Germany, as a democracy, was a world leader in the 1920s in media and mass communication technology. It had more newspapers (4700) than most nations in the world. It pioneered improvements to radio and television, the high-tech of the era. Its internationally acclaimed film industry ranked among the world’s largest. It was a technological and communication leader on the planet.
After the great depression (1929), German citizens were divided between left and right. Millions found the simple messages of Nazi propaganda appealing in times of economic hardship and instability. They left mainstream parties to support Adolf Hitler.
The Nazis’ platform did not initially scare many voters. While many voters weren’t necessarily at first attracted primarily to racist themes, they were willing to overlook them in hopes of economic promises. The Nazi’s carefully crafted different messages to different audiences, using nuance to signal to their deepest supporters without offending more moderate voters. This poster at right (“We’re for Adolf Hitler”) was aimed at unemployed coal miners, suggesting a vote for Hitler would bring their jobs back. At the same time explicitly racist posters were also being widely distributed.
The term propaganda was originally a neutral term for the dissemination of information in favor of a cause. In the 1900s the term took on a negative meaning “representing the intentional dissemination of often false, but certainly compelling claims to support or justify political actions or ideologies” (wikipedia).
Propaganda, by definition: plays on emotions over facts and mixes truths, half-truths and lies. Hitler, and his propaganda minister Goebbels, had a deep understanding of mass media. They masterfully offered an appealing message of national unity and a utopian future, while simultaneously targeting the brutal persecution of minorities and anyone who disagreed with, or competed against, their ambitions for power. Outsiders and minorities were an easy target to blame for national problems, or the failure to fix them.
In 1933 a fire at the parliament, assumed to be a terrorist act, was used as an excuse to suspend the German Constitution. The fire was claimed to be the beginning of a communist revolution, allowing Hitler, who was only chairman at the time, to convince the president to use article 48 to suspend many elements of democratic process, giving the president near dictatorial powers. These powers were never revoked.
Within months the Nazi regime destroyed the country’s free press. There were no longer alternatives to propaganda, making it harder to recognize. The regime closed opposition newspapers, forced Jewish-owned publishing companies to sell to non-Jews, and secretly took over established periodicals. By controlling the media there was no possibility of dissension. Questions could not be asked. Answers could not be heard. Citizens were not offered alternative views to consider nor the means to voice them. Power became unchecked. Challengers were increasingly easy to threaten, as news of their challenge, or imprisonment, would never be known.
In less than six months, Germany’s democracy was destroyed. The government became a single party dictatorship. Rights such as freedoms of expression, press, and assembly were revoked. Police established concentration camps to imprison those deemed to be “enemies of the state” which included intellectuals, teachers, writers and artists, among those chosen simply because of their race or ethnicity.
Mike Pesca hosts The Gist podcast on Slate, one of my favorite news/opinion shows. He had an excellent piece on May 12th about politics and elections, which I transcribed. I don’t know enough about the U.K. election to agree it was a good or bad thing, I’m merely fond of the questions and observations he makes here:
Imagine if you were a performer or a stand up comic, and you magically knew the jokes you could say that would get the audience to laugh. Reliable jokes. You’d probably say those jokes. Maybe you’d use those jokes as ballast, and from that reliable set of jokes maybe you’d experiment, or maybe not, maybe you’d just revel in the laughter. What if you were a playwright and you knew what audiences would like, I don’t mean you had the sense that they liked this sort of play, you really polled audiences. You knew the plots they liked, you knew the characters they liked, you knew how to write a play that everyone would generally say, yeah, that’s the sort of play I like.
What about you at a party. And someone is whispering in your ear… the anecdotes they’d like to hear. Maybe the quips they’d like to hear out of you. The stories they’d like…the phrases that will make them smile. That will make them think you are the kind of person they’re glad they invited. No matter how much of a rebel you think you are, I think it would be pretty hard to go against the script. Maybe you could do it here and there, as a toe touch, but generally, if you knew that these were the things you should do, say or act like to get in other people’s social graces you would do those things.
And what if you were running for office. And you knew what the people wanted to hear. Maybe some of the people, those in your party wanted to hear slightly different things than other people, but you’d probably say “I’d say some of those things to the people who need to hear it when they need to hear it” and then when… I become the nominee I’ll say the things all of the people want to hear. Well this is the state with politics today. The state with polling is that every politician knows what the right answer is. What the popular political answer is. And as much as people want to say “You have to do the things that are unpopular, that’s leadership” yeah, that’s also unemployment for a popularly elected politician.
…In the U.K. they call an election and then they have that election 6 weeks later. And there’s much less money in the election. Less money for TV and less money for polling. The politicians in the UK. do not know as much as the U.S. politicians know. Therefore U.K. politicians generally say more what they believe. And this is a good and useful thing. You might say “that’s a good and useful thing to have more honest politicians”. If you say what you believe than you can be exposed for having bad ideas. This short election span, this lack of someone whispering in your ear what is the exact right thing to say, it can expose a party, it can sweep those bad ideas out of office. That is exactly what happened in the U.K. I wish that could happen in the U.S. It leads to honesty. Honestly good ideas, but also, there is a virtue to these honestly bad ideas.”
In preparing for my lecture on Free Speech and Social media, I’ve been looking for examples where these issues have been explored legally. I was hoping to find someone who had kept a list of them, but since I didn’t find such a thing I started one.
If you know of others to add, or other similar lists, please leave a comment:
I was invited to speak at Seattle’s Social Media Club on Wed 1/22 (registration here) on the topic of Free Speech and Social Media. I’m inviting your opinions to help me sort out my own. It’s a subject Iv’e followed for a long time, but it’s complex enough I’d benefit from opening the floor here on the blog.
The initial premise of “Does social media help or hurt free speech?” is definitely a false dichotomy, but false dichotomies are useful in laying out a general landscape so I’m sticking with it for now.
Clearly there are so many facets to this wide question that both are true: social media improves people’s ability to make their speech visible, meaning the ability to publish, but it can simultaneously make the consequences of speaking up harder if more people pay attention to what you publish than you expected. Mob justice, harassment and vigilante behavior have different dimensions online and the combination has some very destructive consequences.
Among other research I’m reading Tom Standage’s book Writing on the Wall: The first 2000 years of social media and it’s excellent so far. We have had social media for a long time and despite what the laws have said about speech, plenty of people have chosen to speak freely anyway (often at their peril). We have much to learn from look backwards.
I have 6 questions I’m exploring:
How has new media changed access to expression?
How has this made things better?
How has this made things worse?
What new challenges are we facing? (and what can we learn from how we adjusted to previous media innovations?)
What implications does all this have for individuals?
What implications does all this have for leaders, corporations and governments?
Here’s the list of articles and perspectives I’ve been reading recently. Suggestions welcome:
Opinions welcome. The floor is open. I’ll reference useful comments in the talk itself. Thanks.
Today is the 80th anniversary of the repeal of the American prohibition of alcohol, and it serves as an excellent example of unintended consequences. For 13 long years alcohol was illegal, but early in prohibition it was clear the law change didn’t have the intended effects. Alcohol became more powerful in many ways, and since the mechanisms by which people obtained it were illegal, some of the cultural problems prohibition was expected to solve got worse.
Most bans in free countries today regard media: books, films, music and ideas. In most cases the announcement of a ban is free-PR for all of the people who are probably interested in the thing being banned who might not have heard of it if the ban didn’t happen. Most media love telling the story of things being banned, since it earns intense interest from both the people who agree with the ban and the people who are upset by it. Every time a parents group bans an album, or a religious organization bans a film, the film itself becomes far more powerful. Rather than a ban being a bad thing for an artist, it can often be a catalyst for their ideas and you can often see artists deliberately trying to manipulate this cycle to their advantage.
The same principles holds true among parents and children, or managers and employees. The more something is withheld, the more power and meaning it gains. For the powerless in these situations the banned item becomes a symbol of their lack of control, and their interest in it can only grow. Banning something gives that thing a personal meaning beyond whatever attributes the thing inherently has. Forbidden fruit often only tastes better than regular fruit because of what’s in the mind of the person eating it, rather than what’s in the fruit itself.
A ban is lazy policy. It’s a failure to examine causes and effects of human behavior, including the history of the causes and effects of banning things. It’s entertaining to learn the earliest known prohibition of alcohol was by Yu The Great in China in 2100 BCE, and surprise: his son ended the prohibition when he took over. Had Yu been great enough to develop a more mature and reasoned policy, his son might have embraced it.
America suffers from superficial assumptions about not only our criminal laws, but the details of individual cases. We base our “knowledge” on headlines and soundbites, a thin stream of ignorance for evaluating someone’s guilt or innocence. We forget that the jury is sequestered away from the news, and that we in the public have different information than what the jury hears. Even the same information is expressed differently to juries. Our view of a trial from the outside is a watered down, over-simplified and twisted mess that bears little resemblance to the environment where these important decisions are made. As sad as I am about the entire case, I’m grateful we don’t let our emotional, thoughtless mob at large decide much of anything.
I’ve seen dozens of proclamations for what the Zimmerman verdict means, as if the entire 300+ million citizenry of America (or the 1000 people running the show if you believe in conspiracy theories) met together in Florida and agreed on a plan for how to ruin our nation through a single decision. Perhaps the most glaring oversight in our outrage is that a jury trial puts the burden of judgement into a handful of people. The six or twelve members of a jury are alone empowered to judge, which explains why most lawyers, victims and accused criminals avoid them (only 10% of cases go to trial, which, against my point, could also indicate something is wrong with our system). Whatever was wrong with America before the trial was wrong regardless of the outcome of this case. And unless those six people are a secret cabal running our nation, they never had the power to change America at large no matter what they decided.
Before you judge me and the tone of this post, if it matters, I think Zimmerman should have been charged at least with manslaughter. But what I think is irrelevant. as I was not on that jury. That’s my point.
There is no law that can guarantee everyone, or even a majority’s, sense of justice will be carried out. Instead we have laws that attempt to do the heavy lifting in providing a machine that gives everyone a chance at justice. A chance to make their case. And it’s not about what you know or believe but what you can prove to the satisfaction of the members of the jury. This means skill is a critical. It’s not the most righteous who wins, it’s who has the most skill in proving righteousness to the satisfaction of the jury. Is this fair? No. But it is clear.
If you read even a cursory critique of the prosecutions case against Zimmerman you’ll find reasonable questions about the actual evidence in the case, and how the prosecution used, or didn’t use it. Forget whether you agree with this critique or not, the outcome of the case means the jury likely did agree with some of it, and that’s all that matters.
In America we believe in reasonable doubt, and what a burden it is against immediate justice. Reasonable doubt means the job is on the prosecution to prove guilt, not on the defendant to prove innocence. The defense has the much easier job. Even the presentation of conflicting evidence and testimony can quickly create reasonable doubt on a jury, and there was plenty of conflicting testimony in the Zimmerman trial.
Reasonable doubt is unfair because it puts the prosecution at a disadvantage, but it’s unfair by design. Reasonable doubt prefers to let some accused people go free at the expense of preventing the innocent from being sent to prison. Reasonable doubt has its problems but it’s objective is clear, and it has been part of our legal system since its beginnings. It bets the sacrifice of justice of some guilty going free is more than compensated by preventing the innocent from being found guilty. Even if you don’t agree this is as good bet, it is the bet we have.
I am aware of the deep problems with racism, guns and crime in America. I understand why people feel outraged by the verdict and I feel sadness for everyone personally involved. But I won’t let one decision decided by six Florida citizens define much of anything for me or my country. I wish most of all for us to use our brains as much as our hearts in sorting our what the verdict means and what work we have to do to make our nation safe for everyone.
Most things we commonly split into two piles fall apart if you think about them:
In the U.S. we divide people politically as Liberals and Conservatives, but the terms are so poorly defined it’s easy to find examples of people who have some liberal views and some conservative views. There are other important alternatives for defining a person’s politics (what do you want to liberate? what do you want to conserve? how do you think it should be done?), but the convenience of the false dichotomy of liberal vs. conservative hides them from consideration. The convenience of binary logic blinds us from how poor a foundation for thought it can be.
All dichotomies can be sub-divided into smaller groups. This is rarely observed in debate, but if you believe you can divide anything in half, this applies recursively. You can have conservative liberals and liberal conservatives. And conservative liberal conservatives and liberal conservative liberals. If you stop to carefully examine anything polarizing, even when you’re certain you’re on the right side, you’ll discover nuance, contradiction and subtlety that will cause any wise mind to challenge the merits of the initial dichotomy.
America is one of the greatest countries the world and is often heralded as the best example of democracy (or republic if you want to be a stickler) in the world. Yet there are issues with how voting works in the U.S. worthy of examination. There are better ways to handle some of the details.
Voting is not in the constitution. Of the hundreds of democratic countries in the world, only a handful fail to mention voting rights in their Constitution. Even Iran and Lybia at least promise all citizens voting rights. The U.S.Constitution does not. Voting rights have been touched on in 15th, 19th and 26th amendments (race, gender and age) but many core elements of voting rights are left to the states to decide. States of course deserve their own rights, but national elections are worthy of consideration for national rules.
Our ballots are hard to use. Every state controls it’s own ballots. In the 2000 election the butterfy ballot was so poorly designed that many people voted for the wrong person. Some of our current ballots are not much better. Well written guides do exist for designing easy to use ballots, but every state has to choose to follow them (as opposed to Canada, where there is one voting ballot design for national elections).
The Electoral College is unnecessary. Few Americans understand how it works or why it exists. It mostly comes up in close elections where the popular vote won’t decide the winner. The electoral college was created in the 1800s as a compromise between two factions, one wanting the popular vote to decide, and the other wanting Congress to decide. The rules for how electoral representatives are chosen and if they can vote for someone other than who their state’s citizens voted for vary state to state.
It’s hard for some citizens to vote. People who have the hardest lives, including those working multiple jobs, the disabled, and single parents, struggle to make it to voting booths before they close. Many states allow absentee ballots to help citizens participate, but many do not. While we don’t want to make it too easy to do something this important, some efforts should be made to simplify the process (see lines in Florida and Ohio). Why not move a vague federal holiday like President’s day to be on election day, so citizens can honor past president’s by voting for the next one.
Presidential debates are privately organized. Question: Who decides who gets to participate in presidential debates and what the format is? The public? The Senate? U.S. Citizens? The answer is none of these. It’s a group of unelected officials, chosen largely by the Republican and Democratic parties called the the Commission on Presidential Debates. The debates themselves are sponsored by corporations (though what this sponsorship means is unclear). The debates are the only public discorse between candidates and should be protected from partisan and other influences.
It’s impossible for most citizens to run for office. Obama and Romney spent $933 million and $841 million respectively in their 2012 campaigns. While never an option for most citizens, the costs of running for office, including senate races, have increased, narrowing the demographics for who can participate. The test of who runs and wins increasingly has more to do with their bank account rather than their merits as a political leader.
While I don’t have specific proposals for solving these problems, and do recognize attempting to solve them might create more problems, you have to notice the problems before you can do anything about them.
What other problems do you see? What solutions do you have? Leave a comment.
Dear people who complain:
There was never a golden age in American politics. If you despair at how depressing our politics are, recall that in 1800 John Adams and Thomas Jefferson engaged in some of the nastiest PR campaigns against each other. Elections are about power, bringing the best and worst out of everyone who wants power, regardless of their motivation for wanting it.
While it is true that a singular nasty example doesn’t define the past, or the present, politics in a democracy is inherently frustrating. A government by and for the people includes your stupid neighbor, your weird cousin, the person with the religious beliefs you find absurd, everyone you stare at on the bus (or who stares at you), the people who own the company you work for and the ones begging for change on your way there. There is no way for a government by and for the people to function without forcing these diverse views, needs and desires into a dialog with each other. This is the system as it was intended to function. How much maturity and civility we bring to this inevitability is up to us to decide.
It’s really a miracle it works at all and for as long as it has. Part of why is a collective faith in the process and that everyone should get a chance to participate equally, even those we passionately disagree with. Power changes hands in this country with surprising frequency and civilized grace relative to the history of civilization and for all its horrors and disappointments it is still a wonder to behold.
A common refrain heard during election season is “voting is picking the lesser of two evils”, a jab at the disappointing quality of our candidates. This assumes we’ve historically had good ones, which, once you get past the 5 or 6 great presidents most American’s agree on, is increasingly disappointing the further you study it. And when people who make this complaint are asked personally if they would run for office, of any kind, they generally say “no way”. We know how undesirable life as a politician is, yet simultaneously we’re surprised by the low quality of the candidates we have. Yet these facts are directly related to each other.
We are not promised good candidates in the Constitution. Most of us invest little energy towards the process of picking candidates (which involves participating in a party months before an election), understanding how they’re chosen or even helping decide the winners in races: 58% of American’s voted in 2008. And that was just a vote, which takes only minutes: who knows how much time they invested in considering their choices. Complaints and apathy are dangerous bedfellows and we suffer both in great supply. If we are truly passionate, the system offers us countless local elections where our influence is far greater, and collectively, has far more impact on national elections that we tend to think.
I believe, more or less, we get the government we deserve. Paying close attention twice a decade isn’t paying much attention at all. We are an apathetic and divided nation and its those who are undecided the longest who curiously yield greater influence. And while voting is a right, there is far more to be gained in the long run by voting in the interest of the nation as a whole, which requires inquiring beyond the self serving echo chambers we love to pretend is the entirety of the world.
Sadly it’s only when things hit close enough to home that we start watching our representatives, senators, mayors and governors regularly, and participating at levels of government where our vote carries much more weight, where the kind of change we want is both deserved and possible.
Nothing is learned by throwing wrenches at the engine of an already struggling machine. Revolutions almost never succeed, a fact we deny since we are one of the few nations in history to be born from a successful one. It’s only by getting inside and dirtying our hands, or at least studying the system to see how it was designed to work, and was designed to be changed, that empty frustrations can be replaced by meaningful action. No matter how small those actions are, they have far more value to everyone than grandstanding, complaining or voting in protest.
Churchill wrote:
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others.
Eleven Fourteen years ago 2996 people died during the events of 9/11/2001. It was a tragic day for thousands of innocent people whose lives were taken. It’s impossible to understand the significance of the day for surviving family and friends.
From a colder, mathematical perspective, I’ve wondered what the total cost in lives has been since that morning. How connected these deaths are or are not to each other is up to you. With a few hours of research I compiled the math, with sources marked as follows:
WP = Wikipedia, CRS = Congressional Research Service, AP = Associated Press, DoD = U.S. Department of Defense
Deaths on 9/11/01: 2,996 (including 19 hijackers) Injured on 9/11/01: 6000 (WP, but source needed)
The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:
U.S. armed forces deaths in Iraq: 4422 (FAS, U.S. DoD)
U.S. armed forces injured in Iraq: 32,229 (FAS, U.S. DoD)
I don’t have any commentary. These numbers are staggering, no matter how you connect them or not.
Please check my math and my sources and note corrections in the comments. I’d be thrilled to see these stats vetted and improved. It was bewildering to go through all the reports and studies to compile even this list, as many reports show similar data in slightly different ways with different sources. I’m sure I’ve made mistakes, I’m just not sure where.
[references updated 9-11-15]
Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything. – Robert Rubin
The people most attracted to power are the most dangerous to let have it. Yet it’s only the people most driven to get elected that can survive the process. This creates a fundamental paradox to democracy, that the people best suited for the job on some dimensions would never win the election process, or choose to run at all.
Reasonable doubts are part of the paradox. We all know there are excellent reasons to have doubts about big decisions. When you deeply understand an issue, it’s clear there are good arguments on both sides. But when we look for leaders, we demand certainty. We are attracted to people who have bold convictions about both what is wrong and what is the right way to fix it. We are drawn to people who project demigod like clarity, dismissing their opponents as fundamentally wrong rather than having a different perspective, even though we know deep down that level of certainty can’t really exist.
Any leader who admitted uncertainty, admitted doubt, admitted that there may be more than one good answer, makes for an impossible candidate. We wouldn’t listen to them for long, even if our attention spans allowed it. Even though those doubts may be a sign of their wisdom, rather than incompetence.
We chase the mythical image of a leader, and demand candidates give it to us, yet when they are elected and reveal themselves to be human, or change their mind as an act of progress rather than deception, we complain we’ve been betrayed. But in a way we all betray the people who might make for better leaders, by ignoring them in favor of a fantasy.
My good friends and I like to discuss big questions. Two friends and I realized we avoided topics, mostly political, for being too polarizing. But we discussed this, and came up with a set of rules for politics with friends and family, version 1. Over time we revised it and improved it, and I’m pleased to present version 2 below:
What is the actual question being discussed? We often stumble into political discussions, seeded by one fact or recent news. As the discussion gets heated it’s because both people have silently brought different perspectives, histories and stories with them for interpreting the recent news. Periodically you need to stop and re-establish what the specific question being discussed is. It sounds silly, but asking “wait – can you explain what we are arguing about as a question?” forces everyone to clarify not just their position, but in the form of a question that allows more than one answer. Often two people are simply arguing about two different questions simultaneously without realizing it. To at least agree on the question, or a list of questions to discuss, creates a shared place to start from.
What do you actually know? We hear factoids third hand and draw large conclusions supporting our pet theories. We rarely read the studies mentioned in the news, or examine the sources of articles we read online as the concept of confirmation bias, where we cherry pick facts we like and call it research, is a human failing. This means we rarely have the depth of understanding to match our emotions. Poking at our sources and recognizing how many assumptions are being made, or both sides, disarms conversations. It’s easy to misconstrue facts or manipulate data and having volumes of it means nothing, as both sides have ample ammunition.
Can you effectively argue the opposing point-of-view? We forget that an argument is just a tool. In any complex issue, there are valid points on all sides. If you can’t effectively argue the other side’s point of view, you can’t claim to have seriously considered your own position, as you’ve never truly evaluated any alternative (or haven’t done it in years). Switching sides in a debate is a fantastic exercise: it forces you to use more intelligence and critical thinking than defending the same view year after year ever could.
What would convince you that you are wrong? If you can’t imagine any possible way to have a different opinion, then your imagination is limited, which likely makes you boring to talk with. If you can’t imagine the world being any other way, no matter how slim the possibility, then you are stuck in your own beliefs. You deny yourself the chance to have a new opinion. Worse, you likely confuse stroking your old well worn thoughts with the act of thinking up new ones.
Why do you believe what you believe? We assume we have great reasons for our opinions. This sometimes is not true. Maybe you believe what you believe because your parents did? That’s not a logical basis for believing anything, as it doesn’t involve any of your own thinking. It’s ok to believe in it anyway, but understanding why you believe will change the way you talk/defend/promote those beliefs.
Why are you interested in having a discussion about it? Is the goal to explore ideas and learn, or merely to win?
What are you going to do about it? Assuming you’re right, and passionate about your views, why do you think discussing it with a friend will change anything? There are many ways to support political causes and campaigns, and investing your energy there will likely be more satisfying and have more of an impact. If you’re not willing to put your own energy behind something you claim to believe in, why should anyone else take your ideas seriously? We pretend so much is at stake in our position, but most of the time we don’t care enough to take action. Yelling at a friend is a very unproductive way to support your own beliefs.
Q: How has de-individualization impacted society in the recent years and will it grow or can it be stopped?
This is one of those fun but messy questions that is so loaded with assumptions there’s no way to answer it without taking it apart first.
Which societies are we talking about? There isn’t some annual meeting of nations where they all decide collectively whether this year they’re going to be more or less against individuals than last year. Each has its own trajectory and action. Some are more hostile than others, some less. Some are improving, some are getting worse. And some are getting better in some ways, and getting worse in others.
I’d say in general, around the world, freedom has progressed, but not in a straight line and not for everyone. According to wikipedia, in 1972 there were 40 democracies in the world, and 123 in 2007. The use of the word democracy has wide variance, but even so, this suggests the general trend is positive. If people can vote, and their votes influence the government, a certain kind of individualism is allowed.
The next distinction is between society and government. If we are talking government, the question becomes is the government a non-corrupt republic, where the citizens are represented effectively in the government. If everyone votes to elect representatives who limit individual rights, then that is, by proxy, the will of the people. They can choose next time to elect people who extend more rights to individuals or not.
I don’t know that a society can be against individuals, since a society is composed of individuals. If they collectively agree to restrict certain behaviors, than the individuals involved are making those choices: how can you be against yourself? All cultures allow and restrict behavior based on their shared values, and one shared value is tolerance (or not) for people who have different values. While I’m be free to a NY Yankee Fan in South Boston, the culture there would likely beat me to a pulp regularly for choosing to express allegiance to that sports tribe openly. Alternatively, if I chose to be a NY Yankee Fan in Jakarta, where few people might know what a Yankee is, I might be free to be as big a fan as I like.
If people aren’t free to move to a different society (say, a more or less conservative town in their country) then the question is less about individualism and more about mobility. They are related, as your ability to be an individual depends on your ability to find a town that accepts the you that you want to be, but mobility and individualism are not the same thing.
Freedom of expression is one way to think about individualism. The rights of free press and assembly are two good measures to look at. I couldn’t find an index value over time for this, but did find that Reporters without Borders does rank nations annually in their freedom of press (The U.S. ranks 47th this year, Finland #1). However, you could define individualism as property rights or other specific freedoms, which would change what data you’d look at answer the question.
What does individualism mean to you? And how would you measure whether a city or nation is making it easier or harder to be an individual?
We often talk about “the media” as if it were as singular monolithic thing, which it isn’t. Any argument that includes the phrase “the media” should be challenged as it’s an oversimplification likely being used to make a self-serving point. Every political point of view now has their own blogs, videos and social media: the media you experience is in part defined by your choices.
This bias we have towards oversimplifying media is one of our greatest problems in trying to understand the world today. When you stop and avoid saying “the media is…” you’re forced to think more carefully about what you’re really upset about and what the real causes are.
It’s a graphic book, illustrated well by Josh Neufeld, which means it’s a combination of comic like panels, mixed with short essays. I like this style of book when it’s done well (this one is), but it’s not for everyone.
The strengths of the book are its telling of (U.S.) media history. It explores the problematic origins of journalism, how the early press in the U.S. developed (which is shockingly familiar to many who complain about modern journalism), and the inherent good and bad challenges it has wrought throughout our history. Some stories I knew, but others were launching points to research online. Gladstone takes the position that we are a large part of our sense of “media”, as we make choices about what we read, how we read it and the questions we choose to ask or not. She also explores the challenge of objectivity, and challenges the notions most people assume about the objectivity of what the read and hear.
The weaknesses of the book are twofold. First, if you’ve studied media theory and cognitive bias, you’ll be on familiar turf. Second, the last quarter of book switches into future thinking, and here Brookstone is on weaker ground. The book is stronger in its telling of history and Brookstone’s insightful view of how media has functioned, rather than her looking to the future. It’d also be easy to criticize the book for a having a mild liberal tilt, as some negative examples come at the expense of (in)famous Republicans/Conservatives.
The book lightly touches on social media’s impact, which is fine. But it is notable Brooke didn’t have a twitter account when the book released (she does now). However Josh Neufeld does.
It’s a fast read as most good graphic books are, and will definitely improve how you think about media in all its forms.
[Added Gladstone’s twitter account, plus edits for concision 12-4-15]
It is foolish to confuse a moment of forgetting with stupidity. All people who speak make mistakes. We forget things. We confuse words. We lose our train of thought. And if you listen to a recording of yourself for even an hour in your daily life you’ll notice all sorts of gaffs, odd pauses, and long moments of complete inability to remember facts you are certain that you know.
Taken in context of everything else you say, these moments are easily overlooked by your coworkers and family. But taken out of context, and shown in isolation, its easy to make you look downright stupid. Even though all those who think you are stupid based on a small sample, make the same mistakes in their own lives every day.
Presidential debates are shows. They mislead us into thinking speaking on TV is the primary function presidents have, and better speakers will make for better presidents, which is sketchy logic at best. A candidate can claim whatever they like at the lectern, but doing the job requires a very different set of skills.
In the case of Rick Perry, I won’t say much about his merit as a presidential candidate. It’s safe to say I’m not a fan. But I can say that a flub, on its own, is a poor basis for evaluating anyone’s ability to do anything. He could have handled his forgetting (and his campaign) with much more poise, but the mistake itself is almost noise.
A week ago, a 4 minute video, often titled with suggestions Perry was drunk when he spoke, made the rounds. It was excerpted from a 20 minute speech, and it is informative for anyone who only watches the highlights to watch both.
It would have been nice to see discussion of the merit (or not) of his ideas drive how we evaluate him, but that would involve more effort from us than watching entertaining video clips that gives us the illusion of feeling smart.
http://youtu.be/zUA2rDVrmNg
My good friends Royal Winchester, Rob Lefferts and I like to talk about things. Eventually we realized there were some things, mostly political, we were afraid to talk about since they’re often polarizing topics that make everyone involved hate each other. Since we like each other, we wanted to avoid that. By going meta, which we are fond of doing, we came up with the following rules, which can help friends talk about contentious issues with each other:
We have bad data. Confirmation bias is the tendency we all have to find one piece of data that supports something we already believe and then stop looking. We say “I studied this thoroughly”, when really all we did was find one supporting source, something the web makes possible for any claim or belief. This bias even influences the sources we pick for news and the articles we choose to read, making us blind to the diversity of opinions and data out there. Objectively, we know we don’t know everything, but we easily convince ourselves we’ve been objective when arguing. Everyone should admit they don’t have all the data, and the data they do have is biased because they had a belief before they started looking for data.
We don’t really care – if we did, we’d do something more than argue. Most Americans do almost nothing to support the causes they are willing to argue with for hours with their friends. If you really feel so passionately about whatever this topic is, what are you doing for that cause? If you do little or nothing, step down from your high horse, please. If we really cared, we could at least agree to invest the time to read the other sides data, and then get together to review. That takes commitment, but if there is no commitment, why are we arguing so passionately?
We’re arguing about being right. Often with friends there is more ego in the room than people admit. Once things get heated, no one wants to say “I’m wrong” or “That’s a good point” or “Maybe I need to rethink my position”. If you note from the beginning that everyone wants to be right, it helps diffuse that motive, increasing the possibility people might actually listen to each other. A truly wise person is capable of growing. They can incorporate new ideas into their thinking and change their mind. Wise people are more interesting to talk to, compared to people who endlessly, and thoughtlessly, defend the same position their entire life.
There are smart people on both sides. For highly contentious issues (abortion, religion, taxes, war,etc.), there are smart people on both sides. To portray one point of view as obvious is denial, and to make ad-hominem attacks on people with opposing views denies the complexity of the issue involved. Smart people can be wrong of course, but that doesn’t mean the way they’re wrong is as trivial to avoid as you assume, or that their ethics and morals are less noble than yours.
What would convince you that you are wrong? If you have no answer to this question, you haven’t thought very hard about your position. There must be some set of new facts or conditions in the world that would make you take a different point of view, even if they are unlikely or improbable. It’s not much fun to talk to people who have complete certainty that they’re right about everything.
What do you think? We eventually came up with a version 2.
Anyone who makes progress in this world makes compromises.
In the case of the U.S. Government, every gear and cog in the system is based on negotiation. Power is divided into three rings, each ring given a degree of power over the others. Why? To force compromise. Inside Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives, each has the power to reject new laws. Why? To force compromise. Even the executive branch has its power muted by many other forces the population likes to pretend aren’t there. It’s much simpler to point to a singular parental figure, than admit that despite the president’s power, he or she is merely an important cog in a huge, complex system of debates, partnerships, rivalries, and deals (or bribes), with many influential players involved in anything that happens, or does not happen.
One foundation of the entire system is that longevity comes from continual compromise, based on what the population supports. No one ever gets their way without a bargain. Nothing ever happens without some price or consequence. It is not a system designed for innovation, instead it’s designed to slow change until enough support exists to motivate people to overcome their self-interests. This is part of the design of democracies and republics of all kinds. It was true in the Golden Age of Greece and during the American Revolutionary war. It was in the air at the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and has been true on every day since. The chaos you see in the crisis of the day has more to do with the fact you are paying unusually close attention, rather than a shift in the longstanding nature of representative government itself.
John F. Kennedy wrote a book called Profiles in Courage, about senators who stood on principle against their peers. They achieved important legislation, but were not reelected despite how right they were (retrospectively) in their stands. This is not a failure of government, it’s another form of compromise. Arguably one that has been lost in the dominance of career politicians who put their longevity in office above all things.
These brave people were willing to sacrifice their political careers for an ideal, something any politician is free to do at any time. Most of us make the opposite kind of choice every day. We compromise our principles to keep a fancy job, or stay in a marriage, or stay in our parents-in-laws’ good graces. And since so few of us are willing to make the sacrifices to retain perfect ideals in our own lives, why do we expect more from politicians? They say what they need to to get elected, but to be effective in any way in office demands compromise.
The only people who take true hard lines in this world are the spectators. Fundamentalism of most kinds is the mark of someone on the sidelines. People unwilling to compromise can never take the first step towards power, since they fail to see that all things, including the traditions they see as immovable, were themselves products of compromises made long before they were born. And it’s their own ignorance they are fighting against, not anything of meaning in this world.
The first question should be: Do you believe governments have the right and/or responsibility to keep certain types of information secret or private. This might include military information, diplomatic information, medical records, etc.
If you answer this question “Yes”, as I expect most people would — the argument shifts from WHETHER the government has the right to preclude information from being leaked and made public to WHAT TYPES of information and WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES to which this should apply. Then you get to the question of whether wikileaks fits those circumstances, but you’ve acknolwedged [sic] government’s right and responsibility to keep SOME things secret.
It’s a good point and its opposite is also true: it’s the job a free press to push to reveal more about what’s going on than a government wants. Governments tend to protect information, and media tends to want to reveal it. This is an old line of tension with a messy history, with no simple answer. The balance between both forces is what matters, rather than one dominating the other. There is no utopia at either end of the spectrum, only a tenuous and ever-shifting balance somewhere in the middle.
There are many examples of progress being driven by leaks. The Pentagon papers changed our perception of the Vietnam war, for example, and its publishers were tried, and dismissed, under the 1917 Espionage act. But clearly we do not want everything public. Some things like the passwords to the Federal governments social security computers, terrorism on U.S. soil response plans, or the combinations to the locks on the vaults at the Federal Reserve, should be excluded from the public domain.
Everyone seems to think they know what the right balance is, which is insane – there is no way to be certain, which is why the tension between transparency and opacity is paramount.
There are three checkpoints that define the balance:
What government leaders decide to disclose, both to the public, and within the government itself.
The person inside an organization considering leaking something, who compares the pain their “disloyalty” to their organization will cause themselves and others in making the leak, against the possible long term greater good (See Whistleblower)
The journalist receiving the leak who, using their professional judgment, discerns on their own, or through discourse with representatives from the organization the leak is from, what the true greater good is and what should be withheld from the public and for how long (e.g. See NYT’s explanation of its coverage of Cablegate)
WikiLeaks does make journalistic claims, but they separate themselves from the rest of the media world, staking a claim that #2 isn’t porous enough. They have placed themselves on the far left, shifting the playing field towards transparency. Existing media suddenly looks more moderate to governments, and even if Wikileaks is ignored in the future, the landscape shifts – I’m assuming this is their hope.
My key take so far: It’s not progress or regression that’s happened, so much as a disturbance. How governments and other media respond over the next weeks and months will define whether this is a step forward or backward. It’s an opportunity for change, and a forcing function for reconsideration, but so far not much more.
In summary, it’s no surprise that:
WikiLeaks released these documents – there’s a long tradition and in each case it was messy, confusing and painful. Someone can be committing a crime and making progress at the same time. It’s impossible to sort out in the moment, especially when a single leak has 250,000+ documents.
The U.S. and other governments are pissed and calling it a crime and Assange a terrorist. That’s part of their job. If they publicly applauded the unauthorized release of confidential documents, they should be fired.
Internal communications of any organization will always contain harsh criticisms of other organizations, including allies. It’d be more disturbing if every cable said “We love everyone, especially you”, they’d either be phony cables, or proof the entire U.S. government had been lobotomized.
We hear about distractions like Julian Assange’s prosecution for unrelated charges. His personal behavior is mostly irrelevant to Wikileaks, free press vs. government control, and the idea of transparency.
What’s your opinion? Do you know for certain that this is for good or for bad? How do you know? Or more importantly, what am I missing?
Last week I finished reading Founding Faith, by Steven Waldman. The book explores the history of religion in America, focusing on what the founding fathers believed personally and expressed in their role in government. It was an excellent read and balanced in coverage – the author frequently explains how both modern liberals and conservatives get the history wrong.
Here’s some of what I learned:
When someone says “the founding fathers believed X” they’re probably wrong. Each founder had different views – they were rarely unanimous. They had bitter rivalries (Adams/Jefferson), different opinions on the constitution, the war, states rights, you name it. And more confounding, their opinions, like yours and mine, changed over time (Adams became less religious as he aged, Franklin possibly more).
Americans wanted freedom from the British church. The Puritans, and others that followed, wanted freedom to practice their own version of Christianity, but were not allowed to under British law. One (but not all of the) motivation for the first amendment was to prevent the U.S. government from establishing a state religion, having seen what it did in Britain. Religious freedom, specifically from the British Church, was a contributing cause for the Revolutionary war. It was one major reason people came to America, and one reason they resisted British rule.
Many of the issues the founders cared about were immediate. We often say “what the founders intended” but they had little conception of some of the issue we face today. They struggled just to make the constitution, the revolutionary war and the bill of rights succeed at all, in their present time, given the complex politics of a new nation. They hoped to put a system in place that would interpret the law and explore its many corners and applications, which is what the Senate and the Supreme Court have done, and hopefully will continue to do. The first or any amendment wasn’t fully understood or defined until it was tested and explored in the years after its ratification.
George Washington was motivated for religious tolerance to fight the war. He may have had philosophical motivations, but practically speaking he needed soldiers. If he discriminated based on religious factions, he’d had fewer soldiers and he needed every last one. He defended Catholics and other groups for these reasons – the only hope for winning the war hinged on cross-denominational support, which demanded cross-denominational tolerance.
Jefferson was the least religious of the founders. He questioned the divinity of Chirst, yet found Christ’s message and teachings essential and brilliant (he worked on a version of the gospels stripped of its miracles). Adams was probably the most religious, often quoting scripture or including references to divine support in his acts.
The founding fathers beliefs were tempered by politics of the day. The book documents the debates among the continental congress (and, I believe, the senate) that surrounded the founders. Trades were made, positions were taken and then pulled back, in the same messy, ugly way it happens to day. We forget how many other people besides the founders were involved in every piece of legislation.
I read the book in just a few days (motivated by the religious issues in NYC). Oddly enough, the book had little impact on my opinions. But it did ground them better in the history of religion and politics in America.
I strongly recommend the book – not just for religious history, but for general understanding of the workings of the U.S. Government during such a pivotal time. I suspect there are other interpretations of the facts other than his, but simply for better framing the process and key decisions, it’s a worthy read.
Here’s the link to amazon: Founding Faith, by Steven Waldman
The Nazis’ platform did not initially scare many voters. While many voters weren’t necessarily at first attracted primarily to racist themes, they were willing to overlook them in hopes of economic promises. The Nazi’s carefully crafted different messages to different audiences, using nuance to signal to their deepest supporters without offending more moderate voters. This poster at right (“We’re for Adolf Hitler”) was aimed at unemployed coal miners, suggesting a vote for Hitler would bring their jobs back. At the same time explicitly racist posters were also being widely distributed.
Today is the 
It’s a graphic book, illustrated well by 