Kim Davis Will Forever Be The Face of Democratic Homophobia

Earlier this month, I remarked about the inevitable historical procession of the Kim Davis drama:

When does the Kim Davis story become "the bigoted Democrat clerk, & the bold Republican judge who stood for equality & the rule of law"?

— David Schraub (@schraubd) September 6, 2015

Today, Kim Davis has announced she is switching parties to the GOP, explaining that "the Democratic Party left us a long time ago."

I'd say that this might complicate the above story, but then, why would it? Certainly, the mass shift of southern Jim Crow supporters over to supporting the national GOP has done nothing to deter hack conservative historians ignoring that migration completely. In 30 years, I expect to see the exact same thing happen again -- party shift and all.

For The Sins Anyone Has Committed....

It is Yom Kippur today, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Today the Jewish community collectively fasts and repents for the sins we have committed. Indeed, one of the most famous prayers on Yom Kippur, Al Chet, is a litany in which each line beings with "For the Sins We Have Committed...." (e.g., for the sins we have committed under duress or willing, for the sins we have committed by hard-heartedness, for the sins we have committed inadvertently, and so on). This is a time of taking responsibility for ourselves, and resolving to do better.

Peter Beinart thinks the Jewish community has sinned in how we are responding to the problem of anti-Muslim bigotry in American politics. But his column says, I think, more about him and his blind spots than it does about its putative subject. This is a lazy column, and in many ways an ironic column, and even at times a worrying column. The one thing it is not is an insightful column.

Beinart's piece is roughly divided into two parts. In the first, he takes note of the prejudiced and bigoted comments made by several Republican candidates for President (Ben Carson, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz). Pulling out how Muslims have been treated on the campaign trail, he asks he we Jews would feel if we were being treated the same way -- if people challenged our eligibility for the presidency, or shunned our synagogues, or claimed that our faith was incompatible with the Constitution, or nodded along at someone who urged "getting rid of us." And the answer is obvious -- it'd feel pretty terrible! It's a terrible thing to go through that, and that Muslims are experiencing that this campaign season is testament to the power and persistence of anti-Islamic bigotry in America.

Now, it's not immediately clear why any of this needs to be framed in terms of Jewish experience; and especially in Beinart's tone of "look how lucky you ingrates have it" (he even alludes at several points to Jewish "privilege", which, ugh). Beinart's point seems to be that Jews, being anti-discrimination winners, are not just lucky to live in a country where we're treated relatively well. He seems to think that we are beneficiaries of an injustice because we're treated relatively well in comparison to Muslims tout court. But this is obviously too pat. Certainly, I absolutely believe that on the campaign trail in America it is better to be Jewish than Muslim. But that's hardly the only axis we can look -- along the dimension of hate crimes in America Jews are considerably more likely to be victims than Muslims. Does that show how "privileged" American Muslims are vis-a-vis Jews? Not really. It does show that this mode of analysis is pretty silly. Different forms of oppression manifest differently -- a point I'll return to in a moment.

The second half of Beinart's essay attacks Jews for not adequately "confronting" the anti-Muslim sentiments of Carson et al. Faced with the uncomfortable fact that groups like the ADL do, in fact, do this (the ADL condemned Carson's statements, for example), Beinart acknowledges that actually this does occur "sometimes" but then remarks on the ADL's opposition to the Park 51 Mosque in 2010. I think it is fair to say that I was appropriately apoplectic when the ADL made that announcement, which was a true and abject disgrace. But surely even Peter Beinart has to acknowledge the strangeness of an argument which runs "Jewish groups don't condemn Muslim bigotry. Well, yes, they do, now, but five years ago one of them did something that was itself bigoted." Beyond the Park 51 fiasco, Beinart cites a variety of right-wing Jewish organizations who have, unsurprisingly, said bigoted and nasty things about Muslims. Most of these groups (ZOA, the RJC) you'll be unsurprised I find repulsive. But again, for someone so interesting in comparing Jews and Muslims against each other, how much does this echo a very common form of Islamophobia (and racism, for that matter)? "If any member of your ethnic group says or does something wrong, all members are presumed to endorse it unless each and every one loudly condemns the relevant action to the extent and volume deemed satisfactory by the majority. Oh, and if you yourself ever made a misstep, you're permanently tainted no matter what is done in the future."

This sort of requirement, of course, is something that Jews and Muslims share. But I will submit it operates differently for Jews than it does for other groups. The initial targets of Beinart's column, the sinners Jews were supposed to call out, were Ben Carson, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz. None of those three, you might note, is Jewish. Together they currently draw support from less than 14% of Jews combined. Republicans as a whole garnered a little over 37% of Jewish support -- a figure which would be a high-water mark for the GOP in recent years. To put that in perspective, Barack Obama got 38% of the vote in Alabama in 2012. Looking at Jews when Ted Cruz says something idiotic is like taking the latest Alabama abortion policy and turning to Obama with a "what the hell, man?" look.

But this idea, that Jews are collectively responsible not just for the sins we have committed but for the sins anyone has committed, runs deep. I've sometimes joked that what makes Jews different from other groups is how we're blamed for anything and everything. Other groups have this in a limited sense where a wrong by one will be imputed to all -- e.g., Muslim terrorists attacked us on 9/11, therefore, all Muslims are terrorists. And Jews experience this too (Bernie Madoff swindled people out of millions, therefore, all Jews are swindlers). But it stretches beyond that to encompass events that have no connection to Jews at all. Muslim terrorists attacked us on 9/11? Jews were responsible for 9/11. Vladimir Putin invades the Ukraine? Jews ordered Vladimir Putin to invade the Ukraine. Massive tsunami hits Japan? Who gave the Jews a tsunami machine?!?

And this doesn't seem to happen to other groups, Muslims included. Both Jewish and Muslim organizations regularly, of course, face demands to condemn this or that bad act by one of their compatriots. But I've never seen a case where someone -- even the usual hardcore anti-Muslim bigots -- has demanded that Muslim groups condemn anti-Semitism or violence or whatever propagated by non-Muslims. When Ann Coulter railed about the "fucking Jews" in the last debate, or when an NPR reporter contended that Bernie Sanders was a dual-citizen of the US and Israel, we didn't scramble over to see if CAIR had put up a condemnation. The thought of that is baffling. Yet as applied to Jews, it apparently makes perfect sense to take a member of another faith, who belongs to a political faction whose Jewish support hovers between "small" and "trivial", and be outraged that only some Jewish organizations immediately took the lead in condemning his bigotry. Along this dimension, we might ask "what if we talked about other groups the way Peter Beinart is talking about Jews"? Different forms of oppression manifest differently, and here is a case where Jews seem to be comparatively worse off than others.

Now I should say that I actually like that Jewish organizations do step beyond our own parochial concerns and take the time to oppose bigotry promoted by others, against others. I want us to be a "light unto nations", and I think this is part of that. But I don't view it as some sort of special unique obligation (of Jews or of anyone else), and I don't think of it as some sort of unique moral failing when Jews don't do it to the extent Peter Beinart finds satisfactory. This campaign season, Muslims in America are facing some horrific prejudice the sort of which it's difficult to imagine being foisted against other American religious groups. But Peter Beinart's column, in terms of its criticisms and of its demands, is of the sort that is difficult to imagine being written towards any other group in America but the Jews.

Once a Year

The motivating question behind Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel is why Europeans came and conquered America, Africa, etc., rather than the other way around. And one can make a similar observation with respect to religion: Why did Christianity flourish and become the largest faith in the world, while Judaism remains comparatively tiny?

Today, I think I hit upon the answer. And it relies on "once-a-year" faith adherents.

Suppose you're a once-a-year Christian. What is that one day of the year like? It's pretty good! Presents, and bright lights, and beautiful conifers, and carols that remind you of the happy innocence of childhood. It's a great celebration had by all.

And if you're Jewish? Well, your one day a year involves fasting the entire time while thinking about how bad a person you are. It also involves no songs that remind you of your childhood, because the High Holidays are when we give Cantors a free pass to simply make up tunes that are never remotely familiar but are always 64x longer than their every day equivalents.

What I'm saying is, have an easy fast and a contemplative Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur.

Maybe He Just Likes a Challenge

Whatever one can say about his policy preferences (and I have nothing good to say about them), it's hard to argue that Bibi Netanyahu's foreign policy instincts are anything short of disastrous. Put aside entirely his catastrophic handling of the Iran nuclear deal debate (where he watched an international consensus against a nuclear Iran emerge and promptly enraged every single member of it). Let's just take the latest report out of South America, where Brazil is less than thrilled about who Bibi selected as their new Ambassador:

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has expressed discomfort with the appointment of a former settler leader as Israel’s ambassador to her country.

Rousseff sent a backchannel message to Israel with her concerns that accepting Dani Dayan will signal “support for the settlement enterprise,” the Hebrew-language news website Ynet reported Sunday.

An official Brazilian refusal to accept the appointment could spark a diplomatic crisis between the two countries, according to Ynet. The rejection of an ambassador is rare.

What on earth was he thinking? "Hey, South America is an important area of engagement for Israel as it seeks to solidify its international standing. But it's clear that South American countries are sharply anti-occupation -- Brazil, for example, recognized Palestine in 2010. Who is best suited to manage this critical yet delicate situation? I know -- a high-profile leader of a settlement enterprise loathed by the people he's reaching out to!"

It's almost as if, with Avigdor Lieberman no longer in charge of the foreign ministry Bibi decided that someone had to jump in the role of completely unaware self-sabatoeur.

Covert vs. Implicit Bias and the Persistent Appeal of Donald Trump

Since the 1950s, there has been a tremendous drop in self-reported prejudices by White people in America. There are three (arguably, more like 2.5) main explanations for this drop:

1) Self-reported prejudices have dropped because the level of prejudice has diminished. Straight-forward enough.

2) Self-reported prejudices have dropped because White people have learned to lie about their prejudices. They know racism has become unacceptable so they don't admit to it, but actual underlying attitudes haven't changed that much.

3) Self-reported prejudices have dropped because conscious prejudice has diminished, but it has been replaced or overtaken by subconscious or implicit biases which now exist in tension with conscious (and sincerely-held) egalitarian beliefs.

(I say this might be 2.5 explanations because #1 and #3 are consistent with each other).

The reason that the face-value "racist self-identification has fallen because racism is diminishing" argument can't be accepted uncritically is that there is ample evidence that some form of racially biased behavior is still rampant in our society. So alternatives two and three explain that behavior by either saying "White people are doing what they've always done and thinking what they've always thought, they've just gotten craftier in hiding the ball" (explanation #2) or "there's been an actual change in White attitudes, but the continued presence of racially biased patterns of behavior can be explained by the operation of subconscious biases" (explanation #3). We can characterize this split as between covert biases (known and internally acknowledged by the holder, but hidden) and implicit biases (unknown and internally rejected by the holder, but nonetheless still operating subconsciously).

One way of distinguishing between the covert versus implicit bias explanations is that they have different predictions about when prejudice will reveal itself. Covert bias suggests that people conceal their biases because it is socially unacceptable to reveal them; hence, such biases will emerge in social contexts where it is considered okay to express prejudiced views. Implicit bias, by contrast, suggests that people are trying to harmonize conscious egalitarian commitments with their subconscious prejudices; hence, bias operates in cases where the discriminatory behavior can plausibly be justified as being consistent with an egalitarian ethos (for example, one could favor a white job applicant against a black competitor in situations where they were roughly equally qualified by relying on "intangible" differences that are hard to measure; but one couldn't reject a black candidate with obviously superior qualifications because that would be self-evidently discriminatory).

Most of the work I've done in the discrimination context has essentially assumed we mostly live in the implicit bias box. I believe that in general people today honestly and sincerely buy into egalitarianism, but that this commitment coexists with subconscious prejudice. There's some evidence to support this hypothesis (Gaertner and Dovidio's "aversive racism" work being the most influential on me), and as a historical matter it can be derived from Gunnar Myrdal's description of the "American Dilemma". But there was always evidence that supported the covert bias hypothesis: for example, "bogus pipeline" studies (roughly, ones where researchers informed subjects that "we'll know if you're lying because we're scientists with fancy machines") have erased much of the drop in self-reported prejudices. That supports the covert bias hypothesis over the implicit bias one, because in general on the former the bias is known to the test subject (who then tells the truth because "the jig is up"), whereas someone with implicit biases may not even be aware he holds them and thus would be unaffected.

So which is it? Are there really significant portions of Americans who quietly harbor nakedly, unabashedly prejudiced views -- only keeping them quiet because they know that's what society demands?

Enter Donald Trump.

Donald Trump's continued appeal even after a string of outrageous comments -- ranging from Obama birtherism to Megyn Kelly "blood flowing from her wherever" to Mexican immigrants all being rapists to most recently nodding along to a supporter who wants to "get rid of" the Muslims -- has perplexed legal commentators who expect Republican primary voters to eventually recoil against such obvious forms of prejudice. That expectation is very much consistent with the implicit bias hypothesis: as it becomes increasingly difficult to square Trump's statements with egalitarianism, people should start to reject it.

But things are different from the covert bias position. When Donald Trump implies Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim, when he suggests that Latinos are all violent criminals, when he legitimizes mass expulsion (or worse) of American Muslims -- maybe he's saying out loud what many people secretly believe but felt constrained in saying. Isn't this the root of the "anti-PC" backlash? "I used to be able to openly degrade women for having a menstrual cycle, but thanks to liberal elites and Feminazis I can't say that anymore! What happened to freedom in America?" The complaint of the anti-PC crowd is precisely that they have to keep quiet that which they'd rather broadcast (and once could broadcast, before we had to actually start listening to the desires of pesky minorities).

Most people can't say such things anymore, or at least they're constrained in their ability to do so. There are members of traditional outgroups in their workforce (maybe even their boss), or as powerful constituents, or major donors, or simply well-connected citizens. Saying such things comes with real costs, sometimes prohibitive costs. It can lose you your job, or your friends, or your reputation, or your candidacy. And some people resent that deeply even as they quietly stew and keep their true beliefs private.

But Donald Trump is different. He can say these things. He can't destroy his reputation -- he's his own brand. He can't be driven out of the race by outraged donors -- he doesn't need them. He can't lose his job -- he runs his own company. He doesn't have to defer to outraged outgroups -- what can they do to him? For someone with implicit biases, this may not matter -- he's so obviously over-the-top that his positions can't be reconciled with any sort of egalitarian commitment. But for the covertly-biased, he offers up a tantalizing vision where one can say all of those open, overt, explicitly biased things they genuinely believe and it's okay. They don't have to cover it up anymore. After all, someone with covert biases only keeps them covert because of social conventions which demand it. And social conventions can change -- most obviously, if the President of the United States, or even a mainstream presidential campaign with significant support and staying power, busts the taboo.

Bernard-Henri Levy once referred to the reemergence of anti-Semitism in terms of people who "feel once again the desire and, above all, the right to burn all the synagogues they want, to attack boys wearing yarmulkes, to harass large numbers of rabbis, to kill not just one but many Ilan Halimis...." This is what the Holocaust took away from the world, especially the European world: the ability to hate Jews and feel justified and righteous in doing so. And under this view, anti-Semitism never went away, it just was forced underground, and what people thirst for is for something to return what they see as their God-given (often literally) right to openly hate Jews without losing social status (many consider the flourishing of anti-Zionist ideology to be related exactly to this desire). And likewise we can say that the civil rights movement, the laying bare of Jim Crow and American apartheid, and the rise in the power and influence of former outgroups have all taken away the previously-enjoyed rights of straight White male Christian Americans to feel and express their superiority.

The incredulity over Donald Trump's continued appeal relies on the assumption that his supporters can't really buy into his extreme statements or his openly bigoted views. It follows, then, that if his following does continue to stay true, then maybe its not a case of people overlooking, or minimizing, or downplaying those views. Donald Trump is popular because of, not in spite of, his decision and ability to be avowedly prejudiced and not be drummed out of the mainstream.

How To Turn #IStandWithAhmed Into an Anti-Obama Attack

The big viral story of the day is a Muslim teenager, Ahmed Mohamed, who built a homemade clock, took it to school to show his teachers his engineering prowess, and was promptly arrested for bringing a "bomb". The case smacks of racial profiling and Ahmed's heartbreaking statement vowing "never to take an invention to school again" has really hit home the emotional and practical depths of his treatment. The President has joined the chorus of condemnations and invited Ahmed to the White House., and Kevin Drum wonders if this might be something so obviously outrageous that even Republicans have to follow suit.

Even conservatives can't really defend what happened here. On the other hand, they can hardly agree with Obama, can they? What to do?

Please. This is easy. First of all, the statement of Irving's mayor (previously most-well-known for engaging in hysterical Islamophobia in an attempt to ban religious mediation), or that of the school district, is the perfect conservative response: no direct attacks on Ahmed, but stressing the importance of public safety and reporting suspicious threats, and congratulating authorities on being "vigilant" towards any "threats". It's basically how Republicans react to cases of police brutality when they can't gin up a decades-old theft conviction or an embarrassing Facebook photo mugging for the camera: vague indication that it sucks for the victim, overridden by the importance of trusting and deferring to the authorities.

But honestly, that's still only scratching the surface. The real opportunity comes from that invitation for Ahmed and his clock to come to the White House. Because when he arrives, obviously the Secret Service is going to check his bag, because that's what they do. And then somebody -- my prediction is Breitbart -- will crow about the naked hypocrisy of Obama condemning a local school district from taking the same precautions that his own security detail demands.

That's how you go pro in anti-Obama hackery.

UPDATE: BOOM! I called it:

#IStandWithAhmed Didn't s.o. mail battery-powered socks to VP Gore once? Secret Service saw a bomb and attempted a controlled demolition.

— Richard5832 (@richard5832) September 16, 2015

The Best of the 2015 AJC Poll of the Jews

The AJC has released its 2015 poll of Jewish political attitudes. There's a lot to unpack here.

Some of it is very topical and gotten a lot of coverage, like the fact that a narrow plurality of Jews support the Iran Deal.

Some of it is very unremarkable, such as the finding that -- as is always the case -- the most important political issue for Jews is the economy (41.7%), not U.S.-Israel Relations (7.2%).

Some of it reflects the positions I hold, like that anti-Semitism is "somewhat of a problem" in the United States (64.2%).

Some of it does not reflect the positions I hold, like that more people approve of how Netanyahu is handling the US/Israel relationship (55.4%) than of how Obama is handling it (48.9%).

Some of it is reassuring, like that 58.9% of American Jews would support dismantling some or all West Bank settlements as "part of a permanent settlement with the Palestinians".

Some of it is deeply alarming, like that 39.2% of American Jews would not support dismantling any settlements as part of a permanent agreement.

But by far the most important finding comes in the "temperature" question that rates countries on a 0-100 scale of "cold" versus "warm" sentiment. As it turns out, while America receives a stellar 84.64 rating, it is not the country American Jews feel most warmly towards. Beating it out with a 84.73 -- less than .1 degrees! -- is, of course, Canada.

Frankly, I think we all knew that even the most patriotic-seeming American Jew secretly bleeds maple syrup. Is it any wonder that Ottawa effectively pulls all the strings in Washington?

The Inevitability of the Jewish Lobby

Walter Russell Mead argues that the passage of the Iran Deal (indeed, the failure of opponents to even overcome a Senate filibuster) should signal the ned of the myth of the omnipotent and univocal "Israel Lobby". It won't, of course, because the myth is predicated on a series of anti-Semitic assumptions that ignore pluralism within the Jewish community, misattribute which positions are dominant, which are contestted, and which are marginal within the community, and ultimately lead to the "78% of Jews are very confused" problem.

Yet it was always obvious to me that the outcome of the Iran Deal debate would have precisely no impact on popular understandings of the Israel Lobby and/or Jewish power. For any issue which has a side coded in the public imagination as being supported by the "Israel Lobby", there are one of two possible outcomes:

(1) That side wins, thus demonstrating the impossibility of everyday Americans to overcome the overwhelming power of the Israel Lobby; or

(2) That side loses, thus demonstrating that the position is so obviously righteous that not even the overwhelming power of the Israel Lobby can stop it.

In the case of the Iran Deal, I ultimately came down in support of the agreement -- a position which puts me at odds with much (though not all) of the Jewish establishment but in line with a narrow majority of Jews overall. And it should be the case that Jews -- whether in our individual or institutional capacity -- should be able to advocate for their preferred positions without it being viewed as a form of domination.

Turkey Inches Towards Entering the Adult World

Like a spoiled teenager who refuses to admit they can do anything wrong (or a southern bro who insists that the Civil War was a "states' rights" affair), Turkey is rather notorious for throwing a temper tantrum whenever someone tries to acknowledge basic historical facts about its WWI-era Armenian genocide. But perhaps we're seeing a baby step in the right direction, as Ali Haydar Konca, Turkey's minister to the EU, has taken a big step towards actual acknowledgment of the atrocity.

"The fact that massacres happened is explicit and clear and everybody accepts that. Right now, the issue is what it should be called. We will make a decision in our party about that,” Konca told the press, becoming the the Turkish official to admit that, in fact, a Genocide had occurred.

Now before we get too excited, Konca never actually used the term "genocide". That omission is noted later in the piece, although its belied by the last sentence of the block quote (and the title of the article: "Turkey’s New EU Minister Admits to Armenian Genocide"). And the article also has the usual array of charming quotes from other Turkish leaders, including the President's declaration that any EU statement on the subject will "go in one ear and out from the other because it is not possible for Turkey to accept such a sin or crime."

So perhaps not a seismic shift. But maybe a tiny, tiny breakthrough in the long process of becoming a mature democracy that honestly reckons with its past.

Everybody's Terrible ... But Maybe Not THAT Terrible

The Huffington Post has a new story up on how altering who is said to support a given policy changes how persons of different partisan persuasions register their opinions. So saying that "universal health care" is a Donald Trump-approved position makes Democrats less likely to support it and Republicans more so; attributing it to Barack Obama has the opposite effect.

For someone like me who is interested in how cultural affinities construct political beliefs, this is an important topic. That notwithstanding, I think the HuffPo article is potentially misleading in at least two respects. The first is the title -- "Republicans Like Obama's Ideas Better When They Think They're Donald Trump's" -- which implies this is a Republican problem when in reality (as the article makes clear) it is true of partisans of either party.

The second problem, though, challenges just how far we can take the implications of these findings. The issue is that while saying someone supports "universal health care" or "affirmative action" does tell us something, it doesn't tell us all that much. There are, after all, many different ways one might operationalize support for universal health care or affirmative action. And it is reasonable for a conservative to believe they are more likely to favor a Donald Trump-style instantiation, and are less likely to find Obama's version amenable (and vice versa). So for that reason, it is not entirely odd, or purely a matter of partisan hackery, that party identity affects how one responds to a question like "Do you agree or disagree with [Obama/Trump] about universal health care?"

None of this is to discount the point that cultural identity (here taking the form of party allegiance) plays a substantial role all its own. The literature supporting such an inference is robust, and this fits nicely into that puzzle. But it is worth taking this particular article with a grain of salt -- two grains, since its conclusions line up with those I generally share.

Compare me to Jesus or GTFO

Rep. Steve King (R-IA): Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis is a latter-day Rosa Parks.

Kim Davis: Don't compare me to that layabout. She "had it easy."

[Note that I'm having trouble verifying whether the latter letter is genuine. Steve King, though, is absolutely being his usual self].

We Want Dawes!

Shorter Rand Paul : The struggles of Native Americans began when we took their land. In conclusion, we should abolish Native American sovereignty and demand they be fully assimilated into American culture.

Personally, I think any Republican who doesn't support restoring the Dawes Act is a RINO.

I'm a Celebrity! Roundup

I've been busy basking in the glow of my status as a big magazine contributor. That means that I haven't had as much time to do regular blogging as I'd like, and that means it's time for a roundup.

* * *

* Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refuses to issue marriage licenses to gay couples and has defied court orders requiring her to fulfill her official duties, has been jailed for contempt of court. Will any Republican candidate take a stand for the rule of law here? I can actually respect -- to some degree -- someone whose deeply-felt personal beliefs require them to abstain from certain public activities. But the right choice in such a circumstance is to resign from office, not to demand a public salary while obstructing the law.

* The ADL, incidentally, has just issued a statement that gets this issue 100% right. Good on them.

* Former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin has a great column up on the threat post by extremist Jewish settlers. Unlike him, though, I'd rather we not "wait for it to get worse so that it might get better."

* Wouldn't it be hilarious if, after all the sound and fury on the American side, it was Iran's parliament that rejected the deal? Actually, that outcome would probably be the single best thing that could happen for the anti-deal conservatives here in America.

* Dan Drezner urges that Political Science not emulate Economics. Hear, hear (says the political theorist)!

* Local news, but semi-important: Rep. John Kline (R-MN) will not seek reelection. Kline was my representative during college (he represents the area south of the Twin Cities), and his district is trending towards the Democrats. But Kline himself was pretty well-entrenched, so his departure is a big boost to Democratic pickup chances.

* Oh, one more: Virginia Postrel on what's actually driving stressed over-achievers at elite universities. It's not crass desire for fame or materialism, and it's not pushy caricatured Tiger Parents.

* Fine, two more. Shorter PJ Media: If Hillary Clinton is elected, conservatives will break every law that they possibly can and possibly launched an armed revolution. This reflects poorly on Hillary Clinton.

The Cultural Cognition of Pro-Israel: Public Reactions

I want to thank the Tablet editors for hosting my posts on the threat partisanization poses to the pro-Israel consensus and what can be done to combat it. The reactions to the piece have been both gratifying and illuminating. Clearly, my diagnosis seems to have struck a chord with liberal Zionists in the Democratic Party -- unsurprising, since I count myself among their number. Equally interesting was the responses coming from the further reaches of the left and right -- both of whom celebrated the polarization trend because both were supremely confident that they'd win the resulting throwdown in a rout. 

Left-wing respondents were sure that polarizing the American community on Israel was a surefire way to break the back of the occupation once and for all. Their right-wing fellows were equally convinced that the trend would lead to a permanent conservative ascendency and rock-solid protection for Israel no matter how the winds of foreign policy blew. The highlight, then, was the person on twitter who said he supported polarization because it would finally lead to the "end of weapons shipments". I had to ask -- did he mean shipments of weapons from the US to Israel (that is, a total left-wing victory) or the shipment of weapons from Iran to Hamas (a sweeping conservative triumph)? Either one would have been perfectly compatible with the overall thrust of reactions. The real-time convergence of left and right-wing worldviews was fascinating to behold.

My prediction, though, is that neither of these outcomes are likely. Polarization instead is most likely to lead to stasis, instability, and poor decision-making as Israel policy becomes just another partisan squabble. And this is something that should concern conservatives and liberals alike who care about Israel and want matters of Israeli policy to be considered carefully and deliberately. As Kevin Drum observes, the wages of this strategy can be seen in the Iran Deal opposition, which he argues was doomed from the  start because of its partisan character:

Ever since 2009, [Republican] political strategy has been relentless and one-dimensional: oppose everything President Obama supports, instantly and unanimously. They certainly followed this playbook on Iran. Republicans were slamming the deal before the text was even released, and virtually none of them even pretended to be interested in the merits of the final agreement. Instead, they formed a united, knee-jerk front against the deal practically before the ink was dry.

[...]

[B]y forming so quickly, the Republican wall of opposition turned the Iran agreement into an obviously partisan matter. Once they did that, they made it much harder for Democrats to oppose a president of their own party. A more deliberate approach almost certainly would have helped them pick up more Democratic votes.

I noticed this as well -- I had to struggle against my first-blush reaction to the Iran Deal opposition, which was to simply slot it in as yet another Republican temper tantrum that characterized their entire political strategy since Obama was elected. Each move which elevated the partisan salience of the debate -- from the ill-fated invitation for Bibi to address Congress to the histrionic allegations of Obama as a deliberate appeaser of terrorism -- made it less likely that liberals would view conservative objections as anything other than cynical attempts to rev up the base. And even for persons who were trying to listen neutrally and dispassionately in order to appraise the merits of the deal, it was hard to find the seeds of valid criticisms amidst the overwhelming din of partisan hyperbole which quickly overtook the conversation.

The deal -- and matters of Israel policy generally -- deserves better deliberation than that. But partisanization prevents that from happening; the cultural formation of beliefs guarantees that once an issue is seen in primarily partisan terms, that character will dictate most of the resulting positions. The full-court political press against the deal made it so that nearly everyone's decision -- for or against -- became a function of political identity rather than independent judgment. And that's a cost to Israel no matter what one's views are on the merits of the deal.

King of the Ash

AIPAC chief Howard Kohr, who spearheaded the failed push to block the Iran Deal in Congress, visits a Maryland synagogue:

Kohr’s final appeal is for the activists to make the calls to their lawmakers not because they will win — but because they will be able to tell future generations that they did the right thing.

He praises congregants who brought their children to the event, as the kids scamper through the aisles. By making the calls to Congress, Kohl says, they can look into their children’s eyes now and for generations to come and say, “When American interests were jeopardized and when Israel’s existence was at stake, I did everything that I could to ensure that America, the greatest country on earth, stood at Israel’s side.”

There's some irony here, as if AIPAC is to be believed once this deal goes through there won't be a future generation of Jews to be told about "doing the right thing". The Israel and, perhaps, the entire western world will have dissolved in a cloud of Iranian-induced radioactive ash (thanks, Obama). By contrast, precisely because Kohl imagines we'll could be having this conversation in 20 years' time implies that the deal actually worked largely as its proponents promised.*

* Yes, yes, none of this is technically true -- not the least of which because Israel could be destroyed while American Jewry remained untouched. But in such a horrifying event, I'd hope that our main communal response wouldn't be to say "I told you so."

The Cultural Cognition of the Pro-Israel Consensus, Continued

My follow-up column is now up on Tablet. It gives three recommendations to the pro-Israel movement to avoid a partisan schism where "pro-Israel" is equated with "right-wing". In a nutshell: First, don't treat someone as a permanent adversary just because they oppose you on one issue; second, take back control of the movement from partisan (often Evangelical) groups who have no interest in preserving the historical pro-Israel consensus, and three, eliminate the double-standard whereby liberal deviations from the pro-Israel orthodoxy are policed to the letter while conservative departures are treated with kid gloves.

"Playing with Cards" Now Available (Again)

A few months I posted, and then took down, a draft essay entitled Playing with Cards: Discrimination Claims and the Charge of Bad Faith. It came down at the request of the journal reviewing it, which generally doesn't allow such pre-posting. This policy was unknown to me at the time, since such draft distribution is quite common in law, but I was happy to oblige (and want to thank the journal for its flexibility in not peremptorily rejecting the piece then and there).

In any event, though, the piece has been formally submitted and accepted in Social Theory and Practice, and they have now officially given permission for a pre-publication copy to be placed back online. So for those of you who missed it the first time (or just want to bathe in its glory again), the essay can be found either on SSRN or Academia.edu, as per your preference.

The Cultural Cognition of the Pro-Israel Consensus

The first of a two-part series I wrote has been posted on Tablet. It explains the social psychology of "pro-Israel", the incentive for the conservative right (and anti-Israel left) to identify "pro-Israel" as a conservative position, and the potentially catastrophic consequences such an identification could pose for the future of pro-Israel advocacy.

Take Me Down To The Other Side

Robert Fisk is deeply frustrated that his fellow journalists haven't figured out how to blame ISIS on Israel and the West yet.

That's a little unfair. But not really. Fisk's main argument is that ISIS' breathtaking barbarity has blinded journalists to one of their paramount duties: to report on "the other side of the story." As applied to ISIS, that's one of those statements that makes one recoil at first glance, makes sense when you think about it, but is repulsive anew once one sees how Fisk operationalizes it.

Journalists absolutely should examine all sides of the story, including a story like ISIS. Figuring out the "why" -- the actual undergirding ideology of ISIS and how it conceptualizes itself - is a valuable service and an important journalistic project. Graeme Woods' chilling report in The Atlantic is an excellent example of this.

But Fisk doesn't actually seem to want this. What he wants, desperately, is not the "other side" of the story but a very specific story that would contextualize ISIS into a framework of global relations he's comfortable with.

So how, today, do we tell the “other side” of the story? Of course, we can trace the seedlings and the saplings of this cult of lost souls to the decades of cruelty which local Middle Eastern despots – usually with our complete support – visited upon their people. Or the hundreds of thousands of dead Muslims for whose death we were ultimately responsible during and after our frightful – or “bloodthirsty” or “twisted” or “vile” – 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Of course" we can? Maybe we can. But maybe not. There's no guarantee that ISIS' emergence is primarily attributable to Western meddling in Middle Eastern affairs. To be sure, it's doubtful that any contemporary historical phenomenon can wholly be divorced from such influences -- but at that level of generality the point becomes banal. Outside such tautological points, it may still be the case that ISIS is the direct love-child of bad acts from western governments. But it might also be the case that it is primarily the result of indigenous forces and should be related to as such.

Robert Fisk's story of the Middle East has long been one where most of the injustices, the barbarism, the death and the mutilation can firmly be laid at the feet of western (and Jewish) actors. ISIS challenges that story; it presents a different story that doesn't easily align itself with the older narrative. Ultimately, Fisk isn't calling for the "other side" to be told, he's expressing frustration that his story isn't. But sometimes even the "other side of the story" isn't the one you want to hear.

Guess Who's Coming To Lead J Street U?

The Washington Post has a fascinating interview up with Amna Farooqi, who just was elected head of J Street U (the organization's campus arm). Farooqi has caused a bit of a stir since she is a Pakistani-American Muslim -- not exactly whom you would expect to lead a pro-Israel Zionist organization.

I highly recommend reading this interview. Farooqi comes off as an extremely impressive and passionate woman; one genuinely committed to the cause of ensuring Jewish self-determination in tandem with Palestinian liberation. Her election has given J Street more than a milestone -- it has given them a strong leader as well.

The other thing I wanted to remark upon was the Farooqi's notation of her upbringing in Potomac, Maryland as a key influence that led her to this point. I'm familiar with those environs (Bethesda is the town next over), and to read what she said is truly heartening. Bethesda and Potomac are heavily Jewish, and strongly pro-Israel. That can be an interesting cocktail for someone who is not Jewish, and grows up in sympathy with the Palestinian cause. If it is expressed in zealous or ethnocentric or (god-forbid) racist terms, it can poison the outlook forever. But for Farooqi, her Jewish pro-Israel friends growing seemed to instill in her a sense that there was something to this narrative worth exploring. That, I think, is a tribute to my neighborhood and the sorts of people who live there, and the sort of thoughtfulness that is the right way for people to deliberate upon political issues of all sorts.

So I wish Ms. Farooqi the best of luck. But if I'm being honest, it seems she has enough of a wellspring of talent and passion that luck may well not be necessary.