They want action that is big and punishing

I visited the Livonia Pride this afternoon. Livonia is a Detroit suburb near me and closer (and with easier parking) than the big Motor City Pride. There was a stage for entertainers. It featured a tap-dance team while I was there. There were a few food trucks off to the side. And there were about twenty booths of organizations that want to get the attention of LGBTQ people: Livonia human resources office. Democratic Party. Republican Party. LGBTQ friendly churches of a variety of denominations. A mental health organization. A save the library group. A booth with crafts to keep children busy. And a few more similar organizations. I stayed all of 20 minutes. Eliza Mazel of the Daily Kos community wrote that authoritarianism works the same way as cults. Both are based on a narcissistic abuser. There is a lot of material on that kind of relationship, including why a person will stay in its thrall and how to extract a person from it. Alas, Mazel, who is a practicing therapist in political psychology, doesn’t know how to extend extracting a person from a narcissistic abuser to extracting a large group from such a person. And those in thrall of the nasty guy are a very large group. Mazel then linked to an article on Vox. That article discusses the rise of American authoritarianism, written by Amanda Taub in 2016, before the nasty guy got into the Oval Office. It’s a lengthy article (it delves into the research), so I’ll only discuss major points. Stanley Feldman was a professor of political science at SUNY Stonybrook. He developed a way to test for authoritarian tendencies, that could develop into full authoritarianism given the right triggers. I had written several years ago that Feldman came up with four simple questions that proved to be quite reliable:

Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: independence or respect for elders? Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: obedience or self-reliance? Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: to be considerate or to be well-behaved? Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: curiosity or good manners?

In each of these pairs of choices I see one that is very much in support of the social hierarchy and the other isn’t. For example, respect for elders is the same for respect for those higher in the hierarchy. Those questions also mean parents want to make sure their children grow up to honor the hierarchy.

There was now a way to identify people who fit the authoritarian profile, by prizing order and conformity, for example, and desiring the imposition of those values.

People turn to authoritarianism in response to experiencing certain kinds of threats. The threats can be physical (terrorism) or abstract and social, such as eroding social norms or demographic changes. As expected, physical threats can turn people to authoritarianism faster than social threats. A combination of the two could make the number of authoritarians swell rapidly. A survey in 2016 showed 19% were very highly authoritarian and another 25% were high authoritarian. For the American population that’s a lot of people – tens of millions. 55% of Republicans scored as high or very high authoritarians while 75% of Democrats were non-authoritarian. Starting in the 1960s and the Southern Strategy Republicans became the party that promised to stave off social change and impose order. That spoke to authoritarian voters. Democrats became the party of the things (such as civil rights) that repel authoritarians. The population sorted itself accordingly and Republicans could not ignore the voting preferences of authoritarians. The threat of social change might not act as fast as a physical threat, but it’s effect could be a great deal stronger. These threats could be a change in traditional gender roles, demographic changes from immigration, or any changes “that disrupt social hierarchies.” I’ve talked about the power of the social hierarchy and here is research that agrees. Authoritarians want someone strong who will suppress the scary changes and preserve their place in the hierarchy.

The increasingly important political phenomenon we identify as right-wing populism, or white working-class populism, seems to line up, with almost astonishing precision, with the research on how authoritarianism is both caused and expressed.

A non-authoritarian, when told about a specific threat, will mostly say they’re not worried about it. An authoritarian told about the specific threat will be quite worried. They are susceptible to messages of threats and will lash out at those identified as a worry. Which means they are susceptible to the messages of a demagogue. And that explains why the nasty guy speaks only about threats and why his followers grab onto every conspiracy theory they hear. Authoritarians were asked what policies they most support. I won’t list them, only that...

What these policies share in common is an outsize fear of threats, physical and social, and, more than that, a desire to meet those threats with severe government action — with policies that are authoritarian not just in style but in actuality. The scale of the desired response is, in some ways, what most distinguishes authoritarians from the rest of the GOP.

Things such as tax cuts for the rich or international trade agreements were not seen as threats and did not call for a protective government response. Candidates (and in 2016 there were a lot of Republicans in the race) that tried to also declare they were for the nasty guy’s policies didn’t get far because they couldn’t match his style...

The way he reduces everything to black-and-white extremes of strong versus weak, greatest versus worst. His simple, direct promises that he can solve problems that other politicians are too weak to manage. And, perhaps most importantly, his willingness to flout all the conventions of civilized discourse when it comes to the minority groups that authoritarians find so threatening.

And those simple messages are in terms of hierarchy. To summarize the authoritarian goal: They want action. They want it from the government. They want it big. They want it punishing. They want the threat to be vanquished. Most concerning, these authoritarians will not fade away if the nasty guy loses in 2024. They may well begin to act like a third party, though within the Republican Party (for now). While one faction or the other might determine the choice of candidate the authoritarian faction would be too small to win a national election.

Democracy is fragile

A Michigan group Secure MI Vote has gotten approval to start collecting petition signatures for a proposal. They say, as their name says, their effort is to make Michigan voting more secure. But the actual text of the proposal is about voter suppression. Through a misguided provision in the state constitution, once the group collects over 340,000 signatures the legislature, controlled by Republicans, can approve it and have it become law without the governor able to veto it. The petition says it is a ballot proposal, but the Republicans have already said if it gets to them they’ll approve it. So citizens will never see it on the ballot. So today I was at Ferndale Pride at the Voters Not Politicians booth talking to people in the crowd and asking them to pledge to not sign the petition. Three years ago I helped VNP get the citizens redistricting commission passed. Yes, Pride goers were a receptive and friendly crowd. A few times I had to clarify that we’re against the petition. We don’t like voter suppression. It has been a while since I’ve been to Ferndale Pride. This time it is two long blocks on Nile Mile Road in downtown Ferndale. While there are a couple performance stages the rest of the event is booths with whatever organization or business wants to be there. This is why I rarely go – I have no interest in most of the booths and it’s not my kind of music. Even so, after my shift of talking about voting rights I did walk the length of the two blocks. And merely glanced in all the booths. I appreciate Pride as a place where my LGBTQ community can come to be who they are without stigma. I saw many families – gay or lesbian parents with children and straight parents with LGBTQ children. Some dressed up, some wore rainbow clothing, some wore shirts with appropriate slogans. My favorite slogan: “Human Being, color may vary.” The nation has officially passed 700,000 deaths due to the COVID virus. The actual count is likely over a million. According to Michigan data, the number of cases in the state since the start of the pandemic has passed 1 million. Since the population of the state is just over 10 million the case rate has passed 10% – yes, ten percent of the state has gotten sick. I also looked at the state’s data. Over the last five weeks, peak cases per day has been 2313, 3039, 3214, 3335, 4138. The rise seemed to slow, then shot up again. This last peak is almost half the size of the peaks of November last year and April this year. Over the last five weeks, peak deaths per day has been 29, 33, 41, 39, 27. I expect the last number to rise as more data comes in. There is a straight line increase in deaths from mid July to mid September. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra begins its season next weekend. They intend to have a live audience. To get in a person must show they’ve been vaccinated and also have a recent COVID test. The audience must wear masks during the performance. This is the first time in thirty years I did not renew my subscription. I normally do it in the spring (though much later than the orchestra wants me to). I wanted to wait until I could see the COVID situation – which is not good. I’m glad the DSO is at the forefront of streaming their concerts so I can watch and listen from the safety of my home. That’s most definitely not the same as being in the hall. Lean McElrath responded to an opinion piece in the New York Times by Ross Douthat. I haven’t read Douthat’s piece because it is behind a paywall (and doesn’t look like I would agree with it). McElrath wrote:

People who think the unnecessary and preventable deaths of millions of people are simply fodder for bad faith intellectual exercises and games of “gotcha” in online discourse disgust me. ... I don’t care about discourse. I don’t care about engagement. I *do* care about the fact that people are dying in incomprehensible numbers and it’s being normalized. In 18 pandemic months we’ve gone from: Prevent infection to Flatten the curve to Only the disabled and elderly die, NOT children to Only disabled children die to Oh well, it’s endemic now. And from NYT calling American 100,000 deaths “an incalculable loss” to whatever this is:

This being Douthat’s article titled, What if Covid Were 10 Times Deadlier? McElrath continued:

I suggest that what is happening is preventable, ongoing mass death is being minimized and normalized and that it constitutes propaganda. There are significant, predictable dangers associated with normalization of mass death. I’m shocked this is a controversial observation.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is the latest member of the court to push back against low opinion the public has of the court, as shown by recent polls. Barrett and Thomas have already spoken about it. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported Alito added another bit to his complaint: The court’s conservative majority are victims of a coordinated effort to discredit the court. Of course, their use of the shadow docket and letting the Texas abortion law go into effect can’t possibly be the reason for the low public opinion. A couple weeks ago Max Kennerly, a trial lawyer, tweeted about Thomas’ attempt at pushback:

"You’re going to jeopardize any faith in the legal institutions," he said, blaming us for his votes in Bush v Gore, DC v Heller, Citizens United, Connick v Thompson, Concepcion, Shelby County, Hobby Lobby, Vance v Ball State, the eviction moratorium, the Texas abortion law...

McElrath quoted Melissa Murray, a professor at NYU Law, who described a brief filed in support of the Texas abortion ban. The brief invited the Court to overrule two major LGBTQ decisions, one of those the right to marry. McElrath added:

As I’ve warned repeatedly for the past seven years on here, right-wing SCOTUS activists intend to try to overturn marriage equality legislation and to reinstate laws making LGBTQ existence illegal.

In a post from a couple weeks ago (yeah, articles can live in my browser tabs for a while) Mark Sumner of Kos discussed the Republican Party and the memo John Eastman wrote outlining how the vice nasty might subvert the Electoral College count. I’ve written about the Eastman memo. As part of that discussion Sumner wrote:

All John Eastman did in his memo laying out the means for Mike Pence to overturn the legal results of an election was to extend that burn it, smash it mentality to American democracy. Democracy is fragile. It has to be fragile. It’s an agreement among the governed that they will participate in their own governing. It’s a system that requires, and is in fact based on, the idea that adult citizens of a society will act like adult citizens of a society, and place the concerns of that society over their individual desires. Trump supporters are being extremely upfront in making it clear: They’re not playing by those rules. What Eastman laid in front of Pence is just another page of what Ellmers spelled out in his essay: There are Americans who no longer want to make any compromise for the greater good. They don’t believe there is a greater good. They don’t have policy concerns. They don’t place their faith with churches, universities, or even corporations. That doesn’t make them, as Ellmers might say, “not Americans.” It makes them dangerous Americans. ... The core belief is not that anything needs to be conserved, but that American democracy has got to go.

The maneuverings in Congress over the two infrastructure bills is getting so complicated that professional Congress watchers are getting confused. Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos quoted Pete Schroeder and Seung Min Kim tweeting essentially that. Dworkin also quoted a couple sources about a recent development. Moderate House Democrats had been insisting it was time to vote on the $1t bill passed by the Senate, even though they had previously agreed that bill and the $3.5t bill needed to be voted on at the same time. The development is the Congressional Progressive Caucus, about 100 strong and headed by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, said nope, the two bills will be linked together. Quite impressive for progressives who are pretty good at wavering. Not this time. Rebekah Sager of Kos reported that Louis DeJoy – remember him? – is still at the head of the Postal Service and is now starting to implement his plan to slow down first class mail. Amid cries of “Why is he still there?” Sager says it is because the president can’t directly fire the Postmaster General. He has to appoint members to the Board of Governors to do that. And Biden has not yet appointed a majority. A while back I wrote about an article in Nature Scientific Reports as discussed on Kos about evidence that the ancient city of Sodom might have been hit by an exploding meteor, explaining the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Nowhere Man of the Kos community wrote a reply. He said the authors of the NSR article conducted shoddy science, were not experts in archaeology, and had a strong bias in their conclusion. Nowhere Man then linked to several Twitter threads to provide background and rebuttal (which I didn’t read). The comments to this post added critiques of the rebuttals. So maybe an exploding meteor took out Sodom and a real event matched the oral history, and maybe it didn’t. Happy Birthday to Jimmy Carter! He turned 97 yesterday. Walter Einenkel of Kos gathered together several congratulatory tweets, including one from the Naval Academy which shows his graduation picture and tells us he is the oldest living former president. I believe he now has celebrated more birthdays than any other American president. Biden tweeted a photo of his younger self with Carter. Carter’s presidency didn’t play well at the time – he wasn’t elected to a second term. Historians now think this time in the White House was actually pretty good. For one, he kept us out of war. However, his time since then has shown what an exemplary human he is. Einenkel included a tweet from ClockOutWars:

Some people leave the White House and grift + lie + scam Americans. While others like former POTUS Jimmy Carter leave office and build houses. Happy 97th Birthday President Carter.

A safe space for the misfits

Yeah, it has been more than a week. Part of why I didn't write is because there wasn't anything to write about -- why waste my time on yet another vile thing the Fundies, the anti-gay crowd, or the GOP has been doing. Especially since the latest isn't all that different from what they did last week or yesterday.

And when I did have something to write about other things crowded my schedule. One of those things yesterday was Motor City Pride. Since I've been going to this event (which hasn't been all that long or all that frequently) this is the first time it has been held at Hart Plaza, on the riverfront in Detroit. There was a lot more space compared to the previous venue of 9 Mile Rd. in Ferndale, but no shops to duck into. There were lots of booths of various kinds -- gay clubs, gay service providers (including Ruth Ellis Center), gay businesses, gay friendly churches, supposedly gay friendly political organizations (including an Obama Campaign booth), and those companies that don't want to miss a chance to sell to anyone (gay home insulation?). There were also a couple performance stages. While I was there the main one held a mass commitment ceremony, then a drag queen program. I stayed only 90 minutes.

I'm very aware a big reason for Pride is to provide a safe space for the misfits to be who they are. And there were a lot of people in unusual clothing. At that Pride succeeded. No pictures -- I left my camera at home. I wore a polo shirt and felt overdressed.

Perhaps a week ago my dad asked me about PFLAG, the Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. So while at Pride I stopped by their booth. They give great hugs. The Detroit chapter meets in Troy, which is about an hour drive from my place, so I've never attended. There is also a chapter in Ann Arbor, which would be closer. I also checked about a chapter that meets near where my dad lives. Yes one exists.

In the issue just before Pride, the gay newspaper Between the Lines had a series of articles on gay leaders. One of them was on PFLAG. Another was a fine article on the director of Ruth Ellis Center. In the picture with this article just over our director's left shoulder you can the pass-through into the kitchen where I spend most Wednesday evenings. Sorry, the picture was taken at a time when the center was closed -- no glimpse of me.