Dick Cheney was famous for his "One Percent Doctrine", described by Ron Suskind in his book of the same name:
If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response.
And yet, curiously, that same attitude did not apply to the threat of global warming, which was known about as far back as the 1970s, and theorized in the late 1800s. While those outside the climate science community have been artfully confused by a denialist strategy, no one can credibly claim that experts regard the chance of global warming at less than 1%. Nor, indeed, has the chance been seen as that remote since at least the 1980s. So why no 1% doctrine there?
Setting aside the question of answers for the moment, the question itself is most illuminating. First of all, how come it has not been asked very often? Suskind's book was a NYT bestseller. The question--if not some variation--is a fairly obvious one. So why hasn't it been asked quite doggedly? Secondly, what does it mean to have risk formulated this way? How does it comport with professional risk analysis and risk management? How does it compare with traditional practices in the field of insurance? Or other fields where risks must be assessed and resonded to? Whatever the reasons involved in why this doctrine was formulated, just how different is it?
A rough answer to these questions is fairly straightforward: It's quite different. The normal way of calculating potential losses is to multiply the potential loss by the probabilty. A 1% probability of even a terrible loss is still enormously different from a 100% probability. What's more, treating it as a certainty would entail acting in a manner that ignores any costs involved in the potential over-reaction. We may not know what those costs might be. They could be quite high, or they could be relatively trvial. But if we do not even stop to consider them, then we are not even attempting to engage in a rational process. This can be especially disastrous if we actually increase the probabily of what we fear by assuming it to already be certain. There is also, of course, the chance that concentrating on one improbably threat may distract us from attended to other, more imminant and credible threats.
Thus, whatever the reasons for Cheney's approach embodied in the "one percent doctrine", it is perfectly clear that it is not a normal procedure for those accustomed to dealing with threats, it does not accurately assess the threat involved, nor does it consdier the existence of additional threats that it may actually enhance or even create where they do not presently exist.
With those problematic aspects of the "one percent doctrine" already established, we can now turn to the questions of "Why?" And here there is already a fairly rich literature.
I intend to present some diaries about situationism next weekend, and to help set the stage for them, here's a brief video from the National Science Foundation (via the Situationist blog)dealing with situationism, and social cognition, with special attention to authoritarianism, stressing a point that Robert Altemeyer made that is often overlooked: that Milgrim's experiments with obedience are but one source of evidence among many that situational influences are far more powerful in generating authoritarian compliance than any of the internal factors he studied. This doesn't mean that authoritarian traits are irrelevant. But it does mean that intelligent social engineering can help prevent situations like developed at Abu Grhaib. And as such, it's also an appropriate 4th of July weekend reflection on the nature of freedom, and the role of social architecture in protecting and preserving it.
Rebecca Saxe is the Carole Middleton Career Development Professor in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT:
I was distressed and sometimes terrified by what was happening during the Bush years; particularly 2002 to 2006 as I watched Congressional Republicans collude with the White House to fashion an American brand of authoritarianism.
That trajectory was changed by the 2006 and 2008 elections.
An essential part of our mission those two elections was, in fact, to stop - or at least slow - this right wing surge which dominated the first decade of the 21st century.
This year is different. The brawl is on among moderate, liberal and progressive Democrats. (This can make for quite an internal struggle for those of us who have a moderate, a liberal and a progressive living within a single brain).
Maybe we do need to beat the hell out of each other over what Obama, his crew and Congressional leaders did wrong. And maybe various constituency groups do need to act out their outrage and frustration. But probably, at some point, we're going to need a truce in order to fight our true adversary, those clever and devious Republican.
A demoralized and withdrawn Democratic base plays right into the hands of our opponents and legitimizes and reinforces the Republican strategy of twisting facts, blocking reform and disparaging the president. Do we really want to reward their bad behavior and give up ground to the likes of Mitch McConnell, Jeff Sessions, John Boehner, Eric Canter, Tim Pawlenty and - oh yea - Sarah Palin?
I don't think so. I'm optimistic that Democratic activists are going to get over our disappointments and unite.
And one more thing...
As we continue to argue, posture and protest, is it possible that we try to lighten up at least a little bit? Yes, there's a lot at stake. But if politics and policy become too much of a drag, we'll all just want to take our ball and go home.
The left can't do the "everyone repeat the same talking point" thing, or the "let's all use the same loaded phrase" thing nor the "coordinated conniption over behaviour routinely seen on our side but unremarked" thing. Those are tactics the right has perfected that work to their strengths. We will get better at dealing with sanctimonious hissy fits by recognizing the right will always be better at staging them, and finding uniquely liberal responses.
First though, a broad understanding of these different tendencies, that they exist at all and exist reliably enough to plan for.
Dan's point was a very good and very fundamental one--the right and left do not just differ on a series of issue positions, they represent entirely different temperaments, different attitudes, different worldviews, different sets of values, and it's simply mistaken to think that what represents strength and a successful strategy for one side translates unproblematically to the other side as well. Just try thinking of how you'd create a conservative strategy on climate change by paying attention to the peer-reviewed science. Not. Gonna. Happen.
Yet, at the same time, I've been writing for years to make what appears to be just the opposite point--I've criticized Democrats and progressives for failing to engage in hegemonic struggle the way that conservatives have. I've echoed George Lakoff's argument that they've failed to frame their arguments in terms of moral values--unlike conservatives--and that they've failed to build an integrated message infrastructure, combining think-tanks and media into an integrated whole.
So which is it? Do I agree with Dan that it's a mistake to try to imitate conservatives,and that we need to find our own way? Or do I stick with my guns, and keep agreeing with Lakoff? Some of both, actually--and I think we need a well-ground, reality-based argument to distinguish ways in which our actions can and should strive to mirror those of the right from ways in which they should definitely should not. For example, on the one hand, repetition can be good or evil--repeating lies is clearly evil, but repeating truths is how we internalize them and make them our own. OTOH, the same is not true of hissy fits. Their roots are toxic, and they are particularly fitted to conservative politics.
Liberals need to understand that the psychological differences they have with conservatives go beyond mere opinions or factual beliefs, but to issues of thinking style, temperament and even core personality traits. There is ample psychological research that demonstrates that conservatives and liberals are not merely "flip sides of the same coin" like most centre-fetishizing village types believe. Instead, there are deep asymmetries between the camps, and an awareness of that is vital to finding strategies that accent liberal strengths and exploit conservative weaknesses.
In my view, the problem that progressives face is multi-faceted. Here are just a few examples:
First of all conservative's authoritarian tendencies predispose them to follow orders. This makes it relatively easy to organize for fighting--be it physical, political, military or whatever.
Second, the conservative's cognitive strengths and propensities are specifically related to fighting. Among other things, they tend to see the world in black-and-white terms, and seeing things in black-and-white terms is much more conducive to fighting.
Third, this is reinforced by their value tendencies--their heightened orientation to identify with high-status ingroups and demonize and despise out-groups. This makes it much easier to organize for mass attacks on whatever target is identified.
Fourth, conservatives tend to experience divergent ideas as well as individuals and groups as a form of existential threat. In their minds, gay marriage really does threaten to destroy marriage as we know it (and the more marriages they've had, the more threatening this may be, however hypocritical--or even downright silly--it may seem to us.
I could go on, but you get the point. Conservatives really are wired for fighting, in multiple different ways. OTOH, liberals are wired for lots of things, too. We've definitely wired for understanding how stuff works, we're curious, we're interested in exploring what we don't know. And since we don't know how to fight as well as conservatives do in a hard-wired sense, then why shouldn't we be interested in that?
Plus, of course, we're wired for humor. It's no accident that Al Franken is a very funny guy--and yet funny with a long history of serious intent.
So how do we make the most of these--and other--liberal strengths? This is an open thread for discussing your ideas in answer to that question. I'm going to integrate the results of this discussion into the diary I'm working on for tomorrow.
p.s. One thing Dan said that I disagree with--though in a somewhat subtle way:
Too often over the past number of years, you find liberals lamenting the "circular firing squad" while grudgingly admiring the lock-step conservative façade and wishing to emulate it. No. No. No.
I understand what he's saying, and agree with it in a fundamental sense: We need to find ways of acting that are true to our values and cognitive styles and strengths. That's the main post of his diary, and I agree 100%. But it's also true that learning how to adapt and use different tools for different jobs--to think situationally--is also a liberal strength. And so while it's a bad idea to want to be like that all the time, I think it's a good idea to be able to act like that on occassion, when it would be particularly good to do so. We maybe don't want to be fast-ball pitchers. But we want to be able to throw one when we need to.
That chart certainly caught my attention, in no uncertain terms.
In the book, the authors, Marc J. Hetherington and Jonathan D. Weiler, explain:
Of course, we do not argue that preferences for disciplining children are causally related to individuals' vote choice. It is absurd to think that spanking children led people to vote Republican in 2004. Indeed, if favoring corporal punishment actually caused people to vote for the more conservative candidate, liberals never would have been elected president. It is only very recently that alternatives to spanking children have been widely employed. Instead, support for spanking likely emanates from a particular worldview which that has a range of ramifications, including political ones.
By worldview, we mean a set of connected beliefs animated by some fundamental, underlying value orientation that is itself, connected to a visceral sense of right and wrong. Politics cleaved by a worldview has the potential for fiery disagreements because considerations about the correct way to lead a good life lie in the balance. Specifically, we demonstrate that American public opinion is increasingly divided along a cleavage that things like parenting styles and "manliness" map onto. We will call that cleavage authoritarianism.
Although authoritarianism in general has long been associated with the right, the authors refine their definition and their argument to such an extent that they capture a distinct phenomena that's noticably different from the broader race- and gender-based culture wars first set in motion in the 60s. They focus on using the NES (National Election Study) four-item authoritarianism index introduced in 1992. It asks people to choose between desired pairs of attributes in children:
The pairs of attributes are independence versus respect for elders, obedience versus self-reliance, curiosity versus good manners, and being considerate versus being well behaved. Those who value "respect for elders," "obedience," "good manners," and "being well behaved" score at the maximum of the scale. Those who value "independence," "self-reliance," "curiosity," and "being considerate" score at the minimum.
In particular, the authors show a great deal of recent movement on issues they show are connected to authoritarianism. One of their most striking tables of data comes from an analysis of items on two Pew Surveys, from 2003 and 2007, in which there is clear evidence of increased polarization on 10 of the 14 items related to authoritarianism, while the other items show a slight average decrease in polarization. I reproduce it on the flip.
In my earlier post, "No, Obama, Conservatives Are NOT Just Liberals With A Different Set Of Ideas", I concluded by arguing that there are two levels of confusion to Obama's quest for cross-ideological progress. The first I described thus:
(1) Obama expects the general possibility of good-faith rational negotiations, producing consensus between liberals and conservatives "of good will." He mistakes the reality of specific cooperative achievements-of the sort that even flaming liberals like Ted Kennedy and Paul Wellstone managed to achieve-for a viable paradigm applicable across the boards.
He fails to recognize that such specific achievements only appear as potentially paradigmatic on the liberal/procedural side of the ledger, and only there among those, such as himself, who are blind to the topography of the conservative value space. In reality, such cross-ideological agreements are not possible in general, but are only specifically possible because they do not intrude into the realm of core normative principles on the conservative side.
If this were Obama's only confusion, then enough repetitions of the total rejection he's already experienced would eventually lead him to some sort of rethinking-such as, for example, refocusing on reaching out to conservative voters, rather than political leaders who either answer to, or directly come from the movement conservative core, who are far more ideologically rigid. What keeps Obama from making such a sensible adjustment is, at least in part, a second level of confusion, which I described thus:
(2) Having failed to make these crucial distinctions, Obama consequently sets himself up for a second level of confusions. This level consists of abandoning the liberal/procedural framework for achieving cross-ideological consensus, and accepting instead elements-from micro- to macro- of the conservative characterization of potential consensus (such as letting torturers off the hook as simple fairness.) This effort is doomed to failure, as I will describe in a followup post.
This is that post. It will also draw on the intervening post on conservative/authoritarian psychology.
The Republican party has been in the throes of a dramatic transformation these last forty-four years. The final stage of its metamorphosis remains unclear.
When Goldwater received the Republican nomination in 1964, there was still a Northeastern-Midwestern liberal wing. Governor William Milliken of Michigan and Senator Jacob Javits of New York were advocates of public education, civil rights, and full employment. The Southern racist right was a powerful force in the Democratic, not Republican, party.
LBJ's aggressive action on civil rights and Nixon's so-called Southern strategy helped moved Dixiecrats toward the Republicans. But we weren't fully aware then of the enormity of the Republican transformation that had begun.
Nixon's dirty tricks seemed like the crimes of a paranoiac, not signs of a coordinated strategy. Reagan's attractive persona blinded many of us to the authoritarian core of his politics. !988 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis said his campaign was about competency. He was practicing politics as usual, paying no heed to the evidence of the rise of a Republican party rooted in Southern racism and reaction, committed to the extension of one party Mississippi politics to the nation as a whole.
Few of us paid too much attention when Senator Robert Dole dismissed the results of the 1992 election and denied the legitimacy of Clinton's presidency.
Perhaps we were snoozing when William Kristol led Republicans to obstruct health care reform in 1994. A disillusioned electorate brought us a wave of Democratic defeats.
Gingrich's "Contract with America" had concealed within it clues of the Republican, neoconfederate, authoritarian agenda. Suddenly, Republicans began to call Clinton's party, our party, the "Demokrat" party. The word "liberal" always followed "failed."
Management consultant Maurice Schechter helped Gingrich develop the new vocabulary of partisan abuse.
The Washington pundits were dismayed by President Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. They seemed not to notice that Republicans were demanding impeachment over the disputed meaning of the word "sex."
We should have been concerned when Candidate George W. Bush signalled that he would not accept defeat in the electoral college were he to win the popular vote in 2000. This foreshadowed the debacle to come and reflected the covert operations then underway to suppress the vote.
Were you stunned by the Supreme Court's ruling in Bush v. Gore? The neoconfederate "Federalist" network in the courts announced through Justice Scalia that the American people have no constitutional right to vote for President. We have learned since then that the Republican party has sought to turn federal attorneys into the instruments of their voter suppression strategy.
By 2000 it was evident that the Fox network was part of a three-pronged Republican media strategy. The Republicans controlled Fox and could influence the other networks through direct or indirect (corporate) means.
From time to time the Gallup Poll sheds its "objectivity" and joins the Republican campaign.
More and more we see that the Republican party has become an authoritarian phalanx seeking to use every available lever of power to pursue their hard right agenda.
Unfortunately, we see only a part of this process, not the whole. Investigative journalists have failed to uncover the machinations of the Council for National Policy, which is the steering committee for the religious right. If there is a"Mein Kampf" in this movement, it is the CNP that produced it.
The Democratic party can win big this year, but we must be ready for the next step in the Republican party's campaign for authoritarianism. What will it be?
Chris, Josh Marshall and many others are noting McCain's bizarre line of self-contradicting attacks with varying degrees of bemusement, scorn and triumph. Let us not fall into the trap of thinking that the contradictions and inherent absurdities of McCain's positions will cause them to fail entirely. Let's see why:
All fish live in the sea.
Sharks live in the sea..
Therefore, sharks are fish.
Is this logical? Does it follow? Hopefully you see that it does not. But a certain kind of person is often tricked by this: Right-Wing Authoritarians.
"Mistrust all in whom the desire to punish is imperative." - Johann Wolfgang van Goethe
"The rulers of republics or kingdoms must therefore seek to preserve the principles of their religion. Having done this, they will find it an easy matter to keep the state devout, obedient, and united. They should seek to favor and strengthen every circumstance that tends to enhance religion, even if the themselves judge it to be false. The wiser they are about natural reality, the more they should do this." - Niccolo Machiavelli
Reporters, and bloggers, are people, too. No one wants their whole life to be on record, no one wants for everyone they meet to fear to speak to them or get close out of a concern that all will be an open book. Everyone needs, as the founders recognized in forbidding the courts to compel spouses to testify against each other, people with whom they can speak freely and openly.
But this is also, it seems, why DC political culture is so insane. People with a keen interest in politics uproot themselves from all those they grew up caring about and being comfortable talking to, and move to a city where their most likely cohort of people to make friends with includes many of the same people they're supposed to be dealing with from a public interest perspective.
Everyone needs people to spend our down time with. Needs, not wants. That's just how we work. When humans don't get enough company, their minds get dodgier over time, which is exactly why solitary confinement is a terrible punishment to endure.
And to those people with whom we can be comfortable, whom we come to have affection or respect for, that we can turn to with our problems or share our good times with, we become loyal. We don't want to speak ill of them. We want to protect them, as they protect us, even if it's only from spending too much time alone.
This loyalty, it's a good impulse, often a kind one. But it's also reflexive, instinctive, and ultimately self-protective. Like any other human emotion, it can come from bad or selfish motives, it can be base. If allowed uncritical exercise, it can be a path to vices great and small.
We fear to be on our own, to be exiled, even though that doesn't really happen to people like it used to. Not normal people, anyway.
For most of our history as human beings, being exiled from those close to you and with whom you were likely to share bonds of loyalty, was a death sentence. It stands to reason that those of us who are living today are mainly the children of people who learned easily and well how to be loyal to enough people to keep themselves from having to literally wander in the wilderness by themselves. Our fear of exile, after all that time, is powerful.
If our loyalties haven't been well chosen and stop making sense, we will often still be trapped in them for as long as our fear of being cast out rules us better than our reason.
Exile
So I write from this perspective because I literally was expelled from my tribe, though I chose that path. But only because I was super miserable and unrepentantly noncompliant. Even though I was still middling sure that a horrible fate awaited a rebellious person like myself, I thought it couldn't possibly be worse than living the rest of my life as a Jehovah's Witness.
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