Oct 102023
 

Yesterday being a holiday, the courts and everything else were closed, and in any case all eyes were on the Middle East. In that connection, I would say only that, just because a person belongs to a group which has actually, historically, been victimized (as opposed to, say, MAGAts, who who do a lot of whining but are no more victims than, oh, say American police union members) does not mean a person cannot be a jerk. Well, also, that pointing out that something a person is doing is morally questionable at best is not the same thing as calling that person an unmitigated moral degenerate. Screaming insults and accusations does not a conversation make. If I knew how to say that so that a substantial majority of humans would actually hear it, I definitely would. But I don’t. I do want to mention that Pat B.’s family has sustained a loss, and I don’t know, nor does she, how long she will be MIA, but it will be a while.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Wonkette (Substack) – NYTimes Compares Conservatives Annoyed By Unhoused People To Parents Of Trans Kids Being Denied Healthcare
Quote – It’s lovely that they are happy, that they feel safer, and that they are not annoying the good people of Portland with their bullshit. Couldn’t be happier for them! But they’re also entirely ridiculous. Troy is a rural town with a population of 15,000, while Portland is a bustling metropolis with a population of about 641,000. Obviously there would be more crime there. There would also be less crime in any town in Oregon with a population of 15,000, owing to the fact that there are just fewer people to do any crime. That’s just math. In fact, it would likely be a lot more safe, as Missouri has the ninth highest violent crime rate in the nation, while Oregon ranks 36th. Troy is an exurb of St. Louis, the city with the highest crime rate in the United States. Portland? Portland has the 62nd highest crime rate of any city in the United States, even with all them liberal policies what so frightened the Huckinses. Oh, and St. Louis only has about a third of the population of Portland.
Click through for article. Today’s FFT is from this article, and IMO summarizes it well.

Thomas Zimmer (also Substack – sorry) – Why America’s Elites Love to Decry “Polarization”
Quote – In the final third of the book, Klein himself emphasizes that we are not looking at a radicalization on both sides of the political spectrum. He emphasizes the difference between the Right, entirely focused on the interests and sensibilities of white conservatives, and a Democratic coalition that is much more diverse – ideologically, racially and ethnically, and in terms of cultural sensibilities: “Sorting has made Democrats more diverse and Republicans more homogeneous. As a result, appealing to Democrats requires appealing to a lot of different kinds of people with different interests.” (p. 230) As a matter of fact, Klein sees Democrats as extremely resistant to political extremism due to this heterogeneity of their supporters: “Democrats,” the author argues, “have an immune system of diversity and democracy.” (Why We’re Polarized, p. 229)
Click through for full argument. While I certainly feel polarized, in that I feel that MAGA lunacy is the polar opposite of my beliefs, he’s right. True polarization requires both sides to be “the same” but in opposite directions. And both sides are not the same.  Not in any way.

Food For Thought

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Everyday Erinyes #388

 Posted by at 3:49 pm  Politics
Sep 172023
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

At a time when we see democracy mired in a struggle with fascism – and it seems the only possible middle ground is complete ignorance – if someone has an idea to help break thrugh that divide, exen if only a little at a time – then I think we owe it to the constitution to at the very least consider it. Particularly when she has some evidence that it can work.
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The president loves ice cream, and a senator has a new girlfriend – these personal details may seem trivial, but can help reduce political polarization

President Joe Biden eats an ice cream cone at a Baskin-Robbins in Portland, Ore., in October 2022.
Carolyn Kaster/AP

Jennifer Wolak, Michigan State University

Politicians want to be heard – to land a soundbite on the nightly news, to advertise their legislative accomplishments and to have people know their platform. But when given opportunities to talk to voters, they often share details about their personal lives instead.

Presidential candidate Tim Scott used a September 2023 appearance on Fox News to talk about his dating life, saying that voters would soon meet his girlfriend. On Twitter, Senator Ted Cruz often posts football clips and selfies at sporting events.

And in July 2023, President Joe Biden, who has described himself as an “ice cream guy,” tweeted a picture of himself holding an ice cream cone captioned, “In my book, every day is National Ice Cream Day.

This trend of politicians sharing personal information isn’t new.

One study of campaign tweets found that congressional candidates in 2012 were more likely to tweet about their personal lives than their policy platforms.

Why do politicians share so much from their personal lives on the campaign trail?

I am a scholar of political science, and my research shows that when people see elected officials as people and not just politicians, it boosts their popularity. It also reduces party polarization in people’s views of politicians.

Ted Cruz holds up a green jersey with his name on it while standing at a podium.
Senator Ted Cruz receives a Philadelphia Eagles jersey at a political rally in Philadelphia in 2018.
Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images

‘House of Cards’ to hot sauce

My research was inspired by the weekly column, “25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me” published in the celebrity entertainment magazine Us Weekly. While actors, musicians and reality television personalities regularly share facts about themselves or their personal lives in this column, several politicians have been featured over the years.

In 2016, then-presidential candidate Cruz shared with the magazine that his first video game was Pong and that he has watched every episode of the Netflix drama series “House of Cards.” When she was running for president in 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shared that she loves mystery novels and puts hot sauce on everything.

I was interested in whether these kinds of autobiographical and apolitical details changed how people evaluate elected officials.

As part of my research, I noted five items from the list Cruz provided to Us Weekly in 2016, along with five similar autobiographical details collected from the news that same year about Senator Bernie Sanders.

Details about Cruz included that his favorite movie is “The Princess Bride” and that he was once suspended in high school for skipping class to play foosball. Sanders, meanwhile, has shared in news interviews that he is a fan of the television show “Modern Family” and that he proposed to his wife in the parking lot of a Friendly’s restaurant.

I then shared these details with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Americans in a survey conducted just before the 2020 election. Half were asked to just rate the senator, while the other half were given one of these lists of autobiographical details before rating their favorability toward the senator.

I found that those who read autobiographical details gave warmer evaluations of the politicians than those who did not learn these facts.

Even though both Cruz and Sanders are well known and arguably polarizing politicians, members of the public nonetheless shifted their opinions of the senators when they found out a little more about them as people.

I also found that these autobiographical details led to candidate ratings that were less polarized along party lines.

People’s party loyalties typically determine their views of elected officials. People offer positive ratings of politicians who share their partisan loyalties and very negative ratings of those from the opposing party.

But in my research, I found that minor details like Cruz’s penchant for canned soup were especially likely to boost his ratings among Democrats. And Sanders’ love of the musical group ABBA was especially likely to improve his favorability ratings among Republicans.

We know that people tend to evaluate new information through the lens of their partisan biases. People generally accept new information that reinforces their views, and are skeptical of information that is inconsistent with their prior beliefs.

But when politicians share autobiographical details, people see them as humans – and not just through the lens of their usual partisan biases. When politicians talk about their personal lives, it not only appeals to their supporters, but dampens the negativity people feel toward politicians from the opposing party.

Bernie Sanders walks through a crowd of people smiling, standing in front of his wife.
Senator Bernie Sanders has shared personal details about his relationship with his wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, pictured together in 2020.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

What this means for politics

Even in a time where partisanship drives elections, there is still value in being likable.

For elected officials who want to boost their support among supporters of rival partisans, shifting the focus to personality rather than partisan politics can be a useful strategy.

I think that this approach could also help depolarize politics.

If political campaigns focused more on the candidates rather than replaying familiar partisan divides, views of elected officials would be less polarized along party lines.

It can be tempting to dismiss the political content in late night talk shows or celebrity entertainment magazines as mere fluff and a distraction from serious policy debates. But we also know that policy issues rarely matter for the votes people cast. Instead, party loyalties determine much of people’s decision-making. In a time of deeply partisan politics, it is useful to find ways to interrupt partisan biases and decrease polarization.The Conversation

Jennifer Wolak, Professor of political science, Michigan State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, neither the author nor I thinks this will be a magic bullet to reduce partisanship. Additionally, it can probably be overdone, and almost certainly works best in small doses. But it absolutely should not be ignored in our messaging.

The Furies and I will be back.

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