John just thinking . . . .

American policy currently avoids the term “Islamic terrorism” and “Islamic radical” to—if I understand the president’s position—avoid appearing to be at war with Islam. Republicans, though not themselves addicted to calling a spade a spade, see the Administration’s persnickety word crafting to be indicative of weakness, as if we aren’t quite sure whether the terrorists are Muslims or Methodists.  

So while Republicans and Libertarians are attacking what they see as the president’s inaction (or hiding while Rudy Giuliani “rages against the dying of the [spot]light”*), Democrats are scampering around deciding how to argue the point. If the president’s reasoning doesn’t catch on, they don’t want to be caught on the wrong side of the argument. And after all, the Islamic State’s profession of faith is a just a wrongheaded perversion of Islam. It isn’t the real thing. Right?

OK, I’ll give the president the benefit of the doubt as to whether refusing to verbally tie terrorism to Islam is a tactic needed to keep Islamic countries—those that are ostensibly our allies—in the fold. After all, if we are against Islam, as possibly signaled by linking radicalism and Islam, Saudi Arabia and friends might be offended. I don’t mean to sound snarky; there may be serious, even judicious geopolitical reasons for a little obfuscation here. The president might be correct or not; I can’t tell. But what is more important is that his detractors can’t either.

But just between us bloggers, we’ve no diplomatic niceties to worry about. And in view of that, let me say that the radical, extreme Muslims of ISIL, Al-Qaida, and the like are just that, Islamic terrorists. I do understand that all Muslims are not terrorists; I even understand that no more than an incredibly small percentage of Muslims are terrorists. But that minority status in no way stops them from being real Muslims, nor does it stop the minority from being a tail that wags the dog, as terrorist groups have historically often done.

The church of my youth claimed to be the only real Christians. Baptists, Catholics, and Mormons were perversions of Christianity. Similarly, the Catholic Church saw itself as the real Christianity and Protestants the perversion. Only a few years ago after I referred to the horrid acts of Christians in the Dark Ages, a close Baptist friend let me know that those things were done by Catholics, not Christians!

So exactly how do we as non-Muslims decide which Islam is the real Islam and which the fake? In fact, how can Muslims decide that except by using the egocentric solution—a method not known for its integrity?

It seems popular among Western leaders to say that the Islamic State is a perversion of Islam, therefore not really Islamic. As if to prove that point, the theological subtlety was cleared up by President Obama when earlier this month he assured us that “no God condones terror.” (George W. Bush got us accustomed to having a Pastor-in-Chief, so perhaps I should give Obama a little room on this. . . . but I won’t.) Oh, that helps a lot.

I wonder where he got that sentiment about gods and terror. He surely didn’t get it from the Bible or the Koran, each chock full of God-condoned human violence on large scales as well as small. Like the shameful Viet Nam War statement that “we have to destroy a village to save it,” Christians have used terror, mass killings, and vicious treatment to spread or reinforce their idea of godliness. My point is not that Christianity and Islam are or have been equally cruel–and certainly not in the present age—but that the notion that no god condones terror is patently ludicrous. 

(Parenthetically . . . should we have used, when applicable, phrases like Catholic Inquisition, Baptist lynching, Anglican persecution, Calvinist witch-killing, and other similar pairings of violence and perpetrators?)  

In short, there is no way to distinguish between real Islam and perverted Islam. They are both perversions of reason and that, in the long run, is the more salient travesty. We are left with (a) the unsatisfying definition that Islam is anything someone self-declared as a Muslim says it is and (b) in the late 20^th and early 21^st Centuries, religion-linked terrorism is almost entirely a Muslim phenomenon.

[*I so much wish I’d thought of the “raging” quote. But, alas, I must credit the creativity of Wayne Barrett or Paleo (sorry, I can’t be more specific).]

I know. Stupid question. Meaningless to ask; impossible to answer. To a biased observer, however, the question (or allegation, if so worded) is enough to get the intended point across; it is much like being charged as a child abuser. “Have you stopped beating your wife” is a similar tactic. Armed with only a healthy lack of ethics, one can destroy an opponent. Playing to a crowd of partisans whose interest in truth is overpowered by interest in gaining political points yields a cheap political win.

Rudy Giuliani played that dirty game last week, questioning President Obama’s Christianity and his devotion to the country. It wasn’t just a slip of the tongue, for the former “America’s mayor” kept up his unscrupulous attack even until today.

On Sunday news shows, several Republican stalwarts, some seeking their party’s nomination for president skillfully avoided answering a journalist’s question to share their judgments on Giuliani’s statements. The reactions of most of those asked (given my limited exposure to interviews) expressed either no opinion or a tepid one, quickly followed by a change of topic. After all, Rudy loves America, knows the intricacies of terrorism, and is understandably upset by Obama’s failure to deal decisively with Islamic terrorists. The unstated, though clearly implied, allegation is that if Romney had won six years ago, things would be entirely different.

There’d have been no Benghazi, no “leading from behind,” no loss of Syria, no executive action on immigration, no IRS politicization, and so forth. Well, it could be true; all might have been milk and honey. Maybe. We’ll never know. But the allegation is a tactic which, wearing the garb of righteousness, cannot be disproven. The only available guide we have is the old hiring maxim: the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. President Bush’s administration, brandishing the sword of state committed the country to a couple of trillion dollars, thousands of lives, and a thoroughly upset Middle East balance of power in order to deal with a lesser volume of terrorism. Perhaps it would be unfair to ask how that came out.

My distress in watching the Republican politicos’ slimy behavior was (a) partially that I know Democrats can play the same games, but (b) mostly that Americans apparently cannot see the obfuscation or, at least, cannot see it when it comes from our own partisan corner.

In a political discussion last year I accused my correspondent (politely, I hope) of intentionally seeking out biased news sources. He confronted me with a question that—if I may translate loosely—was “OK, wise guy, where can one find unbiased sources?”

Whatever our philosophical differences, he’d gone right to the crux of the matter. As convinced as I was that his choice of news input had been thoroughly biased, on this larger question I was as stumped as he. As most of us do, of course, I have news sources I trust more than others. But I’d never been challenged to explain why my favorites were not simply those that fit my biases—the same failure of diligence I’d accused him of. Embarrassing.

The question of unslanted political information is a vexing one. Dealing with it poorly not only endangers the promise all fair and liberty-loving people hold dear, but spits in the face of whatever shreds are left of American exceptionalism.

Our founders and writers of the Constitution envisioned a country with unparalleled suffrage for that time, flawed to be sure, but subsequently described with characteristic élan by Abraham Lincoln as “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Thomas Jefferson and others pointed out that vesting the authority of a body politic in its citizenry could not work long if they failed to be informed and to participate. The founders’ reach exceeded their grasp as growing pains made clear that Lincoln’s beautiful expression did not apply to blacks and women. Further, even among the enfranchised, the requirement that citizens be well informed was handicapped immediately, as distressingly played out in the bitter presidential campaign of 1800 in which disinformation was splattered across the land.

Our news sources today are both more immediate and more numerous than ever before. But a constant stream of information doesn’t mean we are better informed, no more than standing in front of a fire hose means our thirst is better slaked. News sources themselves are motivated to get our attention and to stay in business. Moreover, no matter how fair-minded their intent, economy of space and time requires them to decide which news to present and which to disregard. Their choices alone cannot avoid implying this is important and that is not, even if reflected in so unavoidable a way as selecting some news for the front page or the top of the hour. How can it even be possible to make those determinations totally free of pre-existing values about their importance?

Pardon my pessimism, but I’m convinced that the bias problem is and will remain integral to the dissemination of public information. The problem is only negligibly addressed by switching the dial or buying a different newspaper. The frightening truth may well be that having accurate, unbiased, and available information is unattainable. Oh, some types of information exist for which we rarely need to be concerned about bias. But public decisions are awash in values, fears, hopes, loves, and hates such that the accuracy of news, say, on police brutality, minimum wage, political negotiations, Keynesian effects, and estimated throw-weight of Russian missiles is always suspect.

So what do we do? It seems safe to assume that politicians, press, and other possible informants with access to accurate information do exist (thought often even that is not true.). With some exceptions, then, we can say there actually is a reality to be described and persons somewhere who possess that information to describe it. That’s worth saying because there are those who take the position that there is “your truth” and “my truth,” but no absolute truth. I disagree with that hyper-relativistic stand; I’ve not given up on the “fact of facts,” and am unwilling to retreat into a post-modernist, info-nihilist position that there is no truth, just opinions. At any rate, my assumption puts the onus on unbiased transmission of information, not its existence.

Transmission, by its nature, includes a sender, a message, and a receiver. In this post, I’m not concerned here with what a sender should do, but how we receivers can be minimally influenced by senders’ biases. Here are some of the tactics many fair-minded persons take to one degree or another. Perhaps the times, marked by widespread partisan extremes, require that we get better at them:

Opposing sources. Wisely, they seek information from opposing sources, particularly ones they don’t agree with, remembering that the effect of one-sidedness is cumulative. It is not that one must always avoid sources one agrees with, but it is best to treat them as a person given to overweight should treat cake and ice cream. Indulge yourself, but keep in mind the tendency to be caught irretrievably in the vortex, never again to emerge with one’s independent judgment intact.

Faux accumulation. They try to avoid what I might call “cumulative bias,” that is, allowing one biased position to be the basis for the next—thereby assuming the first to be true—and so on until the structure of biased thinking masquerades as a framework built on fact. It is as if previous arguments, even inadequate ones, stand as evidence for ensuing ones, so that the greater number of previous ones, the stronger the faux evidence appears. Written as an equation, this is like 0+0+0+0=4. If that is convincing, 0+0+0+0+0=5 is even more so.

Improbable perfection. They attempt to avoid a source that is unable even to consider weaknesses in its own arguments. There are precious few positions taken or interpretations rendered for which there are no downsides or, at least, reasonable counter arguments. We can watch for errors made in topics on which we ourselves are well-read, since if our expertise discerns some of the source’s pronouncements to be wrong, we know we should consider that more errors are occurring in topics on which we cannot expertly judge.

Arguments ad hominem. They recognize that shoring up an argument with ad hominem references is a weak argument. We have a human tendency to personalize, as if it contributes content to an argument. Sources that demonize or canonize cannot be trusted to stick to relevant facts when they get a chance to take cheap shots safely.

Conflict of interest. They suspect commentary rendered by persons who have something to gain financially or otherwise. Think Congressional hearings on the danger of smoking or on banking regulations.

Dogmatic belief. They know that although enthusiastic, true believer advocacy for an idea or course of action is not therefore biased, the probability exists for its overlooking contrary evidence or assigning greater certainty than would a disinterested evaluator.

Irrelevant, biasing criticisms. They dismiss criticisms that are used not to inform but to themselves bias or agree with biases. Consider Mr. Romney’s income tax rate and Mr. Obama’s “you didn’t build that” statement, both removed from context and used to smear even though neither was relevant to the issues.

Expert-choosing. They know to ask why one expert is chosen over another to support a news source’s point of view. We expect disagreements among experts, but the field of 95% of experts cannot be represented by the contrary (though possibly still accurate) view of 5%.

Skepticism. They can employ an unhostile “show me” attitude of simply honoring straight talk and unbent facts, even while avoiding cynicism. Perhaps this is the general, overall strategy that runs through all the other tactics.

That list and associated tactics used regularly by many is not remarkable, possibly provoking (and deserving) a “duh” reaction. But its more bothersome shortcoming is obliviousness to the elephant in the room: The list takes for granted that as citizens we are motivated to find accurate, unbiased information and are willing to be fatigued hyperskeptics in order to find the needle of truth in all the haystacks. However, the truth is more likely that we’re willing to settle on a source we can count on to at least massage our tired biases. Staying vigilant is just too much work for citizens who have other important things to do in their lives.

What’s omitted in the list is the weakness of assuming that we actually want unbiased information. My conjecture after spending some time worrying over this matter is that our need to hear our own biases protected and presented back to us is so great that we can confidently postulate that on the whole our stated desire for the unvarnished facts is a psychological cover for not wanting unbiasedness after all.

I have a strong respect for the marketplace as the default mover of goods and services whether its use is in economics or in ideas. Where there is a demand, there will develop a supply at a price. So it is with news sources. My proposition is that (a) if citizens strongly demanded unbiased news sources, then over time they would be supplied, and (b) widespread citizen apathy (or downright rejection) about unbiased sources could be predicted to lead to the situation that we actually have. That is doubtless an insufficient proof for my hypothesis, but it may be a weighty indication.

We know our human need is to hear things we wish to hear and our desire to re-order whatever we hear into an agreement with our biases. Scientific studies of perception suggest not only that we do that, but that to some degree it is impossible for us not to do it. A huge need for truth is needed to overcome apathy, fatigue, and beloved or comfortable biases. We the people are conditioned, socialized, propagandized to seek like minds, especially about controversial issues or ideas. Our upbringing, our gender, our chronology, our ideologies and most of all Madison Avenue (or whatever passes for marketing) push us in certain directions, and rarely is that direction toward a commitment to truth.

Maybe, in the longer run, the long arc of history bends toward integrity of reception as well as transmission (to borrow and adapt shamelessly from Martin Luther King), but I despair in my lifetime of seeing that come to pass.

Today across America citizens go to the polls to choose a select group from among themselves to make governmental decisions on their behalf. We cast votes for a special few not only because there are so many governmental decisions to be made, but also  because these decisions require dedicated, specialized study. The institution of voting exists for citizens to choose persons whose values, intelligence, and discipline citizens can best trust to make those decisions. They, then, make national (or lower jurisdictions) judgments in the form of laws within which the governmental apparatus and citizens themselves must behave. The critical separation of roles is held in place according to a foundation document (the Constitution)—the stability of which is protected by a difficult amendment process.

As is true with all human invention, there are parts of the process that can go awry, no matter how genius its conception. The first, of course, is that the design of assigned roles and rules are themselves not up to the gargantuan task. Reaching a decision with a group of only two—as in a marriage, business partnership, or simply co-workers deciding where to go to lunch—is frequently difficult, much less in a town of 5,000 or a nation of 320,000,000. Yet decisions must be made. When not made explicitly, many if not most decisions are nevertheless implicitly made by non-verbal behavior itself. The latter is not subjected to the same level of scrutiny and debate as the former, thereby enabling deciders to appear blameless for the outcome. 

All of which is to say that persons of unparalleled care, wisdom, integrity, and intelligence are necessities in making the decision system work well. When all the roles in a system are appropriately designed, those at the top are charged with the longest term, highest policy breadth decisions. Not only must they understand what to decide and what to leave to others, the citizenry must understand as well. For example, as long as some body of citizens is calling for the Congress to intervene in, say, a Terri Schiavo case, it is hard for members of Congress to stay appropriately out of the matter.

Of course, if the elected officials don’t understand the principle themselves, it takes very little pressure for them to be drawn in. In fact, the political payoff renders it inviting for officials themselves to lead the way into inappropriateness. Each such elected official behavior damages the decision system and, thus, the republic, probably more than do most instances of treason.

If for no other reason, each official participating in damaging behavior like this should be eliminated from office. But, of course, that won’t happen. Voters, by and large, neither look for that level of integrity, know it is critical, nor would vote against its most extreme violators. Unless one is prepared to say that massive expenditures on political ads do not make a difference, voters can be counted on to be, well, in a word, stupid. Pity that the “greatest country in the world” haughty refrain fails to notice the shallow, fatuous focus of political campaigning.

Our country faces huge issues: global climate change, massive income gaps, spread of Islamic terrorism, failure of public education, effects of the Citizens United ruling, and more. Yet these have not been the focus of current political campaigning. Politicians mouth politically correct clichés and platitudes. They summon up pious statements about immediate, minor issues in the news just yesterday, as if demonstrating voters to be dupes marks a mature democracy. It is as if campaigning against waste and corruption is even distantly related to doing anything about mis-governing if elected; it is as if campaigning against high unemployment is related to solving the problem; and so forth. Voters watch and agree with ads by their “own side” and find fault with ads by the “other side” even when they are equally culpable. We vote, in part, on which candidate can show the cleverest frivolity; the search for statesmen and stateswomen is embarrassingly missing.

I voted in this election, but not happily. I had no joy of participating in a time-honored, proud institution. I did not do so with assurance, or even hope, that candidates I voted for are fit to govern. I did so because, while candidates’ lack of integrity is bad, candidates’ lack of integrity plus no voting would be worse. Or maybe, it was just to hang onto a shred of optimism in a system where even shreds are hard to find.

Can I say America is the world’s greatest nation? Except in military and economic might, no. In fact, in comparison to the promise it once had due to brilliant, system-building founders seizing fresh, 18^th century opportunities, it is a colossal disappointment. The conduct of our elections, then officials’ performance after having won, are a study in inanity, not the “shining city on a hill” we’ve had the chance to be, and arguably what we actually were two centuries ago.  

Ebola may yet cause a widespread effect in America, though it’s not at all clear that it will. Prevention and treatment have seemed to be slow off the mark, expert opinion has been modified, and the country has teetered between its usual preoccupation with TV reality shows and overreaction to ‘real’ reality. (I know; the need for reiterative wording is a depressing comment.) Meanwhile those we elect to national political office are playing their well-practiced role of partisan noisemaking and righteous posturing.

It was hard for me to watch the piety parade in the Congressional hearing Thursday without thinking that the wrong people are, as news sources put it, being “grilled,” taking time from their important work to participate in political theater. Mind you, my distress has nothing to do with a deadly Dallas mistake nor overly optimistic comfort offered by the CDC. To be sure, errors were made; errors will be made; humans make errors. The very fact that a learning curve is steep is itself testimony that most mistakes happen early in a process.

Taking a hard look at them in the service of further improvement is in order. But a witch hunt within days of the beginning of Ebola as a domestic issue is due not to officials’ anxiety about national health, but to their concerns about an election less than three weeks away. Make no mistake, the hearing and the flood of political comments have little to do with good government, but with political candidates’ appeal to an unwise electorate, the millions duped into thinking their representatives are riding white horses to Americans’ rescue.

Some Democrats and more Republicans are shamefully questioning whether CDC Director Thomas Frieden, M.D. should be relieved of duty. That silliness would be laughable were it not so irresponsible. Do Americans know that Dr. Frieden is a skilled administrator, capable of heading a large and important organization? No, we do not, for we don’t have the necessary data on his performance nor, just as important, on the nature of delegation within which he works.

My experience with government as a governance theorist and consultant leads me to doubt the managerial integrity of the system under which he and other officials operate, regardless of who is in the White House. It tends to be sufficiently slipshod as to render almost impossible the separation of poor individual performance from incompetent system design, thereby rendering politics rather than job performance the arbiter of success.

But that is not the immediate issue now. Under the best of conditions, the public’s being unable to judge the director is not surprising. Given what we know, whether he is wonderful or marginal is not discernable and the fact that mistakes have been made is no guide. That a head should roll if everything hasn’t gone perfectly is simply a sophomoric conclusion. The upshot is that we are unable to make a reasoned judgment of Dr. Frieden’s ability during this predicament. The managerial system is too disorderly and the time has been far too short.

The relevant point, however, is that the pontificating elected officials and political candidates cannot make a reasoned assessment either. “Have you no decency?” needs to be asked again. The futility of forging ahead with judgments and innuendos despite their ignorance in a hastily called committee hearing demonstrates that it is not Dr. Frieden who should be grilled and possibly fired, but his inept judges.

A friend directed me to a “preppers” website-whether as a joke or a friendly warning, I’m not sure. If you don’t know what preppers are, you’re in the same ignorant state I was in until a few hours ago.

Preppers are people who focus on preparing for a world gone mad, broken, or just broke. They point out that we non-preppers are shortsighted, heavily dependent on everything to keep working, and basically oblivious to the risks of modern life. They remind us that (I will use unverified statistics here) 44 percent of Americans are “just one unexpected event away from financial disaster” and 55% have less than three days’ supply of food at home. Moreover, if the electrical grid went down, 21% think they’d survive less than a week and 75% believe they’d not live more than two months.

Are these stats accurate? Actually, it doesn’t matter. As even non-preppers would admit, the world seems to be increasingly unstable-our complicated systems being as vulnerable as they are magnificent. I-or rather, they-know that virtually all of us do not grow our own food and slightly fewer of us would know how to do so. We don’t dig our own coal or drill for our own oil…and even if we are green we wouldn’t know how to build windmills much less solar panels. Well, the list goes on and to no avail, since our awareness of such possibilities and our lack of preparation for them is not in question; only our resolve to do something about the risk.

And risk is what this is about. Can the electrical grid collapse, a meteor blow away Chicago, or a new virus wipe out 20% of us? Of course. Will they? Maybe so in the long run of centuries, but almost certainly not in the next five years. Human beings are not good with calculating life’s risks, as statisticians keep telling us. But we do make an effort to calculate them, at least roughly. So how much will I disrupt my life to protect from what extent of impairment and for which levels of probability? My wife and I chose to drive a few hundred miles recently knowing full well that there was a probability X that one or both of us faced severe injury or death as a price the universe often imposes for taking that risk.

Similarly, most of us choose to accept the risk that in the next few decades there will be a bloody revolution that tears the intricately designed systems of our civilization apart. To most of us, the probability is too low even though the devastation would be catastrophic. At a large scale political level, we choose to take our chances with global climate change rather than alter our comfortable energy policies and practices. We don’t do much better with electric power grids and that isn’t even controversial. Most of our choices are beneath the radar of conscious, studied, debated thought. Most of us do not give these matters the focused consideration that preppers do.

In reading scores of preppers’ comments earlier today, I couldn’t help but notice they talked mostly about their internecine disagreements (when they weren’t engaging in various name-calling and poorly written, uneducated squabbles). I saw no substantial debate of what was otherwise a rich area for discussion, which tipped me off that preppers operate in an intellectual fog pretty much like the rest of us. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was not impressed with their intelligence. But it would be so easy to lose the baby along with the bath water that I want to retain what their dialogue and, yes, sometimes their craziness can bring to our attention and that is this:

At an individual or family level, most actions to protect against large consequence/low probability system failures are either futile or offer only temporary salvation. However, at a high political level-that is, the level at which a far more distant time horizon should be the daily concern-potential actions are not nearly so pointless. In other words, differing levels of organization should attack different levels of issues. For example, individual citizen cannot make a decision to go to war or protect against an errant meteor, but the national level can and should. Similarly, a board of directors, the CEO, and the shop lathe operator should be attending to entirely different levels of issues. Nothing esoteric about the hierarchy of issues (though frankly, in practice it isn’t understood all that well).

Preppers may not have much to teach individuals, but a great deal to teach politicians and bureaucrats at the highest levels. Oh, wait, those “responsible” politicians and bureaucrats seem to wallow in matters of far lower level than that to which I refer. Just watch Congress operate in any administration. In a very disturbing sense, at the highest levels of government, nobody is minding the shop. I want to say more about that in a future post, but for now I need to correct my statement of merely two sentences back: Preppers can teach us as individuals a very important lesson, though it isn’t the lesson to abandon our homes and go to the mountains. It is the unintended lesson of what we should expect-nay, demand-from politicians and lofty bureaucrats. Thus it is that warnings even from crazies need not only win converts to their small cults and regularly amuse the rest of us. Their evangelical warnings can serve to remind us that contemplation and deliberation about highly catastrophic yet highly improbable events should comprise much, perhaps most, of the agenda and problem-solving of elected officials and governmental executives.

[Comments on, challenges to, or requests about this or any other posting can be sent to johnjustthinking@bmi.net.]

I am in constant distress about politics no matter who is winning, who is being exposed, and even who has policies that delight me. Political discourse in the United States has deteriorated to a point I’ve never seen. Before my lifetime, it was pretty terrible during other times; around 1800 comes to mind as one instance. At any rate, my distress is that political arguments—as necessary as they are invigorating—are hollow and misinformed when they could be and should be profound.

I make no claim that the American scene is representative of other countries, though that in itself would be an interesting inquiry. My observation is that American politics has deteriorated into a team sport wherein the aim is to win at all costs over the other team. Cherry-picking, spinning the facts, disinformation, and outright lying have become the norm. Not only do politicians and other partisans join in that mockery of important issues, but the general public has come to accept it instead of revile it. If a political point is to be made, we are ready to tolerate, excuse, and even exult in untruths by our “own side,” while trigger-happy to pounce on behavior of the “other side.” The mendacity we once ascribed to politicians is true of the ordinary voter.

One side makes charges about the perfidy or incompetence of the other side, using whatever weapon is at hand. Truth—as observed about war by U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson in 1917—is the first casualty of politics. One of the virtues of transparency is that conduct of the public’s business is open to inspection and judgment. But having the access and wherewithal to make such judgments imposes an accountability for honesty and fairness in the judging. In politics, however, like often in business, human beings seem more inclined toward back alley brawls than reasoned debate.

One reader of this blog sent me a data-rich condemnation of President Obama a few weeks ago. It was replete with graphs and lists to prove the horrid depths to which the republic has fallen since Mr. Obama took office. My reader, to his credit, recognized that “the graphs may be somewhat inaccurate,” though was sufficiently moved by them to add that “they are close enough to describe a bleak situation.” In sharing my thoughts on the matter, for simplicity I’ll speak of the Accuser and the Accused; the phenomenon of this elevated street fighting is not just a matter of the present Democrats and the present Republicans—the government and the shadow government in a parliamentary setting. I’ll use these terms to stand for individuals or collections of individuals that call attention to reputed misdeeds (Accuser) and those that defend against accusations of misdeeds (Accused).

First critical proviso. There is always an unspoken assumption that weakens the Accuser’s case even if the condemnatory data are accurate: The assumption is that the Accuser would have done things better, avoided mistakes, or been more honest than the Accused. That is, the Accuser implies that things would not be so bad if the Accuser had been or were now in office.

Of course, there are no data to prove such an assumption about what would have or might have been. There can’t be. So no matter how honest the accusations are, they do not overcome this significant weak point in the Accuser’s argument. That Achilles’ heel does not mean the Accuser’s claims are bogus, but it does mean that it can never be fairly used to endorse the Accuser. No matter how true and how condemnatory, then, accusations don’t show that the Accuser would have been or done better.

Second critical proviso. The Accuser normally conflates accusations that can be made of government performance in general (that is, of all administrations) with performance peculiar to the accused administration. When not being partisan, we all carp about government ineptitude. We criticize government workers for their incompetence and laziness (though in my opinion unjustifiably). But when we want to make a partisan point, we are quick to blame any perceived government malperformance on the targeted party in power. So when our intent is to blame one side, we appropriate our general government criticisms to that end.

Further, if there are societal trends that have nothing to do with party, the Accuser will use that against the Accused where possible. For example, some claim that in the past century there is a trend for economic recovery from recessions to take increasingly longer. (I am not making a case for that here, just using it to illustrate a point.) If so, the current recovery is prolonged in part due to that trend as much perhaps as due to either the depth of the Bush recession or subsequent Obama actions. Another trend is that effects of the increasingly computerized and roboticized workplace are inflicting huge changes in labor conditions and job displacement. Many jobs lost will never be restored regardless of economic recovery, thereby extending workers’ pain somewhat like the industrial revolution did in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It is easy to see how so massive a trend would be used against whatever administration is unlucky enough to be in power when the effects are being felt.

Conclusion. The ubiquitous accusations from Accusers against Accused in political discourse can never be taken at face value even if all the Accuser’s accusations are truthful. I have to this point assumed that the Accuser’s accusations are always accurate and honest. But what if, in addition to the natural fog of politics we add intentional bending of the facts and outright perfidy? Those considerations I want to address later in a second posting on this topic.

[Comments on, challenges to, or requests about this or any other posting can be sent to johnjustthinking@bmi.net.]

When I was a child growing up in America’s south, I could be forgiven for misspelling “damn Yankee” as one word; after all, that’s the sound that conveyed our intent, damnyankee. “God-given rights” also long ago acquired that single word status in America. Politicians and regular folks could demonstrate with each articulation that they were God-fearing Christians (there’s another term that bears examination). I suppose, if pressed, they’d recognize a distinction between rights they say are God-given and rights that are human-given. I’m willing to bet, however, that they’d have a hard time saying which is which and probably never gave it any thought.

The Enlightenment popularized the idea that people have or should have rights. It also shared some of that period with the spread of deism. The mixture is interesting and as observable in America’s founding fathers as anywhere else. After all, a deistic god—which was the meaning intended in documents like the Declaration of Independence by no small portion of our founders—doesn’t intervene in human affairs including, one would have to assume, the specifications of personal rights and responsibilities. Of course, it would be naïve to think when political figures use terms that they worry much about philosophical discipline. It should not surprise us that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson said some seemingly inconsistent things about deities, churches, clergy, and scripture over their impressive careers.

At any rate, the popular term and belief in America that rights are God-given begs the question about this particular god’s existence and our ability to know what he/she/it had to say on the matter. Whatever message the faithful discerned must have been a bit foggy about the role of women, divorcing, remarrying, political dissent, and a few other embarrassing items . . . either that or God is frustratingly fickle about such topics. I’d think that when you ascribe your own predilections to a divine source, you’d better get it right rather than just mindlessly slinging a slick term around.

I’ll cut to the chase: Human beings have no rights, that’s no rights, that are not given by other human beings. The rights don’t come from God, the Orion Nebula, or the Ten Commandments. The term God-given is a snare and delusion, telling something about the speaker but nothing at all about the authorship of his or her advocated set of rights.

What societies ascribe to gods is actually a human decision—a pretty obvious conclusion since different believers yank their puppet-God’s tongue in different directions. We pretend that God did the talking when in reality we’ve merely cloaked our own choices in robes of divinity. Our suppositions about God enable us to pretend our choices are those of the universe. What rights humans should have is an important human phenomenon and calls for a reasoned human decision.

The reasoned part is the sticking point. We don’t reason all that well when ancient texts rule our lives. Their provenance is confusing and their intent is to please a supposed deity rather than to inform our living on this planet together. There is nothing to recommend the Abrahamic Jehovah, Jesus, or Saul/Paul of Tarsus as a guide to rights, as any former slave could express more convincingly than I.