This Epidemic Is Widespread And Growing

On this blog I have never made a secret of my disdain for those who are willfully ignorant and mindlessly led. To allow someone else to do our thinking for us is unforgivably lazy and a complete dereliction of the responsibilities of citizenship. Yet in both the United States and Canada, that dereliction seems widespread and growing.

Consider the circus (a.k.a, the Republican National Convention) that so recently concluded in Milwaukee, site of Don Trump's presidential nomination and the quasi-apotheosis of J.D. Vance as his running mate. The embrace of cheap emotions, distortions and lies there was widespread. Witness this distasteful scene, which earned a rousing ovation:

Our movement is about single moms like mine .... Really? Past performance suggests something quite different, and apparently saying that your mom is now 10 years clean and sober is not cheaply voyeuristic and exploitive but inspiring. It is, if nothing else, certainly soap-opera worthy.

That Vance and Trump can get away with such nonsense did not escape the notice of Andrew Philips, as he notes this from Vance's speech:

“America’s ruling class wrote the checks [sic]. Communities like mine paid the price.”

“America’s ruling class?” A Democrat who used that kind of language would be scorched for waging “class war,” for promoting division and turning his back on the American dream of everyone rising together. Democrats are gun-shy about that. Even now, when under Joe Biden they’ve done more to create good working-class jobs than Trump ever did, they soft-pedal their message.

But Vance gets away with it. My favourite part of his convention speech was when he slammed Biden for supporting the “disastrous invasion of Iraq” and sending working-class kids off to fight and die in far-off deserts.

That is truly chutzpah on a grand scale. I seem to recall it was a Republican president, George W. Bush, who ordered that disastrous invasion and the even more disastrous attempt to pacify Iraq and the region that followed.

After recalling Vance's rank hypocrisy and opportunism (which I discussed in my previous post, Philips asks a pertinent question:

[H]asn’t Vance, a successful venture capitalist among other things, joined that same ruling class he now rails against? Isn’t the Trump-Vance project now backed by a coterie of billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel? Isn’t all the class-war talk just a smokescreen for traditional Republican policies that leave Vance’s hillbilly relatives scrambling for crumbs?

Maybe. But if you’re the kind of person who’s devouring articles in the New Yorker and the New York Times detailing all this, you’re already a lost cause from the Trump-Vance POV. And the evidence is those kind of attacks aren’t landing. It’s like going at Pierre Poilievre for targeting “gatekeepers” while spending his entire adult life as the ultimate gatekeeper — a career politician. True, but frankly so what?

A comparison with Canada's mentality is inevitable, along with the fact that the hard right has stolen from the Democrats and the Liberals/NDP the mantle of working/middle class champions.

The arrival of Vance is another big step in the Republicans’ campaign to displace Democrats as champions of the American working-class. Poilievre and, in his own way, Doug Ford, are managing the same trick in Canada, stealing that space from the Liberals/NDP. It’s astonishing, and disappointing, that progressives on both sides of the border have allowed conservatives to pull that off.

I'm not sure progressives could have done much about it. It is not often in their natures to rant, chant, hector, exploit and grossly manipulate those whose issues they advocate for. To lie wantonly and shamelessly would require a breadth of unscrupulousness that would make them no different from those they fight.

To conclude, while playing from some sort of reasonable playbook may now seem out of date, the alternative is far worse.

I Got Nothing Today

 

...except my contempt for willful stupidity.

H/t Wu-Tang is for the Children

Willful And Egregious Ignorance

                                       
I suppose that all political campaigns, to one extent or another, require some willful ignorance or selective memory. If they didn't, how could so many voters support so many obviously unsuitable candidates?

I started thinking about this topic recently as I read about the rise of J.D. Vance, who wrote Hillbilly Elegy, a book I very much enjoyed and whose author I respected for both his depiction of his family and culture and his triumph over his humble beginnings through hard work and education.

That respect, I see now, was gravely misplaced.

The winner of the recent Ohio Republican primary, Vance displayed such a depth of moral vacuity and abdication of integrity that even I, a seasoned cynic, found breathtaking. And it was all in the service of getting the nod from disgraced former president Donald Trump, a man Vance once repudiated. even comparing him to Hitler, but now embraces.

Edward Keenan writes:

In 2016, Vance rose to fame on the strength of his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which detailed the troubles of his family and, through them, those of Red State rural America. At the time, he was unequivocal, saying Trump was selling snake oil to people desperate for solutions to real problems.

“Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it,” Vance wrote in The Atlantic shortly after his book’s publication.

Well, if you can’t beat him, join him: in this race, Vance was the most enthusiastic peddler of what appeared to be exactly the same snake oil. He said the nation needed a “de-woke-ification program,” suggested Trump should defy Supreme Court rulings, and tweeted, “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.” He accused President Joe Biden of flooding the “heartland” with fentanyl to “kill a bunch of MAGA voters,” and ran ads saying if the media calls you racist and says you hate Mexicans, Vance was your guy. He drew endorsements from the QAnon-leaning wing of Republicans in Congress, and campaigned with Donald Trump Jr. at his side. He talked up the Trump border wall — a concept he once explicitly mocked — as a cure for what ailed Ohio. (If you don’t have a map handy, Ohio lies on the northern U.S. border, more than 2,100 kilometres from where that Trump wall was being built.)

Vance doubled down on his newfound allegiance by surrounding himself with other Trump sycophants, as Lloyd Green writes:

In the run-up to the primary, Vance hung out with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. Pressed on Greene’s recent attendance at a white nationalist conference, Vance offered his full-throated support. She is “my friend and did nothing wrong”, he declared. Being “in” with the Republican party’s extremes helps more than it hurts.

We are judged by the company we keep, and in addition to the aforementioned Gaetz and Taylor Greene, he is bankrolled by Paypal founder and Trump fawner Peter Thiel.

Thiel donated at least $13.5m to a Super Pac that had Vance’s back. Thiel also served as a conduit to Trump world.

In 2009, the German-born Thiel questioned the wisdom of expanding the right to vote to women and minorities. “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron,” he wrote.

I started this post by wondering about voter behaviour and their capacity to embrace willful ignorance. It would be simple enough to explain Vance's support by attributing it to the fanaticism that seems to follow Trump like a bad odour. But is that a sufficient explanation for supporting a candidate who displays none of the qualities we would hope for in a high-office aspirant? To endorse someone whose venal grasping for office should be obvious to all, whose ultimate allegiance is only to power and its acquisition, surely requires not only ignorance but massive forgetfulness.

Of course, I could be wrong. The older I get, the more I realize how little I really understand about our species.

 

The High Price Of Willful Ignorance

The other day I wrote a post entitled The Cost of Disengagement. Today's post might be considered a companion piece, inasmuch as disengagement and ignorance often go hand-in-hand. And sadly, much of that ignorance is willful.

I have been a lifelong reader of newspapers; my first memory of them is when my mother would read the comics to me. As soon as I mastered reading, because our house always had a newspaper, I naturally gravitated toward them, initially only in a superficial way that, over the years, grew to include reading stories on local, provincial and federal politics. At about the age of 12 I started what became a lifelong habit of writing letters to the editor. Engagement for me was never a problem.

It therefore pains me that this latter stage of my life has been witness to the decline of news journals. Many have abandoned them in favour of newsfeeds on social media that reflect rather than expand their worldview; others feel there is no need to pay for the news, that it somehow materializes out of the ether, gratis. And still others say that their lives are so busy, they have no time for either politics or any form of news, a complete cop-out for most, in my view. (Even at my busiest as an English teacher, I always took time for papers, either at breakfast, at school, or after work - it is the price of responsible citizenship.)

These sorts of thoughts go through my mind almost every morning over breakfast as I read my print edition of The Toronto Star. Almost every day there are stories in it that are of importance on either the provincial or the national level. Today is one such day, as the implications become clearer of the impending Bill 66, the so-called “Open for Business” act that, in typical Doug Ford hyperbole, will create all kinds of jobs. They are jobs, however, that will potentially come at a very high cost.

Jennifer Pagliaro reminds us of an earlier period of deregulation that led to disastrous results in Walkerton, Ontario:

The tainted-water scandal in Walkerton in the spring of 2000 devastated the community, with thousands falling ill and seven people dying. It was one of the worst health epidemics in the province’s history.

According to the conclusions of an inquiry into the Walkerton tragedy, in May 2000, some 2,321 people became ill from two types of bacteria, including a type of dangerous E. coli, after heavy rainfall caused flooding that flushed the bacteria from cow manure near a farm into one of three groundwater wells that was the source of water for Walkerton.

The number of people who fell ill represented about half the town’s population.

It was concluded after much investigation that the water coming out of the taps in Walkerton had not been properly treated so as to kill off the deadly bacteria, and the tragedy could have been prevented if proper monitoring, protections and oversight had existed.

And now, history seems prepared to repeated itself under Ford's Bill 66:

The stated purpose of the proposed bill, called the Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act, is to cut “red tape” around planning approvals for businesses looking to invest in local communities.

Under the proposed legislation, if a development has the support of both the municipal government and the province and can demonstrate it would create 50 new jobs in areas with populations under 250,000, or 100 jobs for bigger cities, it could get the green light despite possibly being detrimental to the environment.

One of the key problems with the bill is that it will roll back protections legislated in the Clean Water Act, which came about as a direct result of the Walkerton tragedy.

On Friday, Theresa McClenaghan and Richard Lindgren, respectively the executive director and counsel for the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) ... said the attempt to prevent a particular section of the Clean Water Act from applying to certain types of new development is both “objectionable and risk-laden.”

The particular section of the act that would not apply to new developments approved under the “open for business” rules is not some “obscure” provision in the law, but the key part of the act that requires land-use planning decisions in the province to protect safe drinking water, they said.

So that's what I got today from reading a newspaper to which I subscribe. I could go on and tell you how Bill 66 also imperils Greenbelt protection, as Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, writes in the same paper today, but I'll let you read that for yourself.

That is, if you are one of those willing to pay for the news.

On Egregious Stupidity And Willful Ignorance

I readily admit to being intolerant of people at times. Not for me are the excuses that others may make for their shortcomings, such as the limitations of their upbringing, their education, or their natural abilities.

At the top of my list are those who either embrace or promote egregious stupidity and willful ignorance. And while no part of the political spectrum is exempt from such offenders, they do seem to be disproportionately represented by the right. Anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, and ardent supporters of the Harper regime readily come to mind.

Lazy thinking is no substitute for critical thinking, and while the latter, I am convinced, cannot happen without a a good education, whether formal or acquired through wide reading, there is no assurance that those who call themselves educated are in fact able to think critically. Bias, tunnel vision, and a myriad of other factors can militate against that capacity.

Given how much the Harper regime has invested in promoting and exploiting ignorance and stupidity (a look at some of its convoluted rhetoric around Bill C-51 offers ample illustration), now seems to be a propitious time to examine a few basic guidelines that can help promote better thinking.

My first source is an article from The Hamilton Spectator whose purpose was to help people think more rigorously about the science around vaccinations, but most are readily transferable to other topics as well:

Here are 10 questions to ask yourself when you read a piece about science and medicine:

1. Who's saying it and what's their reputation?

2. Where and how are the results being presented?

3. Who paid for the work and who pays the researcher?

4. Are you reading anecdotes or evidence?

5. Are there comments from an arm's length unbiased expert? How does that fit in to the picture?

6. What do the numbers really tell me?

7. How large was the study? (Generally, the bigger, the better.)

8. How was the study carried out? A test tube? Mouse? Dying patient? Healthy patient? (The closer the results are to the general population, the more important they are.)

9. How substantial are the benefits and how big are the risks?

10. Are opposing viewpoints included? If so, what's their reputation?

An even better and more comprehensive set of guidelines is taken from a university website:

1. Ask questions; be willing to wonder. (Re. research problems)

To think critically you must be willing to think creatively - to be
curious about the puzzles of human behavior, to wonder why
people act the way they do, and to question received wisdom and
examine new explanations of why things are as they are.

2. Define your terms. (Re. operational definitions)

Identify the problem in clear and concrete terms, rather than vague ones like "happiness," "potential," or "self-esteem."

3. Examine the evidence. (Re. data: empiricism, reliability, and
validity)

Consider the nature of the evidence supporting various
approaches to the problems under examination. Is there good
evidence one way or another? Is it reliable? Valid? Is the
"evidence" merely someone's personal assertion or speculation,
or is it based on replicated empirical data?

4. Analyze assumptions and biases - your own and those of others. (Re. empirical/objective observations: biases and
assumptions)

What prejudices, deeply held values, and other
biases do you bring to your evaluation of a problem? Are you
willing to consider evidence that contradicts your beliefs? Can
you identify the assumptions and biases that others bring to their
arguments?

5. Avoid emotional reasoning. (Re. empirical observations)

The fact that you feel strongly about something doesn’t make you
right! Remember that everyone holds convictions about how the
world operates (or how it should operate), and your opponents
are probably as serious about their convictions as you are about
yours. Feelings are important, but they should not be substitutes
for careful appraisal of arguments and evidence.

6. Don't oversimplify. (Re. Generalizations)

Look beyond the obvious; reject simplistic thinking ("All the evil in the world is due to that group of loathsome people") and either-or thinking ("Either genes determine everything about personality and behavior or they count for virtually nothing"). Be wary of "argument by anecdote," taking a single case as evidence of a larger
phenomenon. For example, reading about one chilling case of a man who murders while on parole should not be the basis on
which you assess parole programs in general.

7. Consider other interpretations. (Re. alternative explanations,or hypotheses; mutual exclusiveness and exhaustiveness)

Before you draw a conclusion from the evidence, think creatively
about other possible explanations. When you learn that two
events are statistically correlated, for example, be sure to think
carefully about which one is the cause and which the result - or
whether a third factor might be causing both of them.

8. Tolerate uncertainty. (Re. Theories and data: testing and
modifying)

This is probably the hardest step in becoming a critical
thinker, for it requires that we hold our beliefs "lightly" and be
willing to give them up when better evidence comes along. It
requires us to live with the realization that we may not have the
perfect answer to a problem at the moment, and may never have
it. Many people want "the" answers, and thy want science to
provide them: "Just tell me what to do!" they demand.
Pseudoscience promises answers, which is why it is so popular;
science gives us probabilities that suggest one answer is better
than another - for now - and warns us that one day we may have
to change our minds.

On Sporadic Blogging And Willful Ignorance

We are hosting our dear friends from Cuba for about the next week, so depending on our sight-seeing schedule, my blogging may not be quite as regular as usual. But then again, I am an early riser, so perhaps nothing will change. Here is something I prepared the other day to save for this fine Sunday:

If there is information that you could know and you should know but somehow manage not to know, the law deems that you are willfully blind, that you have chosen not to know. - Margaret Heffernan

This video applies to all of us, whether government, company, or individual. It is well-worth the less than 15 minutes it takes to view.