When U.S. Race Relations Soured

I recently read a thread on another forum in which 100 out of 140 posts declared that we became a divided nation under Trump and it was Trump's fault. I then found Gallop data that tracked opinions on race relations historically. I found it fascinating. What jumped out at me was the legacies of the last two presidents, when things began to fall apart, and the disappearance of the "No Opinion" response.

Obama, who took office in 2009 inherited a relatively united country from Bush. A majority of both blacks and whites felt similarly that race relations were "very/somewhat good." When Obama left office, a majority of both races felt that race relations were no longer "very/somewhat good." Things started falling apart around 2013 and the downward trend line simply continued under Trump. Over time, the number of people expressing no opinion shrank to near-zero.

The lines moved in parallel. Even when the gap reached 20% in 2007, both groups were still positive. Joe Biden will inherit a divided nation. If we focus on blame without understanding that this trend began in 2012, we will not reunite.

I understand that attitudes on racism are extremely complex. That said, my first significant indication of coming trouble was John Lewis's characterization of John McCain in 2008 as a "racist." I had always respected both men, and although by then I was becoming accustomed to hearing Democrats cut off debate by pointing at the nearest white Republican and yelling, "Racist!," that was unlikely to apply to McCain. He had matured in the US military, arguably one of the least racist institutions in the country.

My second indication came in 2011, when prominent civil rights leaders repeatedly proclaimed that the only reason to disagree with Obama was racism. His approval rating at inauguration was 70%. Less than three years later it was in the low 40s. One-quarter of Americans had become racists in very short order, apparently.

Bureau of Justice Statistics is not, IMO, intentionally obfuscatory, it's simply standard bureaucratic denseness. It's difficult to tease out, but the numbers don't support a narrative of black victimization at the hand of whites. Interracial violence is unusual, and while black-on-white crime is more common than the inverse, it's still relatively rare.

In 2014 Michael Brown was shot and killed by white police officer Darren Wilson in self-defense. The "hands up, don't shoot" false narrative came out of this. Some forty FBI Agents were dispatched to Ferguson, Missouri, and three White House representatives attended the funeral. The town of Ferguson was seriously damaged and the "Ferguson Effect" was born, with police officers hesitant to approach black suspects not for fear of being shot, but for fear of criminal charges.

Events occurring during the Obama presidency put U.S. race relations on a downward track. Trump, to his discredit, has only made things worse. My point is that we shouldn't be focusing on Trump alone, overlooking events from the preceding years. We need to acknowledge the longer duration and complexity of this unfortunate trend to begin to fix what has gone wrong.

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Misc Thoughts . . .

I'm subscribed to Greenwald and Taibbi. I haven't felt this good about being a liberal in more than a decade.

I have serious difficulty dealing with people dying from Trump Derangement Syndrome, all convinced that I am a committed Trump supporter. I'm opposed to the Far Left which styles itself Progressive, and claims it's the same thing as liberal. It is fundamentally illiberal.

A friend is a committed Christian and committed Trump supporter. He sent me a message asking if I knew what 2020 divided by 666 was. I did the math in my head, knew the answer instantly. It's 3.0330. I replied that I had no idea that God was limited to Base 10. He's furious. Just assume for a second that there is a God. Why would he ever use Base 10? Binary or Base Eight is infinitely more sensible.

As you know, there are 10 kinds of people: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

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Areo Offers 14 Reasons: Why Concerns with Woke Ideology do not Justify a Vote for Donald Trump

From Areo, a collection of 14 short articles (authors include Steven Pinker, Thomas Chatterton-Williams, Helen Pluckrose, Irshad Manji Alan Sokal and others) aimed at those who are convinced (as I am) that Woke-ism is horribly misguided, in fact dangerous, and who fear that under a Biden administration this misguided movement might find room to expand further into America's sense-making institutions. The reason for this article is that many people who lean generally to the political left are so repulsed by Woke ideology that they are considering a vote for Trump. The bottom line for each of these authors: a vote for Trump is not a good option, even though Trump has taken a strong stand against CSJ ideology. Caveat for those of you who get your news only from news media that leans to the political left: These issues have been lighting up Twitter and non-legacy media for months. These are serious issues to many people who are about to vote.

There are few people who have done more than me to try to persuade people to regard Critical Social Justice ideas rooted in postmodern ideas about knowledge, power and language as a serious threat to secular liberal democracies. I truly believe that these ideas already have far too much unwarranted cultural prestige and are causing significant damage to the humanities and the political left as well as infiltrating mainstream media, art, culture, history, schools and the corporate world.

However, one of the greatest dangers of Critical Social Justice is that its authoritarian lunacy drives left-leaning centrists to the right—and not towards a sober and ethical conservatism. People who value evidence-based epistemology and consistently liberal ethics can be found on the left, right and centre: these are the people we need to represent us right now. Instead, too many people who claim to prize liberal values are planning to vote for a populist, anti-intellectual president whose rejection of science, reason, truth and liberalism has been amply demonstrated over the last four years.

We cannot push back against irrationalism and illiberalism on the left by embracing irrationalism and illiberalism on the right. We cannot beat the postmodern Social Justice and alternative ways of knowing of the left with the postmodern post-truth and of the right. Trump is not the solution for anyone who values science and reason and wants to protect a liberal society that defends freedom of belief and speech and viewpoint diversity as well as rigorous scholarship and consistently ethical activism for genuine racial, gender and LGBT equality. I urge American citizens to vote for the moderate Democrat, Joe Biden, and hold him to his promise to be the president for all Americans.

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Pew Graphs Illustrate Our Growing Partisan Divide

I found this graph posted by "Number 6" on Twitter today. I haven't been able to track it down independently. If it is accurate, it painfully illustrates our growing cultural/political/partisan divide. In three colors, this is why we can't talk with each other across the aisle any longer.

I think this illustration is worth considering even though it is generally counter-productive to discuss political attitudes on a one-dimensional scale of left-to-right. It is useful in this context because there are only two options for voting for president this year if you want to be able to cast your vote for a person who will actually become president.

Brett Weinstein comments how dangerous this is that our political orientations are increasingly distant from each other.  I agree with him:

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The Shifting Political Sands

I participate in an online forum where, most members are knowledgeable of Meyers Briggs Type Inventory. The moderators and the majority of the members call themselves liberals, but are intolerant of any deviation from leftist ideology. Those people aren't liberals.

In the politics sub-forum I routinely criticize Democrats, because I used to be one, and they abandoned me. I refuse to worship at the altar of statism for good reason, and I find the tactics of Democrats infuriating. The precedents that have been set are injurious to our society. Perjury is OK because Trump. Falsifying evidence is OK because Trump. Screaming in people's faces, encouraging your supporters to keep political opponents out of the public space, is disgusting. I'm accused of being a Trump supporter for this. The idea that principles, hence precedents, matter, is justifiably dismissed because Trump.

I recently called out a venemous progressive who said my protestations of impartiality are a fraud, because I only criticize Democrats, therefore I am a Republican partisan. I have paid a heavy price for my obstinacy. My participation has been limited, and I suspect I'm not yet banned only because the forum has become a near-perfect echo chamber. The problem with driving out all opposition so that the only thing left is an echo chamber. That's the first strike of the bell announcing a funeral. If there is no enemy, there's no reason to exist.

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