Trump v. Omar: The Psychology of Fear, Prejudice, and Ignorance in American Politics

The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I was taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side

–With God on Our Side
Bob Dylan

Fear, prejudice, and ignorance make people do stupid things.  They are the trinity combustant for hate and intolerance, used as a match to fame the flames of discrimination to label some as disloyal Americans who cannot be trusted and deserve to be denied respect and rights.  One lesson of US history is that  appeals to Un-Americanism have been leveraged both by those on the left and right who claim God is on their side or that their cause is correct, thereby invoking an “end that justify the means” logic to dissenters that is dangerous.
America is a beautiful nation, often filled with hope and promise of a better life for us and our children. Yet this country has an ugly side to it that we often forget and ignore.  We often cloak fear, prejudice, and ignorance in the flag and persecute minorities or those with whom we disagree as the cause of our insecurities.  If only others thought like me, dressed like me, shared my values, some promise, then we could root out witches, communists, disloyal Americans, homosexuals,  immigrants, and terrorists and make the country safe for the rest of us real loyal Americans.
It was fear, prejudice, and ignorance in 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, that led to the death of 24 accused of being witches.  Or over 125,000 Japanese-Americans forcefully interned during WW II.  Or to the McCarthyism and the blacklists of the 1950s. Or the beatings of civil rights protestors at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 or Stonewall Inn in 1969.  Or to all Muslims, Middle Easterners, and even Somalians seen as terrorists post 9/11.  Or to transgender individuals seeking to use the bathrooms of their choice as perverts.
There is something hardwired in American culture that celebrates fear, prejudice, and ignorance into virtues.  Perry Miller’s Errand into the Wilderness, dissecting the Puritan mind, captures the fear of the earliest white settlers to North America.  It was persecution that drove them from Europe, a desire to for a new “city on the hill” as John Winthrop would call for;  founded on Christian values, that led them to the new world.  But they confronted one with strange new people and customs, a world seen lurking with danger, and a fear that the devil and evil was waiting to corrupt their enterprise. 
It was a Manichean bipolar world of good and evil, God or the devil, grace or sin, and either you are part of the saved or part of the damned, with no middle ground.  Difference, the inexplicable, the other as existential philosopher John Paul Sartre once said, were to be feared.  For the Puritans, as told brilliantly by Arthur Miller in The Crucible, the other were witches.  Richard Hofstadter, both in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, uncovered the distrust for facts, learning, and intellectualism and intellectuals.  From these Puritan origins, the us or them, loyal or disloyal, true American or Un-American ethos emerged.
But America’s story is one where each generation saw a different other as a threat, where  the new was scary, where relying on nativism, populism, and the fear of the masses justified intolerance.  The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 aimed to silence critics of President Adams and the Federalist party, Anti-Irishism and Anti-Germanism fueled discrimination in the nineteenth century along with fear of the Chinese.  The No-Nothing Party of the 1840s, later renamed the American Party, feared Roman Catholics and immigrants.  Anti-syndicalism acts targeted labor unions and dissenters to WW I.  Sauerkraut during WW I and french fries after 9/11 became liberty cabbage and freedom fries in response to anti-German and French attitudes.  John Kennedy was feared disloyal as a Catholic, Barack Obama seen as Un-American because of his name and lies that he was Kenyan and, even worse, a Muslim.
The Scope Trial of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee put  science on trial as some feared Darwin would defeat God.  The Smith Act of 1940 along with the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joseph McCarthy found communists to be threats, along with the interned Japanese-Americans during WW II.  The list unfortunately marches on–fear, prejudice, and ignorance have  left no group, cause, or idea unscathed.
Common sense wisdom is truth, what me and my friends know at the local bar or in my garage is the logic of truth.  We all live in the smug bubbles of our beliefs, convinced we, as Bob Dylan once mocked, “have God on our side” and therefore we must be correct.  Anything we do, even attacking others, is permitted as revealing the truth and virtue of our cause.
The point is that at critical points in American history fear, prejudice, and ignorance have  justified hate and intolerance.  And the same is happening now.  Donald Trump draws upon fear, prejudice, and ignorance on a daily basis to justify his policy agenda, with Fox News and Twitter serving as his microphone and his supporters cheering him on. White prejudice, privilege, intolerance, should not define orthodoxy. In fact, as Justice Robert Jackson powerfully declared in West Virginia v. Barnette,  319 U.S. 624 (1943) (a case about declaring Jehovah Witnesses as Un-American because they would not cite the Pledge of Allegiance): “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein”.   The Jehovah Witnesses of 1943, the civil  rights protestor of 1950s, or the gay and lesbian at Stonewall in 1969 are the Colin Kaepernicks of today.
But as wrong as Trump is, so is Ilhan Omar.  Some will contend there is a false equivalency here, but it is hard to find how either Trump, Omar, or their supporters can claim the high moral ground here.  There are lots of good reasons to question US- Israel foreign policy and treatment of Palestinians, but labeling Jews  as Un-American is not the way to start and win a debate as some are now arguing.  “The end justifies the means, the words have gotten us to raise the right questions, so some say.”  But opening the door to fear, prejudice, and ignorance does no one any good.
Can one ever think of a time when appealing to them made us a better world, society, or individuals? Post 9/11, questioning the loyalty of Muslim or Somalian-Americans as Un-American was wrong.  Omar should know better that the weapons of hate directed at her and her family were wrong and do not justify her use of similar tactics.   Words matter, as  many say, and sticks and stones along with names may not just break our bones but hurt in other ways.  If one is going to take offense at words, then trying to understand how they effect others is  a first step in political debates. Turning the oppressed into the oppressor by stealing the weapons from former to be used by the later does not make it right.
The weapons and language of the oppressor are no more justified in the hand of the oppressed or the weak, and the rhetoric of hate from the right does not make it virtuous and correct when coming from the left.  It is just as wrong to label Omar as Un-American and scorn her with hate  as it is for her to do the same to others.  Fear, prejudice, and ignorance should have no place in American politics.  But the sad reality is that it has, and even worse, that it has been effective and defended but those from a variety of political perspectives who see in themselves justified in using the three to suit their goals.

Democracy, Politics, and the War on Science

What is a fact and how do we know when something is true?  These are not just philosophical questions.  In this era of intense partisan polarization, especially in the United States, the very notion that both objective facts and truth exist is contested.  Contrary to the assertion of former US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who once declared that Aeveryone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts,@ it now seems that each person and political party does have their own facts and truth. Why? Simply putBscientific facts and truth are not the same as political facts and truth; democracy and science are often in conflict.

For 30 years, I have taught American politics, law, and public policy.  As someone with graduate degrees in astronomy, philosophy, law, and political science, my research and teaching  centers on how policy making can be more evidence-based. In most aspects of our lives and in business we are taught to draw upon the best available evidence before making decisions. The same should be true for politicians and government.  Decisions crafted on political myths and faulty or no evidence yield bad public policy, causing a waste of taxpayer dollars and failed or ineffective programs.  Yet too much policy is crafted without real evidence. 

There are many reasons for this.  One can clearly point to intense interest group politics and the corrosive impact of money on politics as possibilities.  There is also a deep-seated distrust in American culture that disdains intellectualism and intellectuals, as told by historians such as Richard Hofstadter. But perhaps most importantly, there is a profound difference residing in how scientists and politicians gather facts and think about the world.

Scientists (and most social scientists) ascribe to the scientific method. It is a rigorous approach ideally using controlled experiments where the inductive process of gathering discrete data is aggregated to test hypotheses. Statistical sampling is often employed as ways of estimating the probability that some samples are truly representative of the phenomena being studied.  One cannot examine every molecule in the universe to conclude about all of them.  Good samples allow for generalizations, but there is always a slight probability of error.

For scientists, facts are rigorously tested but cannot be proved with 100% certainty.  Science is about falsifying claims.  Scientific knowledge is also incremental, built upon what is previously known like with bricks upon one another to construct a wall.  Scientists have built a wall of knowledge, facts, and truth.  The laws of gravity, Einstein=s famous e=mc², and 1+1=2 are examples.  Scientific facts and truth have made telephones, television, the Internet and the cure for polio possible.  If one denies scientific truth one might as well deny civilization.

But scientific knowledge is different from political knowledge.  What is political truth, especially in a democracy?  It is what 50% plus one of the population saysBmajority rule.  For elected officials, what counts as facts and truths is what they learn from their constituents.  A politician=s world is not of controlled experiments, hypotheses, and statistically valid samples; what counts as valid evidence in making policies are the stories and interests of constituents.  Hearing something from voters is powerful evidence to someone who many need their support in the next election.  What is true has less to do with rigorous method of investigation than it does with how some assertion plays well with the media or voters.

On occasion, scientific and political truths or knowledge converge, resulting in good public policy.  But historically they do not.  The tension between scientific or expert knowledge culled from rigorous testing versus political knowledge based on majority rule is deep and has existed since Plato discussed it nearly 2,500 years ago. This is the technocracy/democracy gap.  Some have more or specialized knowledge compared to others. Should the people defer to the experts or choose for themselves what they consider true?

 While science and democracy are in tension, how do we explain the partisan war on science between Democrats and Republicans in the US?  Battles over global warming and alternative facts are sourced in competing economic interests that support or sustain specific biases or factual world views.  The two parties represent divergent interests, creating financial interests in rival conceptions of truth. Right now, Republicans are representing interests generally hostile to science, including energy companies that wish to deny climate change, or workers who fear automation will un-employ them.  But this could change.

The gap between scientific and political knowledge might be bridged with more scientific education in schools.  It might also be good if we elected more scientists to office.  Together they might create conditions that make the political process more hospitable to science, yet there is no guarantee.  Differing economic interests drive scientific skepticism, as does simply fear and prejudice and something needs to be done to address both.  Yet even with all that, the challenge for scientists is convincing the public and politicians that science is not a threat but that its enables and enriches our society, not hurts it.

The Two Walls of American Political Discourse

The Trump presidency shows how the United States is trapped by its own
political walls and  tradition, creating a problem both for the Democratic and Republican parties.  The problem is that the current range of political options to address many of the most entrenched policy issues in the United States is caught between failed fundamentalist market solutions of the Republican Party and the neo-liberal regulatory proposals offered by the Democratic Party.

Louis Hartz’s The Liberal Tradition in America is a classic book often forgotten.  It describes a country that was born of a liberal tradition indebted to the political philosophy of John Locke. This is an ideology of limited government, protection of individual rights, and a belief in the centrality of private property.  Hartz contends that the American political tradition demonstrates a core political consensus around these values, with historians such as  Richard Hofstadter, Daniel J. Boorstin, Clinton Rossiter, and Henry Steele Commager argue the same, alleging that there is a powerful core ideology in the United States favoring these liberal values, along with a commitment to market capitalism.   Hartz once correctly argued that the reason there is no viable socialist tradition in the US is because of the strong consensus and support for market capitalism.   McCarthyism and disdain for truly progressive politics are both a product of the liberal consensus and xenophobia and the paranoid style of politics that historian Richard Hofstadter described.  In effect, there is a left wall to American politics beyond which is appears no politician can go, with market fundamentalism describing the right wall.

At its core, American politics has that of a liberal capitalist (representative) democracy.  Markets are presumed good, government bad, and government intervention into the economy to address market failures is a last resort, not a first policy option.  New Deal and Great Society regulation is the exception and not the preferred first approach to solving social, political, and economic problems.  Contrary to what many may think, both the contemporary Democratic and Republican parties ascribe to this belief, with the latter clearly favoring more market fundamentalist solutions while the former endorses more regulatory approaches at times.

How its political tradition affects politics in the United States is playing out now under the Trump presidency.    In many ways the reason why Trump got elected and his message resonated so well with so many is that the political-economic institutions have not benefitted the majority of Americans for the last 40 years.  It is not necessary to recount here the statistics pointing to the widening gap between the rich and poor since the 1970s, producing what is today the most maldistributed US economy since the 1920s.  Many feel they are no longer living the American Dream, and there is ample evidence to support that.  In part, the reason why so many have been left behind is that American public policy since the 1970s has not favored the middle class or the poor, working instead to the advantage of the already most affluent.

Both the Democrats and the Republican Parties have been guilty in not addressing the needs of the former, but the Republicans clearly have pursued  policies more supportive of the rich than the working or middle class.  And now under Trump, Ryan, and McConnell, their embrace of market fundamentalism will do little to help those who voted for them.  Instead, if the history of the last 40 years has shown anything, less regulation and more markets fail to address issues such as economic inequality, health care, the cost of higher education, and the loss of jobs overseas.  There is little evidence that even if the Trump-Ryan-McConnell agenda gets enacted, it will help those who most need help.  The right wall of American politics–market fundamentalism–cannot solve many of the most entrenched problems the United States confronts.

But conversely, the Democrats are trapped by a different wall.  In many ways the crisis of this party is all about the limits of regulation.  The timid regulatory politics that mark Democratic politics from Carter to Obama had limited benefit to the poor, working class, and the middle.  At some point, minor redistributive politics and limited market regulation is not enough. Bolder and broader solutions may be required.  Yet there is a left wall–the wall that defines the limits of progressive politics– as political scientist Charles Lindblom calls it, which imprisons what the Democrats can offer as policy solutions.

The irony of the Trump era is that his call for a wall is a wonderful metaphor for the limits and poverty of American political solutions offered not just by him and the Republicans, but also by the mainstream Democratic Party now.

The Constitution and the Failures of Contemporary American Politics

Note:  This column recently appeared in Politics In Minnesota.

Is the polarization and dysfunctionalism in contemporary American politics an accident or  a product of design failure?  The more one thinks about it the conclusion may well be that the many of the problems now confronting the United States are the product of a faulty Constitution, or at least one that may perhaps have outlived its times.
    Many mythologize our Constitution and the men who wrote it. This seems especially true among the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party. They see in James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and other Founding Fathers a “genius” to the American political process (as historian Daniel Boorstin described it) where the product of their efforts was creation of a representative democracy that really reflected the first three words of the Constitution–“We the people.” Yet historian Richard Hofstadter counseled against seeing the Constitutional Framers as gods, but instead as who they really were–smart politicians with their own interests, prejudices, and limitations who affected compromises to create the American political system.
    Among lost milestones in 2013 was the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.  In that book Beard made a radical argument that the Framers were economic elitists who did not trust the common man, writing a Constitution to further their economic interests which they felt were threatened by America’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation.  The Articles government according to Beard, was an economic disaster for business interests, and many of the constitutional framers were being hurt by this government.  The tipping point for them was Shay’s Rebellion, demonstrating to many of them, including Alexander Hamilton, the dangers that the people could pose to the rich.
    Beard’s book catalogues the economic background of the constitutional framers, all slaveholders or wealth businessmen except for a couple.  They wrote a document giving Congress vast powers to regulate and strengthen commerce, and it was also constitution that preserved slavery, stood silent on voting rights, and otherwise created a system of checks and balances, separation of powers, and other power-dividing mechanisms that made it difficult, as James Madison said, for majority factions to take over the political process.  Political scientist Robert Dahl described the Constitution too as a mechanism to slow down political change, making it difficult to effect reform or change unless there was significant time and consensus to achieve it.
    Beard’s controversial challenge was to assert that the complex constitutional system was not meant to produce democracy, but instead shield the rich from the poor and to entrench the power of the former forever.  John Jay, one of the framers and co-author of the Federalist Papers, once exclaimed that “Those who own the country should rule it,” while James Madison famously declared in Federalist number ten that: “But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.”  For Beard, the real genius of American politics was how the Framers recognized the inevitability of class conflict but designed a political system than  transformed it into group competition, forever dividing the people among various interests, thereby sublimating strife between the rich and poor.  In short, as former Supreme Thurgood Marshall said, “We the people” was the reality of the Constitution, it excluded many from its promise and it took a Civil War, two civil rights movements,  and more than a score of amendments to even give faint meaning to the promise of these three words.
    Looking back over time one wonders to what extent Beard was correct in that the Constitution was designed to assure rule by a privileged elite or that, to update his thesis, that the polarization and dysfunctionalism in contemporary American politics is not just an accident but is exactly what the Framers wanted.  America is a society where economic privilege allocates political power.  Who votes, who runs for office, who gives money, and who benefits from our public policies is significantly determined by economic status.  The “winners” in the American political system look surprisingly a lot like the profile of the constitutional framers of 1787. 
    The Electoral College mechanism for electing the president along with the federalism it embodies have split America into regions since the early days of the republic.  Small states, such as in Senate, can gang up and filibuster legislation and thwart majorities even though they only constitute a small portion of the  population.  And in the House the requirement that every state receive at least one House member too gives disproportionate influence to small populations.  Couple that with gerrymandering and we have created a political system where there are increasingly fewer and fewer incentives to compromise.  This means fringe voices, especially in the political right these days, are given a virtual veto over reform.
    Certainly the American political system is not meant to be winner take all pure populism.  It is a balancing of majority rule with minority rights, but is the minority the Koch brothers and others with money, or those hostile to the rights of women, people of color, and the GLBT community?  The political process which was designed as a compromise seems increasingly unable to create the incentive to compromise, or at least it does not work because some do not want it to.  Instead of seeing our political system now as one where the slowness to change and demand to compromise  were viewed as virtues to protect liberty, it now appears to be one that is unable to act, paralyzed  by gridlock.
    If Charles Beard as updated is correct, one should not be surprised by what is happening across the United States.  The polarization and dysfunctionalism is either an intentional feature to preserve the power for a few, or as law professor Sanford Levinson contends, a sign of original design flaws in the Constitution that are now coming to haunt America more than two centuries later.  In either case, as we head into the 2014 and then 2016 political cycles, we should ask whether the Constitution we mythologize really is up to the task for the demands of the twenty-first century and if it is the cause of, or the impediment preventing the resolution of many of the pressing problems in contemporary American politics.

The Paranoid Style of Michele Bachmann

“In my opinion the State Department, which is one of the most important government departments, is thoroughly infested with communists.” –Senator Joseph McCarthy, 1950.

 

“Information has recently come to light that raises serious questions about Department of State policies and activities that appear to be a result of influence operations conducted by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood."  –Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, 2012.

    Fear and prejudice make people do stupid things.

    *    In 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, fear of the new world and prejudice against the unknown resulted in the deaths of 24 people—19 hung, four dying in prison, and one crushed to death—all because they were accused of being witches. The story is told well in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible—a banned book.

    *    During WWI and the Depression 30s, fears arising out of hunger and desperation and prejudice against hope for a better life led to raids, beatings, and imprisonment for union members and those who wished to advocate for their political views.

    *    After Pearl Harbor, fear and prejudice against the Japanese led to the forcible relocation and internment of over125,000 loyal Americans into concentration camps.

    *    In the 1950s, fear of the Soviets and prejudice against those who saw the world differently from Senator Joe McCarthy were subject to communist witch hunts and Hollywood blacklists that led to the loss of life and livelihood of thousands.

    *    And in civil rights protests in the 1960s, and at the Stonewall Inn in 1969, fear and prejudice against those advocating equal rights for Blacks and gays were treated to beatings and police brutality.

    Then there is Michele Bachmann who seems to be cornering the market on fear and prejudice with her defamatory remarks about Congressman Keith Ellison and Huma Abedin as being members of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Bachmann’s latest accusations are so ugly and dirty that even Republicans such as John McCain and Speaker John Boehner are condemning them.  Her comments  and accusations about Muslims and the State Department take a page from Senator McCarthy’s comments about Communists and the State Department in 1950.
    America is a beautiful nation, often filled with hope and promise of a better life for us and our children. Yet this country has an ugly side to it that we often forget and ignore.  It is the story of America as told so well by Richard Hofstadter in his The Paranoid Style of American Politics. We often cloak fear and prejudice in the flag and persecute minorities or blame individual liberties as the cause of our insecurities.  If only the government had more power or authority, if only people had less rights, some promise, then we could root out witches, communists, disloyal Americans, homosexuals,  immigrants, terrorists, and Muslims and make the country safe for the rest of us God-fearing Christian Americans.
    Yet Bachmann’s recent attacks are only the most recent episode of her appeal to fear, prejudice, and ignorance. Recall again her 2012 presidential candidacy.  After a first place victory in the August, 2011 Iowa straw poll, she was on top of the world.  Yet she suddenly fell from political grace.  Yes the entrance of Texas Governor Rick Perry hurt her campaign by carving into her political base, but it was also her comments about vaccines that doomed her.  In a September 12, 2001 presidential debate Bachmann criticized Perry for an executive order he issued mandating that all sixth-grade girls be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus (HPV) as a measure to prevent cervical cancer.  Bachmann’s criticism was that such an order was an overreach of government authority and an infringement upon individual liberty.  This is a fair criticism.  But she continued her attack the next day on the NBC Today Show.  Describing her conversation with a woman after the debate Bachmann recounted:  “She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter. There is no second chance for these little girls if there is any dangerous consequences to their bodies.”.
    Bachmann’s repeating of the urban legend that vaccines cause cognitive problems—retardation—was swiftly condemned by the medical community.  The source of this claim was a long discredited and doctored study that purported to find this link.  The medical evidence was significant—there was no connection and instead one could argue, as Governor Perry had correctly suggested in the debate, that HPV and other vaccines would be medically beneficial and would better promote public health than not getting the vaccine.  Yet because of this urban legend connecting vaccines with autism, parents were refusing to inoculate their children.
    Bachmann’s repeating and apparent embrace of this myth was roundly criticized.  Suddenly she looked like some type of crackpot, ready to embrace outlandish and fringe ideas.  Some might have concluded that Michele Bachmann believes the world is flat, the Earth is at the center of a universe God created on the evening of Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC (according to calculations by Medieval Bishop James Ussher), and that Elvis is still alive and well and living in hiding somewhere, thereby explaining why she wished him happy birthday on the anniversary of his alleged death.
    Bachmann boiled a cauldron of fringe views and crank beliefs. She was often criticized for factual inaccuracies in many claims, ranging from assertions that the American Constitutional framers freed the slaves (they did not) to the claim that Dodd-Frank (the bill passed in 2010 to regulate Wall Street financial transactions to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) have already lead to the loss of millions of American jobs or increased health care costs despite the fact that most of the major provisions of both had yet to go into effect.  She also simply and repeatedly made other assertions that were simply wrong or widely exaggerated.  Louis Jacobson of Polifact points out that Bachmann through 2010 had earned five “Pants on Fire” on the Truth-O-Meter and has never scored better than “false” in her five truth tests.  She is the hall of famer of political lies and inaccuracies.
    I am not sure what is worse.  Is she lying for political advantage?  Is she that ignorant about  facts and history?  Is she dumb, lying, or appealing to prejudice?  Neither of these explanations are praiseworthy.  With the comments about the Muslim brotherhood I am not sure if her main failing  is the falsehood about Ellison and Abedin or equating being Muslim with being un-American?
    Joseph McCarthy’s end came in 1952 whenJoseph Welch, Special Counsel to the Army asked of him in a hearing:  “Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
    I wonder the same about Bachmann.  Maybe the turning point came this week when Senator  John McCain declared: "When anyone, not least a member of Congress, launches specious and degrading attacks against fellow Americans on the basis of nothing more than fear of who they are and ignorance of what they stand for, it defames the spirit of our nation, and we all grow poorer because of it.”