It sometimes felt to Mark in these moments like his grief was still deepening, like the worst was yet to come. After the gunfire, the funerals, the NRA protests and the congressional debates, they were finally coming into the lonely quiet. They were coming to the truth of what Newtown would become. Would it be the transformative moment in American gun policy that, in those first days, so many had promised? Or another Columbine, Virginia Tech, Gabby Giffords, Aurora — one more proper noun added to an ever-growing list? The FBI had closed its temporary Newtown office. Politicians in Washington were moving on to other issues. Scariest of all to Mark, he was starting to forget little things, too, losing pieces of Daniel to the recesses of his mind, so he had started a journal to log memories before they disappeared.
"These individuals and groups are driven not by facts, says Scott, but by ideologies and identities such as ‘fundamentalist Christian’ or ‘political conservative’. Scott’s strategy is to attack what she calls dichotomous thinking: false assumptions that a churchgoer cannot believe in evolution or that a scientist cannot believe in a higher power. When, in 1995, the US National Association of Biology Teachers issued a statement describing evolution as “impersonal” and “unsupervised”, Scott and others called successfully for those words to be removed, arguing that science could not address such questions."
— Science in schools : Nature News & Comment
Who else would publish an essay in The American Economic Review exploring the “overproduction of opinionated opinion,” questioning the value of having strong opinions, and emphasizing the importance of doubting one’s opinions and even one’s tastes? Hirschman thought that strong opinions, as such, “might be dangerous to the health of our democracy,” because they are an obstacle to mutual understanding and constructive problem-solving.
"Once free-market ideologues make up their mind that complete government withdrawal from markets is the only way to ensure prosperity, then it’s not surprising to find them inclined to disbelieve even rigorous scientific evidence that would somehow point to more increased government regulation as a solution. This is of course independent of actual government regulation; all that matters is a belief in future government action. Sadly, the study also found that unfettered belief in free markets seems to make deniers skeptical of any scientific consensus involving the government, no matter what the field of study or the level of rigor. Simply put, ideology trumps facts."
—
Climate change denial, laissez-faire economics and conspiracy theories: A productive pairing? | The Curious Wavefunction, Scientific American Blog Network
fucking narratives
"- Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) @SenAlexander You explored running for president twice. I hope you do again on a bold “pro-Columbine” ticker
"
— Et tu, Mr. Destructo?: Cordial Greetings to 45 Pocket Toys of Death Merchants
An aluminum company moving to Fort Wayne, Indiana asks for a tax break on its new building; the NFL asks for tax breaks and for the public to construct its buildings. Most nonprofits exist to promote a social good; the NFL exists to promote a brain-mushing, body-destroying activity that increases our collective health care costs. If the league was in the business of farming corn, it would probably ask Congress for: a) increased ethanol subsidies; b) a federal law specifically exempting its employees from paying sales tax on Fritos purchases.
ugh
It was Wills who saw, long before it became accepted dogma, that Richard Nixon, the bête noire of American liberals, was himself the “last liberal,” ferociously clinging to the national myth of “the self-made man.” It was Wills who cleared away the nostalgic mist surrounding John F Kennedy and exposed him as the originator of the modern “insurgency presidency,” addicted to reckless “covert actions” that paralleled his illicit bedroom adventures. “For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why Wills hates Kennedy,” a political scientist and adviser to Kennedy once told me. “Then I got it. Wills is the good Catholic, and Kennedy was the bad Catholic.”
A good Catholic who nonetheless has declared war not only on church elders but on the Vatican itself. When the sex abuse scandals erupted a decade ago, and others writhed in torments of apology or denial, Wills coolly explained that what seemed like desecrations of the faith were in reality outgrowths of its most hallowed rituals. “The very places where the molestation occurs are redolent of religion—the sacristy, the confessional, the rectory… The victim is disarmed by sophistication and the predator has a special arsenal of stun devices. He uses religion to sanction what he is up to, even calling sex part of his priestly ministry.”
"The question on his mind was “How can conservatives make their case after the election?,” and the answer he wanted to share was drawn from his experience with his own four children. They range in age, he said, from twenty-three to forty-three. While they share many of his views on limiting the size of government, and supporting free enterprise, he said, “Not one of them thought of voting for a Republican President” in the last election. Their disenchantment with the Republican Party was not specifically because of Mitt Romney, he added, but because, “They consider the Party to be run by anti-abortion, anti-gay, religious nuts.”
“With gay marriage,” he went on, “I think the train has left the station."
— Charles Murray Urges the G.O.P. to Accept Gay Marriage : The New Yorker
This approach is disastrous both politically and economically. Progressives like myself believe strongly in the potential role of public investments to address society’s needs - whether for job skills, infrastructure, climate change, or other needs. Yet to mobilize the public’s tax dollars for these purposes, it is vital for government to be a good steward of those tax dollars. To proclaim that spending is spending, waste notwithstanding, is remarkably destructive of the public’s trust. It suggests that governments are indeed profligate stewards of the public’s funds.
Yet it’s even worse on the economic front. Spending is not spending. The U.S. needs productive public investments, not wasteful spending. We need to modernize our infrastructure, retool our energy system, make our cities more resilient, and help to train a new productive labor force. All of that is hard work. It requires careful government programs, working alongside the private sector, and good coordination with state and local governments. It requires facing down vested interests in both parties all too happy to continue the wasteful ways.
…the political analyst Charlie Cook gave a sober presentation about current demographic trends, demonstrating that the Party was doomed unless it started winning over Asian-Americans, Hispanics, and younger voters. He also noted that forty per cent of the electorate is moderate—and Republicans lost that constituency by fifteen points in 2012. Thanks to congressional redistricting, Republicans were able to hold on to the House of Representatives, and Cook said that the Party could probably keep it for the foreseeable future, but he warned that the prospects of winning back the Senate, and the White House, would require dramatic change. There are only twenty Republican women in the House, and Kellyanne Conway, a G.O.P. pollster, gave the overwhelmingly white male audience some advice: stop talking about rape.
"Conservatives who talk that way don’t just forfeit the chance to influence the social norms surrounding the genre. They reinforce the perception that their views are shaped by little more than cartoonish stereotypes. One needn’t dig deep into obscure rap albums to find “human feeling.” Multi-platinum singles will do. Try “December 4th” by Jay-Z or “Stan” by Eminem. All across America, kids are listening to rap lyrics that resonate with them more than anything else in their lives, capturing the way they feel about their absent father or the bliss of a long afternoon spent in the park with friends or how parenthood changed their perspective or the effect incarceration has on their community, or just about any other emotional situation people encounter. What do they think when a man capable of meticulously analyzing Hammerstein expends so little effort grappling with the genre that he doesn’t even grant that it has human feeling?"
— When Conservatives Try to Talk About Rap - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic
(via Instapaper)
The difference between these two episodes speaks volumes about D.C.-based access journalism and the highly toxic, incestuous variant of it that Politico has perfected. Or to put things a bit more baldly: in all likelihood, David Catanese and Joe Williams suffered divergent professional fates because the leaders of Politico are more concerned about losing access to the Romney campaign than they are about losing access to victims of rape.
"But I think the way it works — and I think Romney’s comments were very telling in this regard — there are two differences in the mind of this class. First, they’re absolutely convinced that they’re not asking for special privileges for themselves. They’re convinced that it just so happens that their self-interest coincides perfectly with the collective interest. That’s where you get this idea of the “job creators”. The view is that to seek a low tax environment or less regulation, that’s not special pleading for yourself, it’s not transactional politics. It’s that this set of rules is the most conducive to economic growth for everybody. It will grow the pie. Now, it also happens to be an incredibly convenient way of thinking. If you’ve developed an ideology that what’s good for you personally also happens to be good for everyone else, that’s quite wonderful because there’s no moral tension."
— ‘Romney is Wall Street’s worst bet since the bet on subprime’
