Category Archives: Politics

Forgiveness and Reckoning: Preserving American Democracy in the 21st Century

Posted on by Standard 1

On January 6, 2021, a mob of frenzied insurrectionists, fueled by the lies of Donald J. Trump and his allies in the Republican Party, stormed the U.S. Capitol building. Their aim, it has become clear, was to overturn the outcome of a free and open election by force of violence. 

Most of us are still processing what happened. It’s going to take a while—certainly months, quite possibly years. But the path forward, whatever shape it ultimately takes, must begin with a clear and honest accounting of what is actually happening in the United States. 

That reality is ugly. Among its many hideous facets: the fact that millions of Americans willing voted for a would-be autocrat, and that one of only two viable political parties in the United States—the Republican Party—has spent the last few decades displaying what can be most charitably described as an increasingly gleeful indifference to representative governance and the rule of law in the United States.

Continue reading

Partisan Identity and the Death of Representative Governance

Posted on by Standard Reply

 

There is a danger in thinking of ourselves as political and—more precisely—partisan animals. A big chunk of our modern political derangement flows directly from incorporating ideas like “liberal” and “conservative” into our individual identities. As I write in an essay at MerionWest, this is dry kindling for the spread of partisan discord.

On either side of the political spectrum, discourse is dominated by unhinged ideologues whose voices are amplified by their reactionary opposites and an attention-hungry media that feasts on controversy. The most salient opinions are often those most thoroughly divorced from discernible reality. From pole to pole, nuance and clarity are actively derided. On the political right, a pandemic has become a hub for belligerence and conspiracy theories. On the political left, race, gender, and power have suddenly transformed into religious fetishes, and dissent has become an act of intolerable violence. The political arena is no longer a contest of ideas, but of identities.

None of this reflects a political reality anyone would esteem. And most of us—regardless of how we voted in the last election—recognize this. But because the idea of left and right, of liberal and conservative, has seeped so deeply into our brains and characterizes so much of our political discourse, many of us are left fumbling for fresh traction. There is something kooky—even dangerous—going on in the shrill fringes. It is true wherever you look. Unfortunately, our way of understanding ourselves as political animals does not leave us with a lot of options. Open dissent from political orthodoxy risks excommunication—from friends, from family, from professional affiliations.

Read more at MerionWest.

The Dull Art of Problematizing Everything

Posted on by Standard Reply

Here’s an essay for Areo Magazine, a very fine place to go if you like to read interesting things:

Few things in life are certain. Some will populate a short list of inevitabilities with death and taxes, but really, only the former is guaranteed—just ask the sitting president of the United States. If you have spent any amount of time on the internet, however, I’d wager a lofty sum that you’ve seen plenty of headlines of the “Why Blank Is Problematic” variety. More often than not, these aren’t essays that offer insight or clarity. Instead, they simultaneously monetize a boring fact about the world—that everyone’s conception of it is necessarily incomplete—while snidely sidestepping all efforts to understand the intent behind a given act of communication or creation and empathize with its originator.

Read more here.

Stop Stigmatizing Cultural Appropriation

Posted on by Standard Reply

This one is hosted over at Areo Magazine. Here’s a taste:

Cultural appropriation. The term alone leaves many people primed for offense. Unfortunately, as a tool for policing behavior, the concept makes little sense. It implies that extant cultural differences are precious and worth preserving at great cost; that cultural artifacts can be owned; that the bounds of ownership break cleanly along racial lines; and that the value of minority cultures is somehow contingent upon how members of dominant cultures treat them. The first claim is clumsy and misguided—an understanding of culture reveals the latter two to be both false and pernicious. After a quick appraisal of the current sociopolitical landscape, I will explain how a scientific understanding of culture and basic human biology drains cultural appropriation of its coherence, while a sufficiently broad survey of human history renders it petty and parochial.

For more, check out Stop Stigmatizing Cultural Appropriations. And poke around a bit while you’re over there. Lots of interesting stuff at Areo.

Speedy

Does this weird, anthropomorphized rodent diminish an entire culture? Would a mouse so fond of cheese rapidly develop cardiovascular problems? What would his (hers? its?) dopamine reaction curve look like anticipating cheese versus consuming it? Are misused sombreros an act of violence? So many questions. So few answers.

 

An Expansive Sokal-Style Hoax Exposes Academic Tomfoolery

Posted on by Standard 1

An impressive Sokal-style hoax came to light this week and, frankly, I could not be more pleased. The same should be true of anyone who values evidenced-based reasoning and thoughtful, honest scholarship. It took aim at the ideological fanaticism, rampant bias, and pseudo-intellectualism poisoning large swaths of the humanities. There’s an excellent and extensive write-up on this in Areo Magazine, so I won’t spend much time on an exhaustive summary. Make no mistake–it’s worth looking into, but I won’t pretend I can provide a better summary than the one provided by the original authors. Suffice it to say that several leading journals in the humanities (ones focused on culture/gender/identity studies) accepted and/or published papers with absurd or evenly deeply unethical conclusions. One even published sections of Hitler’s Mein Kampf reworked with modern feminist jargon.

Here, I’d like to explain why the hoax is a good thing. Surely people immersed in the fields exposed by the hoax as cauldrons of blind and indulgent hucksterism will cook up all manner of wild apologetics to minimize the harm done to their disciplines. Rationalizing faults and failings is a very human thing to do. Some of their criticisms will probably even have merit.

Thing is, the hoax–perpetrated by Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsey, and Peter Boghossian–wasn’t about harming a grossly misguided set of intellectual traditions. It was about exposing the harm those fields are doing to academia in general and society at large. These are the vacuous progeny of schools of thought based primarily in tortured sophistry and intellectual masturbation. They are, by their very nature, incapable of contributing to human knowledge or advancing human progress. Curing diseases, expanding the scope of human rights, improving the prospects of vulnerable or marginalized groups, or even the humbdrum business of finding things out is not what these fields are about.

Continue reading

Atheism and the Public Sphere

Posted on by Standard Reply

Religious liberals and conservative moderates often recoil in the face of hard atheism. To them, atheism represents a sort callous disdain for an inoffensive source of succor and support. Why, they wonder, are people subjected to such rancorous ridicule for believing in something that brings them comfort?

Doubtless this reaction springs from a place of authenticity. There are plenty of atheists who scorn religion wholesale and excoriate its practitioners as frail imbeciles. And there are plenty of others who take no real offense at private religiosity but opportunistically assail believers with similar barbs. Why not? It’s good fun at the expense of an easy target. A bit of lazy recreation can go a long way. It’s shooting tin cans in the desert.

Because of this confusion, it’s worth making efforts to advance a more nuanced position. Naturally, I can’t speak for the entire population of atheists. The atheist community is diverse. Some, like me, disavow religious belief because it is contrary to a worldview built around reason and evidence. Faith is a childish epistemology. It can’t be reconciled with science and careful reasoning. Others disdain religion for emotional reasons.

Continue reading