the commments to Marek's post: "Short form: the hind brain virtually always steamrolls abstract logical constructs, no matter how elegant. You want to step away from human savagery? Don't assume that you can walk up to the edge of the abyss and peer over just because you're smart."

Link here: http://instapundit.com/archives/021831.php

here: http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_alicublog_archive.html#111107499045678930

comments as well: http://coldfury.com/reason/index.php?p=214

I oppose torture and killing by governments for the same reason that I oppose government's involvement in religion: You should never distort political policy with personal passions.

Abuse of political power is assured when the people allow their government to kill.  This has nothing to do with the brief gratification of bloodlust, it has to do with a citizenry maintaining control over those who manage the police, the judiciary and the penal system.

Once you grant government officials permission to kill, history shows that it's only a matter of time before they use that power to eliminate those they deem undesirable. Such people may initially be limited to the poor and the despised (like serial killers), but eventually the pool of blood grows to include any who oppose the powers that be.  Then you have a serial killer for a government.

Government as serial killer.  That's the way life-and-death power has played out in countless dictatorships.  Living in Iran, it should be easy to imagine.  These days, it's not so hard to imagine in America.

inspired by comment on other thread

Justice, discouragement and the rule of law? [none / 0] Replies: 0

posted by wingfwd on 03/17/2005 05:06:47 PM EDT

attached to Eugene Volokh is one sick bastard

http://agonist.org/comments/2005/3/17/102131/962/4#4

You cannot change Eugene Volokh's mind on this by being outraged and preaching at him. You will not change the attitudes of those Iranians in that crowd by being outraged or preaching at them. That's because those are their feelings and morals and culture and only time and thought and education can possibly change that.

You can however prevent them from acting on their feelings. Quite easily. If the majority has a different idea about what civilization make written laws to prevent acts like this.

That's where the most efficient energy goes to prevent the moral decline you fear, to the latter.

The former, expressing disapproval, chastising, embarassing people for uncivilized thoughts/feelings, that works too, it works on changing the culture, but it takes a long time. It's what Oprah Winfrey does. It's also what I saw a lot of the cable TV news programs do, too, last night, with the story on the Scott Pederson verdict. The family was allowed to verbally abuse the murderer at the sentencing. This was the main issue discusssed on all the talk shows. (Interesting that I saw a blogger quoted elsewhere complaining that that's what they were covering, instead of ANWR.)

"Culture wars" is what sells these days, rather than any practical solutions. It may also do some good in the end, who knows.

How do you balance these?

Some of the goals associated with the implementation of the rule of law include justice and discouraging others from doing the same, but these have to balance with moral values.

In the event this person has tortured his victims, abused them and killed them, what is justice?  Is it a quick and painless death, or is it just what he got?

Part of punishment is to discourage others from doing the same.  Perhaps a quick and painless death would accomplish just that.  Perhaps the "discouraging" portion of punishment just doesn't work.

How do you balance that notion of justice and of discouragement with moral issues relating to torture?  Do you not 'stoop to the level of torture' even if that means justice isn't done?

I tend to believe that justice doesn't mean treating this killer in the way he was treated - I believe that we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard and understand that we can't stoop to that level, even if it means that justice truly isn't served.

I also am not confident that punishment will truly discourage others in an instance like this - a child rapist/killer of tomorrow is probably still going to be a rapist/killer even after this.  You are dealing with a sick person.  I do believe in the discouraging benefit for lesser crimes, for people who aren't sick but perhaps desparate or just a bit malicious (stealing, etc.).  But, not here.  More explicitly, the 'added' discouragement that may be achieved by elevating an execution to an execution plus torture likley not add significant discouragement.  Except, perhaps, to make a more public case of the issue, but the public hanging would appear to accomplish that.

My thoughts aside, how do you balance these things, and where do you stop?  Assuming what happened was justice, is it proper to sacrifice justice to maintain a level or morality?  Or vice versa?

SPK's comment elsewhere that the definition of torture is simply 'that you know it when you see it' would seem to fit well here.  A slower hanging?  Perhaps OK.  Publicizing the execution?  Yes.  The flogging?  No.

Most lynch mobs were fueled by self-righteous anger. Maybe Eugene Volokh is attempting to return to his Southern roots.

There is a cultural war going on, and if lynching is frowned upon, then the terrorist and liberal have won.

Punishing Monsters:

I am naturally daunted, as any thoughtful person would be, by the fact that my views on this run contrary to my nation's constitutional regime, contrary to what is seen by most as a worthy long-term trend in the civilization to which I belong, and the views of many people (both on the left and on the right) whom I admire. (My views are also largely pointless, since they can't be implemented in my country without a constitutional amendment that isn't going to happen.) Perhaps I am grievously mistaken, and have fallen victim to unsound emotion or the first flush of fatherhood.

Yet after reading the counterarguments, I confess that I continue to find them quite unpersuasive. I've gotten many more than I can possibly respond to, but I think I have an obligation to respond to some, so let me focus on those coming from Mark Kleiman, Matthew Yglesias, Maimon Schwarzschild, and Clayton Cramer. These are interesting and generally very thoughtful arguments (and I also thank their authors for framing the arguments not just civilly but quite generously, despite their disagreement with my views).

continued at length at:

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_03_13-2005_03_19.shtml#1111170132

That includes those like Clayton Cramer and Maimon Schwarzchild who are to the right of him.  As well as those roughly with the same politics like Balloon Juice.  Many are linked to in the updates to Eugene's original post, others in his later response.  

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2005/03/his_ones_for_yo.html

NB for people complaining about the lack of female bloggers...

on purely pragmatic/utilitarian grounds, but a retraction nonetheless.  Prompted by a polite attempt to engage with his arguments by his friend and colleague at UCLA, Mark Kleiman.

The retraction is here:

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_03_13-2005_03_19.shtml#1111216987

Kleiman's first post is here:

Kleiman on Volokh I

second post here:

Kleiman on Volokh II

and I know that some of you may disagree. But, I think this offers a key point here. I've made mistakes in my life and wished that people would forgive me. I've made rather large public mistakes and wished that people would forgive me. And through that I have learned that in order to be forgiven on must forgive others as well. I suppose that is called empathy. In my book it takes a REAL MAN (or WOMAN) to say the following: "In any event, I much appreciate Mark's instruction on this. Part of me wishes that I could keep disagreeing, out of sheer bullheadedness. But the fact is that he's right, and I was wrong."

Folks that is what we call intellectual honesty. And it is VERY, VERY hard to come by these days.

Eugene's comments are now officially water under the bridge.

yeah, a deliberately provocative comment title - but  there's a very good post by Tim Burke on Volokh which raises interesting points.

Volokh's Bloodlust

[...]

I think the most intricate reaction I have to Volokh's piece involves the complex genesis of modern liberal-democratic jurisprudence, and some troubling doubts I have about its relationship to the long history of human consciousness and personhood. I'm not entirely certain that some of those who are attacking Volokh recognize the implicit commitments embedded within their attack. If they do, fine, but I want to be sure that what is implicit become explicit at some point.

A historian who studies European societies from the late medieval era to the present has to be uncomfortably aware of just how different the fundamental conception of justice, crime and punishment were in the not-too-distant past. Michel Foucault is far from the only one to have noticed this fact. Hangings in England and elsewhere appear to have been unselfconscious forms of popular spectacle and entertainment in the not too distant past. You can look and look for the haunted conscience of modern subjectivity in those crowds and never find it; instead what you see are many people gathered to watch hangings the way we might gather to watch a 4th of July parade. Many rural communities throughout Europe into the early modern period tried and punished domestic and wild animals for committing crimes against property or crimes of violence. Many people, both elites and commoners, appeared by our standards to be indifferent to certain kinds of pain and suffering on the part of others.

The cultural and social specifics on such issues were often very different in non-Western societies before 1750, but the relative alienness of those pasts to liberal-democratic sensibilities in the present day is often equally pronounced. We're accustomed to shuddering in horror at the prevalence of human sacrifice in some of large-scale pre-Columbian societies, but it's fairly clear that our moral understanding of such practices didn't exist within those historical worlds. It's fairly clear that it took the violence and destructiveness of the Atlantic slave trade to turn the practice of kinship slavery in West and Equatorial African societies into a moral issue instead of an ordinary part of social practice.

I'm not saying here that because modern ethical frameworks did not exist in the past that we cannot judge those past societies as immoral. But I am saying that to judge commits one to a narrative of progress, to an acceptance of the present as superior to the past. The crowds who gathered at hangings in England before 1750 were not barbaric or savage within their own context. They can only become so from within our own contemporary frame of mind, our own understanding of human progress. To successfully curl our lips in disgust at the past in this respect means not just that we accept that we are different than they, but better.

That has some tricky implications when it's brought into the framework of the case that Volokh cited, because here we are dealing not with the past, but with two different framings of the present. I hasten to say that the Iranian case cited is not "backward": in its own way, it's as modern as we are. The world lives in simultaneous modernity now. But it is different, and it's a form of difference that I think at least some of those condemning Volokh might otherwise show extraordinary wariness about judging or attacking. Nobody among those to attack Volokh is quite saying, "Those Muslim barbarians!": they're very carefully keeping their eyes on Volokh himself. But you almost can't attack Volokh in this case without committing to a vision of human progress that suggests the Iranian judicial system and even the ordinary Iranians who participated are in some way barbaric.

The whole discussion has a strange ironic cast to it. Volokh almost sounds like a parody of the classic cultural relativist--make no judgments about the Other, in fact, romantically admire the Other for having a better, older, more elementally human way of living socially. Volokh's strongest critics sound like the classic arch-defenders of the Western tradition: the Other in this case is a barbarian, backward, savage; the sooner that the forces of progress and reason can bring this savagery to heel, the better.

[...]

http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/perma31805.html

My initial response to this was - 'no kidding.'  But then I reflected that on while on a certain level most of Volokh's critics certainly understand this, on another I'm not so sure.  I've often wondered at the bizarrely ahistorical criticisms of the racism of the Founding Fathers. And I remember plenty of critiques of the neo-cons and liberal hawks explicit assumption of the superiority of the Western model of civilization.  To be more precise - of the notions of civilization that grew out of the Enlightment. That even though most of the Left's political philosophy is implicitly rooted in Enlightment attitudes.  It is what leads liberal hawks to support what many on the left see as an imperialist quest to spread Western values and norms around the world.  The left opposition to that project is rooted in a historically well grounded fear of the abuses and hidden agenda's that have generally existed behind such ideas. Abuses so terrible that many on the left find it impossible to conceive of such a project as anything  but evil. And so both sides on this left wing debate feel the other is betraying the most fundamental ideals of the left.

On the record,

House voted 420 to 2

"against torture" as it were.

http://agonist.org/comments/2005/2/7/20454/90513/16#16

But is it real or is it a pretty piece of paper to show constituents?

...Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat, emerged from the session saying Republicans had no serious intention of examining detainee interrogation and detention issues that have drawn increasing public attention.

"It was not good in there. It was probably the least constructive meeting of the intelligence committee that I've ever been to. We are not facing our oversight responsibilities with sufficient seriousness," Rockefeller said....

Go to the post and read the updates.  He makes it very clear that no reasoning will affect his views; that this is a gut moral call.  Well then, ok.  My gut call is that Volokh is morally sick.

How do you balance that notion of justice and of discouragement with moral issues relating to torture?  Do you not 'stoop to the level of torture' even if that means justice isn't done?

The minute you stoop to torture, justice is not done, but vengeance is.

The problem with that is that vengeance is simply another face of might makes right. If we want to do it, we have to admit we've abdicated any higher moral ground than that.

could be purposely deflective, just like other culture wars discussions have been used.

Conservatives know the subject is coming up in the legal arena:

http://agonist.org/story/2005/3/17/16197/1239

and getting people to discuss human feelings about such things under the guise of "what if it happened to you" will make what Bush/Rummy/Gonzales et.al. may have done just look like simple human error ruled by emotion. Especially by using such an egregious example.

Maybe I'm being conspiratorial and paranoid, but I think people should watch for who and what is provoking outrage on blogs. I.E., What's the purpose of raising the issue or the discussion? Is it sincerely trying to affect knowledge or understanding? Any sense they are purposely trying to rile you?

Culture wars issues are the main bread and circuses that the right wing machine uses to deflect on talk radio and blogs et. al. To deflect from what is really going on with people running the country.

It's probably not the case here because he did not make it a prominent post, but I really think people should watch for that type of thing. And I do know it's a case of arta harping on the same ol same ol 'framing' thing again, but I also hate to see manipulation of emotions happen. So apologizing in advance to those who find that tiresome.

Now I don't know where, could be southern Ukraine:)  Most cultures have some history of some variant on lynching but as it happens Volokh's forefathers tended to be the lynchees in Ukraine not the lynchers.

Maybe this isn't purposeful but I betcha somewhere in DC somebody is watching, listening and learning.

They'll do the whole" "I'm outraged by the outrage" thing and use the what if, like you said, to deflect the real issue.

Nice insight.

On Volokh intentionally doing this, well, I would say do not assume that someone that is in the legal profession(s) cannot act like an idiot ruled totally by emotion.

For the last 48 hours been dealing in "reel" life with an attorney who should know better having done shockingly stupid things and then doing further shockingly stupid things to rectify it. Is all because it is dealing with ownership of stuff related to ego to emotion.

Ya know, that kind of relates to JustPlainDave's post somewhere else....it's all interconnected?

...because people, probably outraged, supported the passage of laws prohibiting that type of behavior. The rule of law prevailed (in most cases), and lynchings dissappeared (for the most part).

it took cleaning up the local law enforcement by the Feds to do it.

Here's the main point:

The Ku Klux Klan and other similar groups still exist.

But lynchings stopped.

a down side in raising the torture issue above immediate emotional response. Certainly those in power are now dealing with it on that level. Very rarely does 'knee-jerk' response serve well in a 'war' situation. (Perhaps only with those infamous rare narratives of adrenalin making mom able to lift the car off of the baby?) Just mho.

(I can get nuttier...I think your new Diary post on who reads what papers relates to this. The WSJ is as cool and unemotional as a cucumber.)

Cause I'm not getting it.

rings true to a certain extent.

change of sub-cultures.

Back to my point here:

http://agonist.org/comments/2005/3/17/1156/09860/6#6

Do you want to stop torture, as it is defined by majority of American people? Rule of law.

Or do you want to stop anyone from advocating for or talking about torturing people? Moralizing.

Change of culture takes a long time. You can't force it to happen within a certain time frame; may take a generation or two of efforts.

You think you fear a loss of morals. What you really fear is a change in what acts are permitted by the law. The moral thing is an eternal evolutionary struggle to improve humans. And in those living on the planet any one time, there are a lot of bad apples (and that is all relative, too!)

remind me about it. Coming up on the 2 year anniversary of my own stupid brush with them both.

like to lynch people. But it's not done very often because it's a crime that is prosecuted and enforced.

Matthew Shephard; the case of the black guy in Texas being dragged by a car--see much majority support for the perps there?

Arta, this guy is a Constitutional Law professor at a MAJOR freaking American University. He's liable to get a nomination to the Federal Bench. Can't you see that? Same with Glenn Reynolds. This is so totally over the top and irresponsible. And you know what: the media won't report anything like it. But wait, they'll blow the whole Ward Churchill thing out of all holy-batman proportion but not this. And you know why? Because there is no one on TV that is getting outraged about it like the Conservatives are.

Eachg day I become more convinced that there is only one way to fight this: the same way they are doing it. And I hate that. I really, really do. I want rational, intellectual debate ON THE MERITS but we as a society seem to be in-freaking-capable of that.

Where does the rule of law fit into that?

The execution of Iraqi barbers are lynchings not much different from the lynchings that used to happen in our South. They are meant to put fear into a certain population. They are outside of the system set-up, trying to illegally exercize power:

12 Iraqi barbers executed for Western-style cuts..

posted by artappraiser on 03/18/2005 10:45:19 AM EDT

http://agonist.org/comments/2005/3/17/23528/0572/5#5

and CONTRARILY, from the article, this is actually a sort of defacto "rule of law":

In Falluja, armed mujahedeen ran an Islamic police state for several months before the American invasion last year, punishing beardless men and any women who dared to go out with their heads uncovered.

These make for interesting examples because it relates to what I was saying happened in the U.S. South. The Ku Klux Klan types were intertwined with the law enforcement in the South, they permitted a lot of the stuff to happen, either by being a part of it or looking the other way. You had to have the Feds go in to start the reverse, a higher rule of law. In Falluja, while there was no other government there, it seemed from most of the reports we got was that the majority agreed with a Taliban-style code of morals. That that is their culture, and what they would chose for a rule of law. (I guess we still don't really know if that is true or not.) The U.S. invading was like saying: no, you are going to be part of this country of Iraq whether you like it or not, you are going to submit to the majority rule of law.

you might be surprised Arta. I was in Houston at the time and there were actually KKK rallies in support of the bastards that did it and the citizens of the area showed up to hang out with them.

Still, I do get your point.  

or the way they think.

You can only work at

1. preventing something like he says in that post from becoming law.
   
   
2. preventing someone like him having power to effect law.

As far as affecting other people's morals, how many do you think don't have an opinion on what torture is already? Do you even think the very best preacher can change that?

I don't see much benefit unless the discussion is raised to a level of defining torture for legal purposes.

A post like his is not going to convince anyone that doesn't agree with him already. It should be ridiculed, it is so out of mainstream. It should be ridiculed just like Limbaugh successfully ridicules righteous rage of the left.

This is so ironic, but if you want to do the preacher/change morals thing, I actually see much more benefit in seriously discussing the Scott Peterson case ad the vox populi has currently doing. What they did in that courtroom is much more borderline, many more people would be willing to allow verbal abuse of a criminal. That is where you could change some minds. On finer points.

I've run into several good historians with scary politics.  There are plenty more who I've read and whose work I admire whose political morality leaves   a lot to be desired e.g. Eric Hobsbawm (I really don't like Leninism) I haven't read Volokh's work and I couldn't judge it if I had but other legal scholars seem to think highly of it - that qualifies him to be a prof, end of story.  

He also is no Instapundit. There's a reason why pretty much no left-wing blogger links to Reyndolds except to mock or express outrage - he's a hack.  Volokh isn't and that's why left-wing bloggers tend to respectfully engage him.  His posts are of variable quality - like all blogging - but by and large his contribution to his blog is excellent.  That's why I'll continue reading it.  

But this post has certainly changed my opinion of the man.  Even where I've disagreed strongly in the past - for example detaining 'unlawful combattants' like Padilla and depriving them of rights or the permissibility of torture his arguments have been rational and utilitarian.  That's something I can engage with.  Here they aren't.  I can no more have a rational discussion with someone like Volokh on this topic than I can about the merits of going to war with a full-blown pacifist or about abortion with someone who genuinely sees fetuses as fully human.  We aren't living in the same moral framework.

the need to grandstand to make a point is what I'd like to see.

Discussions like these at the political level are so chained to politics and agendas that is seems you don't get beyond the surface or the mudslinging.  Journalism is often the same, and it trickles down to many conversations here (and even among my friends, and in particular, those still immersed in academia).

I didn't realize he was a CON law prof.  Still, that doesn't mean a lot.  Most of the profs and students I met in law school were really nice and all, but frankly, I come from a small town and I'd place most of my friends back there, many of whome took their last exam in the 12th grade, above these people when it comes to being honest, compassionate and fair.  At the higher level, everybody seems to have an agenda, and some of these profs abuse their ability to 'teach' by pushing their agendas and, often, grandstanding a bit.

The rule of law fits in, in guiding the debate, setting the field of play and the different standards (tenets?) to consider when making a balanced decision.  Almost always, different aspects of the rule of law collide.  Interpreting that collision is the tough part.

Twisting that interpretation to legalise something that shouldn't be, or to push an agenda, or to twist words, is a negative consequence.  This twisting (be it justifying an invasion or characterising certain actions in the oval office (gotta be bipartisan, ya know)), is also part of what turns off so many from politics or from a debate.

So I think the rule of law sets the stage and give you things to pick and choose from in arriving at a working implementation of the law, not unlike balancing constitutional, legislative and judicial interpretation.  Its tough, it is subject to error and manipulation and that's why this kind of debate is so important.  Just need to wake up the majority of the population.

SPK - I've seen some of what you say as fighting it the way they are, in your comments here as they've evolved in more recent times to be more in line with that way "they are doing it."  I have to admit I've been a little disappointed but I'd chalked that up to frustration on your part.  Now that I read this it is easier to understand.  Keep up the good work.

a good term to think of but I believe it stops short.  I think you put that very well .. justice is not vengeance.  BUT, that still begs the question as to how much is justice, and how much is vengeance.  "An eye for an eye" would mean he gets the same thing that he did to those kids.  That is, if he tortured, then shouldn't he be tortured, and isn't that justice, not vengeance?  Might makes right doesn't apply.

So, I'm not sure you can say that the minute you stoop to torture you are into vengeance instead of justice.

Just about no matter what you do, you break away some of that moral ground, take away some of his rights.  Putting him in a jail cell does that.  Executing him takes away more.  Torturing him takes away even more.

The question is how far do you go.

I was thinking of Reyndolds.

Boy, am I embarrassed.

And I agree a lot. I'm comfortable engaging people who are at least rational and utilitarian as you put it. I may walk away from the conversation frustrated but I still felt like I got something of value from it. I enjoy intellectual sparring. But this does really go over the line.

has reached the right temperature yet.

What are they going to do, ask the frog?

boiled...something about it never realizing what hit it, because of the quickness?

but it's usually understood on the level of "useful metaphor"...

The story is that if you put a frog in a pot of hot water, it will try to jump out. But if you put it in a pot of cool water and gradually turn up the heat, it never notices the gradual increase in temperature - until it dies.

Of course, the immediate applicability here is that if a 1999 American was transported through time into 2005, he would understandably ask "What happened?"

The America of 2005 has little remaining sense of how the America of 1999 would have flinched in horror and revulsion from it. Five short years of demagoguery to essentially dismantle many core American values.

Then they'd ask - "You folks had the 'duty watch' - why didn't you try to stop it?"

Sorry, it was a bit of a cryptic reference, but I thought I'd seen a few other people use the metaphor here and assumed it was an understood part of the lexicon... my bad.

We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.

- Cardinal Newman

"At what point shall we expect the approach of  danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic  military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of  Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in  their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink  from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

- The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume I, "Address  Before the Young Men's Lyceum,of Springfield, Illinois (January 27, 1838), p. 109.

Still, I think he is raising this particular egregious example at an incredibly opportune moment for the unrelated U.S. gov. torture story. Can't be helped, I guess. Memes suggest related memes...

We're absolutely certain that this man was not mentally ill (and therefore might have been more appropriately loathed - but pitied and incarcerated)?

We established that definitively before we gave the "thumbs up" to torturing him to death, did we? Because I'd hate to think we were that heedless, primitive and criminally bloodthirsty.

Instead we assume he was sane and capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong (we know that Iranian courts are that sophisticated, progressive and modern that we trust their judgement) ...

...rather than confronting the fact that if he was mentally incapable of knowing right from wrong - what we just approved of is the moral equivalent of a mob slowly and horribly torturing and executing an animal - a bear or a wolf or a lion - that killed twenty children.

You wouldn't do it to a wolf.

You wouldn't do it to a bear.

You wouldn't do it to a lion.

You wouldn't do it to a dog.

You'd shoot it and be done with it and get on with grieving.  What point to cause it cruelty? That won't bring back one child, "teach the lion a lesson", forestall the next "lion", improve your sense of self as a people - or in fact do anything whatsoever but make you people who have renounced their humanity.

If America hadn't fallen so completely into the power of pathological demagogues everyone would see that simple fact in a heartbeat. Volokh gave his thumbs up without even asking the question. And that's merely one of a few.

Perhaps it's better not to be troubled with issues like that - after all, we're entering an era of moral simplicity and clarity now - aren't we?

"What is all this talk of the truth and clarity? The truth is almost never clear, and clarity always does some violence to the truth".

- Herman Hesse, "Aphorisms"

I don't know if Aesop's fox really said "Those grapes were probably sour" either, but it's still a pretty good metaphor :)

I argued that you can't change people's feelings about stuff like this easily.

I also argued that conservatives cynically use culture wars issues to rile and distract.

It's tough when people play games with the news. I just think people should be aware of what much of this stuff often is: game playing.

If you like politics, it's fascinating infotainment figuring it all out. If you like to be informed, you have to remove yourself from it from time to time?