In this post and this post, I briefly mentioned that I believe, due to world-wide pity, the United States will soon start making communal decisions concerning how to better manage our affairs. As part of that effort, and as a short-cut, a set of ideological / theological / philosophical positions will be communally identified as signposts of people who hold to such systems of thought considered inimical to the society of the United States. As we, the mainstream of the United States, have periodically done in the past, those so identified are removed from consideration for positions of authority; if they already occupy such, they are summarily removed if they try to run for reelection. An example of this behavior, beneficial when applied to truly inimical behaviors, are racists and anti-Semites, overt or covert.
I’m kicking this effort off with a suggested short list. Conservative readers may complain that there are similar leftish positions that I am glossing over, and to that I agree; however, to my politically independent eye, much of the woes we’ve self-inflicted since the fall of the Berlin Wall have originated from a conservative movement that has moved so swiftly from moderate, responsible conservatism to ridiculous fringe positions that conservative politicians, political creatures, and writers have repudiated the entire movement. In the category of writers I include The Washington Post columnists Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot.
I’ll accept candidates for the list from readers, of course! There’s a mail link at the right, or huewhite.umb@gmail.com. But suggestions should come with some justification. Note that it only takes the embrasure of one such position for, in my opinion, mainstream America to strongly consider rejecting that person for positions of influence or authority.
GOVERNMENT
- “Lower taxes, bring on prosperity!” The Laffer Curve has failed in all instances in which it has been used of which I am aware (here’s one thread). For those of us who think about these things, if taxes are bad, let’s get rid of them totally and see what happens. A qualified argument such as “Our taxes are too high, we need to lower them to this level based on this analysis,” however, is not similarly disqualifying. It is the treatment of “Taxes are bad!” as a religious tenet which is objectionable.
HEALTH
- Anti-vaxxers – their position depends on unsupported conspiracy theories and retracted scientific studies identified as fraudulent. Mere congruency with a conspiracy theory proves nothing; contrariwise, the absence of polio, smallpox, and many other diseases suggests, overwhelmingly, the fallacy of the anti-vaxxer.
SCIENCE
- Anthropogenic climate change denial – the evidence for it is all around us. 97% of climate scientists, at least, agree the hypothesis is true. Denial and refusal to participate in the critical discussion of mitigation is dangerous to the community.
- Rejection of evolution – denial of the evidence due to emotional reactions is not an acceptable position, as emotions are not reliable measures of reality. Evolution as an explanatory theory for the many aspects of life, supported by evidence from this fossil record, with operationality explained through background radiation affecting DNA copying (not to mention inevitable imperfections in the copying mechanism itself), makes rejection of evolution a self-evident losing proposition.
USE OF HISTORY
- Comparison of something in current society to Nazi practices. Meant to evoke an emotional response that can then be manipulated by the source person. Or maybe the person’s grasp of history is just that poor. Like this half-wit, an Alaska state representative. If one cannot make a point without reference to Nazis, then perhaps there’s no point there after all.
- The American Civil War was about States’ rights! No, they were about keeping slaves around. The South mostly controlled the Federal government right up ’til the Civil War; and most speeches by Confederate politicians make it clear this was about retaining slavery. Until this source of a white sense of injustice is shutdown, we’ll continue to have a tense relationship between whites and blacks. (And, yes, General Lee and all those Southern heroes were simply traitors.)
ABSTRACT
This section, unlike the others, doesn’t identify specific viewpoints, but rather communication strategies and other internal processes which identify individuals as being unworthy of important societal positions.
- Use of emotionally charged statements instead of factual, emotionally neutral statements, especially in venues prone to communal emotional response. See: The Persuaders. Examples: baby-killer, socialism, etc.
- Magical thinking: Inventing false causal relationships between events, ignoring real relationships, believing invented or supernatural entities will relieve one of responsibilities to take specific actions – these are all examples of thought processes whose end object is to relieve the thinker from actually being responsible and take positive action for society’s benefit.
