Posts by Dennis Frank
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Hard News: Lost Men, in reply to mark taslov,
The problem has emerged due to inaccuracy of language usage. The original meaning of racism is belief that one race is superior to the others. Back in the colonial era it was conventional to believe the white race was superior. I never saw any evidence that any of the three expressed that view during their controversies.
I'm aware that younger generations in recent decades have tended to view and call anything they don't like racist, so as to devalue it as a technical term. A symptom of collective brain death? Not entirely; seems reasonable to view some people as having tacit racism. Particularly politicians. As per Polanyi's identification of how tacit beliefs motivate behaviour, folks can easily be indoctrinated with a bias when young and carry it along in their subconscious through life, and yet be horrified if ever made aware of it.
So reality for culture & politics is nuanced. I get why folks polarise so easily and see racism even where it isn't, but Fukuyama is explaining how both become toxic when identity politics prevents interaction on the basis of common humanity and goodwill. The extremist trend has gone too far and must be rolled back!
As regards your clip of the Canadian rationalising apartheid, I'd just comment that I always saw it as racist. My first demo in 1970 was a march against apartheid in Auckland led by Trevor Richardson on behalf of Halt All Racist Tours. He seems to be explaining a separate development rationale. If the govt of SA did actually use such a frame, fair enough. I was the only Green Party member who stood up and supported Matt Rata's launch of a separate justice system for Maori at an Alliance meeting in the early '90s. Separate development seemed a valid rationale there too.
I still see that SA govt as mostly racist, and their voter base likewise. However reality isn't black & white and a third political group that believe in equal rights for all races while being pragmatic enough to use separate development as a transitional stage ought not to be ignored or discounted. Media bias in favour of the old black & white polarisation routinely excludes third alternatives (or any shade of grey).
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Thanks for the technical advice. I've just been reading Fukuyama's chapter 11, in which his account of the historical evolution of identity politics is converging on the present. I'll quote parts that link historic socioeconomic trends to the rise of Trump via resurgent nationalism (since the white male suiciders are just the tip of his iceberg).
"The left continued to be defined by its passion for equality, but that agenda shifted from its earlier emphasis on the conditions of the working class to the often psychological demands of an ever-widening circle of marginalized groups. Many activists came to see the old working class and their trade unions as a privileged stratum with little sympathy for the plight of groups such as immigrants or racial minorities worse off than they were. Recognition struggles targeted newer groups and their rights as groups, rather than the economic inequality of individuals. In the process, the old working class was left behind."
"The shifting agenda by the progressive left in the United States and Europe had both advantages and drawbacks. The embrace of identity politics was both understandable and necessary. The lived experiences of identity groups are different from one another and often need to be addressed in ways specific to those groups. Outsiders to those groups often fail to perceive the harm they are doing by their actions... Identity politics aims at changing culture and behaviour in ways that will have real benefits for the people involved."
"By turning the spotlight on narrower experiences of injustice, identity politics has brought about welcome changes in concrete public policies that have benefited the groups in question, as well as in cultural norms." "So there is nothing wrong with identity politics as such; it is a natural and inevitable response to injustice. It becomes problematic only when identity is interpreted or asserted in certain specific ways. Identity politics for some progressives has become a cheap substitute for serious thinking about how to reverse the thirty-year trend in most liberal democracies toward greater socioeconomic inequality."
"A significant part of the white American working class has been dragged into an underclass, comparable to the experience of African-Americans during the 1970s and '80s." "Trump was the perfect practitioner of the ethics of authenticity that defines our age: he may be mendacious, malicious, bigoted, and unpresidential, but at least he says what he thinks. By taking on political correctness so frontally, Trump has played a critical role in moving the focus of identity politics from the left, where it was born, to the right, where it is now taking root."
"Identity politics on the left tended to legitimate only certain identities while ignoring or denigrating others, such as European (ie white) ethnicity, Christian religiosity, rural residence, belief in family values, and related categories. Many of Donald Trump's working-class supporters feel they have been disregarded by the national elites."
"Rural people, who are the backbone of populist movements not just in the United States but in Britain, Hungary, Poland, and other countries, often believe that their traditional values are under severe threat by cosmopolitan, city-based, elites. They feel victimized by a secular culture that is careful not to criticize Islam or Judaism, yet regards their own Christianity as a mark of bigotry."
"Since his rise, white nationalism has moved from a fringe movement to something much more mainstream in American politics. Its proponents argue that it has been politically acceptable to talk about Black Lives Matter or gay rights or Latino voters as groups that legitimately organize around a specific identity. But if one even uses the adjective white as self-identification or, worse yet, organizes politically around the theme of "white rights", one is immediately identified, the white nationalists note, as a racist and a bigot."
We saw that here recently, as those labels were applied to a couple of visiting Canadian advocates, without any validating evidence. Some pc-drones even tried to deny Don Brash his right of free speech. The moral of such stories is that politics gets more toxic when disrespect is used as a tactic - particularly when exclusion is applied - and the level playing field is tilted in favour of some groups, to discriminate against others. Democracy becomes a sham when fairness is eliminated.
I'm not suggesting leftists are hypocrites - just that they tend to be oblivious to the polarising consequence of their tacit group-think. Wising up to that becomes increasingly essential, to preserve goodwill, when we see extreme escalation of the trend in countries overseas!
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Well, I tried the instructions for italicising text that this site provides under the `post your response' window - but as you can see it didn't work! Why not?
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Russell wrote: "while suicide rates in most western countries have decreased over the past two decades, in America, the rate is up by a third. And one group is driving the increase: white, middle-aged men... Men, who have lost jobs, status, security and identity are killing themselves... it's impossible not to feel that the American problems forced into everyone's face this past week run very, very deep."
I first complained about the lack of theoretical basis for identity politics on my website in 2011, then on various blogs since, pointing out the tacit concession of psychologists that they can't figure it out. I'm currently reading Fukuyama's "Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment", published last month. He's filling that vacuum left by the incompetence of psychologists!
In his preface he reviews his exploration of the nexus where history, culture, politics, mass psychology and personal identity intersect that first made him famous in the aftermath of the Cold War. "I noted that neither nationalism nor religion were about to disappear because, I argued back then, contemporary liberal democracies had not fully solved the problem of thymos"
"Thymos is the part of the soul that craves recognition of dignity; isothymia is the demand to be respected on an equal basis with other people". So this is the very deep factor Russell intuited. Non-christian readers can replace soul with psyche, and we can acknowledge our right as citizens to function in society on an equity basis. When social conditions prevent us thus functioning, the result is identity crisis and psychological dysfunction. White male american suicide syndrome being the latest newsworthy manifestation.
"Demand for recognition of one's identity is a master concept that unifies much of what is going on in world politics today." This is so obviously true, and has been for so long, that we can only wonder what, in their collective ethos, is preventing psychologists from waking up to it!
"It is not confined to the identity politics practised on university campuses, or to the white nationalism it has provoked, but extends to broader phenomena such as the upsurge of old-fashioned nationalism and politicised Islam. Much of what passes for economic motivation is, I will argue, actually rooted in the demand for recognition and therefore cannot simply be satisfied by economic means."
He's right. Neoliberalism, now exiting stage right, shared the same conceptual flaw that saw socialism exit stage left more than 30 years ago. Equity requires a sufficient share in the economy, but that does not suffice for democratic participation. We need that right of parity that recognition of dignity provides.
“Individuals throughout human history have found themselves at odds with their societies. But only in modern times has the view taken hold that the authentic inner self is intrinsically valuable, and the outer society systematically wrong and unfair in its valuation of the former. It is not the inner self that has to be made to conform to society's rules, but society itself that needs to change.”
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Group Think presents this compilation of nine views from "experts" on the design of the cannabis referendum: https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/29-10-2018/reeferendum-what-should-the-question-on-cannabis-legalisation-be/
Chlöe Swarbrick, Green Party spokesperson for drug reform, suggests “Do you support the [proposed law] that legalises, taxes, and regulates cannabis?” "The Greens are pushing for a ‘proposed law’ to pass through the House, which would come into force by hitting a vote threshold at public referendum."
This prescriptive approach has the merit of simplicity, inasmuch as it provides a public mandate for a law co-designed to produce consensus and a majority vote in parliament for adoption. Flawed assumption here: parliament may not reach consensus prior to the referendum, so voters are effectively being asked to support whatever the Greens decide on.
"We are pushing for a Canadian-style regime over one that benefits big pharma and corporates. We want a common sense, comprehensive law that recognises private users of cannabis will always be able to grow their own". Plus this: I’m advocating for a Citizens’ Jury on the referendum question, a tool used recently in the run-up to the Irish referendum on abortion and also recommended in the UK by the Independent Commission on Referendums."
Ross Bell, speaking for the NZ Drug Foundation, agrees with this latter design feature: "we are not ready to commit to a specific question yet. But, we think the ideal situation would be for a binding referendum, where voters are asked to endorse (or not) a bill the establishes a clear public health regulatory model for cannabis, which has gone through Parliament with public submissions to a select committee, all first informed by an awesome deliberative democracy process such as a citizen jury."
Nándor Tánczos, Whakatane Councillor and former Green MP, says "I strongly believe that it needs to be a two-part question. We need to test support for what I would call ‘decriminalisation’ – the right for adults to use cannabis and possess it for personal use. ...this also implies that people would be able to grow it for their own use, because if people can use it they must also be able to legally get hold of it in some way."
"We also know that even if they are allowed to, most people won’t grow it for themselves. ...So there will still be an illegal market for cannabis if we don’t regulate its sale. I think we need a second question around being able to buy cannabis from licensed premises. All the evidence from overseas says that a properly regulated market is the best approach."
His advice on phraseology for the referendum has the merit of simplicity of language to maximise comprehension:
a) Should adults be able to possess and use cannabis?
b) Should adults be able to buy cannabis from licensed premises?Reviewing the other six contributions confirms that a separate question to elicit approval of legalisation, first, followed by another to elicit approval for regulation of commercial providers, seems a consensual format. The question of whether a third question is necessary to specify a right to grow your own is moot - that could be included as a clause in the first or second questions.
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As far as relevant generalisations go, there's always `men are from Mars, women are from Venus'. When the book of that title became a best-seller in '92, I was amazed. It seemed that everyone had long known that already, so why spend money to learn what you already know? It revealed the contagious effect of trendy notions: "The book has sold more than 50 million copies, and according to a 1997 report by the book's publisher, HarperCollins, it is the all-time best-selling hardcover nonfiction book."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Are_from_Mars,_Women_Are_from_VenusBut stereotypes are just the superficial manifestation of archetypes. Since we inherited the notion that Mars is the warrior archetype and Venus is the beauty archetype from classical-era Rome, who inherited it from Greece & earlier Mesopotamian civilisations, we can see several millennia of cultural and political tradtion are informing us.
Nowadays we also have evolutionary psychology informing us. Motivations prompting political violence derive from deep within. Explanations deriving from genetic research seem to provide helpful insights into deep human nature, although I still find historical continuity of the archetypes more persuasive. Then we must factor in how the warping effect of a toxic political culture gives males targets for their hostility.
As regards this white male suicide trend, seems a consequence of capitalism turning them into losers, and exit becomes an admission of defeat. Or, if you believe in reincarnation, a transition into trying again in a different temporal and socio-political context.
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Research into how the public sees the way forward for cannabis policy discovers several significant bodies of public opinion: http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle_uuid=96B6E991-5625-4F5B-A315-F29250EDA0C5
"The anonymous online survey, which was part of the New Zealand Drug Trends Survey, was promoted via a targeted Facebook campaign between November 2017 and February 2018. More than 6,300 people competed the survey, with respondents given a list of 10 policy options, including the option to retain the current approach."
"Associate Professor Chris Wilkins, who led the study, says 41 per cent of survey respondents who answered the question on cannabis policy indicated a preference for the regulation of medicinal cannabis using a doctor or pharmacy provision. This was by far the most popular option. Following that preference, 14 per cent supported prohibition with ministerial exemption – the current approach – and a further 14 per cent supported home production with no selling. One in ten respondents supported a profit-driven medicinal cannabis market with only light restrictions, similar to alcohol,” he says."
"For recreational cannabis use, three quite different approaches received significant levels of support. Twenty-seven percent supported home production with no selling, 21 per cent supported a profit driven market with light regulatory restrictions, like alcohol, and 19 per cent supported continuing with the current prohibition."
"Dr Wilkins says it is important that the public referendum presents the full range of reform options available, including the home production, not-for-profit and heavily regulated market options, rather than just a binary choice between prohibition and a commercial market."
This prompted a somewhat banal editorial from Stuff: https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/108039719/editorial-legalising-cannabis--societys-shrug-of-indifference "But there is something the research does not highlight or the Massey survey address. It's a sense of moral failure; a societal shrugging of the shoulders. The wider muscle memory of apathy and now practised ambivalence."
" We are considering legalising cannabis largely because the horse has bolted, not because of any desire to keep it locked up. We will simply move the numbers, and associated issues, from one Crown agency ledger to another. From Justice to Health. Aside from the few who will enjoy the odd puff from time to time there are a great many who rely on it to relieve the stresses of marginalisation. For them it is not an instrument of a highly functioning society but an escape pod." Are you starting to wonder if the writer is a rocket scientist in their spare time?
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I was under the impression that mental health treatment is the domain of psychiatry, not psychology. So why a psychologist is involved seems odd.
Anyway use of the privacy law to prevent actual facts of the situation emerges reduces media and public debate to speculation and conspiracy theorising. All good fun, but it would be better for freedom of information law to prevail over privacy law in cases where the latter is used to prevent allaying of public concerns about the disempowering of a parliamentarian operating as whistleblower. The public interest ought to be paramount.
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"Kiwis divided on legalising cannabis, but more are in favour, 1 NEWS poll reveals" https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/kiwis-divided-legalising-cannabis-but-more-in-favour-1-news-poll-reveals
"Forty-six per cent of Kiwis were in favour of legalisation and 41 per cent were against. Twelve per cent were undecided." "Interviewing took place from October 15 to October 19, with 1006 eligible voters contacted either by landline or mobile phone. The maximum sampling error was ±3.1 per cent."
They also asked a bunch of parliamentarians when they last had a toke, and for most it was long ago. Kelvin Davis firmly asserted that he never did. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, could be a minority of one in Northland! Apparently the number of Aotearoans who admit trying it is now over 80%. Outlaw nation.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Neil,
True, and as long as privacy law continues to prevent mental health authorities from informing the public on precisely how the whistleblower had his liberty removed against his will, folks will speculate. Oh wait, the Nats could alway issue an official denial that any of their MPs were involved. Yeah, right...