The Tyranny of the Minority and The Extremism of the Republican Party

Part One: The Tyranny of the Minority

Two government professors at Harvard have a new book out called The Tyranny of the Minority, which accurately warns that the Republican Party has been increasingly anti-democratic and right-wing, despite or because of losing the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. The book, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, is a follow-up to their 2018 book, How Democracies Die. The PBS NewsHour broadcast a decent interview with the authors on 9/14/23. You can view or listen to the 7:25 video or audio at the link above, or read a full transcript, or play the YouTube version below:



Some key excerpts, starting with Ziblatt:

To be a party committed to democracy, you have to do three very simple things. Number one, you have to accept election losses, win or lose. Number two, you have to not use violence to gain or to hold onto power. And then, number three, most critically, in some sense, for mainstream political parties, is you have to distance yourself and be explicit and open about condemning anybody who's an ally of your party that commits any of those first two types of acts.

To be a party committed to democracy, in order for democracy to survive, the political parties in a political system have to ascribe to all three of those principles. This applies to parties of the right and of the left.

And I think what is so concerning, as Steve described, is that over the last four years, we have seen a process of decay within the Republican Party where all three of those principles are violated, but, in particular, most recently among mainstream members of the Senate.

Levitsky:

So, semi-loyal democrats are tricky, because they look like regular politicians. They look like mainstream politicians. They are, in fact, mainstream politicians.

They are in the halls of Congress. They are wearing suits. They look and talk and act like regular small-D democrats. But the key difference is their willingness to tolerate, to condone, to justify, sometimes to protect antidemocratic extremists.

And we have seen throughout history that when mainstream politicians of the left or the right tolerate, condone, protect extremists on the right or the left, democracies get into trouble. And so who are we talking about in the Republican Party today? Mainstream Republican Party leaders, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, leading senators, leading governors.

Both this book and their previous one offer some welcome international context on democracies in other countries and compare them to the United States – challenges, failures and better systems. Ziblatt touches on this briefly in the interview:

One big difference between the United States and a country like Hungary or other countries where democratic backsliding has really established single-party rule, we have constraints and there's a strong opposition to these forces.

That's certainly the case at the national level. What's so striking, though, because we have a federal system, that there are states in the United States where there are assaults on voting rights taking place, where there's extreme levels of gerrymandering, so that it makes it possible for a party that doesn't win the most votes to actually win control of state legislatures, where courts are then packed at the local — at the state level as well.

So what we see across the United States is increasingly a divide between states where you continue to have voting rights and democracy and states where democracy is really under assault.

Ziblatt closes by listing some concrete steps and perhaps some hopeful notes:

Some of the things that we discussed in the book and we propose, we have a 15-point set of suggestions in our last chapter, including things such as eliminating the Electoral College — we're the only democracy in the world with an Electoral College — introducing term limits and retirement ages for the Supreme Court.

We're the only democracy in the world that doesn't have retirement ages or term limits for national judges. We also propose some reforms that don't require constitutional reforms, such as eliminating or at least weakening the filibuster, the filibuster in the United States, since we're the only democracy in the world that has such a strong tool of obstruction in one of our chambers of Congress.

This tool of obstruction blocks very often majority-supported policies, gun control, efforts to address climate change, the minimum wage. Things get held up in the national Congress, which frustrates citizens. So we think there needs to be a kind of a sweeping reform agenda.

And one of the things we have discovered looking at other democracies, I should add, is that, when constitutional reforms come, they tend to cluster together. Momentum is gained. People get – regain faith in their political system. And we think this is very much part of the American tradition.

Where we are operating today without this is outside of the American tradition. And this is something we need to get back to.

This is all on point, and it's heartening to see more people considered mainstream and respectable sound the alarm about U.S. conservatism and the Republican Party. The phrase "tyranny of the minority" is nothing new; Rebecca Solnit and Michelle Goldberg both wrote good pieces with that title in 2017, and similar critiques go back further. Liberals and progressives have been accurately pointing out these dangers for over two decades now at least, but we're often not heeded, which remains a big problem, but nonetheless any truth that breaks through is welcome.

For more on the book, The Harvard Gazette did an interview, Steven Levitsky gave a lectue at Brown University, and the New York Journal of Books and Vox both have reviews.

Part Two: The Extremism of the Republican Party

Most mainstream media outlets remain reluctant to call out the extremism of U.S. conservatives and the Republican Party, and by their reticence help normalize that extremism, however inadvertently. Politeness takes precedence over accuracy. The Republican Party has become increasingly conservative and increasingly right-wing, and as a result, in mainstream media labeling, the actual political positions held by political figures called "centrists" or "moderates" have moved further to the right as well. (Classic Overton window dynamics.)

The PBS NewsHour is a good program overall, but its team seems to have made an editorial decision that any conservative or Republican who isn't far right should be called a "moderate." I've noticed it for several years, and PBS is hardly alone in this approach. Although PBS' Laura Barrón-López is a pretty good reporter and interviewer, she did exactly this early in the interview featured above:

Do you see Senator Romney's retirement as a sign that, rather than weed out the extremists in their party, Republicans are weeding out moderate Republicans like Romney and Liz Cheney?

I'd let this go if other reporters didn't use similar, misleading terminology so consistently. This approach is an ongoing problem in U.S. political coverage – normalizing conservative and Republican extremism, and not just by hacks, but even by people who presumably are trying to provide good reporting. It would be accurate to call Romney more moderate than other members of his party on at least some issues, and Liz Cheney did comport herself well during the January 6th committee hearings. It is fair to say they're being weeded out. But both Romney and Cheney are conservative, in many ways extremely so, with some horrible positions, which not incidentally are common in the Republican Party. As of a 2021 analysis by FiveThirtyEight, Romney voted with the Donald Trump agenda 75.0% of the time (which was less than many of his Republican colleagues) and Cheney voted with the Trump agenda 92.9% of the time.

Romney does deserve some credit for voting to convict Trump in both his impeachment trials (even if his vote "no" that Trump didn't obstruct Congress remains ridiculous), and Romney did put common sense and by his own account conscience above significant political and social pressure. It's technically true but a bit misleading, however, to say that Romney is "the first senator who has ever voted to remove a president of his own party"; Richard Nixon would have been both impeached and convicted by members of his party as well, but he resigned before it could happen. (The House impeaches, and the Senate convicts.) Liz Cheney, meanwhile, voted to impeach Trump in 2021 for the January 6th insurrection, but voted against impeaching him in 2020 for "withholding military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to extract dirt on rivals including Joe Biden," and said in 2022 she does not regret that vote. Her defense that the "evidence that was put on didn’t make the case" strains credulity, given the evidence presented. The Republican votes in favor of Trump in both cases were pure political loyalty and sheer political corruption.

It's worth considering Cheney and Romney's histories in a little more depth. It is nice that Liz Cheney respects election results, low bar though that may be, but she's always been pretty authoritarian herself. Liz Cheney has supported torture, opposed due process, and opposed investigating and holding accountable the Bush administration torture team, notably including her own father, Dick Cheney. This 2010 post covers some of that territory and includes a roundup of links on a disgusting attack ad run by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's Orwellian-named group, "Keep America Safe." This 2009 post focuses more on Dick Cheney trying to whitewash his torture record, but also touches on Liz Cheney's efforts to cover for him and the corporate media enabling it. There's also Liz Cheney in 2009 echoing her father's attacks on then-President Barack Obama for proposing to shut down Guantanamo, and arguing for torture to Anderson Cooper, including brazenly lying to his face about the key findings of the Schlesinger report on torture, and shamelessly accusing Obama of covering up the truth of the torture program (she and her cohorts prefer the Orwellian term "enhanced interrogation techniques"). In no world are supporting torture and defending torturers "moderate" positions.

Liz Cheney also can be fairly called a plutocrat, like most of her Republican colleagues, having voted for the Trump tax cuts in 2017, which like the Reagan and George W. Bush tax cuts, were (to quote a 2022 post):

. . . plutocratic, funneling even more money to the wealthiest Americans to please rich donors. Contrary to Republican claims, the corporate tax cuts did not trickle down and the tax plan did not pay for itself; they just gave rich people more money.

As the Council on Foreign Relations summarized in 2022, "income and wealth inequality is higher in the United States than in almost any other developed country, and it is rising." That post, and the website Inequality.org, have some helpful charts. (My most in-depth post on income and wealth inequality was this 2010 one, with several other posts in the category.) Given how extreme income and wealth inequality already is in the United States, especially compared to other developed countries, and the increasing economic pressures on the majority of Americans, I consider it unconscionable (or just evil) to actively work to support more inequality, favoring the rich and powerful. That unconscionable mindset is unfortunately a common one among conservative politicians, but I don't think it can fairly be called "moderate." (I'll add that many political figures labeled "centrist" by the mainstream media are really conservatives in their actual positions, or at the very least establishmentarians.)

Romney was not in the Senate for the Trump tax cut vote, but states on his Senate website that he would have supported it – while simultaneously claiming he "fought against both tax cuts for the wealthy and tax hikes on the middle class"! Romney is counting on readers not knowing his record or details of the law, and not spotting the direct contradiction (or simply believes in his powers of bullshitting). Romney, like many conservatives, isn't merely plutocratic but downright neofeudalistic – when he ran for president in the 2012 election, he adopted his running mate Paul Ryan's extreme policies to give a massive tax cut to the rich but also to gut the social safety net, including ending Medicare as it existed. Romney didn't get the flack an honest assessment of his policies should have received, because voters "simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing." (Much more analysis and links in the stealthy extremist section of this 2012 post.) The same dynamics often play out for conservative political positions – mainstream media outlets seem reluctant to describe them accurately in terms of their likely effects or their extremism, which gives cover for their mostly Republican proponents.

As with almost every Republican presidential nominee since Nixon, Romney used racist dogwhistles. In August 2012, he boasted that "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate," feeding into the racist, bullshit "birther" conspiracies about Barack Obama. He also ran a number of ads with racist dogwhistles about welfare and Medicare, continuing, as Chauncey DeVega pointed out, "the Southern Strategy, and the politics of white racial resentment." Similar dynamics were at play with Romney's infamous remarks in 2012 that 47 percent of Americans would back Obama "no matter what" because they "believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them," and who "pay no income tax." Romney's claims were at best grossly misleading, and taken in larger context were outright false (as I covered in more depth in one section of a broader 2014 post, which did also cover Romney's multiple, contradictory revisions about his remarks).

Donald Trump lies almost constantly, and may be unbeatable in that category. But during his presidential campaign in 2011–2012, Mitt Romney told at least 917 falsehoods that Steve Benen diligently chronicled and fact-checked, and many were substantial lies at that. This wasn't a new trait, either; Romney was lying and bullshitting at least as far back as his 2007–2008 presidential run. (I have posts from 2007 on some Romney "hogwash" and the sophistry of his anti-JFK speech.)

Mitt Romney has often acted as other people are beneath him and lack the capacity to see through obvious bullshit, as when he argued opposite positions to different audiences in subsequent weeks. (The same trend comes up in Steve Benen's exhaustive series.) The most infamous example is probably from 2011, when at the Iowa State Fair Romney argued against increasing taxes on corporations by condescendingly telling a man that "Corporations are people, my friend." When the crowd responded by yelling out the obvious point, "No, they're not!" Romney replied with a straw man, "Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?" Besides these arguments being ridiculous on the merits, it's interesting that Romney believed they would be effective politically. Faced with a crowd who wanted to protect the social safety net, raise taxes on the rich and corporations, and presumably overturn the Citizens United decision – all for the benefit of the vast majority of Americans – Romney essentially argued that corporate profits benefit stockholders (who are, technically, "people") and thus critiques of economic inequality and unequal power were invalid. Romney did express (smugly) what and who he actually values in society, as he did with his 47 percent remarks, and also betrayed an entitled, privileged narcissism that seems extremely prone to bullshitting audiences he holds in slight to significant contempt. Although Trump remains much worse in this arena, Romney shares some of Trump's worst traits.

For much more on Romney, see Jon Perr's comprehensive 7/4/22 post, "Mitt Romney Is in Denial," which superbly shows how Romney is no elder statesman, and is in fact a raging hypocrite who shares much of the blame for the current problems in American politics, which Romney instead tries to blame on 'both sides.'

So it's fine to give Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney credit for their pro-democracy moments. And it's sadly probably accurate that Romney's replacement will be worse, and his departure means that congressional Republicans as a whole will become more extreme. But let's not ignore Romney and Cheney's records and other positions. Every time conservatives and Republicans get worse, there's a tendency to look back at some earlier time with rose-colored glasses and laud an earlier generation of conservatives and Republicans, who might have a bit better in some respects, but were honestly still pretty awful. It's both possible and necessary to acknowledge both realities.

And how awful are their fellow conservatives and Republicans? The vast majority of congressional Republicans voted to defend Trump's attempted coup on January 6th, 2021 and have fought against any accountability for Trump and his cohorts. Most of the Republican presidential candidates (or vice-presidential candidates) would support Trump as the Republican nominee even if he were a convicted felon. Republican legislators in at least 11 states have been working to make it harder to vote. Conservatism has always had an antidemocratic strain, but the Republican Party has become increasingly, overtly anti-democratic and extreme.

Conservatives and Republicans are fighting hard against LGBT rights. They're also fighting against accurate discussions of racial issues and history, with a particularly egregious Florida teaching standard claiming that slavery benefited some black people (a view that Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has promoted several times). Republicans are still both trying to gut the social safety net and lying about it. And as has been observed before, the Republican Party is really the only major political party in a developed nation that both denies climate change and opposes universal health care. Unfortunately, conservatives and Republicans have chosen to be bad on almost every issue. (A 2018 post surveys their policies in the most depth.)

As of the writing of this post, Congress has narrowly averted yet another Republican-led attempt to shut down the government. As the BBC points out, this doesn't happen in other developed countries. And as many folks have pointed out, the shutdowns are Republican attempts to enforce agendas that they cannot achieve democratically. (Conservative and Republican policies tend to be both bad on the merits and unpopular.)

Media coverage has occasionally correctly blamed the Republican Party for this latest shutdown attempt, but as Dan Froomkin, Ian Milhiser and James Fallows via driftglass have pointed out, there's still a strong media tendency to blame 'both sides.' This is inaccurate, irresponsible and dangerous. (It's also nothing new. I haven't covered every shutdown attempt in depth, but covered the same dynamics in 2011's "Extremism in Defense of Nihilism Is a Vice" and " 'Serious' Culpability on the Debt Ceiling Hostage Situation" and 2012's "Why We Can't Have Nice Things." See also the more general false equivalencies category.)

Defeating the tyranny of the minority depends on conscientious lawmakers, civil servants, activists and citizens. But it also depends on more accurate and honest reporting. Extremism should not be normalized, blame and credit should be justly and proportionally assigned, and anti-democratic rhetoric and actions must be called out.

The Fallacy of the Golden Mean

(A "Both Sides" Reader)

The bad argument's natural habitat is the political talk show. (Well, it's one of its natural habitats, anyway.) Nourished by a steady supply of moist bullshit in the studio and the heat of the 24-hour news cycle, bad arguments flourish, thrive and proliferate. Many a breed of bad argument can be spied, but one of the most common and pernicious inside Beltway blather pits is the fallacy of the golden mean (also known under other aliases). Basically, it entails that in any dispute between two parties, the truth must lie somewhere in the middle (generally roughly halfway).

Obviously this could indeed be the case, but the problem is that this conclusion is repeatedly forced onto situations where it doesn't apply, facts be damned. (It's a socially predetermined conclusion versus a logical deduction.) Calling things accurately to the best of one's ability and letting the chips fall where they may seems to be a foreign concept. Moreover, the fallacy of the golden mean – often expressed as "both sides do it" or "both sides are equally to blame" – and preferably delivered with a sage, thoughtful look or amused, knowing cynicism – is almost unfailingly invoked as a means of shutting down greater scrutiny and deeper discussion. It’s a beloved, go-to move of lazy pundits who don't want to spend their time studying those pesky facts or who desire to appear worldly and above it all. (It's also a useful maneuver for party hacks seeking to avoid accountability for their side. In such situations, it's not unusual to also see the superficial brand of tu quoque arguments beloved by conservative rearguard action specialist David Brooks.)

This position conveys the image of wisdom, but closer inspection almost always reveals it to be shallow and overly simplistic. One party could be mostly right and the other mostly wrong. Both could be mostly in agreement and also mostly wrong. One could take a position that's 40% corrupt but 60% useful, while the other position might be 10% useful, 50% corrupt and 40% insane. Other valuable points of view, beyond the binary opposition of establishment figures in the two major parties, might be excluded. (For instance, back during the Iraq War and the run-up to it, many news outlets represented the full range of opinion from the pro-war New Republic to the pro-war National Review, as Atrios and others noted.) When the goal is discussing real problems and actually trying to solve them, versus conjuring bullshit to fill air time, an amazing world of facts, substance, nuance and complexity opens up.

In the U.S. context, the fallacy of the golden mean is particularly misleading because the Republican Party has grown so extreme, in both its policy positions (see DW-NOMINATE scores) and its unwillingness to compromise. (It bears mentioning that prominent conservatives have long held similar views, but merely lacked the power to impose them.) "Centrist" and "moderate" tend to be viewed as positive labels among the pundit class, but what each actually entails tends to be defined in relative terms as a midway point between shifting poles. (For instance, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, appointed by Republican Gerald Ford in 1975, came to be regarded over time as one the most liberal members of the court, if not the most liberal. Yet he's never seen himself that way, remarking, "I don’t think of myself as a liberal at all. . . .I think as part of my general politics, I’m pretty darn conservative." He didn't change much; the power dynamics in his party did. )

It's hard to watch the news for long without spotting misleading false equivalencies, and the shallow, knee-jerk nature with which they're offered can be maddening. Recently, Roy Edroso chronicled the remarkable phenomenon of conservatives calling for Obama's impeachment, then pivoting and claiming they never did any such thing – it was Obama's fault! From "Rightbloggers to Obama: Why're You Impeaching Yourself?":

And here's where the real "sordid sort of genius," to steal from Douthat, comes in: As crazy as rightbloggers may seem to you and us, when their thinking correlates this perfectly with the conservative-Republican mainstream, there will always be thumbsucking MSM types who will look at it, pull their chins, and think, hmm, both sides seem passionate, and that the obvious solution is to split the difference and call it a draw. Thus, nutcases whose credibility should have been shattered around their three-hundredth call for impeachment are ridiculously afforded a place at the table, leaving advocates for common sense at a massive disadvantage, since most of their energy must be devoted to restraining themselves from screaming, "this is fucking bullshit."

Driftglass has been exploring the "both sides" dynamic for years, and a recent post, "Both Siderism Remains The Last Refuge of The Morally Bankrupt," quoted an older post from 2005, addressing the media (emphasis in original):

In your weird fetish to be “objective”, the Republicans learned the little trick that makes [the media] dance like organ grinder monkeys. Whatever goofy-assed idea they came up with, you’d reflexively cede them half the distance between the truth and their goal.

There was a book I loved when I was a little driftglass called, “Half Magic” by Edgar Eager, about a talisman that granted the user exactly half of what they asked for. Wish to be ten times stronger that Lancelot, you’ll get five. Wish for a million in cash, you get 500K. In the Mainstream Media, the Right Wing of the Republican Party found their Half Magic Charm. And each time you met them halfway, they moved the goalposts another twenty yards again...and you jogged right on along behind them, ten yards at a time.

Fred Clark offers a similar diagnosis in "Third Way-ism and Hegel’s Bluff":

Most of the time, when someone invokes a “Third Way,” they’re simply committing Hegel’s Bluff:

Simply find two extreme views roughly equidistant from your own along whatever spectrum you see fit to consult. Declare one the thesis and the other the antithesis, and your own position the synthesis. Without actually having to defend your own position, or to explain the shortcomings of these others, you can reassure yourself that you are right and they are wrong. Your position, whatever its actual merits, becomes not only the reasonable middle-ground and the presumably correct stance, but the very culmination of history.

Hegel’s Bluff is usually an exercise in self-reassurance. It’s a way of telling oneself that one is being reasonable. It works for that, well enough — well enough, that is, that Third Way-ers applying this bluff seem genuinely confused when others fail to perceive them as being as eminently reasonable as they perceive themselves.

But persuading others isn’t really what the Third Way of Hegel’s Bluff is designed to do. It rarely persuades. It fails to offer a persuasive argument mainly because it fails to offer any argument at all. That’s not really what it’s for. Arguments are made in support of particular conclusions, but this bluffery is more about just trying to reach that state in which any given dispute is concluded. That’s what it values most — that the unsettling argument be settled, not that it be resolved. It’s more about conflict-avoidance than about conflict resolution.

Having said all of that, please don’t misunderstand me as saying that no truth can ever be found “somewhere in the middle.”**

Back in 2000, Paul Krugman coined the phrase “Views Differ on Shape of Planet" to mock these dyanmics. In a 2011 op-ed, "The Centrist Cop-Out," he applied it to the media's unwillingness to call out Republican extremism and inflexibility on the debt ceiling. It's worth reading the whole thing, but his general critique remains sadly relevant:

The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.

As I said, it’s not complicated. Yet many people in the news media apparently can’t bring themselves to acknowledge this simple reality. News reports portray the parties as equally intransigent; pundits fantasize about some kind of “centrist” uprising, as if the problem was too much partisanship on both sides.

Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?

The answer, it turns out, is yes. And this is no laughing matter: The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. For when reporting on political disputes always implies that both sides are to blame, there is no penalty for extremism. Voters won’t punish you for outrageous behavior if all they ever hear is that both sides are at fault. . . .

Many pundits view taking a position in the middle of the political spectrum as a virtue in itself. I don’t. Wisdom doesn’t necessarily reside in the middle of the road, and I want leaders who do the right thing, not the centrist thing. . . .

So what’s with the buzz about a centrist uprising? As I see it, it’s coming from people who recognize the dysfunctional nature of modern American politics, but refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the one-sided role of Republican extremists in making our system dysfunctional. And it’s not hard to guess at their motivation. After all, pointing out the obvious truth gets you labeled as a shrill partisan, not just from the right, but from the ranks of self-proclaimed centrists.

But making nebulous calls for centrism, like writing news reports that always place equal blame on both parties, is a big cop-out — a cop-out that only encourages more bad behavior. The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.

Lastly, here's one of my cracks at the subject, from 2012:

Both Sides Do It

As we've explored before, in most cases:

…saying "both sides do it" is a form of trolling. In almost every case, when a Very Serious Person says "both sides do it," "both sides are to blame" or any of its variants, it is to shut down discussion, not to bring it to a deeper, more nuanced level.

Among honest, sane, reasonably intelligent and well-informed adults, the following are taken as givens:

1. Neither major party is entirely pure or entirely corrupt. You can find despicable and honorable people in both parties.

2. There is an inherent level of bullshit in politics. All politicians lie to some degree.

Naturally, the same crowd also holds that:

3. Nevertheless – actually, because of this – it's very important to take a closer look at politicians, parties, and their policies, and try to make an informed, comparative, qualitative judgment. Responsible citizenship and basic voting depends on it. Policy matters.

Strangely, most Beltway political commentators will endorse #1 and #2, but reject #3. The same media figures who sagely inform the public that politicians lie, as if this a revelation... will also refuse to fact-check their political guests. Instead of #3, they tend to hold the following views:

A. Wisdom lies precisely between the parties. One side cannot be significantly better/more correct than the other. It's impossible that one side can be overwhelmingly better!

B. It is rude to call out liars, or not invite them back after they lie.

C. Giving both parties a fair hearing necessitates judging that both arguments have equal merit.

D. Anyone saying harsh things about conservatives/Republicans clearly is closed-minded, hyper-partisan and not a Serious Person, regardless of the evidence.

All of this also entails:

E. Policy doesn't matter.

This mindset, whatever you want to call it – faux centrism, "sensible" centrism, centrist fetishism, establishment groupthink, bourgeois authoritarianism, the world view of Very Serious People, the Emperor's New Clothes, the ol' ruling class circle jerk – is absolutely fucking imbecilic. The people who shill it are often highly educated and have sterling pedigrees by Beltway standards, but they are shockingly shallow.

Saying "both sides do it," "both sides are equally to blame," or anything similar doesn't always spring from the exact same motives, however. There are three general categories (a future post may delve into more detail):

1. Social: The old maxim is that, in polite conversation, one should avoid discussing politics and religion. Beliefs on them can be strongly-felt and deeply personal (and sometimes irrational), so it's easy for people to fight. When this happens, a host or other peacemaker might offer "both sides do it" as a way to change the subject, de-escalate the situation and placate whoever's agitated. The person (more) in the right on the political dispute is expected to play the adult and let the matter drop in the name of comity. Strictly speaking, "both sides are equally to blame" is almost always bullshit, but it has its place in friendly social situations, where it can be well-intentioned, defensible, and useful.

All that said, politics and religion can be discussed among honest, sane, reasonably intelligent and well-informed adults. It has to happen somewhere, and at gatherings whose express purpose is discussing politics (or religion), it's pretty ridiculous and childish to try to shut down adult conversation by insisting that "both sides do it." The issue is knowing the venue and the participants, and how candid and in-depth one can be.

2. Bullshitting: When someone says "both sides do it" or the equivalent on a political show, it's nearly always bullshitting. This does come in different flavors, however. Cokie Roberts will say "both sides do it" to fill time and collect her paycheck; it's insipid Beltway conventional wisdom, but to her fellow travelers and a certain audience, it sounds smart and will receive approving nods. The benefit is that you really don't need to know anything (certainly not any policy details) to say it, so it's a wonderful gift to lazy pundits. Thomas Friedman says "both sides do it" to affect the persona of a Very Serious Person and Sensible Centrist. It supplies the illusion of being independent and thoughtful to middle-information voters, even if anyone who knows the subject well knows you're talking out of your ass. (More on Friedman's shtick here.) Meanwhile, David Brooks and other conservative propagandists will say "both sides do it" as a rearguard action to minimize the damage to their party. The conservative movement and Republican Party have become so extreme and so irresponsible, it's hard to justify their actions. (This increasing extremism is why Brooks' hack arguments to defend his side have grown more obviously ridiculous, and have become more widely mocked.) The best tactic for this type of bullshitter is to hit the false equivalences hard, cherry-picking and pretending some minor incident or minor player in the Democratic Party is as bad as some glaring offense by conservatives/Republicans. It's possible to find Democratic hacks doing similar spin on individual news items, but they're simply not operating on the same scale. The rules of polite Beltway discourse, mirroring some of the "social" motives mentioned above, dictate that it is terribly rude to point out that Republicans are the (chief) problem.

3. Serious Analysis: This is the rarest form of saying "both sides do it," but it does exist, most often as a criticism of both the Republicans and Democrats "from the left." A good example is Matt Taibbi's work investigating Wall Street corruption and reckless greed, and political complicity with it from both major parties. Taibbi has been criticized for occasionally going slightly overboard in blaming both parties equally. (After all, the Dems passed relatively weak Wall Street reform in a climate where the Republicans wanted none at all, the Republicans have steadfastly opposed the Consumer Protection Agency and related appointments, conservative justices delivered the horrible Citizens United decision, and Republicans have twice blocked campaign disclosure requirements designed to minimize some of the damage from Citizens United.) Still, Taibbi and similar figures are qualitatively different from the bullshitters in that they want to stop corruption and encourage good policies and responsible governance, and they are willing and able to discuss detail and nuance. While saying "both sides are equally to blame" may be sloppy and overstated to make a point, for this group, it's normally meant as the start of a deeper conversation, not a trite conclusion to end it.

Another important note, related to bullshitting and serious analysis on political shows: pointing out significant hypocrisy in a politician or party generally isn't the same as a serious "both sides do it" assertion, although bullshitting pundits on the same panel will try to twist it as such. For instance, Paul Krugman has often pointed out that Republicans are not serious about deficit/debt reduction. The David Brooks of the world might pretend otherwise, but this does not mean that neither party is serious about deficit/debt reduction. (Pointing out bad faith, bad policies and bullshit in one party does not magically transfer those to the other party, just to make anxious wannabe centrists feel better.) While some individual Dems might be fairly criticized, colossal bad faith on the deficit/debt is a distinctly Republican failing – in fact, it's one of the defining traits of the party. If Krugman brings something like this up, it's to have a deeper, more accurate conversation, whereas a Brooks will try to shut it down.

Here's another way to break it down:

If you argue that wisdom often resides outside of conventional thinking, I'll agree with you.

If you argue that wisdom lies precisely between two poles of conventional thinking – which are moving, no less! – I'll say you're a fucking moron.

(It's terribly uncivil to say all this, I know, but I still think there's some truth to it.)

(Cross-posted at Hullabaloo.)

The Problem with Mainstream Political Analysis in One (Long) Sentence

The "sensible centrists" and Very Serious People who make up the "savvy" establishment commentariat (the Village) are scared to challenge the authoritarians, plutocrats and raging crazies, yet eagerly punch hippies (actual liberals) and attack even the few genuinely sober centrists as "just as bad" as the raging Right.

(Cross-posted at Hullabaloo.)

Artificially Equalizing Unequal Views on Inequality

The mainstream political press has a horrible tendency to rely on false equivalencies and to conclude, far too simplistically and without nuance or detail, that 'both sides are equally to blame.' It would take much more effort, and seem like taking sides, to call things accurately to the best of their ability, or discuss policy positions in terms of facts and likely outcomes, or contextualize negotiations and other matters for their audience. Even important issues can wind up being poorly covered. Some conclusions, no matter how well supported, are deemed unacceptable; others are essentially predetermined, regardless of the pesky facts. A Washington Post piece from July provides a good example.

The Article

"A think tank wanted to study inequality. It couldn’t get conservatives on board" by Jim Tankersley covers an interesting tidbit. (Its subtitle, "If most of the research on a big economic question comes from one political point of view, can Americans trust it?" seems like an awfully loaded and misleading question, however. To be fair, editors often choose the headlines, not the authors – but Tankersley is listed as the editor for this and other "Storyline" pieces.)

The setup—a new Beltway think tank (Washington Center for Equitable Growth) wants to study an important issue:

What she wanted, [Heather] Boushey said, was to fund an intellectually honest investigation of arguably the hottest issue in American economics right now: the widening gap between the richest Americans and everyone else. She wanted to learn more how and why that gap might hurt the nation’s overall economic performance.

The think tank has some members with a liberal background, but apparently it aims to be inclusive and is officially "non-partisan." Accordingly, it extends a wide invitation:

Boushey was hoping to sign up an ideologically diverse cross-section of thinkers to her effort. . . .

The grant recipients, she explained, would examine questions of inequality and growth from every possible angle, liberal and conservative. They’d report what was true and what wasn’t. Her think tank would live with the findings, whatever they might be.

The think tank's trying to be inclusive and strives to be empirical and data-driven. Sounds good so far. Next, proposals are submitted and grants are given:

There are no identifiably conservative economists among the grantees, however.

Uh-oh! That doesn't sound inclusive! What gives?

No conservative economists applied for grants, among the 70 submissions the center received, Boushey said.

...Oh. Well, it's rather hard to offer a grant to someone who can't even be bothered to apply. Not even one of the 70 applicants was a conservative? That seems remarkable. Why was this? Tankersley theorizes:

Perhaps that’s because the center has, in its early months of existence, engaged in some high-profile blog-and-social-media fights with conservatives over questions of data and policy when it comes to inequality.

Alas, no links are provided for this. This sounds a bit whiny, that the new think tank was mean, so conservatives didn't want to play. The think tank's twitter feed seems fairly anodyne and not combative. Back in May, Boushey did appear on PBS' NewsHour to debate Kevin Hassett of the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) about Thomas Piketty’s recent book, Capital in the 21st Century, but it's a pretty polite exchange of disagreements. The most charitable possibility (for conservatives) would be that they judged that their contributions would be unwelcome. (It's a paid gig, though. And wouldn't getting paid to skewer a liberal position be tempting?) But Tankersley's speculating anyway, so let's move on. He floats another idea:

Perhaps it’s because it’s relatively rare in Washington for liberal and conservative thinkers to team up to pursue big questions – especially ones that, depending on the answer, could shake party platforms or basic ideological beliefs.

This is a much more convincing hypothesis, especially if one's familiar with the usual conservative stances on inequality. Tankersley continues:

It’s also true, in this case, that a lot of conservative economists have already decided that inequality – as opposed to mobility or the even broader “economic opportunity” – isn’t a problem.

Aha! Yes, this is much stronger, more accurate stuff – conservatives have often stated that inequality is overstated, or that it isn't a problem, or that efforts to ameliorate it cause more harm than good, or all of the above. Tankersley's link is to conservative AEI and its latest 117-page collection of essays, which argue all of these positions. This is good context for the reader.

This is the real challenge posed faced by Boushey, and her center, and the work that will now begin thanks to their grants: If most of the research into an economic issue is being conducted from one side of a political debate, consumers of that research could – and should – look skeptically on its conclusions, until persuaded otherwise. The burden is on the researchers, on their data and the stories they tell from it.

It’s a heavy burden. It would help to have a more diverse group of thinkers shouldering it.

Umm… what? Where did this come from? How does this follow? And a "diverse group" needs to include people who explicitly don't want to study the issue? I suppose "until persuaded otherwise" and the mention of "data" soften this a bit, but this is quite the sharp turn. It also ignores that there's a great deal of solid research on inequality already. For example, Thomas Piketty's aforementioned book, Capital in the 21st Century, is a new, major work in the field, and it's earned praise for its extensive research and synthesis of previous studies. (It's also received plenty of attacks from conservative outlets.) This think tank story, and discussions about inequality in general, do not take place in a vacuum. Let's recap Tankersley's account and conclusion:

1. A think tank wants to study inequality. It invites conservatives to participate.

2. Conservatives completely decline to participate (zero of seventy applicants).

3. It's mentioned but isn't emphasized in the piece that the think tank is sponsoring data-driven work. (A chart of the grantees and their paper topics is included. The findings of previous major studies on inequality are not mentioned.)

4. The conservative position is that inequality doesn't matter. (It's not really explored that justifications for this tend to be ideological versus data-driven. More on this in a bit.)

5. Conservatives have their own think tanks upholding their position.

6. Somehow… the new think tank's conclusions will be suspect and the burden is on its members, despite conservatives rejecting their invitation and rejecting their entire endeavor (not to mention rejecting the findings of previous studies).

Tankersley sure seems to arguing that if conservatives don’t agree with something, it can't be valid (or at the very least, that it must be viewed with great suspicion). There are several glaring problems here.

It's completely reasonable and fair to let different political factions have their say. It's utterly ridiculous, however, to automatically judge that their positions are equally valid and sound – especially when the facts say otherwise. Serious policy discussions require some level of qualitative analysis and judgment. Tankersley offers a variation on the usual predetermined "both sides are equally to blame" conclusion – in this case, he essentially lets conservatives veto the propositions that inequality matters and that it should be studied. He doesn’t provide much context for the reader, but essentially, he's falsely equating an empirical approach (and extensive data from it) by one "side" in a debate with a conservative ideological position against it. (For instance, conservatives will indeed argue that efforts to lessen inequality are ineffective or counterproductive, but their central, much more common argument is that such efforts are morally wrong.)

But Tankersley's conclusion doesn't even follow his own account. He links AEI's collection of papers arguing that inequality doesn't matter (and is overstated, etcetera). How is this point of view not represented, then? Why does the Washington Center for Equitable Growth specifically need to represent it, too? (Especially when they tried to, and offered an invitation that was rejected?) How the hell is this their fault?

Put another way, Tankersley's stated concern is about "research into an economic issue . . . being conducted from one side of a political debate." Based on his own account, either the other side has refused to engage in research, or the other side is already engaged. Yet somehow, the conservatives are still blameless and the fault lies with the more liberal – in this case, the intentionally centrist – faction.

Realistically, the news business is based on sales, ads, and page hits – content is churned out, and some of its quality will suffer. A short, quickly written piece won't give a full account of an issue. However, it should give a roughly accurate account of an issue and some basic context, and Tankersley's piece is striking for its abrupt and ill-fitting conclusion. It reads as if he was writing up an interesting tidbit, then realized he had to end by blaming "both sides," so he took a sharp swerve. He could have tried a familiar Beltway gambit – holding this incident up as an example of political intransigence and then bemoaning the lack of bipartisanship in Washington – and he kind of does this briefly (the less context on the issue one provides, the easier it is to pull off this move). But that route is slightly problematic here, because one "side" is investigating the issue and the other is refusing to do so – so fault must be invented in the name of "balance." Basically, the piece offers a socially driven conclusion versus an empirical or logical one.

The Bigger Picture

Tankersley's piece exemplifies some persistent problems in coverage of policy and political disputes. Let's return to that loaded and misleading subtitle: "If most of the research on a big economic question comes from one political point of view, can Americans trust it?"

This asks for a simple "yes" or "no" in a polarizing fashion, not for deeper reflection. (As Neil Postman put it, poor questions "insinuate that a position must be taken; they do not ask that thought be given.") Why does any political point of view automatically possess virtue, insight and accuracy? The stated attitude is also a major problem in "debates" about climate change and evolution, among other things. What if one "side" rejects empiricism and facts? What if one side consistently lies? What if one side had obvious reasons for arguing in bad faith? In the context of the paucity of conservatives in academia, PZ Myers has tackled this issue (emphasis mine):

Of course if [Jonathan Haidt] believes there’s no real difference between left and right, it’s a problem that the right is poorly represented in academia.

But what if there is a real difference, a difference of substance, in how left and right approach the evidence and how they respect the methods of science? I think the field of social psychology is suffering because they haven’t hired enough serial killers for their tenure line positions. They’d certainly do a good job of making psychologists question their assumptions about the importance of health, happiness, and security in human welfare, and also, someone would be around who could finally intimidate those prissy-pants on the Human Subjects Review Board. Should we complain about the deficiency, or should we recognize that some behaviors are antithetical to the cooperative and responsible pursuit of knowledge?

The problem isn’t that academia excludes conservatives. It’s that it is a rare conservative who doesn’t prioritize the moral foundations (to use Haidt’s own terms) of respect for authority and loyalty to the ingroup above breaking through conventions and assumptions to test the truth. Also, it’s the rare conservative who will accept a job with high admission requirements that also pays a pittance.

(As commenters in a Lawyers, Guns & Money thread on Tankersley's piece point out, conservative think tanks likewise probably pay much better than the new think tank's grants.)

Returning to the subject of inequality, it's not a secret that conservatives generally defend it and oppose efforts to lessen it; this is a core ideological principle. As conservative David Frum explained to Bill Moyers in 2009:

The Republicans are not the party of equality. They're the party of liberty and they're the party of efficiency. . . .

Liberty leads to inequality just as attempts to reduce equality lead to adoption of liberty.

The data don't always cooperate with the conservative position, however. Paul Krugman's written a great deal about inequality over the years, and a recent op-ed, "Inequality Is a Drag," summarizes some recent research:

It’s true that market economies need a certain amount of inequality to function. But American inequality has become so extreme that it’s inflicting a lot of economic damage. And this, in turn, implies that redistribution — that is, taxing the rich and helping the poor — may well raise, not lower, the economy’s growth rate.

You might be tempted to dismiss this notion as wishful thinking, a sort of liberal equivalent of the right-wing fantasy that cutting taxes on the rich actually increases revenue. In fact, however, there is solid evidence, coming from places like the International Monetary Fund, that high inequality is a drag on growth, and that redistribution can be good for the economy.

Earlier this week, the new view about inequality and growth got a boost from Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, which put out a report supporting the view that high inequality is a drag on growth. The agency was summarizing other people’s work, not doing research of its own, and you don’t need to take its judgment as gospel (remember its ludicrous downgrade of United States debt). What S.& P.’s imprimatur shows, however, is just how mainstream the new view of inequality has become. There is, at this point, no reason to believe that comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted is good for growth, and good reason to believe the opposite.

Specifically, if you look systematically at the international evidence on inequality, redistribution, and growth — which is what researchers at the I.M.F. did — you find that lower levels of inequality are associated with faster, not slower, growth. Furthermore, income redistribution at the levels typical of advanced countries (with the United States doing much less than average) is “robustly associated with higher and more durable growth.” That is, there’s no evidence that making the rich richer enriches the nation as a whole, but there’s strong evidence of benefits from making the poor less poor.

(Hullabaloo has covered inequality quite a bit. My most extensive post on the subject is this 2010 one.)

The conservative American Enterprise Institute's aforementioned work on the subject is a collection of essays entitled, Opportunity for All: How to Think about Inequality. I'm not going to go through all 117 pages in detail (you can read it for yourself), but I did want to note a few key arguments. In AEI President Arthur C. Brooks' introduction, he states:

The conventional wisdom on inequality is built on three assumptions: (1) Income inequality is inherently unjust; (2) it is bad for the economy; and (3) government redistribution is the best way to remedy it. According to this narrative, narrowing the gap between what wealthy and working-class Americans earn should be our top political priority, and policies such as raising taxes or increasing the minimum wage are the answer.

It's not encouraging when the opener offers such a huge straw man argument (and tinier ones). "Income inequality is inherently unjust"? As Krugman and others have noted, some inequality is necessary and useful, but beyond a certain amount it is indeed "bad for the economy." Direct government intervention can work, as can indirect intervention, and whether it's the "best" option or not, sometimes it's the only real option (see the New Deal). That's the practical argument. The moral counterargument to Brooks is that, if the political will existed, it would be relatively easy to have a system that still featured inequality but also much more "equality of opportunity" and a higher standard of living for everybody. Compared to other industrialized nations, the U.S. does relatively little social spending. Income and wealth inequality have increased over the past few decades, and the rich are being taxed at low levels by historical standards; U.S. taxes could become far more progressive and the richest 1% would still be left immensely privileged, if merely filthy rich versus obscenely wealthy.

In the same vein as Brooks, AEI author Aparna Mathur writes:

Like most Americans, I believe in equality of opportunity and not equality of outcome, which is clearly neither desirable nor attainable.

This is both a false dichotomy and a straw man. (Throw in appeal to the majority, too. What efficiency!) Of course, liberals (and the think tank centrists from earlier) don't seek "equality of outcome"; this is a wearily common conservative straw man tactic, essentially attacking communism and pretending that it's what liberals or European social democrats (or centrists) want. The goals are to reduce inequalities of both opportunities and outcomes, not to eliminate them altogether. In liberalism, governing is a balancing act, and theory and practice inform each other. Outcomes aren't the only concern, but they can't be ignored, either. The entire point of empiricism is to collect good data, which, among other things, entails – duh – looking at outcomes, measuring them and trying to determine causes with greater acuity. If the data show great inequality of opportunity, and also show great inequality of outcome – and the perennially preferred conservative policies to address the former have been shown to be insufficient or simply ineffective – perhaps something else is needed, hmm? If the data show that greater government spending does help, but conservatives oppose that, shouldn't they have to give a good reason and not just their position? If slightly higher taxes on the rich would help fund that spending, why not do it? (And do we really have to pretend that conservative arguments against even slight increases in taxes are always in good faith and with sound reason versus self-interest? Some conservatives are at least forthright about it.) It makes sense that most national political coverage avoids discussion of motives and bad faith, but it's not as if it sticks to the data instead – on inequality, climate change and many other subjects, it's been proven acceptable (for conservatives, at least) to simply say the data don't matter. Only rhetoric (which it would be rude to fact-check) can be allowed to prevail.

"Debates" about inequality do not take place in a vacuum – a long history and context exists. As Krugman observed in a July op-ed, "On Inequality Denial":

Not only do the usual suspects continue to deny the obvious, but they keep rolling out the same discredited arguments: Inequality isn’t really rising; O.K., it’s rising, but it doesn’t matter because we have so much social mobility; anyway, it’s a good thing, and anyone who suggests that it’s a problem is a Marxist.

What may surprise you is the year in which I published that article: 1992.

(Krugman's far from the only one writing about this stuff, but he's awfully good at it.)

That's a fine summing up of the arguments from AEI and other conservative outlets. In the same piece, Krugman also covers criticisms of Piketty's work:

At the risk of giving too much information, here’s the issue. We have two sources of evidence on both income and wealth: surveys, in which people are asked about their finances, and tax data. Survey data, while useful for tracking the poor and the middle class, notoriously understate top incomes and wealth — loosely speaking, because it’s hard to interview enough billionaires. So studies of the 1 percent, the 0.1 percent, and so on rely mainly on tax data. The Financial Times critique, however, compared older estimates of wealth concentration based on tax data with more recent estimates based on surveys; this produced an automatic bias against finding an upward trend.

In short, this latest attempt to debunk the notion that we’ve become a vastly more unequal society has itself been debunked. And you should have expected that. There are so many independent indicators pointing to sharply rising inequality, from the soaring prices of high-end real estate to the booming markets for luxury goods, that any claim that inequality isn’t rising almost has to be based on faulty data analysis.

Yet inequality denial persists, for pretty much the same reasons that climate change denial persists: there are powerful groups with a strong interest in rejecting the facts, or at least creating a fog of doubt. Indeed, you can be sure that the claim “The Piketty numbers are all wrong” will be endlessly repeated even though that claim quickly collapsed under scrutiny. . . .

This picture makes some people uncomfortable, because it plays into populist demands for higher taxes on the rich. But good ideas don’t need to be sold on false pretenses. If the argument against populism rests on bogus claims about inequality, you should consider the possibility that the populists are right.

Exactly. But then both sides aren't equally to blame, and there's no good reason to oppose policies helpful for the middle class (and poor) that powerful groups do in fact oppose. That's awkward for media outlets that traditionally toe the establishment line.

Moral arguments have their place (and can have great value), but the honest use of data is extremely helpful for cutting through biases and grounding those arguments. 'My ideology states that I don't need to care' is a position, not a true argument, and shouldn't cut it in serious discussions. Validating it amounts to empowering the fanatic's veto – it isn't even-handed; it's irresponsible. Having an open mind entails giving someone a fair hearing, not ignoring all evidence, judging all opinions equally sound or turning off one's bullshit detector. False equivalencies do not serve the audience (but unintentionally or not, they do serve other parties).

(Cross-posted at Hullabaloo.)

The Bullshit That Civilly Dare Not Speak Its Name

(If Mark Halperin spouts bullshit in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, is it still the fault of the Dirty Fucking Hippies?)

There's a saying that, as scant as the truth is, the supply always exceeds the demand. When it comes to Beltway pundits – the chattering class, the Villagers, the Very Serious People – the truth is more like a strange, exotic alien speaking a foreign and incomprehensive tongue. (And seriously, who thought it a good idea to invite that Krugman guy to the party every Sunday? Blah blah facts blah blah. Doesn't he know there's a two drink minimum?) Ideally, truth should trump civility, and accuracy should trump politeness, but that is hardly the dominant Beltway style.

Ernest Hemingway observed, "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector." When it comes to good political analysis – given the persistent fragrance of political discourse – what's specifically needed is a good bullshit detector:

I'm basically using Harry Frankfurt's definition of bullshit, in which a bullshitter may accidentally speak the truth, but simply doesn’t care whether what he says is true or not. As Frankfurt puts it, "It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are—that I regard as the essence of bullshit." Timothy Noah wrote a good 2005 piece on all this and noted, "Frankfurt's definition is provocative because it allows for the little-recognized possibility that bullshit can be substantively true, and still be bullshit." (I attempted to classify different levels of truth-telling and prevarication in "The Bullshit Matrix.")

Instead of a bullshit detector, the average pundit has a hypersensitive one of these:

Civility does have value, but how it's defined and actually observed (and enforced) can vary tremendously by community or venue. At its most basic, a civil discourse entails that each person gets his or her chance to speak without significant interruption and that needless personal attacks are avoided. A general ethic of cooperatively seeking the truth and exploring possible improvements to a given problem should also be in play. That said, among honest, sane, reasonably intelligent people, this standard is usually a given.

In contrast, in our national political discourse, the actual practice is that saying something that sounds harsh – even if it is factually, demonstrably true – is typically denounced as uncivil or otherwise rude, a breach of decorum. Newt Gingrich may be lying shamelessly, but the rules of the Beltway pundit game entail that calling him out as a liar is the true sin, not the lie itself. Rather than the hosts limiting the discourse to honest, sane, reasonably intelligent people (which necessitates qualitative judgment somewhere along the way), equal time – or rather, disproportionate time – is given to guests arguing in bad faith and/or with little to no expertise in the subject at hand. Consequently, civility as enforced usually does the audience a disservice.

To quote a piece from October 2012:

Funny, I'd say lying is rude.

Civility has its place, but honesty over civility, accuracy over politeness. Alternatively, if you define "civility" in part as showing respect for the truth, a liar has broken the implicit contract of the debate/discussion, and as a moral matter should be called out. (Not that that happens much in the Village, but boy, it's awesome when it does.)

I'm hardly unique in this take. One of the liberal blogosphere's key critiques of (and chief frustrations with) the corporate media is due to it oddly defining "civility" and exalting it above truth. See, for instance, the archives of Alicublog, Thers, TBogg, Blue Gal, driftglass, Digby, Atrios, Balloon Juice, Sadly, No and many more.

As we've discussed before, the Beltway establishment doesn't really care about "civility" per se, otherwise long-running, shameless bomb-thrower Newt Gingrich would be shunned, and certainly never put on the air so frequently. The Beltway version of "civility" is an odd construct, entailing that certain aspects of the establishment cannot be questioned, that Beltway Villagers in good standing cannot lose respectability, and that the socially-determined conventional wisdom reigns, no matter how false.

Similarly, now is the season for pundits and voters to bemoan all the negative ads. Who cares if an ad is negative? What matters is whether it's accurate or not. An honest ad will sometimes deliver a harsh judgment. That's as it should be. Ads should be accurate, and fair – in the sense that ads should provide relevant context and not be technically true but misleading. Voters face a decision, and any ad that is honest and fair helps them in that decision.

It can help to view political pundits through an anthropological lens; the majority of them define truth socially, nor empirically. Most of their views result from the almost unfailingly wrong Beltway Conventional Wisdom, built of reflexive, unexamined class biases. Pundits tend to have fine pedigrees (at least by Beltway standards). But for them, the benefit of, say, attending a genuinely good school or world travel sadly remains its value as a class marker. There's little evidence of the mind- and soul-expanding they could have experienced. They're rarely actually thoughtful. Oh, there may be a shred of that left, but they're terribly insecure (and often lazy), so they're anxious to follow the herd and not look like fools. (Actually caring about policies and their consequences to average citizens, the "real Americans" they claim to know, is a sure way to look like a rube in what Jay Rosen calls "the Church of the Savvy.") They wield decorum like a weapon. It's a defining feature of a fawning courtier class, establishment hacks and aspiring bourgeois authoritarians.

(Feel free to use alternative terms. Tom Scocca's piece on "On Smarm" covers similar ground, with "snark" being, at its best, the act of calling bullshit on deserving targets, while "smarm" is civility trolling.)

So sure, it's fine to have a civility meter, as long as you also have a bullshit detector and that takes the lead. Basically, it's also important to have a good one of these:

For example, maybe you sincerely believes that someone calling Dick Cheney a "war criminal" is distasteful, because, uh… he hasn't been formally convicted as such. Or it sounds harsh. Okay, but you should be more outraged by what Cheney actually did, his role in constructing a a torture program and his dishonesty in selling a war of choice. Don't agree with all of that? Fine. But the defining feature of civility trolls, the smarm patrol, the bullshitters, is that they're trying to shut honest discussion down. They don't want to investigate. They don't want accountability (not for their team, anyway). For example, there's a reason torture apologists steadfastly ignore all the accounts and mountains of data proving their claims false. Pick another issue if you like; the same dynamics often play out. For instance, pointing out that a climate change denier is completely wrong may lead to an awkward moment socially in the studio, but letting him spew falsehoods unchallenged does the audience no favors. The bullshit detector must take precedence over the (most popular Beltway brand of) civility meter:

When Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke in 2012, both devices should have sounded the alarm. But again, the problem wasn't solely that Limbaugh was rude, or a famous public figure punching down at a student who had the temerity to testify before Congress. Limbaugh was and is a grotesquely misogynist asshole, and that's far from incidental in this case. (As Aaron Bady pointed out, Limbaugh wasn't just ignorant about female contraception, he was "defending precisely his right not to know how it works.") Still, it's absolutely essential to note that Limbaugh lied about Fluke's testimony. He couldn't engage her on the merits, so he lied about her and attacked her personally. Calling out Limbaugh's viciousness and misogyny was deserved and valuable, but rank dishonesty remains a staple of Limbaugh's shtick even when he's (relatively) more "civil."

Basically, a civility meter can be hit or miss, but depends on how it's calibrated and who's wielding it. It can illuminate some issues, but will miss others, and when used by the Beltway's Very Serious People, it typically obfuscates the real problems. In contrast, a good bullshit detector is always valuable, and should be the primary tool.

Put another way, it's essential that one's outrage allocator is guided by a good one of these:

(Hat tips to Tildology and Entropy Zone for some of the art components above.)

Our National Political Discourse

I wanted to try to visualize how our national political discourse should work, and discuss how it does work instead. Here's a simplified version:

Politicians make their pitches; the media asks them questions; voters make judgments based on this process. The political lineup shuffles accordingly with each election, and the process repeats. Long live democracy!

Of course, this is basic civics class stuff, and extremely simplified in terms of what actually happens. For instance, politicians often lie, the media may fail to fact-check them, and citizens may be ill-informed or irrational in their voting choices. Politically active citizens also do far more than just vote. Still, this model expresses an ideal central to our nation's founding: our system of government works better the more that voters can make informed choices. Thomas Jefferson was a fierce advocate for both a free press and public education for precisely this reason. On the press, he wrote:

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Jefferson argued that public education in America would help international competition, but also that it was vital to democracy:

...Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right.

It bears mentioning that Jefferson was quite critical of the quality of the newspapers in his time, and felt one might be better informed if one didn't read them. (Some things don't change.) Nevertheless, his goal was a "well-informed" electorate, and he felt a free press and public education were important mechanisms for achieving this. Jefferson's views on these issues epitomize Enlightenment thinking, as does the notion that "all men are created equal." (Although let's not forget women or other historically disenfranchised groups.)

Enlightenment ideals stand in sharp contrast to the ideology of certain conservatives, neocons, neo-feudalists, a large section of the ruling class, and their attending suck-ups and wannabes. This crowd is not too keen on the whole "democracy" thing, and focuses more on acquiring and keeping power. Its members feel it's okay to lie to the populace – ostensibly for the benefit of the citizenry – but in an amazing coincidence, those lies always benefit themselves. Irving Kristol, the "godfather of neoconservatism," was somewhat candid about this selective honesty to the public:

Kristol has acknowledged his intellectual debt to [Leo] Strauss in a recent autobiographical essay. "What made him so controversial within the academic community was his disbelief in the Enlightenment dogma that 'the truth will make men free.'" Kristol adds that "Strauss was an intellectual aristocrat who thought that the truth could make some [emphasis Kristol's] minds free, but he was convinced that there was an inherent conflict between philosophic truth and political order, and that the popularization and vulgarization of these truths might import unease, turmoil and the release of popular passions hitherto held in check by tradition and religion with utterly unpredictable, but mostly negative, consequences."

Kristol agrees with this view. "There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people," he says in an interview. "There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work."

It's one thing to follow the writer's old maxim to "know your audience," and quite another to "lie to obtain and hold power." Kristol, like many of his fellow travelers and descendants, was an advocate of the supposedly "noble lie."

All this bears mentioning because it would be wrong to assume that every political player actually believes in democracy, representative government, the social contract, basic civic responsibility, informing the public and voting rights. Far right activist Paul Weyrich, who co-founded the Heritage Foundation, stated in 1980:

Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome – good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.

Although of course decent people exist who self-identify as conservatives, conservatism itself has always had an anti-democratic strain. It's not a coincidence that voter suppression efforts for the past few decades have been almost exclusively conservative and/or Republican – and this past election cycle was no exception. However, the mainstream media struggles to call this out.

It's naïve to believe that all political players are acting in good faith, or that citing "principles" automatically ennobles actions or renders them beyond criticism. Some ideologies and their principles are noxious (slavery, white supremacy, female subjugation, theocracy, voter suppression, "I always get to win," etc.). Denouncing taxation as forced labor, theft or slavery is childish, and complaining that you object to your taxes helping the poor "on principle" doesn't make you any less of an asshole… just a less honest one. As John Kenneth Galbraith observed, "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

As for democracy, the various versions of it have their flaws. Winston Churchill (who certainly had his own flaws) reputedly said, "The strongest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter," but he definitely said:

Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

A More Complex Model

Here's a more complex graphic that better depicts the many disparate groups in our national political discourse:

(Click or go here for a better view. No lines for this one, because it would get too messy, but you can draw your own for specific groups. Yeah, I made this quite a while ago.)

This isn't drawn to scale, of course. For instance, third parties are smaller in terms of their actual influence, and corporations are much larger. (That's kinda a joke, but not really.) Corporations aren't always allied, either, but when it comes to politics, they tend to have one voice, which unfailingly promotes a pro-corporate viewpoint. (Several charts making the rounds show how corporate consolidation has increased over the years in the media and elsewhere.) In case there's any confusion, I'll briefly explain these different groups:

Democratic Leaders: The chart doesn't show smaller factions, such as the Congressional Progressive Caucus, but that one doesn't get a great deal of press, anyway. This icon represents the political leadership of the Democratic Party.

Republican Leaders: Likewise, smaller factions aren't shown (especially since members of "the Tea Party" are just rebranded conservatives). This icon represents the political leadership of the Republican Party.

Third Parties: More than one "third party" exists, and they don't agree on every issue, but obviously they all dislike America's two-party system. I picked Nader for this one because he's relatively well-known as a third-party candidate, but picture another figure (Jill Stein, Gary Johnson) if you prefer or find Nader too polarizing.

Corporations: It would be difficult to overestimate how much influence corporations exert on the entire political process, including the national political discourse. The "mainstream media" is for the most part corporate media, and it's rare that it will allow a viewpoint that isn't corporate-friendly.

Conservative Think Tanks: The pictured Koch brothers fund an enormous amount of conservative "thought" and media (sometimes called "the Kochtopus"). Their numerous outlets can give a false sense of multiple factions that are in consensus that the rich are taxed too much and so on, when in fact it's one message delivered by multiple mouths. Left-leaning and "centrist" think tanks do exist, but as SourceWatch notes, "there are twice as many conservative think tanks as liberal ones, and the conservative ones generally have more money." Exceptions exist, but for the most part, conservative think tank "scholars" are pedigreed hacks masquerading as wonks. Most nominally libertarian organizations can be placed here or with the conservative voting groups, the Libertarian Party notwithstanding. Although the Cato Institute and Reason, both Koch-funded, will stray off the conservative reservation on some issues (e.g. legalizing pot), they reliably support plutocracy or plutocrat-friendly policies, environmental deregulation, and a gutting of the Commons, just like the Kochs.

Academics and Experts: This group would be much better to feature in the news than most think tank "scholars," in that they're less likely to have a predetermined political agenda and more likely to tell the truth. However, some academics and experts aren't very good at explaining their field to laypeople, and some aren't good at facing off with hacks (who aren't there for an honest discussion).

Corporate Media: There's more than one corporate media outlet, and they're not always in complete agreement (hence the two icons, although many more could be added to represent the "mainstream media"). Still, they tend to share a basic worldview, often unconsciously, that defers to power, from corporate interests to elite Beltway consensus (the "Very Serious People").

Fox News: Although Fox News is also a corporate media outlet, it's significantly different in that propaganda is a key driver in addition to profit, and the network has shown eagerness in not letting the truth get in the way of a conservative political attack. (For more on this, see basically everything every posted at Media Matters.)

Right-Wing Talk: The hosts and guests on right-wing talk radio overlap considerably with those on Fox News, but there's enough separation it deserves its own category. (The radio-only crowd tends to be even crazier.)

PBS/NPR: Public broadcasting has its faults, but its news coverage is generally better than that of for-profit corporate outlets. It has a little more independence. (Its non-political stories are generally excellent; for anything touching on politics, they sometimes tread too carefully or even bend over backwards not to call out conservatives – unfortunately, conservatives frequently threaten to defund them.)

Independent Liberal Media: Truly liberal media outlets don't have the deep pockets behind them that other outlets do. Still, they do exist, even if they can be harder to find.

True Swing Voters: The notion of the "independent" voter is largely a myth, but there is a small group that will actually switch between the two major parties (or go third party) in major elections. (This mainly applies to national elections, not local ones.)

Likely Republican Voters: This group has a preference for the Republican Party and normally votes for it (at least on the national level). In certain circumstances, members of this group might vote otherwise.

Likely Democratic Voters: This group has a preference for the Democratic Party and normally votes for it (at least on the national level). In certain circumstances, members of this group might vote otherwise.

Diehard Conservative Cheerleaders: This group puts political party and the movement before most other considerations. General loyalty makes some long-term sense, but a "my party, right or wrong" attitude is a big problem, especially when a party/movement's leaders act egregiously. This is the group that still approved of George W. Bush as president no matter what, or stuck by Nixon to the bitter end (or, even if they never badmouthed him publicly, 'only liked him after Watergate').

Yellow Dog Democrats: This group puts political party before most other considerations. (As the joke goes, if the party nominated a yellow dog for office, these people would vote for it.) General loyalty makes some long-term sense, but a "my party, right or wrong" attitude is a big problem, especially when a party/movement's leaders act egregiously. Perhaps it's lack of opportunity, but I don't think this group has been as bad as their conservative counterparts. The closest equivalent would party loyalists who have defended actual (versus alleged) corruption by Democratic politicians or will not hear any criticism of the Clintons or Obama.

Conservative Activists: This group is typified by right-wing bloggers and activists (for instance, pro-life/anti-choice demonstrators). They believe they are the true conservatives and the rightful adjudicators of ideological purity. They tend to be more conservative than the politicians they eventually support (they almost all voted for Romney, but often supported other candidates in the primaries). Still, the activist-politician gap is smaller for them than for their liberal counterparts, since a sizable number of genuinely right-wing public officials do exist.

Liberal Activists: Members of this group tend to identify themselves as "liberals" or "progressives" rather than (or at least before) "Democrats." They typically think that the Democratic Party isn't liberal enough, and will criticize its politicians (although they may still judge them better than the Republicans on given issues or overall). For example, they probably agree with most positions of the Congressional Progressive Caucus or other individual politicians on the liberal end (e.g. Bernie Sanders), but are more critical of Democratic leaders and "centrist" to conservative factions such as the Democratic Leadership Council or Third Way. (It is true that the American Democratic Party as a whole is not very liberal compared to its international counterparts.)

Astroturf Groups: These groups pretend to be grassroots activists, but are actually heavily corporate-funded. Pictured is Dick Armey, former House Majority Leader and rich lobbyist, who went on to be the chairman of FreedomWorks (he's since resigned), a supposed "Tea Party" group backed by rich conservative donors. (And sure, Dick Armey, establishment millionaire, clearly spoke for the little guy as he claimed.)

Third Party Independents: This group is frustrated with the existing two-party system but also eschews internal reform in favor of supporting a third party instead. (There's more than one "third party," making the term technically inaccurate, but it's a common shorthand.) I wouldn't put establishment "centrist" groups such as "No Labels" in this category – they're closer to Astroturf Groups or perhaps the "Likely" groups.

Artists: Not every artist is politically insightful, but some are extremely astute. As we've discussed here before, the Arts can sometimes capture the true nature of politics (particularly its mindsets and pathologies) better than "straight" journalism can.

Political Jesters: The fools who can (and often do) speak truth to power. Sure, there are comics that traffic in cheap, shallow political humor, but The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, while not infallible, often do a better job at covering politics than traditional journalism, because they're not afraid to call bullshit. (In fact, it gives them greater credibility.)

Not pictured are the various political groups out there, because simply too many exist. Plus, many roughly align with the various voting/activist groups. For example, the right-wing group Focus on the Family fits in with the Conservative Activists, even though not all conservative activists are theocrats or even social conservatives. Meanwhile, the ACLU is nonpartisan, but right-wingers hate it and civil liberties so much (except when it comes to their own) that it gets pegged as "liberal." The same basic dynamics hold true for Planned Parenthood, if more contentiously because abortion (and unfortunately, even birth control) remain so politicized. Planned Parenthood follows both the law and standard medical practices, so it could be argued it's more "conservative" than the strident activists of Focus on the Family, but of course most conservatives would never see it that way, and such a stance does not describe actual conservatism (versus the fantasy version). As we've explored before, despite their hype, most self-described conservatives aren't fighting to maintain the status quo; they're fighting for what they view as the natural order with themselves on top. They often speak of these efforts as a "restoration," even though their preferred hierarchy is long gone (and was horrible, and remains widely rejected) or never existed in the first place.

It bears mentioning that not all reasons for being in a given group or listening to specific outlets are created equal. Nor is someone's self-labeling necessarily accurate. Voters often like to describe themselves as "independent" when they really mean "sensible." (Late in an election cycle, it's extremely rare for any "undecided" voters to be well-informed but truly ambivalent; at a certain point, almost everyone claiming to be "undecided" is a liar, attention-seeker, or ignoramus.) This chart could likely be improved, but I hope it's somewhat useful for discussing the mechanisms of political discourse (and how those affect the quality of discussion).

The Types of Guests (and Where the Process Breaks Down)

When it comes to political shows in the corporate media, the quality of the guests is often lacking. The various reasons for booking a guest are not all mutually exclusive, but the breakdown goes something like this:

Merit/Expertise: Guests possessing actual merit, expertise and insight on the subject matter should be the most valuable and the most common, but sadly, they don't dominate the airwaves. As mentioned above, academics and experts don't always know how to adapt their speaking style to the demands of a political show, and some wonks can be flustered by hacks. Additionally, the producer of the show booking guests has to have some sort of mechanism in place for evaluating actual merit. Ideally, someone on the producing team would have some small expertise to help judge potential guests or be able to obtain a recommendation from a trustworthy source. Some sharp potential guests may not be on the producers' radar (certain bloggers).

Reputation/Credentials: Instead of actual expertise, producers will often book guests based on reputation, which isn't quite the same thing, but the two aren't mutually exclusive. Paul Krugman, for example, certainly has the credentials to speak on economic matters, but he's also legitimately smart and insightful. Sadly, this category is where think tank hacks dubbed "scholars" often come in (as covered above, think tank wonks do exist, but certain institutions are dominated by hacks). This category is also the measure by which genuinely perceptive writers without a Beltway pedigree and worldview, such as Digby, are excluded.

Power: It's reasonable to book guests possessing the power to influence or outright control a vote or policy, even if their views have little to no merit. For instance, James Inhofe's notion that "global warming is a hoax" is batshit crazy, but he was the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and fights for climate change denial wherever he can in Congress. The same dynamics held true when the Republicans held the debt ceiling hostage or have engaged in similar recklessness. Ideally, journalists will question those with power about the merit of their positions, but in the more corporate outlets, such pressure typically only goes so far.

Cosmetic Balance/Appeasement (Whining): This category demands the most discussion. Guests are booked because they represent a different point of view, even if that viewpoint has little to no merit. This makes more sense on the basic "power" level, inviting a representative of each major political party to discuss a policy or upcoming vote. It's much less defensible when there's a sizable "reality gap," and, say, an actual climate scientist is asked to debate an oil company shill, or a biologist is asked to debate a creationist on evolution, or any situation where an honest wonk is asked to debate a dissembling hack or sincere loon. This approach provides the image of balance while ignoring content and merit. Effectively, it entails that policy doesn't matter, because the show's producers essentially abdicate any fact-checking or vetting of merit, leaving this up to the viewer in the name of being fair while habitually denying the viewer crucial context for making an informed judgment. This approach is also employed to appease the conservative Wurlitzer, flogging its latest manufactured shitstorm, not that such appeasement typically works. (Liberals don't really have anything comparable.)

The late Molly Ivins, back in 1987, had a great take on these dynamics (emphasis mine):

The American press has always had a tendency to assume the truth must lie exactly halfway between any two opposing points of view. Thus, if the press present the man who says Hitler is an ogre and the man who says Hitler is a prince, it believes it has done the full measure of its duty.

This tendency has been aggravated in recent years by a noticeable trend to substitute people who speak from a right-wing ideological perspective for those who know something about a given subject.Thus we see, night after night, on MacNeil/Lehrer or Nightline, people who don't know jack-shit about Iran or Nicaragua or arms control, but who are ready to tear up the peapatrch in defense of the proposition that Ronald Reagan is a Great Leader beset by com-symps. They have nothing to off in the way of facts or insight; they are presented as a way of keeping the networks from being charged with bias by people who are themselves replete with bias and resistant to fact. The justification for putting them on the air is that "they represent a point of view."

The odd thing about these television discussions designed to "get all sides of the issue" is that they do not feature a spectrum of people with different views on reality:

Rather, they frequently give us a face-off between those who see reality and those who have missed it entirely. In the name of objectivity, we are getting fantasyland.

In "The Heritage Foundation Has Always Been Full of Hacks," Jason Stahl presents similar dynamics as the result of aggressive conservative lobbying in the 70s and 80s:

...The highest value in debating policy would no longer be “best solutions” but merely having a balanced marketplace where the ideas of liberals and conservatives would be heard simply because they “balanced” one another. Such a way of debating policy, which we are still living under today, means that a policy’s identity as a conservative one that balances a liberal one is the only thing required for it to be heard. Such a discourse does not rule out the idea that liberal and/or conservative policies could be founded on analytical rigor, but also does not require it.

This approach creates an anti-empirical, anti-qualitative, anti-content, anti-thoughtful, anti-social-contract, anti-policy framework for discussion. It's not good for the country, but it is a much cheaper product to churn out, especially in the bulk required for the 24-hour news cycle. It also provides the veneer of objectivity while generally discouraging deeper analysis. Good journalists still exist, of course, but their bosses higher up the ladder are another matter. Corporate media heads view news primarily as a commodity to be sold versus as a public service.

Member of the Club: This category often overlaps with Cosmetic Balance and Reputation, but when it's present, it's the dominating factor. Certain pundits and gasbags rarely say anything original and insightful, and at best shill the conventional Beltway wisdom (usually wrong) or their party's talking points. No matter how insipid or appalling their remarks, they never seem to be banned from the club; at best, they're banned for a short time. Reliable hack, grifter and verbal bomb-thrower Newt Gingrich is the poster child for this category, and proof the chattering class doesn't actually care much about "civility." (See driftglass on the Gingrich rules for much more.)

Headline Generation: This category can overlap with the others, especially Member of the Club, but doesn't necessarily. For example, in her heyday, Ann Coulter wasn't really a "member of the club" by Beltway standards, although she was a regular on Fox News and other right-wing outlets. Still, she was booked by major corporate outlets because she was ridiculous, inflammatory and "controversial." She didn't further the national discourse one iota, but she did generate headlines, and that made money. Newt Gingrich, who is a "member of the club," can be similarly counted on to say outrageous things in a calm tone to generate headlines.

The general public and corporate media heads often aren't seeking the same things in news coverage, and it would be wise to remember that.

A More Complex Outlook

In general, our national political discourse is shallow and discourages nuance. It also avoids assigning accountability if only one party is indicted. None of the following statements are unusual or difficult for reasonably intelligent, reasonably well-informed adults, but they're rare to find on the Sunday shows (especially the conclusions):

I could be wrong.
Wonks on my side could be wrong.
Wonks on the other side have some decent ideas.
The wonks on the other side are wrong on certain issues, but they're still decent people.
Dialogue with smart people who give a damn is a good way of coming up with better solutions.
Nevertheless, one side's ideas are qualitatively better.

Or:

There are hacks and scumbags in the political party I prefer.
Corruption is not limited to one party.
Nevertheless, one side is considerably less corrupt (at least on certain key issues).

Or:

There are ill-informed citizens who believe things that simply aren't true.
There are crazy people with genuinely dangerous ideas.
There are zealots with genuinely reckless ideologies.
There are people who seek power, whatever the cost to the country.
There are truly evil people in politics.
Many stupid, evil or crazy people don't view themselves as such.
Many dangerous, reckless or evil people are legitimized by the Beltway establishment or the corporate media.

Sadly, an American citizen will often be better informed if he or she avoids watching political talk shows, with their conventional, false wisdom and addiction to saying "both sides do it" and its variants. To quote a previous post:

…saying "both sides do it" is a form of trolling. In almost every case, when a Very Serious Person says "both sides do it," "both sides are to blame" or any of its variants, it is to shut down discussion, not to bring it to a deeper, more nuanced level.

Among honest, sane, reasonably intelligent and well-informed adults, the following are taken as givens:

1. Neither major party is entirely pure or entirely corrupt. You can find despicable and honorable people in both parties.

2. There is an inherent level of bullshit in politics. All politicians lie to some degree.

Naturally, the same crowd also holds that:

3. Nevertheless – actually, because of this – it's very important to take a closer look at politicians, parties, and their policies, and try to make an informed, comparative, qualitative judgment. Responsible citizenship and basic voting depends on it. Policy matters.

Strangely, most Beltway political commentators will endorse #1 and #2, but reject #3. The same media figures who sagely inform the public that politicians lie, as if this a revelation... will also refuse to fact-check their political guests. Instead of #3, they tend to hold the following views:

A. Wisdom lies precisely between the parties. One side cannot be significantly better/more correct than the other. It's impossible that one side can be overwhelmingly better!

B. It is rude to call out liars, or not invite them back after they lie.

C. Giving both parties a fair hearing necessitates judging that both arguments have equal merit.

D. Anyone saying harsh things about conservatives/Republicans clearly is closed-minded, hyper-partisan and not a Serious Person, regardless of the evidence.

All of this also entails:

E. Policy doesn't matter.

This mindset, whatever you want to call it – faux centrism, "sensible" centrism, centrist fetishism, establishment groupthink, bourgeois authoritarianism, the world view of Very Serious People, the Emperor's New Clothes, the ol' ruling class circle jerk – is absolutely fucking imbecilic. The people who shill it are often highly educated and have sterling pedigrees by Beltway standards, but they are shockingly shallow.

There's a saying that democracy is a form of government where the country gets what the majority deserves. That would be more accurate if our national political discourse were more honest, more accurate, more civic-minded and more in-depth.

(Previous posts on these themes: "Partisanship, Policy and Bullshit," "Both Sides Do It: Partisanship Redux," "Civil Both-Sides Partisans," "Common Ground and Equal Blame," "False Equivalencies," "The Bullshit Matrix" and "The Social Contract.")