This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1479314
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1479314
1 Like
This school board debate over how to handle trans students is exactly why people of good will need to become and stay involved in local politics. If they don’t the bullies and haters will be unopposed and a lot of students will be hurt.
All of the influences of modern life work against people of good will becoming and staying involved. It takes an exceptional person to run for the local school board with the goal of actually helping kids grow up to be educated and responsible adults.
14 Likes
For democracy to work you need to have people making arguments in good faith.
The problem with this and other “hot button” issues is that there are politicians on the right who are bad faith actors, creating moral panics out of nothing but their need to distract voters from the lack of substance of their policies (or the fact that their policies are actually about helping the wealthy).
You can’t argue with bad-faith actors. And that’s the problem with this and other “culture war” issues.
It does create a dilemma for good-faith actors like this school board with no easy answer. But we’d be better off if the media called out the politicians who are bad-faith actors by fact-checking aggressively at a minimum…
22 Likes
This kind of ‘misinformation,’ particularly from the paranoid political Right, is a consistent feature of these political conflicts: when basic facts are distorted and denied, if you can’t even agree on what those facts are as Jon Stewart famously pointed out while roasting Bill O’Reilly as the Mayor of Bullshit Mountain, then problem solving is blocked at the very beginning.
“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.” – Ulysses S. Grant
17 Likes
“will they make good on their threats”
You know a political party is weak when it has to condone terrorizing and abusing children for its political points.
11 Likes
“…Right-Wingers Stoke Moral Panic About Trans Youth…”
How insecure does your own masculinity have to be to panic over a trans kid at school?
(The “Party of Individual Freedom” sure spends a lot of time trying to regulate other people’s genitalia.)
15 Likes
In a true democracy, all issues are on the table and fair game.
The danger here is that those who want to push these issues are going to make it so that only incompetent and/or abusive people will want to serve elected office.
UPDATE: Semantics are important here. The article is mis-using terms that are easy to confuse when it comes to definitions of “true” democracy and representative democracy.
2 Likes
I see a couple of impediments here.
First, is the issue of “expertise.” That’s rare, even among trained medical folks, The public at large, and I include myself here, is not well informed about the whole sex change deal.
Second, is prevalence. How many people/children are actually affected? From all the fuss and bother that the reactionary revanchist republicans are making, one would think it’s 30-40%, that those Eeevil Democrat “Educators” are forcing Our Sacred Children to be surgically manipulated into … something else. But the numbers are actually very small. Small enough for humane and considerate policies to accommodate, probably.
Third, what’s the big deal? Seriously. What is the big deal? Transing is at its heart a cosmetic procedure. The human individual wants to look, feel, dress, and act like a somewhat different flavor of human individual. Why are we supposed to get out the pitchforks and torches?
3 Likes
Everything that makes a person and especially a group of persons less or more equal than other persons is a dilemma for democracy.
Be it racism, sexism, misogyny, religious bigotry and discrimination based on sexuality, all ways beliefs or means of making some people less equal than others, is contrary, in fact mutually exclusive, to democracy. That is democracy is based on equality, everyone is entitled to both opinion and if you prefer vote and all have equal weight is mutually exclusive from a system or belief that you deserve more because of your identity than others.
3 Likes
No, some issues are still off the table.
“Group A gets to kill members of Group B” can’t be up for a vote and still have a viable democracy.
5 Likes
I disagree that “all issues are on the table”.
The reason the Courts are an equal branch of Government is to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. For example, when discussing education, while it is still part of the State Constitution of Alabama, “separate but equal” is not on the table.
7 Likes
There needs to be a Federal curriculum in schools. Every state would fight tooth and nail against it and mostly has because it would remove an entire layer of beaurocracy from the education system and would necessarily mean financial oversight. That’s a lot of shitbox teachers kicked upstairs because the schools couldn’t trust them anymore.
I presented programs in schools across America in the late 90s, 350 across 17 states, and was told again and again of the perceived virtues of the Scottish education system, which was being ‘updated’ as I was going through. The traditional Scottish system was about basic competency in a limited number of subjects: biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, English, geography, French/German/another language.
American curricula divides according to funding, which means tax base, which means the rich get a much better education and facilities than the poor. Facilities aside, and there are schools in America that are still in the 1930s, a basic level of competency, funded federally, means real equal opportunity for every American.
What is happening with the politicization of school system today is being driven by churches that want their hands on the state and Federal school money so they can educate your child that the earth is 6000 years old and the creator of the universe is a buff granddad. But mostly buy a boat and guarantee the ascension of America wholly into the sky at some point to be determined later.
Note to school boards: ask them if they are Christian, then remind them that Chritianity claimed slavery and the selling of children for profit was claimed by their religion to be beloved by God for nearly half of our country’s history.
NB. The people that said what was morally repugnant and profitable was beloved by God now claim if you don’t use gas powered vehicles you’re a child molester. History repeating for a church that serves the rich because to be rich is to be Godly. Jesus, of course, Wept.
7 Likes
MAGA Is Based on Fear, Not Grounded in Reality, By Paul Krugman.
A few days ago, Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota — a MAGA hard-liner sometimes mentioned as a potential running mate for Donald Trump — warned that President Biden is “remaking” America, turning us into Europe. My first thought was: So he’s going to raise our life expectancy by five or six years? In context, however, it was clear that Noem believes, or expects her audience to believe, that Europe is a scene of havoc wrought by hordes of immigrants.
As it happens, I spent a fair bit of time walking around various European cities last year, and none of them was a hellscape. Yes, broadly speaking, Europe has been having problems dealing with migrants, and immigration has become a hot political issue. And yes, Europe’s economic recovery has lagged that of the United States. But visions of a continent devastated by immigration are a fantasy.
Yet such fantasies are now the common currency of politics on the American right. Remember the days when pundits solemnly declared that Trumpism was caused by “economic anxiety”? Well, despite a booming economy, there’s still plenty of justified anxiety out there, reflecting many people’s real struggles: America is still a nation riddled with inequality, insecurity and injustice. But the anxiety driving MAGA isn’t driven by reality. It is, instead, driven by dystopian visions unrelated to real experience.
That is, at this point, Republican political strategy depends largely on frightening voters who are personally doing relatively well, not just according to official statistics but also by their own accounts, by telling them that terrible things are happening to other people.
This is most obvious when it comes to the U.S. economy, which had a very good — indeed, almost miraculously good — 2023. Economic growth not only defied widespread predictions of an imminent recession, it also hugely exceeded expectations; inflation has plunged and is more or less where the Federal Reserve wants it to be. And people are feeling it in their own lives: 63 percent of Americans say that their financial situation is good or very good.
Yet out on the stump a few days ago, Nikki Haley declared that “we’ve got an economy in shambles and inflation that’s out of control.” And it’s likely that the Republicans who heard her believed her. According to YouGov, almost 72 percent of Republicans say that our 3-2 economy — roughly 3 percent growth and 2 percent inflation — is getting worse, while only a little over 6 percent say that it’s getting better.
Again, this negative verdict doesn’t reflect personal experience. In December, YouGov asked Americans to evaluate 2023 in general. Republicans said it was awful for the nation, with 76 percent saying the year was bad or terrible. Strange to say, however, 69 percent of Republicans — close to the same number — said that the year was OK, good or great for them personally.
Now, that last survey wasn’t specifically limited to the state of the economy, and presumably also reflected things like perceptions about crime. But crime declined significantly in 2023, which in a rational world would have added to the good economy in fostering a sense that things are improving.
But the world — especially MAGAworld — isn’t rational. And it’s a longstanding observation that Americans tend to say that national crime is rising even when it’s falling, and even when they concede that it’s falling where they live.
Again, these misperceptions are strongly associated with partisanship, with a startling willingness of Republicans to believe things that aren’t true.
Falsely believing that Europe is a continent on the brink of ruin is one thing (although millions of Americans visit Europe, and so get the chance to see for themselves, each year). It’s much harder to excuse the belief that New York — one of the safest big cities in America — is some kind of urban wasteland. After all, estimates say that more than 50 million Americans visited the Big Apple last year, and a lot of people who haven’t visited New York know someone who has visited or who, like yours truly, actually lives here. Yet only 22 percent of Republicans say that the city is safe to visit or live in.
The trashing of New York raises the question of the extent to which MAGA supporters are willing to disregard the evidence of their own eyes. People buy gas all the time; when Trump says “gasoline prices are now $5, $6, $7 and even $8 a gallon,” around twice the price plainly displayed on big signs all around the country, do his followers believe him?
And then of course there’s the Covid pandemic, wherein the MAGA politicization of vaccines appears to have contributed to higher death rates among Republicans.
What does this say about the future of America? It can’t be good. A large segment of our body politic has in effect joined a cult of personality whose beliefs are nearly impervious to reality.
So how did this happen to us? The truth is that I don’t know. But you can’t talk seriously about the state of America without acknowledging the pervasiveness of the fear-based MAGA worldview.
10 Likes
Media is for profit and sex and violence sells.
2 Likes
Ideals vs reality are the issue here. One needs to have stability to debate any issues calmly, let alone rationally. I’m not advocating for the idealized version of a true democracy btw, just saying that the line between a true idealized democracy (ie pure democracy, ie direct democracy) and ongoing chaos may be very iffy indeed.
1 Like
Take religion out of the debate and what’s left that supports an argument against Trans folks? or Gay folks?
Most of this bullshit is the natural product of religious hustlers. I’m not opposed to religion ( I’m an atheist ) but do think that Jesus should tell us who He hates. Let Him speak for himself. All I recall coming from Him is we should love each other.
Religion is an easy way to be somebody. No training or talent needed. No hard work. It would be much harder to actually live the way God wants us to than to join a club of folks that claim to.
7 Likes
Again, a pure or direct democracy would require that all issues be able to be put on the table at any time. It would be up to each citizen to decide what and how they said things initially. Eventually, for there not to be continual ongoing chaos some laws would have to be agreed on and there would have to be some setting for which there could be calm and focused debate.
The article that has brought this discussion on is premised on the idea that there is an elected board of school district officials. Therefore, it is, by definition, not a true or pure democratic form but a form in which there are elected officials that others must seek to influence to make decisions not determined by a purelly democratic crowd. This is a form or “representative democracy” in which people elect officials to make decisions between elections.
1 Like
Sixty some odd years ago the historian, Richard Hofstadter, wrote an excellent article, The Paranoid Style in American Politics providing context to the kind of fearful sociopolitical mythmaking Krugman is discussing and in his conclusion he speculates that, even if paranoia is limited to a minority of the population there are times in can be amplified:
1930’s Germany was probably not dissimilar. Sometimes, like a swarm of locusts, something familiar changes in scale so much that it becomes a change in kind; we are there now it seems.This glimpse across a long span of time emboldens me to make the conjecture—it is no more than that—that a mentality disposed to see the world in this way may be a persistent psychic phenomenon, more or less constantly affecting a modest minority of the population. But certain religious traditions, certain social structures and national inheritances, certain historical catastrophes or frustrations may be conducive to the release of such psychic energies, and to situations in which they can more readily be built into mass movements or political parties.
– Richard Hofstadter
4 Likes
It’s likely not a new phenomenon, looking back at the “rich tradition” of things like the Salem Witch Trials or the French Revolution. A small group of demagogues can rile up the general populace and push them to commit atrocities in the name of some “cause,” real or imagined.
2 Likes