Tag: QAnon

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Opinion The Last Word

Uncritical Political Discourse

The GQP values party over country. (Photo: Darren Halstead | Unsplash)

Tuesday primary elections are a routine occasion of frustration for many Americans. August 16, 2022, continued this trend. Central questions included ideas about the amount of power still wielded by Donald Trump, whether the accomplishments of the Biden administration have been promoted enough, and whether election results can be trusted.

Many pundits point to Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman defeating Rep. Liz Cheney as more proof that Trump is in control of the Republican Party. Ten Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the January 6th Capitol insurrection; four retired rather than face reelection, four lost to Trump-backed opponents, and two advanced to the general election.

This requires a critical analysis. Let’s look at a few elements.

Results from a 2019 CivicScience survey help to articulate the complicated mess that uncritical analysis creates. The survey revealed troubling information about how bias and prejudice problematize political decision-making.

For example, 56 percent of respondents said that schools in America shouldn’t teach Arabic numerals (which, as every schoolchild should know, are the numerals we all use every day and throughout American education, i.e., 1, 2, 3, 4 … ). While they do not claim that this indicates a stunning level of both ignorance and commitment to purblind prejudice, that should be quite obvious.

We’ve all seen the uproar over critical race theory, which at its core is simply a commitment to teach pupils the truth about American history. The truth is what students need. They can decide for themselves what they believe to be good, great, bad, or evil. But Fox News and Republicans call for a ban on such teaching.

Some of this obdurate, willing ignorance is rooted in a kind of tribalism. This can be an uncritical acceptance of dogmatic positioning and dishonesty in the name of loyalty to group, but has no authentic place in a democracy. If I go along with my tribe (e.g., progressives, conservatives) uncritically, I am both lazy and cowardly.

I’m lazy when I don’t fact-check my “leaders.”

I’m cowardly when I do fact-check them, find their errors, and fail to alter my position accordingly.

A lazy and cowardly democracy is no democracy at all.

Continued loyalty to Donald Trump presents a departure from democratic norms and an embrace of fascism. He introduces falsehoods and repeats lies of others when it seems to serve him.

The acceptance of QAnon conspiracy theory — demonstrably false by any due-diligence, reasonable standard — into the Republican party has created a GQP that values allegiance to party over country. Facts and truth have taken a sideline; hence, we see a deeper movement toward authoritarianism.

Trump’s Tuesday victories undermine the pillars of democracy. He undermines choosing and replacing elected officials in free and fair elections. His supporters discourage active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life. The GQP attacks human rights and equality under the law.

It is an extremely important time for people to think, act, and vote. The people have the power and can reclaim guarantees for free and fair elections and affirmations for equality and human rights. Everyone needs to commit and prepare to safeguard democratic institutions and values before they’re gone.

Wim Laven, Ph.D., syndicated by PeaceVoice, teaches courses in political science and conflict resolution.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Vote, Dammit: Participatory Democracy Only Works if We Participate.

It never fails. About this time every year, I start to hear the grumbling: “Not a single shop on Summer Avenue for Best Mexican.” Or, “Wait, they think who has the best pizza in town?” Or maybe, “I don’t even know who that is! How come they got nominated?” I’m speaking, of course, about the Flyer‘s annual Best of Memphis contest. Really serious high-stakes stuff.

In a year full of uncertainty and surprises, the consistency is almost a comfort. Almost, but I can’t help getting a little frustrated. We don’t pick the nominees! You do! Or at least, you’re supposed to, if you’d just vote.

Democracy tastes as fine as Dickins Cider.

So to these people, these complainers after the fact, I always say, “This is what happens when you ignore the primaries.” My guess is most folks don’t pay attention until the BOM candidates start making serious pleas for votes, but there is a nomination phase every year. You can write in anyone you want. (That, incidentally, is how “Dickins Cider” — say it out loud — very nearly won Best Strip Club last year. Cheeky.)

In college, I worked at a local pizza place, and the owner used to make everyone with an email address take turns filling out the BOM ballot. Other people make daily social media posts asking you to nominate them. None of that is cheating — it’s just grassoots campaigning. But the point is, if people don’t throw themselves into working to support their favorite taco shops, local singers, and whathaveyous, the folks with the campaign machinery in place are always going to win nominations and make it to the final ballot.

I’ll say it again: This is what happens when you ignore the primaries, when you get engaged only every four years, and then, only if the candidates really motivate you. Gee, it’s almost like I’m not talking about BOM anymore.

Okay, in all honesty, I know that centrists and far-right candidates benefit from low voter turnout. I know that much of the system is overly complicated, that districts are gerrymandered, and there is both active and passive voter suppression. Hell, we’re in the South — there’s a long, disgusting history of Jim Crow-era hoops and hurdles baked into our election history. So I’m not so much speaking to the people who try their damnedest to effect change despite generations of obstacles put in their way.

No, I’m taking aim at my more progressive friends, those who get frustrated and feel boxed out. Well, duh. If you want to bring about real, systemic change, you’re going to have to work quite a bit harder. Because if the party in power can, metaphorically speaking, tell all its employees to nominate it for Best Pizza, it’s damn well going to.

So yeah, here we are. I’ve got some progressive buddies who equate Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump. Different sides of the same coin, they say. To which, naturally, I do a film-worthy spit take and sputter out something like, “Well, one of them condemned the extrajudicial murder of protesters by a teen insurgent, and the other can’t seem to bring himself to do that.” We’re ruled by the minority who has built a coalition of the most wealthy, ignorant, racist, and greedy among us. What happens if we take back even a little of their power?

This is an issue that seems, to me, to plague Tennessee particularly. Thinking back to the Senate race in 2018, I remember former Governor Phil Bredesen name-dropping Memphis in one of the debates. He talked about fixing roads, funding our rural hospitals. It wasn’t exactly awe-inspiring stuff, but at least he sounded like he had a plan. Then-Representative Marsha Blackburn, however, took a different approach. If I’d taken a drink every time she said “NRA” or “Obama,” I’d have died of alcohol poisoning. I don’t really believe that a majority of Tennesseans want assault weapons and hate Obama more than they want drivable roads and access to healthcare. But who knows?

We all know how that election turned out. Senator Blackburn took a page out of the Trump playbook and inflamed people. Now, two years later and in the middle of a pandemic, we haven’t done anything about our rapidly closing hospitals. And I call her office every week to demand she cool it on the “China virus” talk and do something to actually help Tennesseans.

So if you missed the nomination phase in the Flyer‘s BOM contest this year, maybe the best thing to do is just hold your nose and vote for the taco shop you think sucks the least. And next year, campaign for your favorite small, family-owned taco truck. Vote in the nomination period. Text your friends and remind them to vote, too. But whatever you do, for democracy’s sake, don’t withhold your vote in protest. That only helps preserve the status quo. Just vote, dammit.

Jesse Davis is the Flyer copy editor, book editor, and a staff writer.

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Opinion The Last Word

Science Fiction: Why Are So Many Americans Willing to Believe Anything?

CREDIT: Wikimedia Commons | Library of Congress’ Prints and Photographs division

In 1867, a Scottish physician named Joseph Lister published an article in response to the new “germ theory,” in which he advocated that surgeons wash their hands and spray a light acid on their tools to sterilize them. Though more or less accepted practice by the mid-1870s, sterilization was not yet universal in the medical field. In fact, in 1881, after President Garfield was shot, his doctors probed around in his wound with their unwashed hands. It is believed the president died of sepsis brought on by, you guessed it, infection in his wounds. “I shot the president,” Charles Guiteau, Garfield’s assassin, reportedly said, “but his physicians killed him.”

Just 12 years later, in a 90-minute-long procedure on a yacht on a lake, surgeons removed cancer from President Cleveland’s mouth. The procedure was incredibly dangerous — they were operating on the president of the United States on a moving boat, for crying out loud — but the doctors washed their hands and sterilized their instruments. President Cleveland survived. President Cleveland survived having a hole cut into his head while on a moving boat.

Wikimedia Commons | Library of Congress’ Prints and Photographs division

President James Abram Garfield

This could be construed as evidence that science and medicine progress as we gain more information, which some people find comforting. I, for one, am glad a doctor has never told me that my four humors were out of balance, that I was possessed by demons, that cocaine would cure what ails me, or that my headache could be solved through the simple application of leeches — you know, to remove the “bad blood.”

All this is a long way of reminding folks about the scientific method, which is essentially a methodology for asking questions. When your best friend changes his story six times about why he bailed on helping you move, sure, that’s a sign that there’s something fishy in the state of Denmark. When health professionals revise advice they first issued, that’s a sign that the method of testing theories is working. And it’s going to work a lot faster in the internet era, when leaders in their fields can communicate with each other nearly instantaneously.

Also worth noting is that scientists, physicians, researchers, and academics live and die by their reputations. Where party loyalty will carry you a long way in politics, in the realm of peer review, it’s just not enough.

I suppose it should be no surprise, though, that in a world where the president of the United States spends his morning retweeting QAnon conspiracy theories, so many Americans pick their beliefs like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Not surprising, but no less disappointing.

Is evolution real? Decide for yourself! Could Earth be flat? Well, if that’s the hill (or lack of one) you want to die on, it’s your right. Will this cloth mask give me brain damage — even though I survived lord knows how many Halloween nights in an equally snug costume ninja mask or four successive variations on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles motif? Sure. If you will it to be so, mask-induced brain damage is no dream.

In a world of shrinking education budgets and dwindling news landscapes, where disinformation on internet forums and white supremacy sites is never behind a paywall, it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to go from “climate change is a Chinese conspiracy” to “this malaria drug cures COVID, which is a hoax anyway.”

I understand that the self-mythologization of America is deeply rooted in a tradition of independence — but, damn, do we have to be such rootin’, tootin’ cowboys about every little thing? Is it possible that every instance of compromise for the good of society as a whole is not a terrorist plot or Deep State attack on individual liberties?

Well, it’s my right as a red-blooded descendant of the rootin’est, tootin’est of American outlaws, to choose what I believe. And I, for one, flatter myself that I’m smart enough to realize I’m not that smart. I’m going to listen to the experts.

Jesse Davis is the Flyer copy editor, book editor, and a staff writer.