Lines Divided

 

 

All things being equal, you root for your own sex, your own culture, your own locality… and what you want to love is that you are better than the other person.

~Isaac Asimov

Failing to see reality

In-group bias is real, and so is our categorization instinct, our tendency to group everything into categories. And so we have our warring camps, and they render us unable to process reality in a more objective way. Since we are still focusing on the right-wing, here's a few more examples of how partisan politics short-circuits critical thinking: partisans are unable to see the causes of things they object to. In particular, I will make the case that some conservatives are unable to see the full picture with regards to the causes of terrorist attacks on citizens of the USA, immigration to the USA, and racial unrest in the USA.

Terrorism

 

Map of the American Empire
Map of the American Empire
(from Immerwahr 2019).

Chalmers Johnson (2000) argues that terrorist attacks on U.S. citizens are primarily blowback from heavy-handed, and oftentimes covert, U.S. imperial foreign policy. Moreover, because various foreign policies are secret or are poorly publicized, American citizens often don’t understand why they are being attacked. But, Johnson argues, the impetus for many terrorists is to strike back at the American Empire. Here's some context.

Johnson reminds us that blowback is a term coined by the CIA which refers to attacks on US citizens inspired by US covert actions abroad, going back at least to the middle of the 20th century. However, as Johnson uses the term, blowback refers to attacks on American citizens as retaliation for the USA's imperial tendencies. These imperialist policies, whether they be overt land invasions or covert operations, create resentment towards the US and now fuel terrorist activities. Here are some examples of the USA's imperialist policies.

First there old-fashioned land grabs. The late 19th and first half of the 20th century saw a rapid level of conventional territorial acquisitions (including Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, Guantanamo Bay, the Panama Canal Zone, and many islands) as well as the proliferation of military bases (see also Immerwahr 2019). Next came the Cold War. Although it was imperialistic business as usual—more territory, more bases—this conflict seems to have obscured the American imperial project, since the case could be made that the acquisitions and new bases were all part of a strategy of containment of the Soviets. Nonetheless, as stated, the territorial acquisition and base proliferation continued, and in addition, whenever it was convenient, the US would install US-friendly governments in a region.

Other examples of imperialist policy that might cause blowback:

 

Johnson's Blowback

 

  • The training of rightist Nicaraguan militants during the 1980’s (see Byrne 2014 or this lecture by Byrne)
  • Continued US presence in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War, which inspired Osama bin Laden's attacks (see Johnson 2000, chapter 1).
  • US-sponsored dictatorships in East Asia (at varying times):
    • Taiwan
    • Philippines
    • Vietnam
    • Cambodia
    • Thailand
    • Indonesia
  • Alliances with brutal authoritarian regimes such as that of:
    • King Khalid of Saudi Arabia
    • King Hassan of Morocco
    • the Persian Shah
    • several Greek colonel dictators
    • General Pinochet in Chile
    • General Franco in Spain
    • General Geisel in Brazil
  • Various overthrows in Latin America

Johnson notes that the American experience of blowback has an element of confusion: the actions taken by the managers of the American empire are usually done covertly, leaving its citizens at a loss as to why some foreign agents hate them. In other words, because the American electorate is ignorant on most of these historical matters, they don't realize why they are being attacked. This is why they resort to insipid comments, like "They hate us cuz they hate us", and asinine descriptions of US soldiers as "fighting for our freedom". The truth, as we can see, is much more complicated.

Immigration

Here's some Food for thought...

 

 

The US southern border does not only see migrants from México attempting to cross; there are also many people fleeing violence in Central and South America. Part of the reason is that the US gun market is actually playing a vital role in destabilizing the regions from which these migrants come. In chapter 5 of his recent Blood Gun Money, Grillo begins by discussing how porous the border actually is, despite rhetoric of building walls and securing the homeland. Greater border security, Grillo argues, doesn’t make crossing the border impossible—just more expensive. And this is the case whether one is crossing the border with contraband (e.g., drugs) or taking part in illegal immigration. Why is it so expensive? It's because much illegal immigration is now orchestrated by the Mexican drug cartels. These cartels, which control smuggling at the border, simply expanded their trade to include smuggling humans—a task to which they easily adapted. This in turn gives them another form of revenue, which makes them more powerful, which makes them more feared, which makes Americans more alarmed, leading to more militarization of the border, which leads to more money for the cartels.

 

Grillo's Blood Gun Money

 

In addition to giving more power to Mexican drug cartels, militarizing the border puts all the focus on the flow of goods and people travelling north, neglecting the flow of goods and people travelling south. But the goods travelling south are a causal factor with regards to the people travelling north. How so? Grillo discusses how both Americans and Mexicans use the private sale loophole in American gun laws, which allows private sellers to sell weapons without a background check, to buy weapons in the US and take them to México. These, by the way, are known as straw buyers, those that legally buy weapons and then sell them into the blackmarket. These weapons, of course, end up in the hands of the now more powerful drug cartels. Why do so many guns flow south? Well, obviously, because there's a demand from drug cartels. But you still need someone to actually purchase the weapons. Why would anyone engage in straw buying? The reasons for why someone might participate in this practice vary. Grillo reports that some undoubtedly like the excitement. Some like the culture. Most, including many veterans, the recently unemployed, those on disability, etc., just really need the money.

As it turns out, no one knows how many guns have been smuggled south across the US-México border. That’s the nature of the black market. One estimate, however, is that over 250,000 weapons per year have been smuggled from the US to México during the 2010s, earning the gun industry more than $125 million per year. The study is called The Way of the Gun. The US firearm black market, or as Grillo calls it The Iron River, makes its way into more than 130 countries. It gets into the hands of gangs and guerrillas in Central and South America, destabilizing those regions, strengthening the gangs by equalizing the firepower of the police forces and the gangs, which in turn lets gangs commit more crimes with impunity. This violence is what drives people to leave their country, becoming refugees, and ultimately making their way to the American border.

Racial Unrest

As a final example, recall from the lesson titled The One Great Thing (Pt. I), that Republicans are more likely to blame those in poverty for their socioeconomic status, as opposed to blaming external factors (i.e., "the system"). However, this has to be untenable. There are some radically asymmetrical wealth dynamics in the United States, and they are in no small part due to the federal government. In other words, a certain group (Whites) have undoubtedly been priviledged in recent history to the detriment of other groups (Blacks, Hispanics, Natives, etc.). It's essentially impossible to deny this. And importantly, these past injustices are still having repercussions today that affect the socioeconomic status in those disenfranchised groups. Put bluntly, some white people are still benefiting from the racial injustices of the past.

Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin and Lev Kamenev, Moscow (1920)
Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin &
Lev Kamenev, Moscow (1920).

Perhaps the most straightforward case of this in recent history is in the housing sector. In The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein reviews how government housing policies in the 20th century explicitly discriminated against African Americans to the benefit of whites. Let me begin first with some context.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, in which Lenin and his group of revolutionaries took power in Russia, the Wilson administration thought it could stave off communism at home by getting as many white Americans as possible to become homeowners—one of the many ways in which the fear of communism shaped the United States during the 20th century. The idea was that if you own property, you will be invested in the capitalist system. And so, the “Own Your Own Home” campaign began. The program, however, was largely ineffectual and the housing crisis only grew.

In the 1930s, then, as part of his New Deal, Franklin D. Roosevelt subsidized various aspects of homeownership, such as insuring mortgage loans and construction on new housing, through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). But since segregation was still in the books, these programs necessarily had a racial bias. Due to unfounded worries about African American inability to pay loans and “community compatibility”, African Americans were denied housing in white areas and were denied loans, even when they met all the non-racial qualifications.

 

Rothstein's The Color of Law

 

This continued after the conclusion of World War II. Several subsidized housing projects with racial restrictions arose as WWII veterans were returning to the US, providing housing for those returning. California natives will recognize some of these communities: Lakewood, CA; Westchester, CA; and Westwood, CA.

Anyone familiar with the housing market knows that these homes are now extremely lucrative, many of them costing more than a million dollars. So, the federal government subsidized extremely lucrative housing to one group (Whites) and deliberately disallowed other racial groups to benefit from these programs. Moreover, these white homeowners were able to pass on their wealth to their children. As anyone who pays rent in California knows, it'd be really nice to live in a home you already own. So, generational wealth accumulates. Not only did WWII and their cohort enjoy these social benefits, but so did their kids—and their kids' kids.

It doesn't end there. During these time periods, local law enforcement enabled or were at least complicit in the white terrorizing of black citizens which took the form of harassment, protests, lynchings, arson, and assault. Just to see how egregious this negligence by law enforcement was, Rothstein reminds us that this was during a time period when federal and local agencies were expending considerable effort to surveil and arrest leftists and organized crime syndicates (see the lesson titled Apt Pupils). In other words, they certainly had the capabilities to investigate and infiltrate dissident groups. So, it is telling that law enforcement did not extend this effort to curtailing attacks against African Americans; they mostly just let it happen.

 

Oliver and Shapiro 2006

 

It's even the case that the federal government was guilty of suppressing wages for African American workers. When minimum wage requirements were rolled out, it was not uniform across all industries. Namely, no minimum wages were mandated in industries were African Americans predominated. It gets worse. During WWII, FDR mandated that American factories be taken over as military factories, manufacturing war materiel. At first, these factories employed white men, due to segregation. After white male manpower had been exhausted, the factories began to let women into the workforce. It was only when white women were not numerous enough to fill the workforce that African American males were recruited. African American women were last. Until they were hired on to these factories, African Americans had to labor in low-wage industries—ones with no minimum wage. And so, in government-run factories with decent wages, there was a policy of delaying the employment of African Americans as long as possible.

This history puts racial inequality in perspective, but it is a history that some want to suppress. But if this history is suppressed, then we won't learn the economic lessons. In their research, Oliver and Shapiro found that “[white] family assets are more than mere money; they also provide a pathway for handing down racial legacies from generation to generation” (Oliver and Shapiro 2006: 26). Put bluntly, the wealth that you inherit (whether it be in the form of an inherited home, or stocks, or cash) clearly plays a determining role in your social status for life. And, importantly, not everyone gets to inherit. This is because not everyone's parents got a leg up from the government. Here are Oliver and Shapiro again:

“Whites in general, but well-off whites in particular, were able to amass assets and use their secure economic status to pass their wealth from generation to generation. What is often not acknowledged is that the accumulation of wealth for some whites is intimately tied to the poverty of wealth for most blacks. Just as blacks have had ‘cumulative disadvantages,’ whites had had ‘cumulative advantages.’ Practically, every circumstance of bias and discrimination against blacks has produced a circumstance and opportunity of positive gain for whites. When black workers were paid less than white workers, white workers gained a benefit; when black businesses were confined to the segregated black market, white businesses received the benefit of diminished competition; when FHA policies denied loans to blacks, whites were the beneficiaries of the spectacular growth of good housing and housing equity in the suburbs. The cumulative effect of such a process has been to sediment blacks at the bottom of the social hierarchy and to artificially raise the relative position of some whites in society” (Oliver and Shapiro 2006: 51).

Terrorism, immigration, racial inequality. The explanations are above are well-sourced, social scientific explanations of these phenomena. But these are not the kinds of explanations that conservatives tend to give on these topics. I wonder if truly entrenched conservative would even be able to process these theories. My gut says no. If you're at least thinking that I might be right on this, then I've accomplished what I set out to accomplish.

 

 

 

Lines Divided

As we saw last time, crowds are not good for your brain. If we are faced with uncertainty, we turn to our in-group for guidance on what to believe (Damasio 2019, chapter 12). Let's continue with this line of thinking, since it relates to today's reading. Dutton (2020) reminds us of two important things: it is inevitable that we draw lines between Us and Them (given how our brains evolved) and it's typically counter-productive. Let's begin first with our innate need to categorize everything, including ourselves, even if there's no corresponding categories in the real world. Here's Dutton:

“Our brains come equipped with a formatting palette. We’re hardwired to draw lines by our rich evolutionary past. But how can we be sure that the lines we are drawing are accurate? And how do we know where to place them? The answer, quite simply, is: we can’t. We have no way of knowing, no means by which to be certain, that the lines we are drawing are true. And yet still we are compelled to draw them. Because the world is a complicated place and lines make stuff easy and doable. And ‘doable’ is something we crave” (Dutton 2020: 3).

So, it looks like we can't help it. But putting up walls between Us and Them only leads to more conflict and less concord. Studies show, as Dutton reminds us, that pointing out differences actually makes us less willing to work together—and much else. For example, in one study:


“[T]wo groups of participants comprising four members each (AAAA and BBBB) convened in separate rooms to discuss the solution to a problem (the so-called ‘Winter Survival Problem’: their plane had crash-landed in the woods in the middle of January and they had to rank order items salvaged from the plane—a gun, a newspaper and a tub of lard, for example—in terms of their importance for survival). Both groups then came together as one around a conveniently octagonal table to hammer out a joint proposal. But there was, as always, a catch. This time with the seating plan. In one variation of the study, the groups remained fully segregated (AAAABBBB). In another they were partially segregated (AABABBAB), while in a third they were fully integrated (ABABABAB). The effects were incredible. Not only did this rudimentary game of psychological musical chairs significantly reduce in-group bias among those who were fully integrated, it also increased cooperation levels, friendliness ratings and respective member confidence in the jointly proposed solution” (Dutton 2020: 298).

In short, minimizing group boundaries gets results: greater openness to hearing the ideas of out-group members, reduced animosity, greater perceived friendliness across the board, and even a better feeling over the plan of action that the group decided on. But again, we seem to not be able to not divide up into warring camps, at least not politically. And so, we cannot reep the benefits of our collective wisdom. As we saw last time, partisans actually agree on a lot, but they don't seem to realize since they can't see past their team colors—which is why Mason's book is called Uncivil Agreement.

This, however, is no good. Remember that, according to Caplan (2008) and Brennan (2017), our actual living standards—the material and social wealth we get to enjoy—are being artificially suppressed by the bad policies of our government, and the bad policies of our government are a result of catering to irrational, ignorant voters. Even our media is reduced to mere "infotainment" in order to secure good ratings (since presumably real news coverage would bore people and they would watch something else). Given that most are irrational and ignorant of truth, Plato argues only those with true knowledge and special minds should be able to rule...

Argument Extraction

 

 

 

Do Stuff

  • Read from 502d-511e (p. 197-207) of Republic.

 

 

Executive Summary

  • There are well-sourced, social scientific explanations given for the phenomena of terrorism, immigration, and racial inequality.

  • The following question is raised: Would die-hard conservatives actually be able to process these theories accurately? Given the evidence from last lesson, I wager the answer is no.

  • Dutton gives us evidence that dividing ourselves into groups makes us less capable of learning from society's collective wisdom.

  • In the dialogue, Socrates and friends begin to discuss Plato's Theory of the Forms and Platonic Heaven.

 

 

FYI

Suggested Reading: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Entry on Plato (Section 6)

TL;DR: The School of Life, Plato's On: The Forms

Supplemental Material—

Related Material—

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For full lecture notes, suggested readings, and supplementary material, go to rcgphi.com.