Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy (D) is challenging incumbent Senator Ed Markey (also D) in a primary. Recent polling suggests Kennedy is ahead.
Can someone explain to me why this primary is happening? From what I can tell, Markey and Kennedy have relatively similar views. Markey is a staunch progressive, but Kennedy is not challenging him from the center. There's no scandal I know of in Markey's file either. It seems that the motive for Kennedy's challenge is nothing more than "I want to be a bigger deal than I am now", which is not exactly the most inspiring rallying cry for a primary campaign. Yet he seems to be winning. Is it just the magic of the Kennedy name in Massachusetts?
I have a pretty high bar for supporting primary challenges against Democratic incumbents,* and things like "we need a fresh face" or "generational change" virtually never qualify. If there's anything to Kennedy's challenge other than an ego trip, I'd love to hear it.
* Recent examples of challenges that passed this bar include Marie Newman over Dan Lipinski and Jessica Cisneros taking on Henry Cuellar.
Friday, May 08, 2020
Sunday, May 03, 2020
Performing Solidarity Anxiety in the Jewish Community
The other day, prominent Hasidic Jewish representatives published a defense of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. The letter emphasized their community's generally strong relationship with de Blasio as well as their commitment to observing social distancing protocols. It expressed a desire to "disavow the attacks and derogatory language against our mayor, from people from outside the community and from reckless people among us."
De Blasio had come under fire after tweeting a message to the "Jewish community" lambasting the failure to adhere to social distancing requirements after a large Hasidic funeral drew crowds in the city streets. This message was viewed as unduly singling out Jews in general and Hasidic Jews in particular as violators of social distancing requirements, when in reality this was an isolated incident which one could find parallels among New Yorkers of all stripes. Until this letter, the hostile response to de Blasio was one of the great unifiers in the Jewish community -- which made it all the more striking that the defense of de Blasio came from the segment of the community that the rest of us were nominally trying to stand up for. What's going on?
Well, many things, in all likelihood. But one thing I suspect we're seeing is a form of solidarity anxiety -- the desire to be (and be seen as) an ally to a given community without possessing the sort of deep connections to it that generate knowledge regarding what would actually be seen as allyship. In these circumstances, one grasps onto high profile events or causes that seem like an opportunity to demonstrate solidarity, but in doing so one often imputes assumptions or stereotypes regarding what one imagines the interests of the group to be that are at best oversimplified and at worst flat wrong. Something like this, I think, is at work in the recent finding that White Democrats were more likely to be "bothered" that the Democratic nominee was a White man than non-White Democrats. It's important to White Democrats that they present themselves as allies to People of Color, and expressing concern about nominating a White guy seems like a decent way to effectuate such a presentation -- even as, it turns out, non-White Democrats aren't especially motivated by the question.*
Among Jews, there was already some tension among non-Ultra Orthodox Jews facing accusations that they were insufficiently concerned with street violence faced by their Ultra Orthodox peers in New York City (ironically, not all but certainly some of those accusations were also being leveled by non-Orthodox actors who themselves were seeking to perform a sort of solidarity anxiety -- often by wrongfully assuming aggressive attacks on "Black antisemitism" were the way the ultra-Orthodox wished solidarity to be expressed). I think that background is germane to how the broader Jewish community responded to this case -- it was an opportunity to get loud and be clear in support of their Hasidic fellows.
In particular, I don't think it was wrong for non-Hasidic Jews to view de Blasio as having done something worthy of condemnation. But I think there was a race to a further assumption that de Blasio was in general viewed as a disliked or hostile figure among the Hasidic community such that piling on him would be viewed as inherently solidaristic. Turns out, not so much.
* Though I do think there is one possible wrinkle I'd be curious to look into: whether non-White Democrats -- regardless of whether they personally are unruffled by the nominee being a White man, look any more or less favorably at White Democrats who purport to be similarly unconcerned. The most straight-forward hypothesis is that it'd have at worst no effect -- after all, the White Democrats are taking the same position they are. But I can imagine a line of thinking where even if they themselves are unperturbed by the nominee being White POCs might find it suspicious for White people to too readily agree -- because, for example, certain racial dispositions that the POCs feel comfortable in assuming in their own case can't be taken for granted among White actors.
De Blasio had come under fire after tweeting a message to the "Jewish community" lambasting the failure to adhere to social distancing requirements after a large Hasidic funeral drew crowds in the city streets. This message was viewed as unduly singling out Jews in general and Hasidic Jews in particular as violators of social distancing requirements, when in reality this was an isolated incident which one could find parallels among New Yorkers of all stripes. Until this letter, the hostile response to de Blasio was one of the great unifiers in the Jewish community -- which made it all the more striking that the defense of de Blasio came from the segment of the community that the rest of us were nominally trying to stand up for. What's going on?
Well, many things, in all likelihood. But one thing I suspect we're seeing is a form of solidarity anxiety -- the desire to be (and be seen as) an ally to a given community without possessing the sort of deep connections to it that generate knowledge regarding what would actually be seen as allyship. In these circumstances, one grasps onto high profile events or causes that seem like an opportunity to demonstrate solidarity, but in doing so one often imputes assumptions or stereotypes regarding what one imagines the interests of the group to be that are at best oversimplified and at worst flat wrong. Something like this, I think, is at work in the recent finding that White Democrats were more likely to be "bothered" that the Democratic nominee was a White man than non-White Democrats. It's important to White Democrats that they present themselves as allies to People of Color, and expressing concern about nominating a White guy seems like a decent way to effectuate such a presentation -- even as, it turns out, non-White Democrats aren't especially motivated by the question.*
Among Jews, there was already some tension among non-Ultra Orthodox Jews facing accusations that they were insufficiently concerned with street violence faced by their Ultra Orthodox peers in New York City (ironically, not all but certainly some of those accusations were also being leveled by non-Orthodox actors who themselves were seeking to perform a sort of solidarity anxiety -- often by wrongfully assuming aggressive attacks on "Black antisemitism" were the way the ultra-Orthodox wished solidarity to be expressed). I think that background is germane to how the broader Jewish community responded to this case -- it was an opportunity to get loud and be clear in support of their Hasidic fellows.
In particular, I don't think it was wrong for non-Hasidic Jews to view de Blasio as having done something worthy of condemnation. But I think there was a race to a further assumption that de Blasio was in general viewed as a disliked or hostile figure among the Hasidic community such that piling on him would be viewed as inherently solidaristic. Turns out, not so much.
* Though I do think there is one possible wrinkle I'd be curious to look into: whether non-White Democrats -- regardless of whether they personally are unruffled by the nominee being a White man, look any more or less favorably at White Democrats who purport to be similarly unconcerned. The most straight-forward hypothesis is that it'd have at worst no effect -- after all, the White Democrats are taking the same position they are. But I can imagine a line of thinking where even if they themselves are unperturbed by the nominee being White POCs might find it suspicious for White people to too readily agree -- because, for example, certain racial dispositions that the POCs feel comfortable in assuming in their own case can't be taken for granted among White actors.
Saturday, May 02, 2020
Should I PlagueWatch It?: Never Have I Ever
Never Have I Ever is a show so good, the protagonist can tell a Jewish teenager she wishes he was killed by the Nazis and still be relatable.
The protagonist is Devi Vishwakumar; the line is delivered to her academic arch-rival Ben Gross. It is not deserved -- Ben is certainly a jerk (though he evolves as the season progresses, and honestly Devi isn't really any better than he is), but not anywhere close to where it would be even remotely acceptable to wish genocide upon him. There's nothing cathartic about it, no "well that might have been a bit much, but ...." Devi just said something terrible, hurtful, offensive, and self-destructive. And yet, she's still relatable.
This is a very hard feat to manage. Television is still reckoning with its era of the anti-hero, and after an array of male leads who were meant to be protagonists even as they constantly made terrible and callous choices (e.g.: Mad Men, The Sopranos), the latest trend seems to be female anti-heroes who are by no means one-dimensional villains but certainly mistreat friends and evade responsibilities with seemingly cavalier abandon (e.g.: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Killing Eve), These shows are interesting because they explore personalities and inner conflicts that other shows don't. But it's supremely difficult to keep the audience onboard with a main character who just makes relentlessly bad and unlikable choices. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend -- and to be clear, I loved Crazy Ex-Girlfriend -- really wavered while walking this line. Never Have I Ever manages it better than maybe any show I've ever seen.
At the show's opening, Devi is returning to high school a year after her father suddenly died at her orchestra concert, and all she wants is for this year to be better than last. If Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a comedy that just under the surface is an exploration of mental illness, Never Have I Ever is a comedy that just under the surface is an exploration of grief. Devi, played outstandingly by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan in her first role, is clearly still traumatized by her father's passing. And that trauma manifests mostly by her being very, very angry. Devi is trying to suppress her emotions, but she often lashes out -- sometimes to real stimuli, yet often way out of proportion to what is remotely reasonable. Breaking a window with her textbook upon finding out that her best friend has a boyfriend she never told her about, for example. Or responding to a bit of smug condescension by her bitter rival by announcing she wished he had been exterminated, for another.
Ramakrishnan deserves a ton of credit for immediately establishing Devi so that this anger feels authentic -- it isn't drama for drama's sake, and it isn't one-note either. It's how this teenager would be responding to this trauma she's trying to work through (or avoid working through, as the case may be). That she's a teenager certainly helps: she doesn't have to always make smart or likable choices. She's a teenager! They screw up -- usually under far less emotionally taxing circumstances than these. Devi, it is alluded to, was by no means a perfect child before her dad died. She was stubborn and headstrong and a bit too invested in being the highest achiever in her grade. But in the end, she's a regular kid with regular teenage struggles and stresses who just took one emotional punch too many, and now is in a spiral. And that is certainly relatable.
Devi is such a strong lead character that I haven't even gotten into the superb supporting cast that surrounds her, virtually all of whom feel like fully-realized and lived-in characters. These include the aforementioned arch-rival, her two best friends, the popular boy who's the object of Devi's affections, and her older cousin with an American boyfriend and an impending arranged marriage (it's not really a love triangle, she explains, "It's more of a line with a dot if you're really going to graph it."). The most important is Devi's mother, who is a strict immigrant parent insisting on nothing short of the Ivy League and no dating until Devi is in her twenties. If these sound like pretty standard rom-com archetypes, they are -- which makes it all the more impressive how the show gives them each a fresh spin. I could quibble with some character choices around the edges, but they're really not worth the time. The show works, and it works well.
Oh, and John McEnroe is surprisingly strong as the narrator (yes, there's a reason for it, and yes, it makes at least enough sense to justify the conceit).
Should you PlagueWatch it? Definitely. Jill and I binged all ten episodes in one night. Never Have I Ever is very, very good.
The protagonist is Devi Vishwakumar; the line is delivered to her academic arch-rival Ben Gross. It is not deserved -- Ben is certainly a jerk (though he evolves as the season progresses, and honestly Devi isn't really any better than he is), but not anywhere close to where it would be even remotely acceptable to wish genocide upon him. There's nothing cathartic about it, no "well that might have been a bit much, but ...." Devi just said something terrible, hurtful, offensive, and self-destructive. And yet, she's still relatable.
This is a very hard feat to manage. Television is still reckoning with its era of the anti-hero, and after an array of male leads who were meant to be protagonists even as they constantly made terrible and callous choices (e.g.: Mad Men, The Sopranos), the latest trend seems to be female anti-heroes who are by no means one-dimensional villains but certainly mistreat friends and evade responsibilities with seemingly cavalier abandon (e.g.: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Killing Eve), These shows are interesting because they explore personalities and inner conflicts that other shows don't. But it's supremely difficult to keep the audience onboard with a main character who just makes relentlessly bad and unlikable choices. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend -- and to be clear, I loved Crazy Ex-Girlfriend -- really wavered while walking this line. Never Have I Ever manages it better than maybe any show I've ever seen.
At the show's opening, Devi is returning to high school a year after her father suddenly died at her orchestra concert, and all she wants is for this year to be better than last. If Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a comedy that just under the surface is an exploration of mental illness, Never Have I Ever is a comedy that just under the surface is an exploration of grief. Devi, played outstandingly by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan in her first role, is clearly still traumatized by her father's passing. And that trauma manifests mostly by her being very, very angry. Devi is trying to suppress her emotions, but she often lashes out -- sometimes to real stimuli, yet often way out of proportion to what is remotely reasonable. Breaking a window with her textbook upon finding out that her best friend has a boyfriend she never told her about, for example. Or responding to a bit of smug condescension by her bitter rival by announcing she wished he had been exterminated, for another.
Ramakrishnan deserves a ton of credit for immediately establishing Devi so that this anger feels authentic -- it isn't drama for drama's sake, and it isn't one-note either. It's how this teenager would be responding to this trauma she's trying to work through (or avoid working through, as the case may be). That she's a teenager certainly helps: she doesn't have to always make smart or likable choices. She's a teenager! They screw up -- usually under far less emotionally taxing circumstances than these. Devi, it is alluded to, was by no means a perfect child before her dad died. She was stubborn and headstrong and a bit too invested in being the highest achiever in her grade. But in the end, she's a regular kid with regular teenage struggles and stresses who just took one emotional punch too many, and now is in a spiral. And that is certainly relatable.
Devi is such a strong lead character that I haven't even gotten into the superb supporting cast that surrounds her, virtually all of whom feel like fully-realized and lived-in characters. These include the aforementioned arch-rival, her two best friends, the popular boy who's the object of Devi's affections, and her older cousin with an American boyfriend and an impending arranged marriage (it's not really a love triangle, she explains, "It's more of a line with a dot if you're really going to graph it."). The most important is Devi's mother, who is a strict immigrant parent insisting on nothing short of the Ivy League and no dating until Devi is in her twenties. If these sound like pretty standard rom-com archetypes, they are -- which makes it all the more impressive how the show gives them each a fresh spin. I could quibble with some character choices around the edges, but they're really not worth the time. The show works, and it works well.
Oh, and John McEnroe is surprisingly strong as the narrator (yes, there's a reason for it, and yes, it makes at least enough sense to justify the conceit).
Should you PlagueWatch it? Definitely. Jill and I binged all ten episodes in one night. Never Have I Ever is very, very good.
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Tupac Lives!
By now you've probably heard about this story. Basically, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear called a press conference to complain about people filing for unemployment benefits under fake names -- a practice which slowed down processing for real Kentuckyians facing real needs. The example he gave was a guy named "Tupac Shakur" -- obvious fake, right? Wrong. There is a real Tupac Shakur living in Kentucky (though presumably not the Tupac Shakur) who really filed for unemployment benefits. Upon learning this, Beshear called the real Tupac to apologize. And Tupac accepted, saying "I understand, he’s dealing with a lot. Mistakes happen."
There isn't really anything substantive worth saying about this. The reason I'm writing is because the story seemed like a rare instance of everybody involved being nice and reasonable.
There isn't really anything substantive worth saying about this. The reason I'm writing is because the story seemed like a rare instance of everybody involved being nice and reasonable.
- Gov. Beshear was reasonable in thinking the name "Tupac Shakur" was fake.
- The actual person with that name was reasonably embarrassed to be called out like that.
- Beshear, upon realizing his mistake, called Mr. Shakur to apologize.
- Shakur graciously accepted the apology.
Really, I can't ask for much more from either of them. Mistakes happen, apologies are made, people are understanding. It was just nice. And sometimes I like focusing on nice.
Sunday, April 26, 2020
Should I PlagueWatch It?: Making the Cut
As many of you know, I've been a Project Runway fan for years. The show made Tim Gunn a household name and elevated Heidi Klum to perhaps an unprecedented level of international stardom. But in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal (Project Runway was in his portfolio -- recall Georgina Chapman's presence on the All-Stars seasons), they decided to leap to a new project. The result was Amazon Prime's own take on the fashion design challenge show Making the Cut, which just wrapped its first season (meanwhile, Karlie Kloss has made for a surprisingly strong Heidi replacement on the OG PR).
If you're a Project Runway loyalist, the show won't be anything too groundbreaking. The main differences are:
If you're a Project Runway loyalist, the show won't be anything too groundbreaking. The main differences are:
- A lot more money is floating around, both in terms of the budget (they're going to Paris! and Tokyo! and then back to New York!) and prizes (a cool million).
- The designers aren't expected to sew everything -- they have a team of seamstresses they're allowed to work with (this was actually something they thought about when launching Project Runway, only to conclude it was too expensive).
- The end goal is to identify the next great fashion brand, which is not necessarily the same thing as the best pure designer.
Ultimately, the show is entertaining but still groping a bit for its identity. Certain elements -- like having the judges come to preliminary decisions on eliminations but be open to changing their minds after "a conversation" -- felt forced (and rarely resulted in any changes). The focus on building a brand was harped on in rhetoric but wasn't always made clear in practice. And they had to replace all their catchphrases -- as an aside, how awkward must it be for Heidi that "goodbye" in German is now apparently off-limits for her? (Even sadder: no more "make it work" from Tim!).
On the other hand, the Heid and Tim segments were great, and Nicole Richie stood out as a really incisive judge -- so good on her.
On the other hand, the Heid and Tim segments were great, and Nicole Richie stood out as a really incisive judge -- so good on her.
Should you PlagueWatch it? If you like Project Runway, you'll definitely enjoy this show. But it offers nothing new for those who aren't already onboard. Think of it as the wealthier spin-off of Project Runway that it effectively is -- if that idea appeals to you, go for it. If not, skip.
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Mike Huckabee Threatens the Jews (Again)
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella group representing (as the name implies) many of the most significant Jewish groups in the US,* recently nominated Dianne Lob to be its new chair. Lob was most recently chairwoman of HIAS, a Jewish immigrant rights advocacy group and a mainstay of progressive Jewish politics that has taken a leading role in opposing President Trump's draconian and racist anti-immigrant policies. Sadly, many people came to know HIAS because they were the specific Jewish organization that Pittsburgh shooter was fixated upon in "justification" for his massacre. He hated HIAS for doing what it has done for years -- assist needy refugees in securing a safe and thriving home in America. Hence, in my quick thoughts on Jewish organizations, all I wrote on HIAS was "If you don't like HIAS, you're a monster."
Of course, the world is full of monsters. And one of them is former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who, despite not being Jewish, decided he was in a position to dictate to Jews who our institutional representatives should be.
For "their own sake". Subtle.
Huckabee has a habit of expressing his great affinity for the Jews in the form of veiled threats and antisemitic jabs. For example, when he was criticized by the ADL for comparing failing to confront the national debt to the Holocaust (speaking of Holocaust trivialization!), did he apologize? No. He lashed out, darkly warning that "Israel and Jewish people need to make friends, not insult the ones they have." (The ADL, spinelessly, then apologized to Huckabee). He's complained that American Jews just aren't as supportive of Israel as evangelical Christians. He even spread a baseless conspiracy theory that antisemitic grafitti in Chicago was actually the false flag work of left-wing Jewish students seeking to smear Donald Trump -- a grotesque smear on which he doubled-down when challenged.
The arrogance Huckabee is displaying (and I haven't even gotten into the idea that American Jewish organizations should choose their leadership based on fealty to Netanyahu) is both astounding and par for the course. Even if he hadn't repeatedly demonstrated his contempt for the American Jewish majority he still wouldn't be entitled to pick our leaders. American Jews are not his serfs, and we do not run scared from his brand of thuggish intimidation.
Meanwhile, ZOA -- which already has gotten a warning from the COP regarding its inability to play nicely with others -- jumped into the fray to not just oppose Lob's nomination as chairwoman, but to suggest that HIAS should be expelled from the COP outright. When you're outflanking Dani frickin' Dayan from the right....
Huckabee and ZOA deserve each other, but the Jewish community deserves better than either. I hope Lob is welcomed into her new role, and that her ascension begins the important process of healing some very real rifts that have grown between the American Jewish community and an appointed leadership which has taken actual, mainstream progressive Jews for granted for too long.
* Though this can be a bit misleading. Some legacy organizations that once were prominent but today are basically shells remain members, and other important groups of more recent vintage have been denied membership notwithstanding their prominence -- J Street being the obvious example.
Of course, the world is full of monsters. And one of them is former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who, despite not being Jewish, decided he was in a position to dictate to Jews who our institutional representatives should be.
W/O dispute @realDonaldTrump is best US President ever as ally to @IsraeliPM so why would Conf of Presidents of Jewish Groups nominate anti-Trump Dianne Lob fmrly of HIAS (ties to radical groups) to lead them? Makes NO sense! Hope they reconsider-for their own sake!— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) April 21, 2020
For "their own sake". Subtle.
Huckabee has a habit of expressing his great affinity for the Jews in the form of veiled threats and antisemitic jabs. For example, when he was criticized by the ADL for comparing failing to confront the national debt to the Holocaust (speaking of Holocaust trivialization!), did he apologize? No. He lashed out, darkly warning that "Israel and Jewish people need to make friends, not insult the ones they have." (The ADL, spinelessly, then apologized to Huckabee). He's complained that American Jews just aren't as supportive of Israel as evangelical Christians. He even spread a baseless conspiracy theory that antisemitic grafitti in Chicago was actually the false flag work of left-wing Jewish students seeking to smear Donald Trump -- a grotesque smear on which he doubled-down when challenged.
The arrogance Huckabee is displaying (and I haven't even gotten into the idea that American Jewish organizations should choose their leadership based on fealty to Netanyahu) is both astounding and par for the course. Even if he hadn't repeatedly demonstrated his contempt for the American Jewish majority he still wouldn't be entitled to pick our leaders. American Jews are not his serfs, and we do not run scared from his brand of thuggish intimidation.
Meanwhile, ZOA -- which already has gotten a warning from the COP regarding its inability to play nicely with others -- jumped into the fray to not just oppose Lob's nomination as chairwoman, but to suggest that HIAS should be expelled from the COP outright. When you're outflanking Dani frickin' Dayan from the right....
Huckabee and ZOA deserve each other, but the Jewish community deserves better than either. I hope Lob is welcomed into her new role, and that her ascension begins the important process of healing some very real rifts that have grown between the American Jewish community and an appointed leadership which has taken actual, mainstream progressive Jews for granted for too long.
* Though this can be a bit misleading. Some legacy organizations that once were prominent but today are basically shells remain members, and other important groups of more recent vintage have been denied membership notwithstanding their prominence -- J Street being the obvious example.
Monday, April 20, 2020
Holocaust Trivialization Leads To Holocaust Mockery
A recent news story reports on two Minnesota high school students who released a TikTok video titled "Me and the boys on the way to camp." It was making fun of the Holocaust.
Elsewhere in the country, Republican and conservative leaders have gotten very trigger-happy comparing coronavirus restrictions to the Holocaust. An Idaho state representative insisted that stay-at-home measures were "no different" than Hitler sending Jews to extermination camps. The Colorado House Minority Leader said that Governor Jared Polis' (who is Jewish) efforts reflected a "Gestapo-like mentality". We all saw the pictures of right-wing protesters in Michigan holding signs saying "Heil Witmer" [sic] with a swastika on them (referring to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer). There are other examples.
These are not the same thing. But they are related. The latter is a form of Holocaust trivialization, where it gets employed in opposition to political moves that fall clearly and obviously short of concentration camps and mass extermination.* The effect of Holocaust trivialization is to make the Holocaust utterly ordinary and mundane; unremarkable save for how it can pack an emotional punch in ordinary and mundane political debates. And once the Holocaust is ordinary and mundane, one can do ordinary, mundane things with. Leverage it in attack ads. Use it as a bit of effective (if perhaps hyperbolic) rhetoric. And, of course, mock it. Ordinary and mundane events in the political sphere are legitimate subjects of parody and mockery. It is the Holocaust's status as something distinct from the ordinary, in a separate class, that justifies keep it insulated from such insults. Take that away, and why shouldn't it get its share of snipes and jabs? There is a direct line from trivializing the Holocaust to mocking it. The kids in Minnesota and the elected officials in the GOP are not doing the same thing -- but there is a familial lineage.
The past few years have seen the GOP talk a very big game about what great friends they are the Jews. They say it every election season, of course, and they always put on such a display of hurt and confusion when that friendship isn't reciprocated. Well, here's part of the reason why. Given the slightest opportunity, they'll cheapen our genocide in service of a destructive, paranoid, and frankly inane political agenda. They won't care in the slightest the damage it does to the Jewish community. Hell, I doubt they even notice it. But we do.
* Here is what I wrote, incidentally, on comparisons of immigrant detention camps in the U.S. to the Holocaust. I did not and do not like them, though in that case at the very least there is non-frivolous basis for the comparison (though not on the axis of systematic extermination) which made me feel as if litigating the comparison was of subsidiary importance to keeping our eye on opposing the underlying policy. By contrast, there is no remotely plausible basis for comparing stay-at-home protocols aimed at fighting a pandemic to Nazism. It can do nothing but trivialize the Holocaust.
Elsewhere in the country, Republican and conservative leaders have gotten very trigger-happy comparing coronavirus restrictions to the Holocaust. An Idaho state representative insisted that stay-at-home measures were "no different" than Hitler sending Jews to extermination camps. The Colorado House Minority Leader said that Governor Jared Polis' (who is Jewish) efforts reflected a "Gestapo-like mentality". We all saw the pictures of right-wing protesters in Michigan holding signs saying "Heil Witmer" [sic] with a swastika on them (referring to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer). There are other examples.
These are not the same thing. But they are related. The latter is a form of Holocaust trivialization, where it gets employed in opposition to political moves that fall clearly and obviously short of concentration camps and mass extermination.* The effect of Holocaust trivialization is to make the Holocaust utterly ordinary and mundane; unremarkable save for how it can pack an emotional punch in ordinary and mundane political debates. And once the Holocaust is ordinary and mundane, one can do ordinary, mundane things with. Leverage it in attack ads. Use it as a bit of effective (if perhaps hyperbolic) rhetoric. And, of course, mock it. Ordinary and mundane events in the political sphere are legitimate subjects of parody and mockery. It is the Holocaust's status as something distinct from the ordinary, in a separate class, that justifies keep it insulated from such insults. Take that away, and why shouldn't it get its share of snipes and jabs? There is a direct line from trivializing the Holocaust to mocking it. The kids in Minnesota and the elected officials in the GOP are not doing the same thing -- but there is a familial lineage.
The past few years have seen the GOP talk a very big game about what great friends they are the Jews. They say it every election season, of course, and they always put on such a display of hurt and confusion when that friendship isn't reciprocated. Well, here's part of the reason why. Given the slightest opportunity, they'll cheapen our genocide in service of a destructive, paranoid, and frankly inane political agenda. They won't care in the slightest the damage it does to the Jewish community. Hell, I doubt they even notice it. But we do.
* Here is what I wrote, incidentally, on comparisons of immigrant detention camps in the U.S. to the Holocaust. I did not and do not like them, though in that case at the very least there is non-frivolous basis for the comparison (though not on the axis of systematic extermination) which made me feel as if litigating the comparison was of subsidiary importance to keeping our eye on opposing the underlying policy. By contrast, there is no remotely plausible basis for comparing stay-at-home protocols aimed at fighting a pandemic to Nazism. It can do nothing but trivialize the Holocaust.
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
The Wisconsin Supreme Court Upset
Liberal challenger Jill Karofsky ousted conservative incumbent Justice Daniel Kelly, slicing the right-wing majority on the court to a 4-3 margin. The race was heated because state Republicans insisted that it must go on as scheduled in spite of the coronavirus epidemic making voting positively dangerous, then fought tooth-and-nail to make sure as many absentee ballots went uncounted as possible (they got an assist from the U.S. Supreme Court on that one). All this notwithstanding, Karofsky ending up winning by 10 points -- a frankly crushing margin given the history of Wisconsin statewide races and the fact that she was a narrow underdog. Some of the county data coming from this race -- Karofsky winning Kenosha County, for instance -- will undoubtedly make state Republicans very nervous about November (and it should).
For his part, Justice Kelly is best known around these parts for authoring perhaps the worst argument I've ever seen against affirmative action. It managed to standout for incompetence even in the hyper-competitive "comparing racial justice measures to slavery" arena, which truly is something.
Of course, the person Kelly replaced literally tried to choke out one of his colleagues, so he still might have been a step up given who came before. Fascinating place, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is. Anyway, I fully expect Judge Karofsky to continue that positive momentum and be a force for good and the rule-of-law in her tenure on the Court.
For his part, Justice Kelly is best known around these parts for authoring perhaps the worst argument I've ever seen against affirmative action. It managed to standout for incompetence even in the hyper-competitive "comparing racial justice measures to slavery" arena, which truly is something.
Of course, the person Kelly replaced literally tried to choke out one of his colleagues, so he still might have been a step up given who came before. Fascinating place, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is. Anyway, I fully expect Judge Karofsky to continue that positive momentum and be a force for good and the rule-of-law in her tenure on the Court.
Sunday, April 12, 2020
What We Owe To Each Other: Democratic Unity Edition
The vast majority of Bernie Sanders primary voters intend to vote for Joe Biden in the general. Indeed, it isn't even all that begrudging: a majority of Sanders supporters view Joe Biden favorably. It is easy to be mislead by a loud, raucous, but ultimately small online minority.
Still, as the primary season concludes and we pivot to the general, we are seeing claims and counterclaims from the erstwhile Sanders and Biden camps regarding what each one now expects from the other. Sanders backers are demanding to be courted and that their vote be "earned". Bidenites are crowing about how they won and that anyone who doesn't back Joe come November is a fascist enabler.
As it stands, this is not a productive conversation. But as we emerge from another harsh primary, we should be think about what we owe each other in the service of unity and making Trump a one term president.
To that end, I suggest the following things we can reasonably expect out of each camp:
From Biden Supporters
From Sanders Supporters
On a lighter note, the need for Democrats to be cheerful and enthusiastic and united and optimistic brought to mind some old Boondocks comic strips way back from 2004.
Still, as the primary season concludes and we pivot to the general, we are seeing claims and counterclaims from the erstwhile Sanders and Biden camps regarding what each one now expects from the other. Sanders backers are demanding to be courted and that their vote be "earned". Bidenites are crowing about how they won and that anyone who doesn't back Joe come November is a fascist enabler.
As it stands, this is not a productive conversation. But as we emerge from another harsh primary, we should be think about what we owe each other in the service of unity and making Trump a one term president.
To that end, I suggest the following things we can reasonably expect out of each camp:
From Biden Supporters
- Do not promote the baseline expectation that Sanders voters will not end up voting for Biden in November. For one, as noted above it's not true. For two, it tends to create its own reality--the more the message is communicated that there is a gaping rift between Sanders voters and Biden voters, the more it becomes the truth. The more rhetoric we put out in the world that communicates mistrust and suspicion, the more the relationship will be characterized by mistrust and suspicion.
- Following on that, treat everyone who voted in the Democratic primary -- no matter for which candidate -- as being presumptively all on the same team, with everyone's contributions welcome.
- Do not gloat. Do not crow. Do not take joy in the defeat of Sanders or his faction. I don't care if it's to someone who two months ago was telling you to "bend the knee". Don't do it.
- Promote those elements of the Democratic platform that demonstrate the influence of the progressive wing and common ground within the party. This is a good example. Use it as outreach to the extent Sanders backers say they want an affirmative reason to vote for Biden. Things like paid family leave, universal healthcare with a public option, rejoining the Paris Accords, and the $15 minimum wage are all part of the Biden campaign now, and we should credit progressive activists for laying the foundation that made those mainstream in the Democratic Party.
- Do not run against Sanders. The primary is over. There is no good reason, particularly given whom Biden is running against, for why Biden or his supporters should engage in any performative hippie-punching.
- Nominate a VP who reasonably will be perceived as extending an olive branch to the Sanders faction. It doesn't have to be Nina Turner (and in fact it almost assuredly should not and will not be). But Stacey Abrams remains a good choice. There are, presumably, others. But don't double-down on a "moderate".
From Sanders Supporters
- Vote for Biden. Obviously. That's starkly put, but there really isn't room for hedging or caveating around this.
- Don't publicly mope about it. We know he wasn't your first (or likely, third) choice. But public expressions of sourness and unhappiness are contagious and depress turnout, and the corollary of "vote for Biden" is "do what you can to make sure Biden wins the race". Think of it this way: the only thing worse than having to vote for Biden to become President is having to vote for Biden and Trump still being President anyway.
- Following on the above: find something to be enthusiastic and cheerful about. It doesn't have to be Biden himself. It can be "Trump doesn't replace RBG". It can be the $15 minimum wage. It can be something else. Worst case scenario -- fake it. But find something, anything, that you can be passionate about that compliments the agenda of electing Joe Biden
- Do not impose "conditions" on your vote that boil down to "Biden must become Sanders". Instead, look for the elements of Biden's platform that are most likely to be harmonious with or complimentary to Sanders agenda, and focus on locking those down.
- Biden is the consummate party man -- his instincts are to do whatever is the conventional wisdom of the median Democrat. Take advantage of that by making your agenda items part of that conventional wisdom. It won't all happen at once, but there is a lot of room for real progress here.
- Do not look for reasons why efforts at outreach from the Biden camp are dishonest, disingenuous, or otherwise insufficient. Politics is the strong and slow boring of hard boards. Collect the carrots offered and lay the groundwork so that they can be cashed in come 2021.
On a lighter note, the need for Democrats to be cheerful and enthusiastic and united and optimistic brought to mind some old Boondocks comic strips way back from 2004.
Thursday, April 09, 2020
Bernie Drops Out
Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the 2020 presidential race.
There are half a million commentators on this, covering every possible niche, so I'll just focus on one thing.
Bernie Sanders was Jewish. And his presence at the highest echelon of American politics mattered to us.
This might surprise some, because a commonly-expressed sentiment on segments of the Twitterati was that the actual Jewish community didn't trust or even hated Sanders. That's simply not true. Sanders may not have been the first choice candidate of Jewish voters, but his favorability ratings were still net positive. He had many passionate supporters in the Jewish community, and even those of us who didn't back him in the primary still would have overwhelmingly checked his name had he have been the 2020 nominee. One of my main regrets that he didn't win the nomination is that we will never have true occasion to return to this bookmarked tweet.
The far worse claim was that Sanders was not even a "real Jew" or a "Jew in Name Only". This was nothing short of grotesque. Like many of my co-religionists, I saw Bernie's Jewishness clear as day. The mannerisms, the accent, the passion, even the democratic socialist politics: these all rang perfectly familiar as evoking Jewishness -- of a particular kind, yes, but no less distinctive. One can have legitimate grievances with particular surrogates or spokespersons; one can wish he had been more vocally Jewish (although for me his voice is one of the most Jewish things about him) for longer. But it's also the case that he wrote one of the better meditations on Jewishness, antisemitism, and politics that I've seen from any politician.
It is fair to say that Bernie Sanders does not reflect the preferences of the median American Jews. But if one says that, then one must be equally forthright in saying that hating Bernie Sanders is also unreflective of the median American Jew. It is a crude caricature of identity politics that suggests it means complete blind allegiance to anyone and everyone who happens to share your faith or your phenotype. What it actually means is far more nuanced. I didn't have to agree with Sanders on everything -- I didn't even have to vote for him in the primary -- to be proud that he was running and proud for what his successes meant for my community.
And I am proud. He was and is a valuable member of my community. I thank him, and wish him nothing but the best.
There are half a million commentators on this, covering every possible niche, so I'll just focus on one thing.
Bernie Sanders was Jewish. And his presence at the highest echelon of American politics mattered to us.
This might surprise some, because a commonly-expressed sentiment on segments of the Twitterati was that the actual Jewish community didn't trust or even hated Sanders. That's simply not true. Sanders may not have been the first choice candidate of Jewish voters, but his favorability ratings were still net positive. He had many passionate supporters in the Jewish community, and even those of us who didn't back him in the primary still would have overwhelmingly checked his name had he have been the 2020 nominee. One of my main regrets that he didn't win the nomination is that we will never have true occasion to return to this bookmarked tweet.
The far worse claim was that Sanders was not even a "real Jew" or a "Jew in Name Only". This was nothing short of grotesque. Like many of my co-religionists, I saw Bernie's Jewishness clear as day. The mannerisms, the accent, the passion, even the democratic socialist politics: these all rang perfectly familiar as evoking Jewishness -- of a particular kind, yes, but no less distinctive. One can have legitimate grievances with particular surrogates or spokespersons; one can wish he had been more vocally Jewish (although for me his voice is one of the most Jewish things about him) for longer. But it's also the case that he wrote one of the better meditations on Jewishness, antisemitism, and politics that I've seen from any politician.
It is fair to say that Bernie Sanders does not reflect the preferences of the median American Jews. But if one says that, then one must be equally forthright in saying that hating Bernie Sanders is also unreflective of the median American Jew. It is a crude caricature of identity politics that suggests it means complete blind allegiance to anyone and everyone who happens to share your faith or your phenotype. What it actually means is far more nuanced. I didn't have to agree with Sanders on everything -- I didn't even have to vote for him in the primary -- to be proud that he was running and proud for what his successes meant for my community.
And I am proud. He was and is a valuable member of my community. I thank him, and wish him nothing but the best.
Sunday, April 05, 2020
Can Sir Keir Starmer Turn the Page for Labour and the Jews?
The UK Labour Party has chosen its next leader to replace Jeremy Corbyn. Sir Keir Starmer won decisively in the first round of balloting, beating Corbyn's favored successor Rebecca Long-Bailey and back-bencher Lisa Nandy. Starmer was seen as a moderate candidate who nonetheless ran as a unifier, appealing to groups (including many Jews) alienated by Corbyn's hard-left politics while not actively assailing his predecessor.
So -- what does this mean for the UK Jewish community, and its deeply fraught relationship with the nation's main left-of-center party?
The tone is cautiously optimistic -- and I think justifiably so.
The Jewish Labour Movement -- Labour's main Jewish affiliate, and a true warhorse in fighting Labour antisemitism over the past few years -- endorsed Lisa Nandy in this race, but Starmer came in a very strong second and obviously carried significant support. Starmer, whose wife is Jewish and has relatives who live in Israel, took part in a striking moment where he and every other Labour leadership candidate (even Corbynista Long-Bailey) characterized themselves as either "Zionist" or someone who "supports Zionism". Upon his election, his first act was to apologize to the Jewish community for antisemitism in the Labour Party and said he will "'judge [the] success [of his leadership] by the return of Jewish members."
These gestures have been welcomed by the Jewish community, albeit with the reasonable caveat that actions will speak louder than words. Indeed -- but that does not mean the words are not welcome.
What I will say is that Starmer absolutely deserves a chance. These past few years have been rough, and have left scars. They will not heal overnight. There is legitimate basis for mistrust. But healing requires some amount of trust, and of patience. Starmer's victory was decisive, and we're already seeing additional key parts of the party apparatus swing towards "his" people and away from the Corbynista old guard. Still, things will take time and there almost certainly will not be a highly public purge or bloodbath of Corbyn loyalists. I do not think that such a purge is per se necessary for Labour to right ship. Slow, steady leadership, partnerships, open communication, and rebuilding connections may not offer the visceral satisfaction of someone putting Seamus Milne's head on a spike -- but it might ultimately offer a better route forward in the long run.
The risk of the past few years is that they've created wounds that can never heal, because nothing that can be done going forward can undo the hurts of the past. Last year I wrote the following:
So that's my plea -- don't give into that type of bitterness. I'm not saying give Starmer a free pass. I am saying give him a real chance. And the most difficult part of giving someone a real chance is acknowledging and accepting that -- as legitimate as the Jewish community's grievances are -- things will never be fully put to right; yet still, we must move forward.
So -- what does this mean for the UK Jewish community, and its deeply fraught relationship with the nation's main left-of-center party?
The tone is cautiously optimistic -- and I think justifiably so.
The Jewish Labour Movement -- Labour's main Jewish affiliate, and a true warhorse in fighting Labour antisemitism over the past few years -- endorsed Lisa Nandy in this race, but Starmer came in a very strong second and obviously carried significant support. Starmer, whose wife is Jewish and has relatives who live in Israel, took part in a striking moment where he and every other Labour leadership candidate (even Corbynista Long-Bailey) characterized themselves as either "Zionist" or someone who "supports Zionism". Upon his election, his first act was to apologize to the Jewish community for antisemitism in the Labour Party and said he will "'judge [the] success [of his leadership] by the return of Jewish members."
These gestures have been welcomed by the Jewish community, albeit with the reasonable caveat that actions will speak louder than words. Indeed -- but that does not mean the words are not welcome.
What I will say is that Starmer absolutely deserves a chance. These past few years have been rough, and have left scars. They will not heal overnight. There is legitimate basis for mistrust. But healing requires some amount of trust, and of patience. Starmer's victory was decisive, and we're already seeing additional key parts of the party apparatus swing towards "his" people and away from the Corbynista old guard. Still, things will take time and there almost certainly will not be a highly public purge or bloodbath of Corbyn loyalists. I do not think that such a purge is per se necessary for Labour to right ship. Slow, steady leadership, partnerships, open communication, and rebuilding connections may not offer the visceral satisfaction of someone putting Seamus Milne's head on a spike -- but it might ultimately offer a better route forward in the long run.
The risk of the past few years is that they've created wounds that can never heal, because nothing that can be done going forward can undo the hurts of the past. Last year I wrote the following:
British Jews are angry at Labour, and they're by no means unreasonable to feel that way -- I've been quite vocal in calling out the disgusting cesspool of antisemitism that has taken over the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's watch. That's legitimately anger-inducing. And one could even argue that Jewish anger about this has played a significant role in forcing Labour to come to the table and take what (meager) steps it has taken to tackle antisemitism in its ranks.These feelings of woundedness are still present, and if left unattended they could make even a good faith effort by Starmer to rebuild the relationship between Labour and the Jewish community impossible.
But I also worry that this anger and bitterness has gotten so deep that it's almost impossible to imagine any set of steps by which Jews and Labour might reconcile. Even when Labour officials do issue statements or take steps that seem genuinely positive as expressions of the importance of tackling antisemitism, the mistrust runs so thick that they're often immediately rejected -- "what good is this statement or that commitment coming from so-and-so, who's been so terrible to us in the past?"
I'm not saying that these statements or commitments will always be followed through on or even that they're always offered in good faith. I'm saying it almost doesn't seem to matter any more, the efforts that are offered in good faith and would be followed through on are swept away just as decisively by the omnipresent feeling of woundedness and mistrust. At a certain level, what Jewish anger wants out of Labour is for it to have never done such awful things in the first place. But there's nothing Labour can promise to satisfy that demand -- and so the anger can never be placated. And that, ultimately, can only lead us to a destructive place, where Jews and the left must be enemies, because there is no longer anything that can be said or done that is interpreted to be a gesture of friendship (even the most perfectly worded statement can be dismissed as a front or a guise, or insufficient given past sins).
So that's my plea -- don't give into that type of bitterness. I'm not saying give Starmer a free pass. I am saying give him a real chance. And the most difficult part of giving someone a real chance is acknowledging and accepting that -- as legitimate as the Jewish community's grievances are -- things will never be fully put to right; yet still, we must move forward.
Friday, April 03, 2020
If You're One in a Million...
Many of you are familiar with the saying "If you're one in a million, there are a thousand people just like you in China alone."
It helps illustrate that while one in a million is certainly very rare, on another way of looking it at it's also quite common. A thousand people! You could fill a high school gymnasium with that!
Push the proportion down a bit and things get even more stark. Imagine a political view held by only 1% of the population. That's pretty fringe, right (for reference, 33% of Americans believe that alien UFOs have visited Earth)? But it's also one in a hundred -- in America, that translates to well over three million people. That's a lot! (We explored this dynamic previously in my "how to tokenize with proportions" post.)
One thing I often think about is how modernity and modern technology, in conjunction with our decidedly pre-modern lizard-brains, don't always mesh well. We know, for example, that fat tastes delicious because in the primordial environment it was rare and vital, and thus highly desirable to consume -- unfortunately, this doesn't translate well to a contemporary context where calories and fat are plentiful and we can easily over-saturate ourselves.
I suspect there's something similar going on with political opinions. One of the oft-proclaimed virtues of the internet is it allows you to find communities of like-minded persons no matter how obscure or random the interest. Obsessed with underwater basketweaving? You can find dozens of people who share that passion with minimal effort!
What does it mean when the same is true for political opinions? I suspect our brains have a rough heuristic at the ready that correlates how difficult it is to find holders of a given opinion with how uncommon it is in society. If one struggles to come across individuals who believe ideology X, one assumes that X is rarely believed in a given society. If one comes across X-believers without too much trouble, one infers that X is a common ideology. If 1% of Americans hold a particular political stance, that may be three million people -- but (at least until recently) they're not going to be easy to find via the normal modes of political engagement. If you just read newspaper columns, chatted with your neighbors, watched TV pundits, and so forth, you'd probably come across it rarely, if ever. If one really wanted to find a sizable chunk of Americans who believe this 1% view, one would have to expend considerably more effort.
Now to be clear: what I'm describing is only a heuristic, which means it's imperfect -- there are all sorts of reasons why, for example, a rare opinion might nonetheless be easy to spot "in the wild" (it's favored among extroverts or celebrities, e.g.) or a common one might be rarely seen (it's embarrassing). But it has some logic as a rough-and-ready way of telling us which views are common in our social circle and which aren't. It's not quite the same as the availability heuristic, but it is similar. Call it the search heuristic. Something easy to find upon commencing a search for it is common; something hard to find even when searching for it is rare.
The problem is that if modern technology makes pretty much any opinion with even a speck of public salience "easy to find", that hijacks our heuristic circuitry to make all of these opinions register in our minds as "commonplace". What is the result of that?
One potentially positive result is that it might offset some mechanisms that serve to silence dissident views via the so-called "spiral of silence" -- they learn that they're not alone, and so they're more willing to air their dissident views knowing that there are peers who share their perspective.
But there are also some potential upshots that I'm more ambivalent about. One thing that we might experience is the erosion of perceived consensus -- a sense of widespread opinion balkanization and a corresponding vertiginous inability to tell when there is an opinion that carries significant social agreement. There's a push/pull on this -- sometimes, a feeling of "consensus" is dependent on wrongly not perceiving the existence of dissent, and so the elevation of dissident voices corrects a widespread social misperception. But, assuming "consensus" does not require universal agreement, sometimes, a feeling of dissensus is falsely inspired by the presence of high-profile but ultimately negligible dissenters. To the extent that modern technology makes very small ideological minorities loom larger, we might believe ourselves to be far more disunited than we actually are. And if the search heuristic causes a wide range of opinions (many mutually incompatible with one another) to register as "common", we may have trouble grasping onto distinctions between actually common versus fringe outlooks.
In a similar vein, it is at least plausible that in a democracy there is a prima facie obligation to consider and give airing to certain viewpoints simply by virtue of the fact that they're common. This wouldn't necessarily mean that uncommon views can be automatically rejected, only that they must "earn" their space on the democratic agenda by means other than "because many people believe it". If this is so, then the perception that more views are "common" mean that more views can claim access to this prima facie obligation of consideration. Perhaps that doesn't strike you as a bad thing -- but consider it in the case of, say, openly avowed racism or extremism -- views which might objectively be as rare as ever, but perhaps feel more common than they've been in recent memory.
There are also risks latent even for the holders of the dissident opinions themselves, for they as much as anyone might be mislead into thinking their views are more widely shared than they are. If someone holds a view they know is rare but wish was widely shared, they must endeavor to persuade others to adopt it. If they then, say, run for office on its platform whose tenets are held by only 10% of the population, if (or when) they lose they probably won't be happy but they at least probably won't be confused. Unpopular opinions don't win elections.
But things are different if the search heuristic misfires and makes the dissident believe they are actually expressing a very common view. If they nonetheless persistently lose in the democratic arena, they might suspect bias, corruption, institutional barriers, or other forms of foul play are obstructing them. To be clear: there are many cases where such things are at work; I'm not saying that everyone who believes their views are not carrying the democratic day because of various social biases is simply misleading themselves. But sometimes a democratic spade really is just a spade; and there is at least the potential for this sort of self-deception to accelerate -- the result being greater mistrust and resentment of social institutions.
It's worth noting that there isn't an "objective" way of declaring whether a view is "rare" or not. Much of it already lies in framing: "held by 1% of the population" sounds uncommon, "held by three million Americans" sounds reasonably common. So we can't quite say that, even if the search heuristic is misfiring, it is objectively causing us to label "uncommon opinions" as "common". But I do suspect that our wider net of appraisals around how we relate to an opinion based on its perceived "commonality" are tied to the same set of assumptions under which the search heuristic should function at least roughly well -- meaning that if we no longer exist in that social world, the whole edifice comes under serious strain (if it doesn't collapse outright).
These are preliminary thoughts; they are not wholly hashed out in my mind yet, and I'm curious to hear others' views. Here's the tl;dr
It helps illustrate that while one in a million is certainly very rare, on another way of looking it at it's also quite common. A thousand people! You could fill a high school gymnasium with that!
Push the proportion down a bit and things get even more stark. Imagine a political view held by only 1% of the population. That's pretty fringe, right (for reference, 33% of Americans believe that alien UFOs have visited Earth)? But it's also one in a hundred -- in America, that translates to well over three million people. That's a lot! (We explored this dynamic previously in my "how to tokenize with proportions" post.)
One thing I often think about is how modernity and modern technology, in conjunction with our decidedly pre-modern lizard-brains, don't always mesh well. We know, for example, that fat tastes delicious because in the primordial environment it was rare and vital, and thus highly desirable to consume -- unfortunately, this doesn't translate well to a contemporary context where calories and fat are plentiful and we can easily over-saturate ourselves.
I suspect there's something similar going on with political opinions. One of the oft-proclaimed virtues of the internet is it allows you to find communities of like-minded persons no matter how obscure or random the interest. Obsessed with underwater basketweaving? You can find dozens of people who share that passion with minimal effort!
What does it mean when the same is true for political opinions? I suspect our brains have a rough heuristic at the ready that correlates how difficult it is to find holders of a given opinion with how uncommon it is in society. If one struggles to come across individuals who believe ideology X, one assumes that X is rarely believed in a given society. If one comes across X-believers without too much trouble, one infers that X is a common ideology. If 1% of Americans hold a particular political stance, that may be three million people -- but (at least until recently) they're not going to be easy to find via the normal modes of political engagement. If you just read newspaper columns, chatted with your neighbors, watched TV pundits, and so forth, you'd probably come across it rarely, if ever. If one really wanted to find a sizable chunk of Americans who believe this 1% view, one would have to expend considerably more effort.
Now to be clear: what I'm describing is only a heuristic, which means it's imperfect -- there are all sorts of reasons why, for example, a rare opinion might nonetheless be easy to spot "in the wild" (it's favored among extroverts or celebrities, e.g.) or a common one might be rarely seen (it's embarrassing). But it has some logic as a rough-and-ready way of telling us which views are common in our social circle and which aren't. It's not quite the same as the availability heuristic, but it is similar. Call it the search heuristic. Something easy to find upon commencing a search for it is common; something hard to find even when searching for it is rare.
The problem is that if modern technology makes pretty much any opinion with even a speck of public salience "easy to find", that hijacks our heuristic circuitry to make all of these opinions register in our minds as "commonplace". What is the result of that?
One potentially positive result is that it might offset some mechanisms that serve to silence dissident views via the so-called "spiral of silence" -- they learn that they're not alone, and so they're more willing to air their dissident views knowing that there are peers who share their perspective.
But there are also some potential upshots that I'm more ambivalent about. One thing that we might experience is the erosion of perceived consensus -- a sense of widespread opinion balkanization and a corresponding vertiginous inability to tell when there is an opinion that carries significant social agreement. There's a push/pull on this -- sometimes, a feeling of "consensus" is dependent on wrongly not perceiving the existence of dissent, and so the elevation of dissident voices corrects a widespread social misperception. But, assuming "consensus" does not require universal agreement, sometimes, a feeling of dissensus is falsely inspired by the presence of high-profile but ultimately negligible dissenters. To the extent that modern technology makes very small ideological minorities loom larger, we might believe ourselves to be far more disunited than we actually are. And if the search heuristic causes a wide range of opinions (many mutually incompatible with one another) to register as "common", we may have trouble grasping onto distinctions between actually common versus fringe outlooks.
In a similar vein, it is at least plausible that in a democracy there is a prima facie obligation to consider and give airing to certain viewpoints simply by virtue of the fact that they're common. This wouldn't necessarily mean that uncommon views can be automatically rejected, only that they must "earn" their space on the democratic agenda by means other than "because many people believe it". If this is so, then the perception that more views are "common" mean that more views can claim access to this prima facie obligation of consideration. Perhaps that doesn't strike you as a bad thing -- but consider it in the case of, say, openly avowed racism or extremism -- views which might objectively be as rare as ever, but perhaps feel more common than they've been in recent memory.
There are also risks latent even for the holders of the dissident opinions themselves, for they as much as anyone might be mislead into thinking their views are more widely shared than they are. If someone holds a view they know is rare but wish was widely shared, they must endeavor to persuade others to adopt it. If they then, say, run for office on its platform whose tenets are held by only 10% of the population, if (or when) they lose they probably won't be happy but they at least probably won't be confused. Unpopular opinions don't win elections.
But things are different if the search heuristic misfires and makes the dissident believe they are actually expressing a very common view. If they nonetheless persistently lose in the democratic arena, they might suspect bias, corruption, institutional barriers, or other forms of foul play are obstructing them. To be clear: there are many cases where such things are at work; I'm not saying that everyone who believes their views are not carrying the democratic day because of various social biases is simply misleading themselves. But sometimes a democratic spade really is just a spade; and there is at least the potential for this sort of self-deception to accelerate -- the result being greater mistrust and resentment of social institutions.
It's worth noting that there isn't an "objective" way of declaring whether a view is "rare" or not. Much of it already lies in framing: "held by 1% of the population" sounds uncommon, "held by three million Americans" sounds reasonably common. So we can't quite say that, even if the search heuristic is misfiring, it is objectively causing us to label "uncommon opinions" as "common". But I do suspect that our wider net of appraisals around how we relate to an opinion based on its perceived "commonality" are tied to the same set of assumptions under which the search heuristic should function at least roughly well -- meaning that if we no longer exist in that social world, the whole edifice comes under serious strain (if it doesn't collapse outright).
These are preliminary thoughts; they are not wholly hashed out in my mind yet, and I'm curious to hear others' views. Here's the tl;dr
- The search heuristic tells us that, roughly speaking, a view that is hard to find upon searching for it is rare, and a view that is easy to find upon searching for it is commonplace.
- The social media revolution has drastically reduced the search costs required to find large absolute numbers of persons who hold any particular view, even when they are actually relatively uncommon.
- Together, (1) & (2) cause us to mentally code many viewpoints which we'd perceive as uncommon as quite common (since we are able to find examples of them with little effort).
- The effects of this are unclear, but may include (a) increased willingness to air dissident views; (b) decreased sense of social consensus; (c) decreased ability to distinguish relatively common versus uncommon views; (d) decreased trust that formal mechanisms for measuring public opinion reliably track actual public viewpoints (even when they are in fact doing so reasonably well).
Wednesday, April 01, 2020
Advancing Downward
For your pleasure, a tiny example of academic absurdity I encountered today.
As many of you know, I'm completing my Ph.D in the UC-Berkeley Political Science department. Today, I was asked by the department if I would be interested in teaching a class for them this fall. I had a few logistical questions, but the important one for our purpose was how this job -- and in particular, its pay -- would be impacted if I filed my dissertation (and thereby finished the program over the summer).
To be clear: regardless of whether I was technically still a Ph.D. student or an actual, factual minted Ph.D., I'd be teaching the exact same class and doing the exact same work. I'd just have a different title: "Lecturer" if I have a Ph.D., "Acting Instructor" if I do not.
So you might be thinking that I shouldn't get a pay raise just because I've got some fancy new letters after my name (you might also think that, if one's job description is exactly the same as a "Ph.D. student" versus as a department lecturer, then such "students" are, in fact, employees and should be treated as such. But we'll leave that aside for now.).
But if I would just be paid the same for the same class before and after garnering the credential of Ph.D., I wouldn't find that absurd and I wouldn't be writing this post. No, the truth is that if I deign to file my dissertation and graduate, I'd be paid less as a Lecturer -- substantially so. I'd also lose my health insurance.
So as best I can tell, the best play for me is to just arbitrarily delay "finishing" my Ph.D., even if it is complete by this summer. Which seems foolish for a host of reasons -- but certainly not more foolish than nominally advancing up the ladder of academia resulting in somehow making less money with fewer benefits than a graduate student.
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
My Encounters with Richard Epstein
Apropos of current events, I thought I might share my three encounters with Richard Epstein.
Normally, I'd say "interactions" rather than "encounters", but in this case it would not be accurate -- there was no "inter-", as I never got a word in edgewise.
The first time came while I was sitting in the University of Chicago Law School common area (Epstein was for many years a University of Chicago law professor, though these days he's more associated with NYU and the Hoover Institute at Stanford). The law school cafe does not have pizza, but that day I had gone to the main food court on campus to pick up a few slices which I had brought back to the law school to eat. Epstein spotted my pizza as he was walking across the room and, without breaking stride or taking a breath said something like the following:
The second encounter came while I was sitting in on a faculty workshop featuring a presentation by Bernard Harcourt (now at Columbia) on 19th century French grain market regulations (or something like that). Harcourt is a good old fashioned Foucault acolyte, which made him stand out a bit at Chicago in general, and the thesis of this paper was that there was no such thing as market "deregulation" only "reregulation", which made him a target of Epstein in particular. Epstein asked him how it could be that there was no such thing as "deregulation" -- what if you just repeal all the regulations? -- and Harcourt responded by saying that the market is its own form of regulation that can have just as much disciplining effect, so "repealing" the regulations just results in a different form of regulation emerging. This answer was not satisfactory to Epstein, and they went back and forth along this vein for a bit -- is this deregulation or reregulation? -- until Epstein got frustrated and exclaimed "well that's just a semantic game." And Harcourt responded, with the perfect serenity of a continental political theorist:
The third encounter was also at a faculty workshop, this one for M. Todd Henderson, a corporate law professor and bastion of the law school's right flank, whom I happened to know idolized Epstein. I forget what Henderson was presenting on, but it must have been some way of de-(or re-?)regulating corporate law so as to minimize the government's role, and one could tell from the puppy eyes that he was hoping for Epstein's approval. Alas, it was apparently still too much government for Epstein, who went on a sustained rant that concluded "and then we're on the path to totalitarianism!" All of Epstein's comments on the papers of others concluded with that, but Henderson was still crushed.
Finally, while not an "encounter" per se, there was a running joke around the law school while I was there, to the effect that if Richard Epstein wrote the Constitution it would have only one amendment which would read "Congress shall make no law." In a similar vein, his known status as a polymath who worked in a dizzying array of legal subfields was thought to be counterbalanced by the somewhat "thematic" link tying together the contribution he was said to bring to all of them: if it's communications law, abolish the FCC. If it's election law, abolish the FEC. If it's health care law, abolish the FDA. If it's environmental law, abolish the EPA .... you get the idea.
Normally, I'd say "interactions" rather than "encounters", but in this case it would not be accurate -- there was no "inter-", as I never got a word in edgewise.
The first time came while I was sitting in the University of Chicago Law School common area (Epstein was for many years a University of Chicago law professor, though these days he's more associated with NYU and the Hoover Institute at Stanford). The law school cafe does not have pizza, but that day I had gone to the main food court on campus to pick up a few slices which I had brought back to the law school to eat. Epstein spotted my pizza as he was walking across the room and, without breaking stride or taking a breath said something like the following:
Where did you get that pizza I like pizza you can't get good pizza around here it's not like New York maybe I'll get some pizza for lunch!Despite the fact that the opener was at least nominally addressed as a question to me, he never glanced backwards and I never had a chance to speak. By the time he was finished with his train of thought, he was halfway across the room and out of earshot anyway.
The second encounter came while I was sitting in on a faculty workshop featuring a presentation by Bernard Harcourt (now at Columbia) on 19th century French grain market regulations (or something like that). Harcourt is a good old fashioned Foucault acolyte, which made him stand out a bit at Chicago in general, and the thesis of this paper was that there was no such thing as market "deregulation" only "reregulation", which made him a target of Epstein in particular. Epstein asked him how it could be that there was no such thing as "deregulation" -- what if you just repeal all the regulations? -- and Harcourt responded by saying that the market is its own form of regulation that can have just as much disciplining effect, so "repealing" the regulations just results in a different form of regulation emerging. This answer was not satisfactory to Epstein, and they went back and forth along this vein for a bit -- is this deregulation or reregulation? -- until Epstein got frustrated and exclaimed "well that's just a semantic game." And Harcourt responded, with the perfect serenity of a continental political theorist:
"Everything is just a semantic game."Reports were that it was the only time most of Epstein's colleagues had actually seen him rendered speechless.
The third encounter was also at a faculty workshop, this one for M. Todd Henderson, a corporate law professor and bastion of the law school's right flank, whom I happened to know idolized Epstein. I forget what Henderson was presenting on, but it must have been some way of de-(or re-?)regulating corporate law so as to minimize the government's role, and one could tell from the puppy eyes that he was hoping for Epstein's approval. Alas, it was apparently still too much government for Epstein, who went on a sustained rant that concluded "and then we're on the path to totalitarianism!" All of Epstein's comments on the papers of others concluded with that, but Henderson was still crushed.
Finally, while not an "encounter" per se, there was a running joke around the law school while I was there, to the effect that if Richard Epstein wrote the Constitution it would have only one amendment which would read "Congress shall make no law." In a similar vein, his known status as a polymath who worked in a dizzying array of legal subfields was thought to be counterbalanced by the somewhat "thematic" link tying together the contribution he was said to bring to all of them: if it's communications law, abolish the FCC. If it's election law, abolish the FEC. If it's health care law, abolish the FDA. If it's environmental law, abolish the EPA .... you get the idea.
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Best Epic Rap Battles of History (By Season)
Look, we're all bored here, so let's award the best Epic Rap Battles of History for each season.
Season One
Winner: Albert Einstein vs. Stephen Hawking
Honorable Mentions: Dr. Seuss vs. Shakespeare, Napoleon vs. Napoleon
The season that started it all. Honestly, though, I think only Einstein vs. Hawking can compete with the stronger entrants in later seasons. The creators -- reasonably enough! -- were still finding their rhythm (get it?).
Season Two
Winner: Michael Jackson vs. Elvis
Runner-up: Rasputin vs. Stalin
Honorable Mentions: Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates, Cleopatra vs. Marilyn Monroe
Now we're cooking. The kid who plays young Michael Jackson was superb, and carries his battle to victory. The Rasputin vs. Stalin (vs. Lenin vs. Gorbachev vs. Putin) battle was strong almost top-to-bottom (only Gorbachev was a bit of a sour note for me). Jobs vs. Gates was a ton of a fun (remember those Mac vs. PC ads?). And Cleopatra vs. Monroe was a superb all-women battle with some truly vicious disses. Freddie Mercury's performance over Frank Sinatra was also a stand-out, but he won so convincingly the battle was actually too one-sided to make this list.
Season Three
Winner: Isaac Newton vs. Bill Nye
Runner-up: Edgar Allen Poe vs. Stephen King
Honorable Mention: Bob Ross vs. Pablo Picasso
It's tough to top getting Weird Al in one of these (though if Neil deGrasse Tyson had actually played himself -- which I've heard he was willing to do -- it would have been even cooler). Stephen King has one of the best closing lines in the whole series. Bob Ross vs. Picasso is relatively light, but consistent all the way through. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs. their namesake Renaissance Artists was good, but the performance was a little short. I also suspect I'm virtually alone in thinking that Miley Cyrus beat Joan of Arc (and pretty decisively, frankly).
Season Four
Winner: Stan Lee vs. Jim Henson
Runner-up: Western Philosophers vs. Eastern Philosophers
Honorable Mention: Ellen vs. Oprah
If you forced me to pick my absolute, all-time favorite, I'd probably go with Lee vs. Henson -- but it'd be torture. If you asked to pick me single favorite verse, though, it'd be Walt Disney's intervention in Lee vs. Henson -- and it would not be close. It's brilliant from start to finish (and, to be clear, compliments very strong work from Lee and Henson). As a political theorist, I found the philosophy battle hilarious. Ellen vs. Oprah is also a very good, evenly matched battle (and one of the few "clean" ones on ERB).
Season Five
Winner: George R.R. Martin vs. J.R.R. Tolkien
Runner-up: Gordon Ramsay vs. Julia Child
Honorable Mentions: Tony Hawk vs. Wayne Gretzky, Ash Ketchum vs. Charles Darwin
This was an absolutely loaded season -- I think clearly ERB's strongest overall. Tolkien's final verse where he works in all the titles of the Lord of the Rings is just masterful. I'm a dedicated Gordon Ramsay fan but Julia Child completely kicked his ass. Tony Hawk's incredible first verse is matched by Wayne Gretzky's brutal last verse. And Darwin has one of the great one-liners of all-time calling Ash "Mighty Morphin' Michael Vick." All that talent means a ton of tracks I love don't even make it onto the honorable mentions list here: (Daniel Craig) James Bond vs. Austin Powers, Ivan the Terrible versus various "the Greats", Wonder Women versus Stevie Wonder, and Winston Churchill versus Theodore Roosevelt are all superb.
Season Six
Winner: Guy Fawkes vs. Che Guevara
Runner-up: Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg
Honorable Mention: Ronald McDonald vs. The Burger King
This was a shaky season on the whole, but Fawkes vs. Guevara is one of the best in the entire series -- a distinction based primarily around the dead-on Che Guevara portrayal (who knew he also looks exactly like Jon Snow?), but certainly with an impressive toe-to-toe performance from Fawkes. Musk vs. Zuckerberg has a wonderful subtle gag running through it in that Mark "I don't even fucking blink" Zuckerberg in fact never blinks during the whole video. The McDonald vs. Burger King rap sneaks into honorable mention, but not due to either of the titular characters -- Wendy steals the show. Wendy's the company actually tweeted about the rap, which is a bit gutsy given their mascot's line about how she's "exploiting you both like you were growing my tomatoes."
Season One
Winner: Albert Einstein vs. Stephen Hawking
Honorable Mentions: Dr. Seuss vs. Shakespeare, Napoleon vs. Napoleon
The season that started it all. Honestly, though, I think only Einstein vs. Hawking can compete with the stronger entrants in later seasons. The creators -- reasonably enough! -- were still finding their rhythm (get it?).
Season Two
Winner: Michael Jackson vs. Elvis
Runner-up: Rasputin vs. Stalin
Honorable Mentions: Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates, Cleopatra vs. Marilyn Monroe
Now we're cooking. The kid who plays young Michael Jackson was superb, and carries his battle to victory. The Rasputin vs. Stalin (vs. Lenin vs. Gorbachev vs. Putin) battle was strong almost top-to-bottom (only Gorbachev was a bit of a sour note for me). Jobs vs. Gates was a ton of a fun (remember those Mac vs. PC ads?). And Cleopatra vs. Monroe was a superb all-women battle with some truly vicious disses. Freddie Mercury's performance over Frank Sinatra was also a stand-out, but he won so convincingly the battle was actually too one-sided to make this list.
Season Three
Winner: Isaac Newton vs. Bill Nye
Runner-up: Edgar Allen Poe vs. Stephen King
Honorable Mention: Bob Ross vs. Pablo Picasso
It's tough to top getting Weird Al in one of these (though if Neil deGrasse Tyson had actually played himself -- which I've heard he was willing to do -- it would have been even cooler). Stephen King has one of the best closing lines in the whole series. Bob Ross vs. Picasso is relatively light, but consistent all the way through. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs. their namesake Renaissance Artists was good, but the performance was a little short. I also suspect I'm virtually alone in thinking that Miley Cyrus beat Joan of Arc (and pretty decisively, frankly).
Season Four
Winner: Stan Lee vs. Jim Henson
Runner-up: Western Philosophers vs. Eastern Philosophers
Honorable Mention: Ellen vs. Oprah
If you forced me to pick my absolute, all-time favorite, I'd probably go with Lee vs. Henson -- but it'd be torture. If you asked to pick me single favorite verse, though, it'd be Walt Disney's intervention in Lee vs. Henson -- and it would not be close. It's brilliant from start to finish (and, to be clear, compliments very strong work from Lee and Henson). As a political theorist, I found the philosophy battle hilarious. Ellen vs. Oprah is also a very good, evenly matched battle (and one of the few "clean" ones on ERB).
Season Five
Winner: George R.R. Martin vs. J.R.R. Tolkien
Runner-up: Gordon Ramsay vs. Julia Child
Honorable Mentions: Tony Hawk vs. Wayne Gretzky, Ash Ketchum vs. Charles Darwin
This was an absolutely loaded season -- I think clearly ERB's strongest overall. Tolkien's final verse where he works in all the titles of the Lord of the Rings is just masterful. I'm a dedicated Gordon Ramsay fan but Julia Child completely kicked his ass. Tony Hawk's incredible first verse is matched by Wayne Gretzky's brutal last verse. And Darwin has one of the great one-liners of all-time calling Ash "Mighty Morphin' Michael Vick." All that talent means a ton of tracks I love don't even make it onto the honorable mentions list here: (Daniel Craig) James Bond vs. Austin Powers, Ivan the Terrible versus various "the Greats", Wonder Women versus Stevie Wonder, and Winston Churchill versus Theodore Roosevelt are all superb.
Season Six
Winner: Guy Fawkes vs. Che Guevara
Runner-up: Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg
Honorable Mention: Ronald McDonald vs. The Burger King
This was a shaky season on the whole, but Fawkes vs. Guevara is one of the best in the entire series -- a distinction based primarily around the dead-on Che Guevara portrayal (who knew he also looks exactly like Jon Snow?), but certainly with an impressive toe-to-toe performance from Fawkes. Musk vs. Zuckerberg has a wonderful subtle gag running through it in that Mark "I don't even fucking blink" Zuckerberg in fact never blinks during the whole video. The McDonald vs. Burger King rap sneaks into honorable mention, but not due to either of the titular characters -- Wendy steals the show. Wendy's the company actually tweeted about the rap, which is a bit gutsy given their mascot's line about how she's "exploiting you both like you were growing my tomatoes."
Thursday, March 26, 2020
It's Coronatime! Roundup
While I'm dubious that there are actually large numbers of people who will consciously avoid Corona beer because of coronavirus, I still can't fathom what their PR people are going to do with this. It's like all those apartment complexes called "The Isis" -- you hate to see pretty word get ruined like that.
* * *
Trump campaign threatens the operating licenses of stations which run ads critical of Trump's handling of the coronavirus (the ad is damn good too). The real tragedy is that, with college campuses largely closed, there probably isn't some 19-year old Oberlin kid with a stupid protest we can all point to as "the real threat to freedom of speech in America."
Hobby Lobby CEO decides God wants him to keep his stores open, but doesn't really care about giving his workers paid sick leave.
Democrats made the coronavirus bill that passed the Senate much, much better than it was at the start.
Billionaires are ready for American workers to start working again, goddammit!
Technically ex-Rep. Brenda Jones (it's complicated) is seeking a rematch against "Squad" darling Rep. Rashida Tlaib. One might think Jones' unabashed stanning of Louis Farrakhan would present a problem given literally every Jewish opinion piece on antisemitism that's run over the past three years; but you'd be surprised (or not) at how, er, "open-minded" some folks are suddenly capable of being given the opportunity to take out Tlaib (Jones' ongoing praise and admiration for Farrakhan and his organization vs. a solitary article written by Tlaib in an NoI publication 15 years ago -- these probably wash out, right?). The ultimate kicker: Tlaib almost certainly will crush Jones anyway, so all this selling out of deep-seated principles will be for naught.
DOJ intercedes in court to argue that allowing trans women to compete in women's sports (and, one imagines, trans men to compete in men's sports?) is not required by and may indeed violate Title IX.
* * *
Trump campaign threatens the operating licenses of stations which run ads critical of Trump's handling of the coronavirus (the ad is damn good too). The real tragedy is that, with college campuses largely closed, there probably isn't some 19-year old Oberlin kid with a stupid protest we can all point to as "the real threat to freedom of speech in America."
Hobby Lobby CEO decides God wants him to keep his stores open, but doesn't really care about giving his workers paid sick leave.
Democrats made the coronavirus bill that passed the Senate much, much better than it was at the start.
Billionaires are ready for American workers to start working again, goddammit!
Technically ex-Rep. Brenda Jones (it's complicated) is seeking a rematch against "Squad" darling Rep. Rashida Tlaib. One might think Jones' unabashed stanning of Louis Farrakhan would present a problem given literally every Jewish opinion piece on antisemitism that's run over the past three years; but you'd be surprised (or not) at how, er, "open-minded" some folks are suddenly capable of being given the opportunity to take out Tlaib (Jones' ongoing praise and admiration for Farrakhan and his organization vs. a solitary article written by Tlaib in an NoI publication 15 years ago -- these probably wash out, right?). The ultimate kicker: Tlaib almost certainly will crush Jones anyway, so all this selling out of deep-seated principles will be for naught.
DOJ intercedes in court to argue that allowing trans women to compete in women's sports (and, one imagines, trans men to compete in men's sports?) is not required by and may indeed violate Title IX.
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
UK Jewish Community Hit Especially Hard by Coronavirus
In the United Kingdom, Jews represent approximately .3% of the population. They also currently comprise nearly 5% of all coronavirus deaths.
Obviously, my heart goes out to them. But I can't help but think that one of the cruel ironies of antisemitism is that, if Jews were disproportionately unlikely to be victims, it would be proof that we're behind the virus, and if we're disproportionately likely to be victims, it would be proof that we're spreading the virus. There's no winning in the antisemitic imagination.
Obviously, my heart goes out to them. But I can't help but think that one of the cruel ironies of antisemitism is that, if Jews were disproportionately unlikely to be victims, it would be proof that we're behind the virus, and if we're disproportionately likely to be victims, it would be proof that we're spreading the virus. There's no winning in the antisemitic imagination.
Monday, March 23, 2020
World Zionist Congress Election Results: Catastrophe
The World Zionist Congress results are in, and they're ... bad. No way around it -- it's just a catastrophe all around.
I was supporting the Hatikvah slate, which represents progressive groups like Ameinu and J Street and finished fifth last election. This year, Hatikvah made a big push to improve its showing and succeeded in doubling its vote share ... only to come in seventh (with 6% of the vote). Conservative groups rallied to in response to Hatikvah's mobilization, and dramatically improved their showing. Two Orthodox groups, Orthodox Israel Coalition – Mizrachi and Eretz Hakodesh, surged to second and third place (both positioned themselves on the conservative end of the Orthodox spectrum). Less ultimately consequential but more insulting was that the ZOA slate leap-frogged over Hatikvah to finish fourth with 8%.
The plurality winner remained the Reform Jewish slate (which is a progressive bloc as well), but saw a vastly reduced vote share, dropping from 39% to 25%. The centrist Conservative movement slate (MERCAZ) also dipped from 19% to 12%. Basically, the right -- both in terms of religious equality and anti-democratic values -- saw huge gains against brutal losses for the left and center. Whatever the next WZC does, it will almost certainly favor settlements, annexation, the Orthodox monopoly, and the acceleration of Israeli illiberalism.
Other people more plugged in than I can probably explain these results better than I can. If you pressed me, my hypotheses are:
It's nice to know that, even with the coronavirus disaster bearing down on us, we can still periodically poke our heads up and turn our gaze over to other, totally different catastrophes.
I was supporting the Hatikvah slate, which represents progressive groups like Ameinu and J Street and finished fifth last election. This year, Hatikvah made a big push to improve its showing and succeeded in doubling its vote share ... only to come in seventh (with 6% of the vote). Conservative groups rallied to in response to Hatikvah's mobilization, and dramatically improved their showing. Two Orthodox groups, Orthodox Israel Coalition – Mizrachi and Eretz Hakodesh, surged to second and third place (both positioned themselves on the conservative end of the Orthodox spectrum). Less ultimately consequential but more insulting was that the ZOA slate leap-frogged over Hatikvah to finish fourth with 8%.
The plurality winner remained the Reform Jewish slate (which is a progressive bloc as well), but saw a vastly reduced vote share, dropping from 39% to 25%. The centrist Conservative movement slate (MERCAZ) also dipped from 19% to 12%. Basically, the right -- both in terms of religious equality and anti-democratic values -- saw huge gains against brutal losses for the left and center. Whatever the next WZC does, it will almost certainly favor settlements, annexation, the Orthodox monopoly, and the acceleration of Israeli illiberalism.
Other people more plugged in than I can probably explain these results better than I can. If you pressed me, my hypotheses are:
(a) Hativkah's initial success in mobilizing energy and support made it into an effective boogeyman for the right, and this "counterattack" ultimately had greater reach than Hatikvah's pool of progressive support;
(b) Orthodox communal groups took the election more seriously and have strong GOTV norms in their communities; and
(c) a growing shift where the American Jews who will self-select into explicitly "Israel" related political activity (at least, activity that isn't solely critical) are primarily the right-wing ones.Oh, and in Israel itself, the speaker of the Knesset is refusing to allow a vote on his replacement because it looks like the current opposition has a majority. So that's one giant leap toward autocracy.
It's nice to know that, even with the coronavirus disaster bearing down on us, we can still periodically poke our heads up and turn our gaze over to other, totally different catastrophes.
Sunday, March 22, 2020
How It All Came Apart for Sanders
In the space of about a week, Bernie Sanders went from likely Democratic nominee to virtually dead in the water. How did it all go wrong? The New York Times has its entry up in what I'm sure will be a crowded pool.
It's an interesting article, in part because it doesn't have a clear through-line. At times, the piece seems to blame Sanders' reluctance to directly attack Joe Biden (whom he apparently is personally fond of), against the recommendation of more pugnacious advisers (but in line with others who urged him to take a more unifying line). Under this view, going after Biden (on things like the crime bill) would have been the only way to crack his solid support in the African-American community -- but Sanders wasn't willing to "go low" and it cost him.
That account would pose a direct challenge to the "Sanders was too mean" narrative that many folks have coalesced around. But at other points in the article, the authors suggest a different diagnosis -- focusing on Sanders' refusal to modulate his attacks on the "establishment" as a means of expanding his core progressive base and making inroads to the rest of the party. Sanders was extremely reluctant to do the basic political legwork of "assuring concerned stakeholders" or "reach out to secure endorsements", and instead alienated potential allies with undifferentiated broadsides that seemed to be fired against the Democratic Party as a whole. Advisers who defended his strategy here seemed to think that Sanders should only approach the Democratic Party from a position of strength (remember "bend the knee"?). Once Sanders were clearly in a dominant position, then they could reconcile -- but with it obvious who the alpha dog was.
This is a perhaps more "traditional" (if we can use that term yet) account of why the Sanders campaign ended up unraveling, one that puts the blame on his refusal to do the political work of winning an entire party. The same no-compromise qualities that endeared him to his core base severely hampered any instincts Sanders might have had to reach out.
Anyway, it is an interesting piece even (or perhaps because) the account it gives doesn't lend itself to a clear conclusion.
It's an interesting article, in part because it doesn't have a clear through-line. At times, the piece seems to blame Sanders' reluctance to directly attack Joe Biden (whom he apparently is personally fond of), against the recommendation of more pugnacious advisers (but in line with others who urged him to take a more unifying line). Under this view, going after Biden (on things like the crime bill) would have been the only way to crack his solid support in the African-American community -- but Sanders wasn't willing to "go low" and it cost him.
That account would pose a direct challenge to the "Sanders was too mean" narrative that many folks have coalesced around. But at other points in the article, the authors suggest a different diagnosis -- focusing on Sanders' refusal to modulate his attacks on the "establishment" as a means of expanding his core progressive base and making inroads to the rest of the party. Sanders was extremely reluctant to do the basic political legwork of "assuring concerned stakeholders" or "reach out to secure endorsements", and instead alienated potential allies with undifferentiated broadsides that seemed to be fired against the Democratic Party as a whole. Advisers who defended his strategy here seemed to think that Sanders should only approach the Democratic Party from a position of strength (remember "bend the knee"?). Once Sanders were clearly in a dominant position, then they could reconcile -- but with it obvious who the alpha dog was.
This is a perhaps more "traditional" (if we can use that term yet) account of why the Sanders campaign ended up unraveling, one that puts the blame on his refusal to do the political work of winning an entire party. The same no-compromise qualities that endeared him to his core base severely hampered any instincts Sanders might have had to reach out.
Anyway, it is an interesting piece even (or perhaps because) the account it gives doesn't lend itself to a clear conclusion.
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Keeping the Curve Flat
Much of the Bay Area, including Berkeley, is under "shelter-in-place" guidelines at least through early April. It's basically semi-compulsory social distancing: we're not locked in our houses, but we're only supposed to leave for grocery shopping, medical services, or to go on a walk (six feet distant from any fellow pedestrians).
The goal of all this is to "flatten the curve" of new coronavirus infections. It won't stop new infections, but it will spread them out so the medical system isn't overwhelmed.
I'm supremely lucky in that shelter-in-place isn't a huge burden on me -- I work from home anyway, and I'm enough of an introvert that I frankly don't leave the apartment as often as I should even under the best of circumstances. But society-wide this sort of living arrangement will be tough to maintain over a long period of time. Yet I don't have a clear sense of what sorts of conditions would signify it's safe to lift the guidelines and let public events (anything from sports to school) proceed again. Even if the guidelines work to flatten the curve, wouldn't it get pointy again the moment people started congregating in masses again?
Put differently: shelter-in-place and social distancing rules are a holding pattern. But it's not clear to me at least what we're holding for. Anybody have an answer to that?
The goal of all this is to "flatten the curve" of new coronavirus infections. It won't stop new infections, but it will spread them out so the medical system isn't overwhelmed.
I'm supremely lucky in that shelter-in-place isn't a huge burden on me -- I work from home anyway, and I'm enough of an introvert that I frankly don't leave the apartment as often as I should even under the best of circumstances. But society-wide this sort of living arrangement will be tough to maintain over a long period of time. Yet I don't have a clear sense of what sorts of conditions would signify it's safe to lift the guidelines and let public events (anything from sports to school) proceed again. Even if the guidelines work to flatten the curve, wouldn't it get pointy again the moment people started congregating in masses again?
Put differently: shelter-in-place and social distancing rules are a holding pattern. But it's not clear to me at least what we're holding for. Anybody have an answer to that?
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