What Would Durkheim Do?

Over at The Poor Man Institute, they have a concise analysis of the media love for McSame:

Why do the media idiots love him? Because he’s one of them. Why do they give him a pass on his totally fraudulent references to elitism? Because they do that shit all the time. Why do they love his insanity-based foreign policy? Because he says all the absurd, superficially strong-sounding stuff that makes good TV. They love him like Chris Matthews loved Tim Russert. They love him like David Brooks loves Tom Friedman loves Richard Cohen loves Fred Hiatt. They love him like the Slate editorial board loves any idiot with a contrary position. They would go to bat for him because it’s tribal, because they get him, on a fundamental level. He’s good TV people. He’s one of them.

No wonder our political system is broken. But what did you expect? This is how advanced capitalism works.

All social institutions get co-opted by ruling class interests. Those institutions, such as the mass media or public higher education, that regard themselves as independent of the state for the purposes of critical analysis of it have already been taken over by the same managerial functionaries who control the state itself.

That members of the media or the academy think of themselves as independent in any real sense is either self-delusion or propaganda. (Well, that's a little harsh, I realize. There are journalists and professors who are, in fact, critical voices, but they are ignored by the institutions they inhabit and society in general to the extent that they resist co-optation. More so for the media, perhaps. The academy is probably the last battleground for capitalist control.)

At first, I thought this was a joke. It is not. Talk about stupid.

Look, if you think that having more guns in schools is going to diminish violence — a belief I strongly disagree with — then hire more police officers to patrol the schools. The last thing any crisis needs is amateurs with guns.

Let Krugman explain, from his column today:

Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don’t mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

It is pure political cynicism to advocate policies that you know won't work. The strategy is a key part of the political spectacle. Convince voters that the situation is simple and the worse thing to do it think about it. Appeal to childishness ("You can have that pony if you close your eyes and wish hard enough!") and the worst in people ("They don't look like us; it must be their fault!") in order to get into power to serve the interests of the corporate class. Blame the "thinking class" (such as teachers or scientists or all educated professionals) when things go inevitably wrong and push for more oversimplification and posturing.

It seems to work perfectly in a country with a lazy, vain electorate.

Maybe 2008 will be different. Here's hoping.

From Countdown on August 4. Keith is discussing McCain's "celebrity" attack ad with Jonathan Alter of Newsweek:

OLBERMANN: What about when it backfires because it seems like the celebrity ad continues to echo and Bob Herbert of the “New York Times” was on this network pointing out something—I don‘t know that anybody noticed before, this morning—that not only in that McCain ad were there two underdressed blondes mixed with the black guy in the ad, but there are also images of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Washington monument, and the Victory Column in Berlin, as Bob Herbert put it, “phallic symbols”—three phallic symbols, two blondes and Barack Obama.

So, this is not just a sexist ad anymore, this is what they used against misogynation [sic], isn‘t it? This is what they used against Harold Ford.

ALTER: Well, to suggest that somehow, you know, Obama is going to —

OLBERMANN: He‘s going to wind up dating those women. That‘s the idea.

ALTER: Yes. And that‘s the oldest and deepest, you know, racist canard in American history, really, is that, you know, the slave is going to come after the wife of the plantation owner.

It is pointless to ask whether or not McCain himself is racist. The Republicans' campaign strategy certainly is. It is the politics of racial resentment — page one of the Republican campaign playbook for forty years. If McCain isn't a racist, he's a cynical political opportunist.

Don't expect this to ease up before November. It is going to get much, much worse. As Alter said on the show, there is a "smear gap" between the parties. Alter explains:

The Republicans are very, very good at this, at taking trivial issues and using them to cut. The Democrats don‘t do it nearly as well.

The sad thing is that American voters keep falling for it.

From Effect Measure, via Dr Evil*:

theonoma

A cancer of the body politic that results from failure to separate civil public discourse from theology.

Remember, prevention is the best cure!

* The Scourge of All That Is Sacred, But Most Especially, Crackers.

Go, right now, and read the G-man's latest post. I'll wait.

The Americanized fascism that he is discussing is a problem that will grow worse before it gets better, especially if Obama wins. Nothing like a little old-fashioned racism to get the nascent fascists in a froth. They have been preaching eliminationism for a while now. With the economy in recession, the howls of "cultural decline" will grow louder, and that invariably leads to scapegoating.

I'm not a big fan of Obama's policy proposals — I prefer a more progressive candidate — but his political style might be an effective weapon against the extremists on the Right. Hope is a powerful alternative to the politics of violent resentment.

More wisdom from Paul Krugman today:

Back when he was cultivating a maverick image, Mr. McCain portrayed himself as more environmentally aware than the rest of his party. He even co-sponsored a bill calling for a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions (although his remarks on several recent occasions suggest that he doesn’t understand his own proposal). But the lure of a bit of political gain, it turns out, was all it took to transform him back into a standard drill-and-burn Republican.

And the planet can’t afford that kind of cynicism.

He aptly worries that if Americans let themselves be manipulated by easy claims of lower energy prices, we won't ever have the political will to do what is necessary to save the planet.

As long as one of our two political parties is bought and paid for by the pollution industries, you can be sure that cynicism will never be in short supply.

I think that environmental awareness is increasing, but I am not optimistic that we've reached a tipping point as a culture. We desperately need real leadership on this issue. It is an opportunity for scientists and science organizations to take the lead in the effort to educate the people.

But we also need the Democrats to call bullshit on the Republicans when they make their false promises of easy energy.

Bill Maher says

“I think religion is destructive to mankind.”

I quite agree!

I guess neither one of us will ever chair a sociology department at a public university.

Read more about his new documentary. It sounds like a hoot.

Josh Marshall has got it exactly right.

Another day, another Krugman column explaining how capitalism works: profits are privatized while risks are socialized. It's a system of private betting with public money.

Who wins?

Throughout the financial industry, executives received huge bonuses when they seemed to be earning big profits, but didn’t have to give the money back when those profits turned into even bigger losses.

Who loses? Do I even have to ask?

Let us hope that this is the end of the cracker saga, though I know well that it isn't. Religion makes people powerfully stupid, and there are certainly enough opportunists around (like that gasbag who started all this) to keep egging on the stupid ones. Oh well.

Beyond the spectacle of offending the easily offended (and those who never pass up an opportunity to let everyone else know that they are offended), what is the important idea here? Let me quote from Dr Evil (no, not that Dr Evil, I mean PZ, the new Dr Evil):

I think if I were truly evil, I would have to demand that all of my acolytes be celibate, but would turn a blind eye to any sexual depravities they might commit. If I wanted to be an evil hypocrite, I'd drape myself in expensive jeweled robes and live in an ornate palace while telling all my followers that poverty is a virtue. If I wanted to commit world-class evil, I'd undermine efforts at family planning by the poor, especially if I could simultaneously enable the spread of deadly diseases. And if I wanted to be so evil that I would commit a devastating crime against the whole of the human race, twisting the minds of children into ignorance and hatred, I would be promoting the indoctrination of religion in children's upbringing, and fomenting hatred against anyone who dared speak out in defiance.

Making fun of a cracker is the express ticket to hell, apparently, but conspiring to cover up a major child sex abuse ring is nothing to lose sleep over. And who is the crazy, evil one? Like I said, religion makes people powerfully stupid.

If you haven't already seen it, I expand on this idea myself.

Congratulations, PZ, on becoming a truly dangerous professor!

Let's cut right to the point:

Could I make one more suggestion? Maybe you could knock off trying to convince people that choosing a new label for your snake oil is an epistemological dilemma. Maybe then you could own up to the fact that the Bush administration "policy trajectory" differs from the Reagan policy trajectory only in that the latter had already licked all the icing off the cake. We ended the Reagan administration with a national debt nearly four times what we started with. This is not a bit of political esoterica, or a matter of interpretation. Or that you were happy to claim it all back when it was working electorally. Deficit spending hit town the same time Ari Fleischer did, and the fact that we were refusing to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan was, somewhat surprisingly, in all the papers, so it's a little strange to hear now that the administration still managed to hide the truth from AEI for so long. As for the rest of it, well, I made a vow during the ascension of St. Ronnie that I would never discuss federal spending with someone who imagines Social Security is an "entitlement" while a new aircraft carrier every two years is not, or who uses "government regulation" as a pejorative, while failing to disclose that he, like Reagan, would include food inspection, airline safety, and the requirement of driving on the right side of the room on his list of invidious nanny-statism.

The problem is not that conservatives have lost their way in their quest for The Perfect Reactionary Brand, it is that their ideas have always been bankrupt but for a while many voters were too distracted to notice. Not so now.

I see that PZ has captured the attention of that gasbag over at the Catholic People's Liberation Front. Once again we see that believers insist that everyone respect their delusions. Sorry, but I don't play that game. I call crazy where I see it, and I am pleased that PZ does too.

I got named one of the Most Dangerous Professors in the Universe for suggesting that believers might not be as moral as they think they are. (I believe the phrase I used was "moral retards.") I think it is safe to say that Professor Myers will make the list in the second edition. Good work, PZ! Welcome to the club!

Whenever the gasbag sends out his flying monkeys you can be sure that the hate mail will start piling up. More evidence of their moral superiority, I guess.

I've written to the U of M president in defense of Prof. Myers, and I encourage everyone to do the same. Let's not let a professional hysteric and his noisy troops determine what can and cannot be said publicly.

BONUS: I get a kick out of all those who write to say "I'm a taxpayer and since you work for a public institution, I should have the right to determine what you can say." I got a lot of those letters too. Sorry, assholes, let me explain how this works. When I'm off the clock, my speech is my own. You can go fuck yourselves. Take your silly crackers with you.

It has been agonizing to read the news from Zimbabwe recently. What can be done? The U.S., thanks to an ugly colonial history topped off by the arrogant and incompetent Bush regime, cannot intervene directly. We have to hope that others can find the wisdom to change the course of events there.

It was encouraging to read William Gumede's column in the Post today:

If Mugabe and his junta still refuse to cooperate and stand down, then they should be forced out through the United Nations. This should include initially applying smart sanctions against the regime. South Africa, for example, must freeze all properties, financial and business assets of Mugabe and his cronies — who have unsurprisingly invested most of their money in South Africa. The US, Europe, Middle East and Asian countries where Mugabe and his cronies have also sizeable assets must also do the same. Companies doing business with the regime should stop doing so. There must be international travel bans on all the key Zanu-PF officials. A case must be prepared to prosecute Mugabe for crimes against humanity at the International Court in The Hague.

I hope that enough African governments have the courage to stand against the Mugabe dictatorship and that Western countries can, for once, put humanity before profits.

Mr Alicublog is on the top of his game today:

My suggestion to Wehner: try comparing Iraq to Terry Schiavo instead. It's a more appropriate metaphor (or would be, if Schiavo had been beaten into a coma during a home invasion). And it'll energize the base!

I am too much the pessimist to believe that by continuing to poke holes in the insane justifications for the endless occupation of Iraq the neocons and the fighting keyboardists who love them will shut up and go home. Or that their arguments won't be treated as serious by the pundit class. Still, it helps one's sanity to be reminded that their justifications really are full of shit.

I sincerely hope that the McCain campaign listens to the whispers of these same neocons and makes Iraq the center of their platform in the general election. I understand well that many Americans will be fooled by the politics of fear and pseudo-patriotism. But I do think that there are enough sane voters who can see the occupation for the catastrophic blunder that it is, and who will be roused to action by the ongoing attempt to bullshit them. The neocons won't go home by choice, but we can send them away with a landslide rejection.

I'm all for evolutionary psychology. After all, evolution is one of the great achievements of science. Psychology (and sociology and anthropology) should be informed by biology, just as they should obey the laws of chemistry and physics. I'm all for evolutionary psychology. I just wish someone would develop one.

What passes for evo-psych now is just discredited sociobiology is a cheap tuxedo. Evolution is a biological process, not a metaphor. I don't think it is too much to ask that proponents of a scientific evolutionary psychology understand evolution. Nor do I think it is too much to ask that any scientific theory be based on empirical data and not elaborations of stereotypes and just-so stories that appeal to those stereotypes.

Like I said, evolutionary psychology — it would be a great idea.

I've just finished reading the chapter on evo-psych in Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography. It is a thorough and amusing fisking of the testosterone-fueled musings of Evolutionary Psychology. Angier, a Pulitzer Prize winning science writer, splendidly reduces this pseudo-science to its essence:

In the Darwin-o-gram reckoning of human nature, a stereotype is not an intellectual pitfall to guard against; it's an opportunity! What is a stereotype if not an expression of a potentially universal truth, which means it could be the signpost of an adaptation, a trait that might have conferred selective advantage on those who bore it? All of which merits further exploration by the distribution of a questionnaire to a couple of hundred willing college students to see whether or not they believe the stereotype to be true.

My friend Karla called my attention to this:

As always, the cat speaks truth.

Last week, the BCAW, co-sponsored by the PSC, held our end-of-the-year event, Rock Against the War!. It was a great event, with lots of energy. The music was good and the speeches were righteous.

There was even a brief appearance by one of the nation's Most Dangerous Professors.

The students were really the stars of the show. I feel a great deal of pride every time I watch them in action. Their efforts will change this nation, and the world.

It isn't difficult to see why the capitalist class likes the status quo so much (and the BushCo that ensures that it does). They get to make private bets with public money. They profit; we suffer.

As usual, Paul Krugman explains it neatly:

But while our out-of-control financial system has been bad for the country, it has been very good for wheeler-dealers, who collect huge fees when things seem to be going well, then get to walk away unscathed — indeed, often with large severance packages — when things go wrong. They don’t want regulations that would stabilize the economy but cramp their style.

We don't people vote for their interests? *sigh*

We are doomed to live before the revolution, and so must ask these questions. What is wrong with us?