News as selling mythologies

I’m reading Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another by Matthew Taibbi, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone who has covered political campaigns. If you’re not familiar with Taibbi I’ll note that he would never be accused of being a right-winger! In reading his essays and his book it’s clear Taibbi despises Fox News and Donald Trump. However, unlike many of his new media brethren who have jettisoned objectivity to push their politics, Taibbi seems to value being objective even when it leads him to uncomfortable conclusions. While he excoriates Fox and Trump he also turns his guns (although with markedly less harshness) on CNN and MSNBC.

In the chapter titled How Reading The News Is Like Smoking, Taibbi says the following.

The main difference between Fox and MSNBC is their audiences are choosing different personal mythologies. Again: this is a consumer choice. It’s not the truth, but a truth product.

People who watch Fox tend to be older, white, and scared. They’re tuning in to be told they’re the last holdouts in a disintegrating empire, Romans besieged by vandals.

…

People who watch MSNBC, meanwhile, are tuning in to receive mega-doses of the world’s thinnest compliment, i.e. that they’re morally superior to Donald Trump. The network lately has become a one-note morality play with endless segments about Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, and Paul Manafort.

…

The coverage formula on both channels is to scare the crap out of audiences, then offer them micro-doses of safety and solidarity, which come when they see people onscreen sharing their fears.

I’ve written before about Arnold Kling’s book The Three Languages of Politics in which he identifies three primary languages in American politics. Liberals tend to talk in terms of oppressors and the oppressed. Conservatives fret about civilization succumbing to barbarism. And libertarians see things in terms of individual freedom from coercion. Based on listening carefully how liberals, conservatives and libertarians talk I think Kling’s model is valid.

Taibbi’s description of Fox’s primary audience identifies conservative’s fear of leftist barbarians undercutting the traditional foundations of civilization, which reflects Kling’s language modal. While Taibbi doesn’t discuss the views of MSNBC (or the other major news outlets) in the same terms as Kling, I assume Taibbi would agree with many of the Trump haters I’ve met who claim that Trump is a racist, misogynist and didn’t earn his wealth but who obtained it by taking advantage of people. A common theme underlies these charges: that Trump (and therefore his supporters) favor oppressing people because of their race, gender or economic status.

Later Taibbi says:

I’ve run into trouble with friends for suggesting Fox is not a pack of lies. Sure, the network has an iffy relationship with the truth, but much of its content is factually correct. It’s just highly, highly selective – and predictable with respect to which facts it chooses to present.

Here I’d say the same thing could be said about CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC and NPR. Taibbi gives them a pass, as if they don’t do exactly the same thing he attributes to Fox. On the other hand, the first appendix in Hate Inc., “Why Rachel Maddow Is On The Cover Of This Book,” explains why Taibbi put Maddow’s photo on the cover with Sean Hannity. He concludes the appendix with this comment about Maddow.

What she reads each night is not the news. It’s Stars and Stripes for a demographic, the same job that made Sean Hannity a star. Only she does it for a different audience, Lonesome Rhodes for the smart set. Even she must realize it can’t end well.

[Lonesome Rhodes was a character in a 1957 movie titled A Face in the Crowd. Here is the Wikipedia summary of the plot: “The story centers on a drifter named Larry ‘Lonesome’ Rhodes who is discovered by the producer … of a small-market radio program in rural northeast Arkansas. Rhodes ultimately rises to great fame and influence on national television.”]

While I’m only halfway through Hate Inc. I’ve read enough to be comfortable with recommending it to people on the left or the right. As Taibbi says, the news organizations “keep people away from the complexities of these issues, by creating distinct audiences of party zealots who drink in more and more intense legends about one another. We started to turn the ongoing narrative of the news into something like a religious contract, in which, in which the idea was not just to make you mad, but to keep you mad, whipped up in a state of devotional anger. Even in what conservatives would call the ‘liberal’ media, we used blunt signals to create audience solidarity. We started to employ anti-intellectualism on a scale I’d never seen before, and it ran through much of the available content.”

The only thing I’d add is that this anti-intellectualism springs from shedding objectivity.

Persuasion Mode, Demonization Mode - Arnold Kling - Medium

Persuasion Mode, Demonization Mode - Arnold Kling - Medium

In the linked article Arnold Kling distinguishes between two modes of political discourse: persuasion mode versus demonization mode.

In persuasion mode, we treat people on the other side with respect, we listen to their logical and factual presentations, and we respond with logical and factual presentations of our own. In demonization mode, we tell anyone who will listen that people on the other side are awful human beings.

Later in the article Kling poses the following reasons why we tend to demonize people who disagree with us politically.

As individuals, we seek to minimize cognitive dissonance. It troubles me to believe that there are good reasons for people to disagree with my views. The dissonance goes away if I can dismiss those who disagree as driven solely by bad motives.

As social creatures, we are motivated to demonstrate loyalty to our tribe. Demonizing people of other tribes is a way of doing this.

Why have we devolved into demonization as our default mode of discussion? (How about that for alliteration?) Kling thinks its tied to how the mainstream news media.

As best I recall, fifty years ago, more of the commentary in newspapers, magazines, television, and radio was in persuasion mode, and less of it was in demonization mode. But in recent decades Rush Limbaugh discovered that demonization could appeal to a mass audience and Paul Krugman discovered that demonization could appeal to the readers of the New York Times.

While I agree with Kling that despite our ability to reason objectively we still harbor deep-seated tribal instincts that can challenge or at times over-ride our objectivity. I would argue that the influence of postmodern philosophy makes it even harder for some people to maintain their objectivity or makes it easier for them to succumb to primitive, tribal forces.

What is postmodernism? For a detailed explanation and analysis please refer to Stephen Hicks Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. Based on his study of postmodern writing he extracts the following summary. Warning: the quoted paragraph is long and uses philosophical terms but I think it’s worth plowing through it to get to Hicks’ main points.

Metaphysically, postmodernism is anti-realist, holding that it is impossible to speak meaningfully about an independently existing reality. Postmodernism substitutes instead a social-linguistic, constructionist account of reality. Epistemologically, having rejected the notion of an independently existing reality, postmodernism denies that reason or any other method is a means of acquiring objective knowledge of that reality. Having substituted social-linguistic constructs for that reality, postmodernism emphasizes the subjectivity, conventionality, and incommensurability of those constructions. Postmodern accounts of human nature are consistently collectivist, holding that individuals’ identities are constructed largely by the social-linguistic groups that they are a part of, those groups varying radically across the dimensions of sex, race, ethnicity, and wealth. Postmodern accounts of human nature also consistently emphasize relations of conflict between those groups; and given the de-emphasized or eliminated role of reason, post-modern accounts hold that those conflicts are resolved primarily by the use of force, whether masked or naked; the use of force in turn leads to relations of dominance, submission, and oppression. Finally, postmodern themes in ethics and politics are characterized by an identification with and sympathy for the groups perceived to be oppressed in the conflicts, and a willingness to enter the fray on their behalf.

Let’s see if I can digest Hick’s ideas a bit further. Before doing that I need to touch on his description of modernism, the philosophical outlook that preceded postmodernism. Modernism reflects the Enlightenment in which thinkers agreed that there is an objective reality and that we have the ability to reason from the facts to sound, objective conclusions that we can defend and explain.

Postmodernism then fundamentally disagrees with the modernist, Enlightenment worldview. If, as postmodernists claim, that we can’t forge objective conclusions about the world then “truth” belongs to the winner of the inevitable resulting power struggle. And unfortunately that means we’re free to treat people who disagree with us as sub-human demons because they threaten our grasp on the reins of power and they’re considered agents of oppression so it’s OK to ignore or even silence those who disagree.

Tips for Political Debate, part 1 and 2 – Fake Nous

Tips for Political Debate, part 1 – Fake Nous

I like and agree with Philosopher Michael Huemer’s guidelines on how to discuss politics with someone who doesn’t agree with you. His first tip sets the tone.

1. Guiding principle: Your goal is to make progress toward understanding, if not agreement.

It is not to “score points”, express emotions, prove your moral or intellectual superiority, humiliate the other party, or otherwise cause harm. (If this isn’t true, then you shouldn’t be engaged in discussion at all; you’re part of society’s problem.) Everything else follows from this.

Huemer follows this with four other tips in this post (which is the first of two on the subject): don’t beg the question, don’t be emotional, don’t take it personal, and don’t be dogmatic. These tips probably sound obvious but they have sub-parts to explain what Huemer means or gives examples to flesh out his point.

I'd summarize his overall method as "Seek to understand and be understood rather than to win." I've never seen someone "win" a political debate. By that I mean I've never seen a debate that ends with one of the people saying, "You're right and I'm wrong. I'm going to jettison my long-held belief based on this discussion." The most you can hope for is to plant a seed of doubt. As Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff say in The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up A Generation For Failure disagreement "is part of the process by which people do each other the favor of counteracting each other's confirmation bias."

Tips for Political Debate, part 2 – Fake Nous

Here is part 2 of Huemer's tips on how to handle political debates. Continuing from the previous five tips Huemer offers the following: be charitable, don't confuse issues, don't be tribal, have modest aims, don't waste time, and don't misinterpret people.

In the first tip about being charitable Huemer recommends not straw-manning or weak-manning. Instead of straw-manning, "assume your opponent holds the most reasonable view that could plausibly explain his words, not the stupidest one." Regarding weak-man, "when defending a position, don't just address the least reasonable opponents. Address the most plausible, most interesting, and/or most common opposing positions."

Huemer doesn't refer to another concept called steel-manning in which you try to improve your opponent's position to be even stronger then address that position. Naturally this takes more effort and applies his tip of being charitable. Steel-manning might not be feasible to do in the heat of a discussion but we could think about an issue, say the opposing position on abortion or gun control, then think about how to make their argument the best you can think of then come up with your response.

Political Discussions: Wielding the Moral Hammer

Before I tell the story of what triggered today’s post I want to explain my usual approach to political discussions. In general, I avoid them. Why? Because I’m a libertarian in deeply liberal Massachusetts and because I’ve seen conversations between people who disagree quickly plunge into emotional barrages of one-liners with no amicable resolution. I especially avoid getting into political discussions with ideologues. Of all of the discussions and arguments I’ve been party to almost none of them end with either of us changing our minds. The only rare exceptions have been when the person with whom I’m talking calmly asks me to explain why I believe what I do or calmly asks questions about the source of the facts I’m citing.

With that as background the story starts when I was playing in my Friday morning men’s doubles tennis match with three other guys. One of the guys, let’s call him George, almost always brings up politics between sets. George hates Trump so he uses the changeovers as an opportunity to vent about Trump’s latest actions that offends him. When our first set ended this week George came to the net and asked his two friends (who also happen to be liberal) a question that I’ll provide below along with the exchange I had with him. I’ve added some comments in parenthesis to explain what I meant.

George: Can we find someone to kill Mitch McConnell? (A Republican and Senate Majority Leader. George was referring to McConnell’s involvement in the current government shutdown.)

Me: That’s what I love about liberals. They want to kill people who disagree with them but if a conservative said something like this they’d scream bloody murder. (I almost never come out this strong but at this point I’d had enough of George’s weekly political rants. I wouldn’t have reacted this strongly if he hadn’t used the word “kill.”)

George: So you’re OK with the government shutdown?

Me: Yes. (Actually I think there could be a better way to resolve the difference between what Trump wants for border security and what Pelosi and Schumer want [whatever that is] but I answered this way partly to shock George. I play tennis to get away from the constant drone of politics.)

George: Even though it hurts people?

Friend #1: Good one! (Said with a smug smirk on his face.)

Me: As long as the border is not secure people are going to continue to die.

George: You’re going to have to explain that to me.

Me: Some other time. I came here to play tennis.

I’m not here to talk about the pros and cons of the shutdown and immigration policy. My purpose is to share some observations and thoughts.

1.  I consider George to be an ideologue. Merriam Webster defines an ideologue as “an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology.” Oxford defines an ideologue as “an adherent of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic.” George fits this definition because there can be no honest disagreement with him. He is like many other people I’ve seen who think it’s OK to demonize anyone who disagrees with you. That makes it OK to joke about killing, say, Mitch McConnell or Donald Trump. Yet they’re apoplectic if don’t share their adulation for Obama or – horrors! – dare to say one critical word about him! (George is not an aberration. Other liberal friends have said they wished Trump would die until they realize that Mike Pence would take over. This is unacceptable to them because they believe Pence is more evil than Trump.)

2. George thinks he wields the unquestionable moral trump card because he cares about people while he believes Republicans, conservatives and libertarians don’t. I’m not singling out liberals or progressives as the only people who climb onto their moral high horse. Ideologues at each end of the spectrum believe they have a monopoly on moral rectitude. This is one reason why many political discussions end in a stalemate. Each side thinks they’re moral and that their opponent is immoral. If you’re on the receiving end of this your natural reaction is going to be defensive. Who wants to be called an immoral heathen while also being asked to change your position?

3. My standard way of making my case is to avoid throwing the moral trump card onto the table. If someone presents their favor for a policy such as trying to help the poor or claim that regulations protect us from greedy businessmen I respond by saying their policies often don’t accomplish their goals. Or if the topic is climate change I’ll say my reading of several hundred scientific papers has lead me to a different conclusion. (Of course my responses need to be backed by research. Plus I know the facts I quote need to come from sources the person is willing to give some credence.) However, when George trotted out the “you don’t care who is hurt” ploy he was challenging my moral character. Countering with practical issues such as the financial cost of securing our border or the legality of trying to enter the U.S. without going through proper channels wouldn’t have tackled George’s snarky attack on me as a person. So I felt the proper response was to resort to a moral argument of my own and say that his position on open borders results in no controls of who comes in, which means some of the people could be criminals such as members of MS-13.

4.    I find it amusing how many liberals mock religious fundamentalists or evangelicals because they constantly refer to God and rigidly adhere to the Bible yet these liberals are just as fundamentalist about their political beliefs and heroes.