“President Donald Trump’s tweets attacking the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election might not sway the outcome — but they might sway Americans’ faith in democracy.
A study by political science researchers from Stanford and five other universities found that exposure to those tweets “erodes trust and confidence in elections and increases the belief that elections are rigged among his supporters.” However, among those who oppose the president, the study found that their trust in elections actually increased after seeing his tweets, albeit by a slightly smaller magnitude.”
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“people’s self-reported views may have less to do with their actual opinions and more to do with staying in line with their party. Previous research has shown that survey respondents often follow partisan cues: Politico, for instance, found that Republicans’ and Democrats’ views on whether the economy was improving flipped after Trump’s 2016 win, but that those shifts in reported attitudes only sometimes affected people’s actual behavior.”
“Establishing new Cabinet departments in the US isn’t that unusual either. In fact, more than half of the government’s 15 active departments have been formed in just the past 75 years. But among these executive-level departments and in all the hundreds of federal agencies, not one has a mission solely dedicated to the climate crisis.”
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“When the US faced grave security threats in the past, it rose to those challenges by reorganizing the executive branch. For instance, after World War II, Congress enacted the National Security Act of 1947 and it was signed by President Truman. The Act reorganized military and intelligence branches, established the National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency, and merged the War and Navy department into what became the Department of Defense.
Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Department of Homeland Security was established, integrating 22 different federal agencies and offices into one unified Cabinet department. In a message to Congress on June 18, 2002, President George W. Bush wrote: “History teaches us that new challenges require new organizational structures. History also teaches us that critical security challenges require clear lines of responsibility and the unified effort of the US Government.””
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“legion of civil servants, who have devoted their careers to combating climate change, are fragmented and lack that clear line of responsibility President Bush described as necessary to address critical security challenges. These leading experts could be convened under one broad mission, with the potential for producing unified actions and outcomes far greater than the sum of their disaggregated parts.
Just as the Department of Homeland Security promises “relentless resilience” to attacks against the United States, a Department of Climate could deploy this same mindset, ensuring the US has the foundation it needs to take on the threats climate change poses to this nation and to future generations.”
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“federal health agencies’ ability to focus on climate-related health impacts is currently inadequate. This is in part due to leadership that is dismissive of climate change — and in part because their attention is, understandably, on the Covid-19 pandemic. And the 2018 hurricane season before that, and Zika before that, and Ebola before that. While the CDC and other health agencies are full of experts working to mitigate climate-related health threats, their priorities will always be driven by the next new global health crisis — and by each new administration’s political whims.
A new department would not be completely immune to the same geopolitical winds that tug on other federal agencies’ attention; but a dedicated budget and clear language in its mission mandating action on climate change would better position it against such winds. Instead of each new administration interpreting whether work on climate falls within the scope of an agency’s mission, there would be no question that addressing climate change is within the purview of a Department of Climate.
While there are many offices or divisions across numerous agencies engaged in work related to energy or transportation, these cross-cutting topics nevertheless have Cabinet-level leadership and congressionally determined budgets to ensure their missions are met regardless of who sits in the White House. As with education, labor, or agriculture, we should have a Department of Climate so that our nation always has the clear dedication of resources it needs to concentrate on crucial issues.”
“Recent events underscore the need for a reformed reading of Islam. But such reformation will not be brought about by stigmatizing Islam or Muslim communities, as the French president did. What is needed is to challenge Muslim institutions to take a clear position on Islamic jurisprudence justifying violence.”
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“It was a policy statement about cracking down on “radical Islamist” influence among French Muslims to prevent their transformation into a “counter-republican” community. However, Macron’s bizarre remark that Islam “is in crisis all over the world today” unsurprisingly got most of the attention in the Middle East.”
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“What was meant to be a debate about combating Islamic radicals in France turned into an outcry against “Macron’s stigmatization of Islam.” Nuanced Muslim voices got lost in the noise.
The Macron fiasco didn’t overshadow the problem of violence in the name of Islam for long. The beheading of a schoolteacher, Samuel Paty, on Oct. 16 for showing his students images of a caricature depicting Islam’s prophet came as a crude reminder of the problem. Calling it an isolated act, as the grand mufti of Egypt did, doesn’t cut it any longer. Nor does the lamentation over French atrocities in Algeria half a century ago. The problem of violence motivated by a certain interpretation of Islam is real.”
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“Three key premises held by the Islamic Salafist tradition lie at the source of the problem. First, the idea that sovereignty lies with “God,” not the people, restricts the role of legislatures to enacting Islamic law, which is also understood in its most literalist interpretation. Rulers who don’t uphold this principle are deemed idolatrous. Second, Muslims’ “apostasy,” often defined as having a different interpretation of their faith, is punishable by death. Third, when Muslim leaders fail to enact these rules, individual Muslims have a duty, under certain conditions, to carry them out themselves.
These interpretations of Islam underpin most of the violence in its name, since the Egyptian scholar Sayyid Qutb wrote his call for Jihad more than half a century ago, all the way to the Islamic State and “lone wolves” violently punishing those who “insult Islam” today. Islamic institutions such as Al-Azhar often denounce that violence and insist that its perpetrators do not represent “true Islam,” as Egypt’s mufti just did. Yet they rarely address the intellectual foundations of these belligerent interpretations of Islamic texts.
Independent-minded Islamic thinkers have long been advocating more clement readings of Islam, its laws and its relationship with non-Muslims. From Muhammad Abduh in the 19th century to Nasr Abu Zayd, Mohammed Arkoun and many others more recently, thinkers have critically reviewed Islamic jurisprudence to show its emphasis on reason, individual freedom and equality. But religious institutions and movements did not follow their lead. And political leaders, including those of the so-called secular regimes, hedged their bets and walked a fine line between reformers and Salafists. Decades of social, economic and political decay, foreign encroachment and military interventions, along with Saudi support, helped Salafi thought grow. Today, Salafi thought is no longer a fringe: It has penetrated mainstream religious institutions as well as the Islamist movements that had started off as modernist, such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Those who are interested in promoting a reformist vision of Islam should challenge the foundations of Salafism within these institutions and movements — not “Islam” as a whole, as Macron did, nor the already stigmatized Muslim minorities who are struggling with racism and discrimination in Western countries.
Instead, Islamic institutions and movements should be pressed to come up with unambiguous answers to the key questions that Salafism poses: Does their interpretation of “true Islam” allow Muslims to use violence against others? Does it allow Muslims to uphold modern political institutions and their laws? Does it allow Muslims to live peacefully with people they consider apostates or infidels?
Challenging these institutions and movements will help, not undermine, the debate among Muslims over what Islam is — the debate that will shape the future of Islam.”
“it’s often difficult to understand which comes first: a polarized situation or the social media that aggravates that situation. Rather, it’s become a self-reinforcing system.”
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“Animosity toward members of opposing parties is very high even though our divisions over policy preferences don’t appear to have grown, according to new research published in Science magazine. The paper brings together a number of different studies on the topic and is written by scholars from six disciplines who found that, these days, we’re more likely to hate the opposing side and consider them to be “different,” “dislikable,” and “immoral.” The result is a “political sectarianism” in which one’s party identity seems to come first, before policy, religion, or common ground. Political identity, in turn, shapes our other views instead of the other way around. For example, after seeing a clip of Donald Trump espousing a liberal policy, followers exhibited a more liberal attitude, according to the paper, which presumes Democrats would do the same for their political leaders.”
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“The results of this kind of alignment are disastrous for a functioning democracy. As the researchers argue, “holding opposing partisans in contempt on the basis of their identity alone precludes innovative cross-party solutions and mutually beneficial compromises.””
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“Then there’s distrust — encouraged by the president — of facts and journalism organizations, which are necessary to protect democracy. A series of Pew Research Center polls shows that Republicans rely on and trust fewer news sites for politics than they used to, with Fox News, Trump’s mouthpiece and a fount of disinformation, being one of few sources they regularly read and believe. However, research by Andy Guess, assistant professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University, looks at web traffic rather than people’s survey responses to reveal that there’s considerable and consistent overlap in media consumption between the parties, except among a smaller set of extremists. This suggests many people might be reading the same sources but coming to totally different conclusions. Wildly divergent interpretations of the same news is a more difficult problem to fix.”
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“Hyperpartisanship, tense societal factors, and divergent news diets — or at least divergent interpretations of the news — are then fed back through social media, which is likely amplifying our divisions. We don’t know exactly how the social media algorithms work that select what information we see because the technology is a black box controlled by the respective social media company that built it.
What we do know is that Facebook has put less of an emphasis on news and more on engagement, and that posts with strong, emotional language have more engagement. We also know Facebook has continually promoted Groups since 2016, which can function as their own echo chambers, even without algorithmic help. YouTube, whose algorithms like other platforms were designed to make people spend more time on the site, has been shown to radicalize people through inflammatory messaging. Most recently, it has been awash in election misinformation.”
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“The share of Americans who often get their news from social media grew 10 percentage points to 28 percent last year, according to Pew. Those who mainly get their news that way were also less informed about current events and more likely to have been exposed to conspiracy theories.”
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“A new study from the University of Virginia found increased Facebook usage among conservatives is associated with reading more conservative sites than they normally do. The effect was less dramatic among liberals.
The study’s authors conjectured that the way Facebook works might have something to do with this outcome. In addition to algorithms favoring engagement, the very structure of Facebook limits who we talk to: You have to “friend” others to see their posts, meaning you’re less likely to see people outside of your real-life friends and family, who are more likely to have similar lives and viewpoints. Facebook also tweaked its algorithms after the 2016 election to promote posts from friends and family and show far fewer posts from news outlets, which likely further contributed to filter bubbles and division.”
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“Research highlighted in the Wall Street Journal suggests that people on social media do see opposing viewpoints. But since sites like Facebook are calibrated to highlight posts that elicit reactions, we’re seeing the most acerbic of opposing views, which can lead people to be even more repelled by them. The result is even more entrenched viewpoints and more polarization.”
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““It’s not just a matter of coming into contact with the other side,” Pariser told Recode about how his conception of filter bubbles has changed since he first coined the term. “It’s doing so in a way that leads us to greater understanding.””
“The women—all white, all from the greater Phoenix area—had been repelled by Trump in 2016. None of them voted for Hillary Clinton. But over the past four years, as they watched their party fall to Trumpism, their disgust sent them all in the same direction: the Democratic Party.”
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“This suburban shift has been especially clear here in Maricopa County, the 9,000-square-mile of beige housing developments and lush golf courses around Phoenix, which accounts for more than 60 percent of Arizona’s votes. The candidate who wins Maricopa—one of the most populous counties in the nation—nearly always wins Arizona, and no Republican nominee has ever won the White House without Arizona since it became a state in 1912. But the state has become much more hospitable to Democrats since Trump’s election. In the 2018 midterms, which were seen as a repudiation of Trump, especially in the suburbs, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema won Maricopa and became the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Arizona in 30 years. Sixteen percent of Republican women in Maricopa broke with their party to vote for Sinema that year, exit polls showed.”
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“Overall, most white Republican women supported Trump. But nationally, “we’ve not seen this amount of defection from the Republican Party in 20 or 30 years,” Christopher Weber, a professor at the University of Arizona School of Government and Public Policy, told me.
The suburban shift went well beyond Maricopa. Through organizing by activists of color and the leftward tilt of white, college-educated women, Biden was able to capture many of America’s other big suburbs, including Cobb County, Georgia, outside of Atlanta, and the counties surrounding Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Detroit; and Houston.
For many of the GOP defectors, it came down to the president’s personality—his flagrant racism and misogyny, his bullying, his insult comedy.”
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“the women were careful to note that it’s not just Trump’s personality that turns them off. It’s his antipathy toward the issues that feel most urgent to them. That attitude helps make them prime targets for the Democratic Party. These women are conservative, yes: They believe in low taxes, limited government, free trade, and “the responsibility of individuals,” as Andersen put it. But they also crave action on climate change. They want affordable health care for all Americans. They want a humane immigration system. They want policies to promote equality and address police brutality. For many Republican women in America, the starkest example of Trump’s failure has been his administration’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, his refusal to encourage mask wearing, and his blasé attitude toward the crisis, experts told me.”
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“Since he won the Democratic primary, Biden has tried to forge a healthy partnership with Bernie Sanders–aligned members of his party. He’s accepted their counsel on issues such as climate change, and he’s adopted several progressive policy positions. But all along, leftists have questioned just how genuine his commitment is. That’s why women like Andersen and Skousen scare them: They worry that the addition of anti-Trump Republicans to the Democratic coalition will nudge the former vice president back toward the ideological center, a place where he’s traditionally been most comfortable. They fear that the moderates and former Republicans who helped him win in crucial swing states will be the voters he most wants to appease in office. They worry that he’ll stock his executive branch with Bill Clinton–era Democrats and corporate executives, and fill his Cabinet with Republicans such as former Ohio Governor John Kasich.”
“USMC Commandant General David Berger explained to the US Naval Institute’s magazine, Proceedings, how aerial drone-equipped Marines could effectively hunt down submarines and other vessels as they carry out Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations.
“As Chinese and Russian undersea warfare capabilities continue to improve, logistics and other supporting operations for US ASW forces will grow in importance,” Berger wrote in Proceedings. “Integrating cross-domain ASW [anti-submarine warfare] operations into the Marine Corps’ expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO) concept could enable the joint force to sustain or widen its advantage in ASW.”
It should be noted that China and Russia have upped their submarine game, and are increasingly more active when it comes to the “silent services” of their respective countries.”
“The Trump administration has pushed the envelope of its executive authority once again by issuing a blanket eviction moratorium that applies to all rental properties nationwide.
The order, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in early September, says tenants earning up to $99,000 ($198,000 for joint filers) cannot be evicted for failing to pay their rent, provided they tell their landlord in writing that they have made every effort to obtain government assistance, that they have lost income or received extraordinary out-of-pocket medical bills, and that their eviction would force them into homelessness or into a crowded living situation.
Landlords can still evict tenants who engage in criminal activity on the property or who pose a risk to public health or safety. Property owners who try to remove a tenant in violation of the CDC’s directive could face a $100,000 fine and a year in jail. The order goes beyond the federal eviction moratorium passed by Congress in March, which applied only to the 28 percent of properties covered by federal mortgage guarantees or other federal housing programs.”
“Biden is correct that the previous administration made numerous fatal blunders in its handling of the pandemic, and that more clarity and transparency at all levels is an important step in rectifying those mistakes. That will be a welcome change from his predecessor’s failure to roll out sufficient testing, devise an effective reopening strategy for the country, and his numerous inane assertions that the end of the pandemic was nigh, including claims like the virus will disappear “like a miracle” and “this is going to go away without a vaccine” and “the China plague will fade” and “we’re rounding the corner and it’s going away.” Nevertheless the makeup of Biden’s advisory board and his mixed messages on mask mandates give cause for concern, and will be worth keeping an eye on.”
Optimistic View: What Trump will do. Lone Candle. 11 11 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttw8tSXNesk&feature=youtu.be The biggest problem with Donald Trump as president Lone Candle. 7 22 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PexQGJj3C8w&feature=youtu.be More pain than gain: How the US-China trade war hurt America Ryan Hass and Abraham Denmark.
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