethnicity and his religion.

Unbalanced Perception of Ethnicities

Since Hasan has survived the gunshots that ended his shooting spree, we are likely to discover his true motives for the attack[2]. If it is a case of another highly stressed person going postal – shocking as it is every time, well, we’ve seen this before. If there is ideology and religious fanaticism involved, that will be a different conversation, but then, neither ideology nor fanaticism is limited to Arab Americans, or the 24% of them who are Muslim Americans. Timothy McVeigh already demonstrated that, yet oddly there was no widespread call to profile, investigate and harass Catholics. 

We are not new to this mindset. “Hours after [McVeigh's] 1995 bombing, rumors began spreading that the crime had been carried out by Muslim terrorists.“  There is simply no generalized guilt-by-association when the attackers look like “us”. In fact, the first place we look for the guilty party is to the Other: the ones who do not look or (we think) act like “us”.

That is the quick way to jump off the pre-judgment cliff, and it’s never a soft landing when we do so.

Let’s watch out for over-hyped speculation until more is known and confirmed.  Media in the immediate aftermath of a chaotic event is always filled with distortions, speculations, and unsubstantiated claims from anonymous sources.  One news report claimed Hasan was “handing out Korans” before he went to the base (hmmmm, suspicious act, that). Turns out that is an exaggeration of his neighbor’s statement that he was giving away some stuff from his apartment on the eve of being deployed, and he gave her a Koran.  Twist words just a hair, and the terrorism conspiracy theorists are off and running.

Knee-Jerk Reactions: Don’t Let Them Rule Us

Arab Americans are mostly Christian, and a huge number of them have names you will never recognize as Arab because of the American side of their heritage. Take me: I’m half Lebanese. If I signed off with my mother’s name of Hakeem here, I’d be more of a target for bigots, I have no doubt. I know some Arab Americans who conceal their heritage to avoid exactly such problems.

Is that the country we want to be living in? Where we follow a boneheaded calculus that goes,  “religious foreigners hurt us, you’re foreign (and probably of that religion), therefore you’re to be distrusted because you might hurt us”?  A land where ethnic  and religious difference is regarded with suspicion and hatred, reminiscent of places like Bosnia? That’s not the America I served in the Army to defend.

Fears and paranoia are toxic and erode everything we’re about. Glenn Greenwald critiques this “media orgy of rumors, speculation, and falsehoods,” rightly noting that people will come to snap conclusions and then not listen to new facts any more after the urgency of the story fades. Based on that constructed reality – one based not on facts, but fear and prejudice – anti-social and violent actions follow.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

We need to get a handle on these unthinking reactions before bin Laden and his lap dogs can proudly proclaim, “Mission Accomplished.”  Though I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re doing that happy dance already.

**
1.  Homepage text from the Arab American Institute today:

We at the Arab American Institute are horrified by this tragic and senseless act of violence committed by a disturbed individual. We grieve with the families of those who died and those who were wounded. Our thoughts and prayers are with them.

Thousands of Arab Americans and American Muslims serve honorably everyday in all four branches of the U.S. military and in the National Guard. Additionally, many of our sons and daughters have willingly stepped forward to fulfill their duty with their fellow soldiers in Afghanistan, Iraq and other locations around the globe. Indeed, many are today currently deployed in both countries, honorably serving each and every day.

Please contact your local Red Cross and volunteer to give blood. If you are looking for a loved one from Ft. Hood, please contact the Red Cross’ “Safe and Well” program at https://disastersafe.redcross.org/. You will need the telephone number or address for the person you seek. For more information on how to help through the Red Cross in this crisis: http://redcrosschat.org/2009/11/05/fort-hood-shootings/

For more information about Arab Americans in the military, please visit the Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in the Military.

2. To compound this tragedy, he may not be responsible for the whole body count laid at his doorstep.  The AP reports that “Officials are not ruling out the possibility that some of the casualties may have been victims of  ‘friendly fire,’ shot by responding military officials.”

Post from: Cogitations

Maj. Hasan: New Lightning Rod for Terrorism Fears

There is a common element running through these and other scenarios. It is the factor of authoritarianism: a personality construct and set of behaviors certain people exhibit and are drawn to. Authoritarian followers march behind their leaders blindly and loyally, ready to unleash aggression upon any that question those leaders. Authoritarian leaders believe the ends justify the means, and blithely embrace manipulation, aggression, deceit, and force to get what they want at any cost.

This goes beyond any mere political difference between liberals and conservatives. Social science scales which test for personality traits have found that approximately 25% of the general population is wired this way.[1] Not surprisingly, authoritarians like order and tradition, and traditional authority. They gravitate to patriarchal forms of allegiance. Authoritarianism may manifest differently in differing political systems (such as in China), but in the U.S., authoritarians are typically drawn to conservative party politics.

Fundamentalist Christians and the evangelical right were drafted wholesale into Republican politics to get Ronald Reagan elected in the 1980s. That infusion of Christian conservatives was revitalized under born-again Bush II. Since then, this set of traits has become even more prominent and entrenched in the American right wing. This broad authoritarian streak accounts for why the GOP and its close media affiliates like conservative talk radio have become so rigid in their orientation that the Republican party has shed moderate conservatives in droves over the last decade.

Authoritarian abhorrence of compromise and the tactics they use to gain control at any cost are at their heart anti-democratic. The more powerful this element becomes in politics, the more damage is done to our democracy. That is my concern in exploring this aspect of contemporary politics. To frame that discussion,  I’ll be looking at the authoritarian personality, then at how these individuals and groups behave, then their political/religious affiliations, and finally at specific authoritarian actions that are subverting constitutional principles in the service of their bid for power.

Next in series: Pt 3, The Authoritarian Personality

Part 1 of series: Authoritarians and Conservative Politics

______

1. See subsequent posts for discussion of this data, related factual claims,  and links to source material.

Post from: Cogitations

Authoritarians, pt 2: the Problem Broadly Outlined

This is a subject area that is, as it were, part of the skeleton of what makes conservatism tick in contemporary politics. The conservative movement, as embodied by the current GOP and its largely Christian-religious base, is a relatively recent development on the national stage. It has gained momentum since Falwell et al’s jump into the spotlight with the perversely named “Moral Majority” in the late 1970s, and its successor organization the Christian Coalition.

The damage that has been done by this school of thought is insidious and widespread, and has managed to hijack older strains of conservatism and pervert them to a narrow, righteous, and dogmatic worldview that takes no prisoners and works to create a fundamentalist autocracy in place of actual democracy.

Democracy, you see, requires compromise, and truly listening to what others have to say so that compromise can be achieved.  Because of the authoritarian orientation that closes doors to open discourse and marches roughshod in condemnatory righteousness over “enemies” (Let’s take our country back! We’re the Real America!) – we are losing or have already lost our channels of true bipartisanship.  It is increasingly difficult to find common ground in national issues.  The disconnect between liberals and conservatives has become a gaping chasm, and authoritarianism is the underlying dynamic, I think, behind why the country has become so polarized, so Red State/Blue, “Us or Them”, most markedly over the last decade.

In the posts I’ll write regarding this theme, I hope to share with you not only my rationale, but the social psychological research that underpins it. I believe my perspective is well-founded from a rational basis. I live in the eternally springing hope that rationality and not only emotional appeal can inform people’s political opinions. Yes, I know our knees all jerk more quickly to the emotional hotbutton, but at the end of the day if we are talking about long term strategic governance of a great nation (and I am), then rationality, I believe, should take premier place at the table.  (That’s one reason I favor braniacs in the Presidency:  it’s good to have Spock in office. At least then rational arguments will be considered, and it is likely that polemic will take second place.)

I find it ironic that I of all people am commenting on this sort of thing. According to the self-survey at Political Compass, I rate out as a libertarian-liberal somewhere on the spectrum near Gandhi. (hahahaha)  Yet by some other measures I also have streaks of conservatism, and potential affiliation with certain closely defined conservative interests, ranging from aspects of Goldwater conservatism to a distinct Technocratic leaning. (again: hahahaha. I am amused by the weirdness of life.).

Yet I rather toss all these cards in the air, because labels are too constricting or not descriptive enough, and in my case at least, change situationally. And I know from experience that my socially “open-minded” leanings are stark enough  to tie even most progressives into knots. They are also off-put by my avid gun-ownership. <g>

At the end of the day I aim to pitch most of my arguments to moderates and independents, not only because “you’re the swing votes, baybee!” but because I find them the least ideologue-driven of all interest groups, and actually inclined to listen to rational argument and come to their own conclusions. (But of course people with open minds willing to engage with new info and new perspectives can be found anywhere, and if you come from this orientation I welcome your thoughts no matter where you think you may fall on a political spectrum.)

So. I will be spending a little energy here delving into some threads of power and control that play largely upon fears and have, I believe, hijacked what our country is about in quite overt ways. I can’t separate these discussions entirely from my own potpourri of political leanings, but I can step back as a social scientist and make some observations and arguments founded in actual research, not merely reflexive opinion.  Or, for that matter, ideology, to which I am rather allergic.  My own eclectic interests are one reason I remain non-affiliated with any party, and prefer to ask pointed questions from something of an outsider stance.

Nevertheless, those points will be pointed rather directly at the present configuration of conservatism or better said, Republicanism, as it appears today, because that is where I find the most egregious offenses and greatest threat to the practical work of democracy, for reasons I will be getting into in coming posts.

There. Pump primed, posts to follow.

“Every facet, every department of your mind, is to be programmed by you; and unless you assume your rightful responsibility, and begin to program your own mind, the world will program it for you.”
Evil Nine – Cakehole

______

1. Political Compass offers a surprisingly accurate self-test, with some interesting social science to back it up. If you’re interested in how such things tick, read their various explanatory notes and links at the site. If you don’t care, just take the test for fun. If you’re a regular reader here and care to share, please feel free to post your Political Compass orientation. I’m curious. And hey, I’ll share my ratings specifics too, if at least 1 person posts their own in the comments

Next in series: Authoritarians, pt 2: The Problem Broadly Outlined

Post from: Cogitations

Authoritarians and Conservative Politics

In saying this, I don’t know if Obama is being oblivious, politically savvy, or truly believes what he claims.

As I touched upon in an earlier post,  I agree with Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell that much of the “othering” of the President – questioning his origins, his Americanism, his legitimacy – stands in as proxy for racism and racial unease, as well as other discontents that find a lightning rod in the man who symbolizes profound change.

We can’t measure this empirically yet, although this is such a marked phenomenon that I have no doubt there are myriad political and social scientists already undertaking studies of the reactions to Obama and what motivates them. Perhaps in 10 years we’ll be able to say definitively how much of the current unrest and vitriol regarding our first black President is directly related to his race.

In the meanwhile, what we know presently from social science argues that there is indisputably a deep well of discomfort in a large part of the population originating specifically around the fact that a black man is President.   In addition to the Othering of the President (which is by its nature an often oblique exercise), there has been overt race-baiting from the right, such as Glenn Beck’s assertion that he is certain the President has a “deep-seated hatred of white people.”  Commenting on this on the Rachel Maddow Show on July 29, 2009, Prof. Harris-Lacewell said,

“When we think about the history of race in America, sometimes we have to put aside the notion of [partisan] strategy, and just embrace the reality that race in this country has often brought out irrational anger, fear, anxiety, emotionalism. So it is possible that this [race-baiting] is not a GOP or conservative strategy but is instead really kind of an emotional tantrum on the part of some members of the conservative wing who really just are floundering as they look at a world that is changing so dramatically around questions of race.”

I expect most folks to “not know what they don’t know”: in this case, to be reactive without deep understanding of what is provoking their particular psychological reaction.  I think Barack Obama is a pretty sharp cookie, though, and his comment virtually dismissing race as a driving factor in the backlash against him and his policies seems… naive. I don’t really think he’s naive, so I am going with the assumption that he does not want to make race a central issue in the debate right now. Even though it is the elephant in the living room, his choice to ignore it is (I must assume) made for calculated strategic reasons.

While politically expedient for now, I don’t think that helps us in the long run. The issue of race, and the polarizing factor of a minority-race President, is having an impact on politics and policy, and this is the kind of thing that festers and becomes sublimated (can we say “birthers”?) unless and until it is dealt with directly.  Yet the subject of race, and how to talk about it, continues to challenge us. Whites and blacks see the issues differently, and we are unpracticed at having a constructive national dialog about such things. Not to say constructive dialog does not occur: it can, and does, but usually in smaller microcosms than national-level policy and events.

Barack Obama’s presidency offers us a chance to change those dialog rules, and the perfect occasion to bring this conversation to the table.  We are foolish if we don’t take the opportunity to engage with this particular elephant. It may be the only way (if you will pardon my mixing of metaphors) to prevent it from becoming a bull in a china shop.

Post from: Cogitations

The President, Racism, and the Missing Conversation

Orly Taitz

Army Captain Connie Rhodes, represented by “birther” attorney Orly Taitz,  is refusing deployment on the grounds that Barack Obama is not legitimately President.  A suit filed in this case was thrown out of court on Wednesday.

Regardless of the dismissal of the case, that a military officer rejects the authority of the Commander-in-Chief at all is a troubling sign and symptom of the systematic delegitimization of Barack Obama. It is easy to dismiss this as more fringe “birther” activity, but even baseless claims repeated long enough have a destabilizing effect over time, as well as persuading uncritical thinkers that “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” The birther phenomenon is insidious and continues to gain momentum with a certain segment of the population.

Of much greater concern here than one person’s lawsuit is the damage these ongoing claims and actions do to the office of the President. Birthers traffic in delegitimacy.  Their tactics, and indeed, the core of their argument with Obama, has one goal:  to delegitimize authority.

With the hysterical right-wing reaction to having a black man as president, that office has become something attack-worthy in a way that is not partisan (which revolves around “we’re right, you’re wrong”) but rather assails the actual authority of the office of President itself.[1]

Rhodes’ brief was thrown out of U.S. District Court by Judge Clay Land, who levied a stinging rebuke to Taitz.  Judge Land tore apart Birtherism and threatened Taitz with sanctions in his Sept 16, 2009 court decision.

That would be entertaining to see, but the real battleground regarding delegitimization is in the public marketplace of ideas and discussion/debate.  As one commenter at Talking Points Memo noted,

One reason McCarthy and his soul mates got away with so much was a disinclination for confrontation. Even President Eisenhower didn’t take a stand against him. Ignoring this sort of stuff will not make these people go away, it will make them see how far they can push.

Evoking McCarthyism, in this instance, is not far off-base at all. There are considerable parallels with the tactics of delegitimization, and the use of fear and insecurities that destroyed lives, careers, and fomented public paranoia in the 1950s.

I give America a D right now for how we’re handling our collective insecurities and fears. We are ripe to be maneuvered by groups and individuals who know how to take advantage of such things.

Check back for more on this topic soon.

_____

[1]  Princeton associate professor of political science Melissa Harris-Lacewell has observed – rightly, I think – that the extreme backlash and resistance to Obama is rooted in race issues.  In particular, she has commented that the Birther phenomenon – persistent claims that Obama is not one of us, that he is “Other” (a foreigner) – stands in as proxy for racism. To that I would add, also, the sublimated anxieties of a class and demographic profoundly threatened by change, not just in the Presidency but in many areas and issues of our society.   I will be blogging about this in more detail in the future:  this touches on the deep-seated security issues and fears that are part of the theme of this blog.

Post from: Cogitations

Birther Refuses to Obey President as Commander-in-Chief

Angry Health Care Town Hall Aug 2009

Part 2 of a Series: How Angry Citizens Become Tools of Republican Propaganda.  (See Part 1 here.)

[Dear Reader: If links do not work in this post for you, please view it with Internet Explorer. I'm having some template problems that will persist until I have some downtime for site admin tasks.]

The national health care debate is a great example of propaganda influencing how people think about an issue. How is it that so many people can have their passions whipped into a frenzy about something, and not realize that they have been intentionally led into that state of being?

To understand such broad-scale manipulation of feelings and opinion, we have to first understand how we interact with information presented to us. This harkens back to Walter Lippmann’s quote in my last post: that we react not to the world around us, but to a representation of the world. To pictures, in Lippmann-speak. The way we imagine the world based on those pictures determines how we will react to it.

We react to the world as we perceive it through our senses, out of which we form our impressions and thoughts: our mental picture of what we are dealing with. And we react not merely to the stimulus as such, but to what it evokes within us, and the pictures we associate with that. Who has not felt an upwelling of emotion when a song played, and reminded them of a certain someone? Or been disturbed – pausing, tensely alert – when hearing an unexpected noise outside? We feel things before we respond to them rationally, whether that feeling is simply registering a sensation, or a full-blown emotion.

What comes in to the space between our ears – whatever path it takes to get there – affects us in many ways. It is often unnoticed, because this manner of intake is pretty much the only way we humans can interface with the world around us. We are like fish who do not notice the water we swim in. So pervasive is this sea of input that we become oblivious to just how much we take in every day and how it affects us and our moods, thoughts, and mental state. We are generally blind to the nuances of that input unless we are paying special attention to it at a given moment.

So where does that leave us as social, political animals? It leaves us subject to the emotional resonance of what we take in in our world of affairs. How things come to us, how they are presented, has a profound impact on our perceptions and thoughts. That impact can evoke powerful emotions or subtle associations that color our thinking. We are thinking creatures, but we are also feeling creatures. Not surprisingly, emotions usually underlie whatever rational conclusions we come to.

Our Enlightenment Heritage

The Thinker, by Rodin (Nicolas Perez, Wikimedia Commons)

Rational thought has been an ideal for the mature American adult in public discourse since the Enlightenment Age era of our Founding Fathers. The ideal for the rational thinker is to ask the right questions about a topic, research it with facts from sources as unbiased as possible, then on the basis of that information (and, if appropriate, some ethical or moral values as underpinning), form an opinion that is supported by the facts as we know them.

In perverse reality, people almost always feel an emotional reaction to a subject first, then cobble together a rationale that justifies that feeling. That is, they do the Rational Thinker process in reverse: first the emotion-based opinion, then reasoning backwards to a premise and cherry-picked facts that can plausibly support that stance.

This is a very human response and a very common one – but it is intellectually sloppy. It results in muddy thinking about issues on the basis of partial knowledge and misinformation presented (or invented) by whatever sources bolster the emotion-based stance. This is the perfect recipe for flawed conclusions stemming from faulty logic and missing facts.

Such a result is ideal for ideologues and partisans who want to “activate the base.” But it is a disaster for reality-based policy work and anyone who hopes to evolve real solutions to problems that confront our nation.

The Emotional Process Propaganda Relies On

People who want to sway how others think, and propagandists in particular (who do this with a vengeance), intentionally exploit our emotional reactions. They count on the fact that when an emotional resonance has been hooked, at least four critical things happen[1]:

• We will probably not notice this with our conscious, logical (critical) mind. People are more inclined to react first, and think later.
• We go by default into a reaction mode that, properly prodded, lets one emotion cascade into another: a worrisome assertion evokes fear which stirs anger or outrage. Once we are in the grip of this cycle, our critical brain effectively checks out of the argument.
• If we have been whipped up enough emotionally, we will want to relieve our emotional tension by taking physical action. Propagandists know how to direct that urgency for action into channels beneficial for the propagandists’ purpose.
• We will rationalize how we feel. In a process called “motivated reasoning,” we will pick and chose factoids from what we know that support how we feel, and ignore evidence to the contrary or rationalize its significance away.

The process of hooking an emotional reaction can be very subtle. Indeed, in the beginning it generally must be subtle, because we are not yet emotionally reactive, and many (though not all) of us will logically question overtly outrageous claims or exhortations. But subtle opening volleys can easily get in under our radar even if we are on guard against this sort of thing. A simple example is how we respond to survey questions, which, not coincidentally, can also be used to influence how people think about a topic (see discussion of “push polls” here.[2])

A Single Word Can Influence Our Reaction

Pollsters and social scientists know that how a question is worded has a huge impact on how it is answered. Ethical pollsters take great pains to ask neutral questions. Changing just one word or phrase in a question can yield substantially different results in the responses to it. For instance, asking “Do you favor or oppose the war in Iraq?” gets one set of responses; asking “Do you favor or oppose the war in Iraq as a means of fighting terrorism?” garners another.  Terrorism evokes emotional reactions, and when the war is framed that way, more respondents say they favor the war.

Obviously, then, questions and statements that resonate with emotional responses can be used to bypass our more critical thought processes. This is not to say people don’t weigh a question in their minds. It is to say that what they weigh and how they assess it can be influenced by how the subject is presented. Ask someone to comment on a skewed picture of a fact, and they will focus on the skewed picture, not the underlying fact (and probably not even notice the skew, depending on their personal biases.)

In this way, discussions are subtly (and not so subtly) controlled by the person who establishes the framing: that is, how an issue is defined, how it is presented, and what words (hence, emotional reactions) describe it.

In part 3 of this series, I’ll look at the work of Frank Luntz, and how his strategy memo created for Republicans framed the language – and, intentionally, the emotional reactions – which define our present discussion of health care reform.

_______________

NOTES

1. See generally Propaganda and Persuasion (Jowett and O’Donnell 1999) and Age of Propaganda: the everyday use and abuse of persuasion (Pratkanis and Aronson 2001) in Sources.

2. For a recent and very overt example of a push poll question (one intended to lead public thought in a certain direction), the Republican National Committee has provided us with this example from their fundraising survey distributed earlier this year. Although masquerading as a legitimate survey, and producing results that might (and probably will) be quoted as poll results, this instrument is actually what is called an “involvement device.” (See comments here for discussion.)  Its purpose is to engage readers’ concerns enough that they are roused to action (see bullet points above about creating a need for action) and contribute to the cause, in this case the RNC. Most of the questions in the survey are slanted, but this is the most outrageous:

“It has been suggested that the government could use voter registration to determine a person’s political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system. Does this possibility concern you?”

(The complete survey is here.)

This particular piece of chicanery was so egregious that when questioned, the RNC felt it necessary to actually apologize for it, calling it “inartfully worded.” One wonders what the artful way is to word such questions as that.

SOURCES

Bardes, Barbara A., Mack C. Shelley, and Steffen W. Schmidt. “American Government and Politics Today 2008: The Essentials.” Google Books, 2008.

Begley, Sharon. “Lies of Mass Destruction: Why We Believe Lies, Even When We Learn the Truth.” Newsweek, August 25, 2009.

Cawiser, Sheldon R., and G. Evans Witt. “20 Questions A Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results.” National Council on Public Polls, 2009.

Jowett, Garth S., and Victoria O’Donnell. “Propaganda and Persuasion.”  Google Books, 1999. 

Pratkanis, Anthony, and Eliot Aronson. “Age of Propaganda: the everyday use and abuse of persuasion.”  Google Books, 2001.

Weigel, David. “RNC: Our Survey Was ‘Inartfully Worded’.” The Washington Independent, August 27, 2009. 

———. “RNC’s Health Care Survey.” The Washington Independent, August 27, 2009.

Post from: Cogitations

The 4 Reactions Health Care Propaganda Relies On

Town Hall Protesters, West Hartford CT (Wikimedia Commons)

An acquaintance of mine – let’s call her Lisa – went to two town halls this summer along with friends to protest “Obamacare.”  Lisa, a Republican, sought out the town halls of Democrat representatives not in her home district, but nearby so she could protest “socialism” where she felt it was being promoted: by Democrats, in Democratic districts, under the guise of health care reform.

She was not a constituent. She did not go to have a dialog. She went to shout her anger and “be heard.”

When it was suggested that she and the other angry citizens who disrupted these events were part of something orchestrated by the insurance lobby, she became irate. “No insurance company told me to go do that,” she declared. “It was my idea, and my friends’. We want to fight this thing.”

I understand why Lisa thought she was acting as an independent Angry Citizen.  But frankly, the depth of ignorance in her perceptions and assertions is absolutely breathtaking. Worse, it is shared by the fractious herds of like-minded Angry Citizens who shouted such profundities in August as, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”  – a pugnacious defense and endorsement of their beloved government-run socialist health care program, and the very same sort of thing they had come to protest against.

“[W]hat is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond..?” – Walter Lippmann

The cognitive dissonance in such scenarios is enough to make a thinking person’s brain explode.  To spare myself just such an experience, my chosen remedy is to blog a bit about this phenomenon now. (I was too busy defending myself from imminent brain melt-down during August to muster anything cogent on the topic.)

Played Like a Cheap Fiddle

Now, at the remove of September, I think it is time to prod a bit at the citizenry’s muddy thinking and unfettered emotionalism that enabled lobbyists and GOP leaders to play them like a cheap fiddle.  There are two groups that together created the August hysteria that largely shut down any real policy debate or discussion of real issues about health care.

One is the mass of individuals who tossed their brains out the window and ran on poorly rationalized (”justified”) anger, swallowing lies whole and letting falsehoods become their basis for decisions and action.

The second, and more despicable, is the coolly calculating horde of propagandists and politicos of various stripes who planned and followed a strategy to mislead, stir up emotion on that basis, and point the impassioned result at the goal of derailing healthcare reform.  This is the group that is really to blame for fomenting and directing the angry herd response that resulted in town hall meetings so raucous that dialog was shouted down, congresspersons received death threats, and many meetings were canceled.

Fears, Exploited

Together, these instances perfectly illustrate how those in power manipulate security concerns to generate fear and its close cousin anger.  The end result is the expansion, consolidation, and reinforcement of power, and in this case the defense of their status quo.  It is a pattern that repeats again and again in American politics: conservative politics, at least, seems stuck in a chorus line singing “be afraid!,” and has been for most of a century, now. (Indeed, the perverse longevity of this “approach” to politics and policy is one reason for my continuing fascination with the intersection between security, fear, and power.  I continue to be boggled by how few question the dynamic at all.)

So. Now that I have framed my interest in this issue, and made some claims about people being tools, I’ll start getting into the whys and hows of that in my next post in this series.

Meanwhile, I will leave you with this thought from Walter Lippmann, a well-known columnist, reporter and writer from the 1920s and ’30s, whose masterpiece Public Opinion dissected some of the dynamics of propaganda and politics well enough to inspire generations of Madison Avenue ad men and ambitious politicians.

“[W]hat each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him….The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do…[W]hat is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another?”

- Walter Lippmann in Public Opinion (1922)

Post from: Cogitations

How Angry Citizens Become Tools of Republican Propaganda – Part I

Gonzales Cantata Poster by Molly Crabapple

Well, that didn’t take long at all.

Alberto Gonzales gave another interview to the Washington Times yesterday, in which he rushed to backtrack on his support for Holder’s investigation.

To be fair, he did draw a very (very) fine distinction in semantics: he said, “I do respect the role of the attorney general to make this decision based upon his judgment of the facts, I just respectfully disagree with the decision.”

If only he had left it at that. Or even started with that, instead of finally becoming articulate at the tail-end of the interview.  Instead, the interview is a fascinating exercise in avoid-dance-avoid-avoid.

This is somehow eerily reminiscent of his “I don’t recall” refrain (said 72 times) during the 2007 Senate hearings that resulted in his resignation from the office of Attorney General. In fact, that was such a memorable performance that it has actually been turned into a performance.  Melissa Dunphy has composed the Gonzales Cantata, playing at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival this weekend, but happily with outtakes and the full libretto posted online for anyone who cares to sample it.  It is a delightful work, made up of songs like “I Don’t Recall”, “You Don’t Recall,” and “This Is Not About Alberto Gonzales.”

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Dunphy said of the work, “This is not a partisan piece…It’s about a man who made some mistakes and is facing the music. It’s also an exploration of how a man could so brazenly politicize the Department of Justice without really standing up for the reasons he went into politics in the first place.”

That seems to be a stance Gonzales continues to be familiar with. He pretzel-twists himself around direct questions about the CIA investigation, or the past investigation conducted on his watch, and splits fine hairs indeed to ensure he is still seen as a party loyalist.  His logical arguments are just as weak: tacitly admitting that a small percentage of interrogators exceeded the guidelines (and ergo committed what could be criminal acts), he likens his past decision not to prosecute to the discretionary exercise of a cop deciding whether or not to pull someone over for a speeding ticket.

In discussing the Gonzales Cantata, Dunphy said, “I see Gonzales as a tragic figure who’s also simultaneously irredeemable.”

Sadly, that seems to be spot-on.

The Gonzales Cantata can be purchased and downloaded here. Music samples and trailers here.

Post from: Cogitations

Gonzales Reverses Self on CIA Investigation