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Tuesday, August 15, 2023

The Great Endumbening

A More Nuanced Past

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, President George W. Bush gave his historic Axis of Evil speech. In addition to the titular triumvirate, the other line from that speech that made a lasting impact was the proposition to other countries that "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

In the immediate reaction, the country so pro-America and standing behind the commander-in-chief, there was little consternation at this dichotomy, but as the months waned on, and a presidential election loomed, and President Bush used that line, among other things, to push for a war many thought was unrelated and a huge mistake, and to expand the security state at the expense of civil rights, people began to criticize that line.

The biggest criticism was over how it over-simplified the situation. That it's wrong, even if it's rhetorically effective, to paint the world as black and white. John Kerry, Bush's Democratic challenger, came to represent the opposite of Bush's simplistic world. Kerry was the candidate of thoughtfulness and nuance.

"During the last presidential campaign we were endlessly reminded that John Kerry was the standard bearer of the Nuance People, whereas President Bush was the intellectually incurious, black-and-whit, simplistic non-thinker who didn't appreciate life's shades of gray."

Etta Hulme 9/8/04. Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"Nuance is not a word Americans associate with strong leadership. But Kerry called it the essence of his presidency." --NBC News

In fact, it got to a point where George W. Bush was made into Darth Vader in the third and then-final Star Wars prequel.

The Endumbening

Sometime since then and now, however, nuance was thrown out the window, as even something to aspire to. Politicians have often resorted to the black and white-ification of public policy. Climate change policy is a battle between people who want to wreck the economy and those who want to eviscerate the environment. Journalists, though, and the Democratic media complex had promoted it, as an aspect of their push for technocratic rule. Experts, you see, understand policies have benefits and costs, and once they identify all of them, they would be able to govern perfectly.

If I had to pinpoint an exact moment when the zeitgeist changed, it would be when Donald Trump won the 2016 election. From then on, it seems like we are in an entirely different media environment. There is much less tendency to grant that the other side might have strong arguments or that their own arguments are weak, and much more tendency to vilify opponents.

How often does President Biden call every Republican that disagrees with him MAGA? Not to mention Kamala Harris claiming that Florida wanted to "replace history with lies", even though the instigating action by Florida was one that the AP had approved and Democrats (including Harris!) defended six months previously.

In the research for this story, this Slate article came up. In it, the authors gleefully observe that Bush painted himself into a corner with his over-simplistic, un-nuanced rhetoric. He then was in a position where he needed to make a more complicated argument but couldn't because he was trapped by his own one-dimensional world. Humorous in its supreme irony, advertised on this criticism of Bush for being unnuanced was a story about how DeSantis wanted to erase people.

Even in Supreme Court cases, the media consistently dumbs down the esoteric arguments to the point that they're more dissembling than informing. In a decision about whether or not business owners have the power to control their products (not their customers), the media calls that "legalizing discrimination."

Reaching another level is Matt Yglesias. He had the audacity to say that Richard Hanania, even if he was overall a bad person, had some interesting ideas that merited consideration. The left honed in on him.

It's fascinating that lefty Twitter has decided its archenemy is @mattyglesias. Just goes to show that @Atrios still has his mojo.

— Kevin Drum (@kdrum) August 8, 2023

Matt, here, is demonstrating a level of nuance that many on the left have heretofore abandoned. As a result, Matt must be destroyed. It's a particularly interesting episode, because Matt can be open-minded and inclusive but also impressively unforgiving of others who disagree with him, calling Peter Thiel, Marc Andreesen and Elon Musk "immoral."

What to make of all this? Previously, I argued that competition among media is bad for the country, and this is a manifestation of that. It is much easier to attract audience with simple themes of good and evil because people are primed for it. We observe that in fiction, history, and politics. People gravitate toward simple messages. Politicians ave been using it for as long as they needed to persuade people to vote for them. Fiction even longer. Media, though, have lately become more enthralled to it as a result of the increased competition for Americans' attention.

Saturday, January 28, 2023

Giving Schiff the Boot

Background

House Speaker Andrew McCarthy, fulfilling a campaign promise, booted three Democrats from three committees yesterday. The reasons for each varied and have been mentioned but are worth laying out in full.

David Winston already did a great job going through the precedent argument, namely that McCarthy's action broke long-standing precedent. As Winston lays out in detail, this just isn't true, it was Nancy Pelosi who broke the precedent and McCarthy has acted differently from Pelosi in his application of this new power that Speaker Pelosi employed.

Firstly, it should be understood that while Pelosi kicked Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Gossar off of all of their committees, preventing them from serving in any, McCarthy is blocking the three Democrats in question from one committee each, relevant to the criticisms against them. Also consider that the rationale used to prevent the Republicans from serving on committees were all based on their past rhetoric not any actions taken by them.

Adam Schiff

The case against Adam Schiff is made based on his actions during Trump's presidency--particularly the Russia collusion investigation and the impeachment trials. As the chair of the Intelligence Committee, Schiff had access to confidential information on a host of topics, and he used his access to persuade the country that there was proof of Trump's collusion. In one month, he went from "circumstantial evidence of collusion" and "direct evidence of deception" to "more than circumstantial evidence" which "would prompt a prosecutor to begin working with a grand jury." In sum, he used his position as Chair of the Intelligence committee, to amp up the charges against Trump and feed the media frenzy, despite the true evidence being well below what he suggested. He was a vital part in inflating the Trump-collusion bubble that popped when the Mueller Report was released. As an example of how he fed this frenzy, in the story covering Schiff's comments, CNN goes on to say "The tension on the Intelligence Committee comes a day after CNN reported that the FBI has information that may indicate associates of Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, according to US officials." demonstrating that Schiff likely timed his announcement to keep building up the story. This communication alluded to, was obviously mistaken.

As part of his endeavor, he also fought against any truth that damaged Democrats or helped Trump being revealed. He was adamantly opposed to releasing the Nunes Memo. For those who have forgotten, the Nunes Memo is where we learned that the Steele Dossier was the core of the Russia Collusion investigation and the warrants on Carter Page, and was paid for by the Clinton campaign. Read this hyperbolic coverage warning about the consequences of releasing it. Schiff himself warned releasing it would increase the "risk of a constitutional crisis." The FBI was obviously against releasing it because it showed how problematic their behavior had been. Why did Schiff? While some quibble over the details of exact accuracy.1

Finally, while he was Chair, oftentimes the subjects of his investigations would be interviewed and information gleaned that was supportive of his arguments would leak to the press, while the full interview, including information that contradicted his position would be sealed. It happened with Donald Trump, Jr. in December 2017, during Trump's first impeachment hearings, text messages from Kurt Volker were selectively leaked while the rest of his testimony was not, while the testimony of the inspector general was kept completely secret, Mark Meadow's text messages. And the accusations continue.2

In sum, Adam Schiff has shown himself to be a serial abuser of his power as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee and hence why nearly every Republican supports McCarthy's decision to exclude him from that committee.

Eric Swalwell

The case against Swalwell being on the Intelligence Committee is much more straight-forward. Republicans believe he is a security risk and exercised very poor judgment for someone in charge of national secrets by conducting a relationship with a Chinese spy. It was serious enough that the FBI provided a briefing to Pelosi and McCarthy on the subject. This NY Post article lays out almost all that is known. He definitely had a professional relationship with her, where she would donate money and advise him on personnel, and she definitely was a spy who had physical relations with others. It's notable that his defense of himself argues that he didn't break the law, he didn't share confidential information, and he cooperated with FBI once they told him about her. He does not deny a personal or physical relationship, however.

Ilhan Omar

The case against Omar is the weakest of the three, but also the most similar to the cases for Greene and Gossar. Omar is being excluded from the Foreign Affairs Committee. Her infractions comprise remarks she made which some consider antisemitic. She also argued that US and Israeli actions were as bad as those of Hamas and the Taliban. In my view, committee assignments should not be denied due to opinions, unless their truly egregious. Omar's, Greene's, and Gossar's comments do not rise to that level and they should be free to serve on any committee.

Footnotes

1 For example, the Nunes Memo contends the FISA application for the Carter Page warrant did not "disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign or any party/campign in funding Steel's efforts", the truth is that the application included a footnote that Steele was hired by an identified U.S. person to conduct research regarding "Candidate #1"'s ties to Russia and that the FBI "speculates" that this U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit the Trump campaign. (taken from IG report p. 11). I would say that technically Nunes is correct, there's no specific mention of DNC or Clinton even using pseudonyms common in applications like "Opposition Party #1" or "Candidate #2". But detractors contend that referencing the goal of the source suffices. I suppose that's up for debate, but I think Nunes's memo is closer to accurate.

2 Note that this story doesn't mention the long history of leaks under Schiff's leadership.