Political Animals

"I wish nothing but good; therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel."

King George III of the United Kingdom, born June 4, 1738

What motivates this blog post is the quote from King George III above, which appeared on one of my Pinterest boards: Dobson's Improbable Quote of the Day for June 4. It had a lot of resonance for me: while George III said it aloud, a lot of people — including me — feel that way, at least from time to time. I didn't aim it at left or right, because that particular feeling is independent of which side of the fence you fall on.

Within a minute or two of sharing the link on Facebook, a comment appeared: "Substitute 'racist' for 'traitor,' and you have Barack Obama." I deleted it at once and sent a message to the poster explaining my desire to keep politics off my wall.

It was some hours before I checked Facebook again. Obviously, that quote had triggered strong political reactions, because now I had two political comments: "Didn't realize the tea party was so old," and "Still the official motto of the Republican party?" People on both sides clearly saw this quote as describing the attitudes of their political opponents.

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There are, I think, few things in the world more useless than having a political argument on Facebook. There are never any winners, only losers to one degree or another. Those who've known me for a long time know I am a man of passionate political opinions, with an unfortunate tendency to use scorched earth rhetoric when provoked — and I provoke more easily than I should. This tends not to end well.

One of the most popular posts in this history of this blog appeared March 2, 2010: You're Not Being Reasonable. In that post, I tried to establish some objective standards for reasonableness in political discussions, virtually all of which I've violated at one time or another. The cost of those violations has been high: I've lost several friendships I valued. Mind you, it takes two to tango, but my own behavior is the only thing I can control, and I look at my own lapses of reasonableness and decorum as cause for shame and embarrassment.

My obsession with cognitive biases (collected in my personal magazine Random Jottings 6) and argumentative fallacies (only partially done, and on my ever-growing list of projects to complete One Of These Days) has done a lot to convince me of the futility of political argument.  Confirmation bias  alone, the tendency to interpret information in a way that conforms to your preexisting beliefs, derails most discussions before they get started. None of us can shake personal bias altogether, but we can work to limit its effects on our thinking.

Because of the operation of cognitive bias (I include my own bias as well as that of others), I can't think of a single situation in which someone's mind has been changed through a Facebook argument, or indeed through an argument of any kind. When I have changed my mind, it's not because of someone's argument but rather someone's behavior or personal actions, or my evolving understanding of the world around me. If I have changed someone else's mind, it is for the same reasons.

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My social media activity is a combination of personal and professional. A lot of my Facebook friends are actually friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, but many are professional relationships (LinkedIn has been pretty useless in that regard), and a surprising number are people I've actually met and gotten to know through Facebook itself. (Having grown up in science fiction fandom, I'm used to having friends I've never actually met in person.) Some of my Facebook friends have political opinions I find congenial, but a whole lot of them don't.

Mixing the personal and the professional has its dangers. For the first few years I was on Facebook, I mostly posted a daily "Dobson's Law" of project management (collected here). I learned a lot from the discussions that followed. For both personal and professional reasons, I began wishing people happy birthday on Facebook (sadly, I've neglected that in recent months), and started adding a list of shared birthdays. That led to my second blog, Dobson's Improbable History (pace Peabody), a more-or-less daily post of events and people associated with each day, which in turn supports a series of books I'm writing: The Story of a Special Day, one for every day of the year. (Only $7.95 print, $2.99 ebook — it's like a birthday card they'll never throw away!™ — adv.)

In other words, there are plenty of reasons for me to stay out of politics on Facebook.

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My formative political experience was Alabama during the civil rights years. We supported civil rights in a time and place where that was an extreme minority position. My father considered marching in Selma, and only refrained because he was told his job was on the line. He was generally unafraid of confrontation and had a take-no-prisoners attitude toward those with whom he disagreed, and in that, I took after him.  I believed — and still believe — that the segregation side was not merely wrong, but evil. That's not to say I thought the people who held those beliefs were necessarily evil, but when you call someone's beliefs evil, it's hard for them not to take it personally. I didn't have a lot of friends in those days.

Strangely, however, I now call lots of the same people my friends, though in many cases my feelings about their political opinions remain unchanged. Perhaps it's the shared Stockholm syndrome experience of high school; perhaps it's simply the realization that personal history matters. I can get along with people of dramatically different beliefs, but the way to do that is to focus on what we agree on and what we share, not what separates us. At least that's the plan — the execution has been less than perfect.

Yes, I occasionally find political pieces I want to repost, or comments I feel compelled to make. I created a Facebook list of people likely to find my political positions congenial, and when I can't refrain from political comment, at least I don't feel the need to rub it in the noses of those who disagree. I also feel more free to jump into other people's Facebook discussions, especially when I agree with the original poster. After all, they brought up the subject, not me. It's rare for me to comment when someone posts an opinion I find repugnant; instead, I simply hide the most regular offenders from my timeline and thus keep my blood pressure under control.

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I can never tell what posts will draw political reactions. In addition to Dobson's Improbable History and Dobson's Improbable Quote of the Day, I  also explore my fascination with maps on a Pinterest board called, oddly enough, More Fun With Maps!  I generally share them without much in the way of comment: a map should speak for itself. Some maps, however, lend themselves to one political position or another.  I avoid sharing some maps because of the likelihood of triggering a political argument, but that doesn't always do the trick. Maps I think of as fairly neutral have drawn sharply partisan responses. The same thing is true of quotes. Honestly, I didn't think the King George III quote was going to provoke this kind of reaction.

It is much easier, of course, to see the mote in thy brother's eye than the beam that is in thine own eye. We notice the horrible and disgusting things people on the other side say about our side much more clearly than the horrible and disgusting things that our fellow travelers say about them. Whatever the merits of one position over the other, none of us have clean hands when it comes to rhetorical excess. While I'm wary of false equivalence, or "both sides do it," as a general argument, in this particular case, I think it's a fair observation. I wrote this blog post, and then shared it.

The next comment was political as well: "I stand firmly for the Mugwump party."

I appreciated the sentiment. After all, politics is a Mug's game.

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A New Political Lexicon

The “loony left,” right “wing nuts,” fanatics, extremists, terrorists — how we define these people normally grows from our own political beliefs and positions. Is it possible to define these categories objectively? Let’s start with the big, general categories:

Categories of Principled People

• Principled people. While some principles vary depending on political belief or position, other principles are generally accepted across the spectrum. These generally accepted principles include character, integrity, commitment, and hard work. Other principles come from our beliefs and positions, and we call others “principled” when they share and practice those same values.

• Indifferently principled people. This category, alas, is one most of us fall into at least some of the time. When we don’t live up to the principles we ourselves believe in and advocate, we usually know it.

• Differently principled people. When people share those generally accepted values of character and integrity, but hold opposing views on political issues, they’re “differently principled.” They may (or may not) be wrong on the issues, but they are consistent and thoughtful on the topic.

• Unprincipled people. Unprincipled people are centered around self rather than principle. They evaluate their choices and situations in terms of what maximizes personal (and usually short-term) benefit. They are not necessarily evil (but may commit evil acts), but they are almost by definition immoral.

• Passionate people. What passionate people have in common is a belief their cause is so important it justifies breaking at least some social rules. Passionate people cover a wide spectrum that starts with argument and ends in violence, but that’s not to say that all passionate people are cut from the same cloth. There’s a big difference between someone who insists on trying to win you to their cause verbally and someone who thinks killing a lot of random civilians is a great way to make a point.

• Kooks. “[T]he fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses,” wrote Carl Sagan. “They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” Believing something outside the mainstream doesn’t by itself make you a kook. To be a kook, you have to believe that the mainstream has to prove itself to you, rather than the other way around.

Passionate people. As noted, passionate people cover a wide spectrum. The best way to segment them is by the type and severity of the rules they feel entitled to break.

• Argumentative/persuasive people simply bring up their topic even when other people disagree or don’t want to hear it.

• Deliberately rude people believe showing bad manners to the opposition is a good strategy. Public shouting, interruptions, ad hominem attacks, and name-calling fall into this category.

• Civil disobedient people are willing tobreak laws they consider immoral or unjust, typically in a non-violent way.

• Extremists use violence or the threat of violence in support of their goals.

At different times or on different issues, we may occupy any of these categories ourselves, so it’s important to point out that even being an extremist isn’t always or necessarily wrong.

It is, however, wrong to confuse passionate people with unprincipled people. Unprincipled people are only out for themselves. Passionate people believe in what they’re doing. That dramatically influences their behavior, and if you confuse the two types, you’re likely to make huge tactical and strategic mistakes in dealing with your opposition.

Kooks. Extreme beliefs aren’t the same thing as extreme behavior. The extremes are determined by the norms – the opinions held by the majority of educated people on a given topic. If there is no strong and overwhelming consensus for a specific opinion, then the contrary opinions are also mainstream. When there is an almost universal consensus among educated people, contrary opinions are not mainstream. (The key is determining in each case who are the “educated” people. Shakespeare's dominance of English letters doesn't rest on whether ordinary joes like his writing, but on whether the consensus of English scholars do.)

But disagreeing with the majority doesn't automatically make you a kook. Believing it's the job of the educated majority to justify itself to you, rather than the other way around, does. “Burden of proof” is a very useful legal concept. Which side owns the burden of proof? In a criminal trial, the prosecution has the burden. Ties go to the defender. What is the burden of proof? Do you have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, or only by the preponderance of the evidence?

When it comes to extreme beliefs, the burden of proof lies with those who challenge conventional opinion, not those who support it. If you want to patent a perpetual motion machine, you can’t make the Patent Office prove your invention can’t work. It’s your job to prove that it can. Intelligent people who want their unconventional and extreme positions to change the world know they have to do it the hard way, by winning over educated opinion.

Kooks are people who believe the burden of proof falls on the mainstream, not on themselves. The world is full of people who walk around with detailed manuscripts “proving” that the Freemasons are secretly behind the Trilateral Commision and crop circles, and insist that opposing opinion is proof of a conspiracy.

It’s the insistence, not the claim itself, that is the gold standard of kookdom. Intelligent out-of-the-mainstream opinion understands and accepts the burden of proof, and works to establish it. Although social inertia makes change a slow process, in time the truth tends to win out.

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This is a work in progress. I’d love to hear your comments. Do these categories seem objective? Is it clear how to categorize today’s controversies? Is it fair and reasonable? Is it useful? What have I missed?

The Three Americas

Abdul Aziz Al Saud, first monarch of Saudi Arabia, wanted his nation’s borders based not on geography, but on the migration of tribes. The British High Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox, lost his temper and started yelling, but Ibn Saud had a good point: a nation is not necessarily the same thing as a state. A nation exists in the hearts of the people who belong to it by some combination of heredity and choice. A state, on the other hand, exists in physical space. The two can be as one (a nation-state), but they don’t have to be.

In many parts of the world, nations overlap in the same geography: Israel and Palestine; Turkey, Kurdistan and Iraq; and Tibet, China and Taiwan. Nations can overlap states, be contained within states, or be distributed in communities worldwide like the Chinese and Jewish Diasporas. Such relations tend to be uneasy, and sometimes (Yugoslavia, Rwanda) turn tragic.

What makes a group of people into a “nation”? Culture, common geographic or ethnic origin, religion, history, numbers, and political clout all combine. Nations can self-declare, but others eventually have to recognize them as a distinct population. The Kurds and Tibetans are generally recognized as nations even if not as states. Some nations (Native American tribes) get some limited privileges of statehood. Other self-proclaimed nations (Nation of Islam, Aryan Nation) get little recognition except from their immediate circle.

“Nation” can exist on a metaphorical plane as well. We can be members of more than one nation (if not more than one state) at a time. We might recognize our national, ethnic, or racial origins, or embrace the community of our religion or political movement. Regional differences form nations. In his 1981 book The Nine Nations of North America, the Washington Post writer Joel Garreau identified nine culturally distinct nations sharing our North American continent.

I’d like to propose three nations of my own. Three distinct motives drove Europeans to conquer and settle the New World.

1. Business. New Romans came to conquer and build. The frontier was dangerous, but the potential rewards were great. “The business of America is business,” New Romans tell us, and pragmatically measure success in terms of wealth. It’s not an accident that Washington classical architecture is Roman in style, or that we have a Senate and do not have a king. Above all, it's no accident we maintain the world's largest military.
2. Faith. New Israelites, from the Puritans of New England to the Baptists of Dixie to the Mormons of Utah, came here to settle a new Promised Land, to build anew the institutions and society of God.
3. Society. New Athenians came from the explosive development of liberalism in Europe, which sparked a revolt against aristocracy and the divine right of kinds. Embodied by the intellectual elite that clustered around the hotbeds of political thought in great American cities like Williamsburg, Philadelphia, and Boston, they sought to build a pure Athenian democracy.

Each of the three nations has equal roots that stretch back before the founding of the United States of America. We share, but none of us owns outright, the state, even if from time to time we all wish we could.

We are fortunate that no group is powerful enough to dominate alone. In practice, the country is governed by a shifting and inherently unstable alliance of two out of the three nations. Traditionally, New Romans, pragmatic in orientation, find it easiest to unify in a common cause with either of the other two nations, although occasionally New Athenians and New Israelites have found common cause. And there's not a simple Athenian=liberal, Israelite=conservative pattern either: libertarians are New Athenian conservatives; utopian religious communities are New Israelite liberals. New Romans occupy the whole spectrum as well.

Viewed through this lens, here’s our recent pattern: New Athenians and New Romans united to conquer the Great Depression and World War II. Their alliance could not withstand the philosophical discord and disintegrated over Vietnam and civil rights. Inertia sustained the cause for a while, but by the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan, the foundation had clearly crumbled beyond repair, and a new alliance of Israelite and Roman led the country into a new era, which now too appears to be at an end.

(Some will argue that the Reagan Israelite/Roman alliance is merely suffering a temporary setback, but that’s not the way to bet. The fracturing and realignment is natural, and even if it can be staved off for a while, it can’t be stopped.)

Regardless of your national identification, there’s a lot to like about the well-known 30-year political cycle. Ideas, like fields, need to lie fallow from time to time to maintain healthy crops. A strategy that worked on one set of problems turns into a one-size-fits-all solution, working on the well-known theory that when the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems start to look like nails.

The success and the stability of the system require the three nation tribes to live with one another. The relationship among the three Americas too often resembles something in between a food fight and the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

When we share geography with people whose values we dislike or distrust, we have to accept that they are here, that they are not going anywhere, and that they have a right to be part of the public discourse. Nations that have not been able to recognize and accept their overlapping distant cousins as neighbors inevitably turn to the only logical alternative: get rid of them. While the United States has robust cultural and legal institutions that make such an outcome unlikely, it’s never impossible.

When I was young, my father made a point of paying attention to news sources and ideas he found stupid, repugnant, or just plain wrong. He wanted to make sure he understood them. I know he paid attention; I’ve even known him to change his mind. That's SideWise Thinking.

People who disagree with you can be opponents or enemies. Opponents are people with whom you have opposing interests, but a good relationship (trust, mutual respect.) Opponents keep you on your toes, make you think harder, and often stimulate your best work. Good opponents make your ideas better and your life richer. They can

When respect and trust are absent, opponents turn into enemies, and with enemies, it’s personal and negative. "Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer" doesn't mean what most people think. Contact provides opportunity, either to find common ground, or to build a better relationship. While success isn't always possible, it's usually worthwhile to make a reasonable effort.