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Political correctness, and Donald Trump

“When people say things that are non-normative, unexpected, or non-self-serving, those things are seen as more likely to be true.”

It has occurred to me that I don’t know what the term “politically correct” really means. Of course, I’m aware of the dictionary definition: “Conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated.” That’s pretty vague.

Thus I was excited by the prospect of reading a three-part series in the Scientific American Blog Network called Decoding Trump-Mania: The Psychological Allure of Hating Political Correctness, by Melanie Tannenbaum.

In Part 1, posted August 14, 2015, she posits: “The research showing that people high in ambiguity intolerance feel so profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of uncertainty, they will often prefer a slightly negative yet certain outcome to a potentially-more-positive, uncertain one. In other words, people may find Donald Trump to be disagreeable, abrasive, or downright unlikeable. But because of his reputation for ‘telling it like it is’ and ‘being honest to a fault,’ they also feel certain that they can believe Trump when he says he’s telling the truth.”

In Part 2, posted August 15, 2015, she asks, “Given obvious flip-flops like Trump’s shifting stance on abortion” and taxing the rich, why does he still resonate? “When people say things that are non-normative, unexpected, or non-self-serving, those things are seen as more likely to be true, and outside observers are more likely to think they have a good chance of really knowing the authentic, deep-down, true personality of the person saying them. It doesn’t matter what those statements objectively are.”

In other words, if he insults Hispanics, blacks, John McCain and veterans, and Carly Fiorina and other women, and suggests he’d marry his daughter if she weren’t, well, his daughter, NO ONE would say these outrageous things if he didn’t believe them to be true.

Part 3 was supposed to come out the following day, but didn’t appear until September 8. Tannenbaum gets to the heart of my question: “When something [such as being PC] is this ambiguous, it leaves a lot of room for different subjective interpretations — what social psychologists refer to as construals. Construals, broadly, are the different ways that people perceive and understand the world around them — and these interpretations are subject to bias from anything ranging from the stimulus’s local context and environment to personal ideological biases and political affiliations.”

For instance, what is the character to the right? Seen with other letters, it’s the letter B. In a roster of numbers, it’s the number 13.

Tannenbaum takes on the conservative and liberal biases of the term, and if you read nothing else, peruse those sections. She concludes:

In the end, the fervor over political correctness seems to stem from the fact that we’re all using this phrase completely differently. But hopefully, with a little more understanding of where the “other side” is coming from — and with a little more insight into the flaws in our own logic — we can start to figure out a way to move forwards.

Which I can only hope involves removing the phrase “politically correct” from our vocabularies forever. I’m just about sick to death of it, and now we have all the proof we need that it’s too vague and subject-to-interpretation to be helpful anyway. Who’s with me?

I’m not sure she’s “proved” it, but I DO agree with her conclusion that it’s a meaningless term.
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Back in June, Bill Maher predicted Donald Trump’s success.

The Gospel according to Bernie, and Colbert

We commit to the mental gymnastics necessary that allows us to abandon the least of these, to abandon the poor, to abandon the immigrants, to abandon those who are in prison.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is running for the Democratic nomination for President, recently spoke at Liberty University, “the very conservative, very Christian school in Lynchburg, Virginia,” once the headquarters for the very outspoken Rev. Jerry Falwell.

An evangelical responds to his speech, a graduate of Liberty University, who worked on the presidential campaign for George W. Bush in 2004. He compares Bernie to John the Baptist.

He was convicting the Christian leaders and the religious leaders in that university, and calling us out for being complicit in the abandonment of those who suffer, the least of these, and siding with the powerful and rich, the masters of this world. And he was convicting us and calling us out, and we scorned him, and we stared him down; and, with sour faces, we thought, “Who is this wacko, and why do all these people seem to follow him, seem to like him – this wild-haired Jew, crying out from the wilderness of the political left, in his hoarse voice?”…

And lightning hit my heart at that moment. And I realized that we are evangelical Christians. We believe the Bible. We believe in Jesus. We absolutely shun those who would attempt to find nuance and twisted and tortured interpretations of scripture that they would use to master all other broader interpretations, to find some kind of big message that they want to flout. We absolutely scorn such things, and yet somehow we commit to the mental gymnastics necessary that allows us to abandon the least of these, to abandon the poor, to abandon the immigrants, to abandon those who are in prison.

The very idea of evangelical Christians realizing that income inequality, for instance, is not a liberal position or a conservative position, but a fundamental Christian one, pleases me greatly. Perhaps Bernie Sanders IS the Christian candidate.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade had degrading words for Pope Francis while talking with Chris Wallace. “Yeah, I’m Catholic and he could stay home. Some of his comments just have no place. He’s in the wrong country…” The part that is on the audio, but not quoted in print is this sentence: “Capitalism is our savior.” Or should it be “Capitalism is our Savior”?

While never a great fan of Stephen Colbert – the “conservative pundit” shtick bored me sooner than it did my friend Alan David Doane – I was interested in the cultural folderol around the late-night programs in general, and specifically, him taking over the CBS Late Night Show for David Letterman. I did think the Joe Biden interview from the third show was more satisfying than the uncut version online.

The recent item I found most interesting about Colbert, though is Stephen Colbert – Witness. “In this rare, personal interview with Fr. Thomas Rosica, CSB, Stephen Colbert tells all” about his Catholic faith. It’s cued to his observations about Communion, at about 35 minutes. Earlier, c. 22 minutes in, he explains why he believes Jesus must have laughed; Wile E. Coyote is namechecked. I found the whole piece surprisingly moving, as it shows the depth of Colbert’s theological knowledge.
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Donald Trump Makes Up Bogus Bible Quote To Impress Gullible Christians.

The unfortunate case of Kim Davis

The attacks on Kim Davis because of her hair or clothing are just sexist, classist, and mean-spirited .

Fame is a fascinating thing to me. In August 2015, three Americans received France’s top honor for stopping an armed attacker on a train. In September 2015, Alek Skarlatos, one of those three men, is slated to be a contestant on ABC-TV’s Dancing with the Stars.

In June 2015, Kimberly Jean Bailey Davis was an obscure elected county clerk for little Rowan County, Kentucky, population of less than 24,000. Now she’s a lightning rod in the culture wars. She “defied a U.S. Federal Court order requiring that she issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples following the Obergefell v. Hodges U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage in the United States.”

Kim Davis has been criticized for not doing her job.

From Snopes:

Four couples [have] sued Rowan County and its clerk, Kim Davis, for refusing to issue marriage licenses because of Davis’ religious objections to the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

Davis is obligated by law to issue a marriage license to all qualified applicants, which now includes same-sex couples, the plaintiffs said. By “promoting a particular religious belief” at the Rowan County courthouse, Davis has “acted maliciously, with callous disregard for, or with reckless indifference to, the clearly established rights” of the plaintiffs, they said.

The argument that an elected official could not be allowed to ban the registration of a gun because weapons are against his or her religion, or keep women from driving on the same grounds, is a compelling point. This great West Wing clip frames the argument well. That she’s been married four times – she remarried husband #2 – and therefore is a hypocrite, is true – as the evil Westboro Baptist church has pointed out – though it is rather beside the point, as a matter of law.

But the attacks on Kim Davis because of her hair or clothing or weight or looking marginally like Dick Cheney are just sexist, classist, and mean-spirited, and lowers the tenor of the conversation. We need to be able to call out her bigotry without slut-shaming or hillbilly-shaming.

She has been held up as some sort of martyr for “oppressed” Christians, more so since she was temporarily sent to jail. Judge David Bunning, son of baseball Hall of Fame pitcher and former US Senator Jim Bunning, explained why he rejected her argument. “The [marriage license] form does not require the county clerk to condone or endorse same-sex marriage on religious or moral grounds. It simply asks the county clerk to certify that the information provided is accurate and that the couple is qualified to marry under Kentucky law. Davis’ religious convictions have no bearing on this purely legal inquiry.”

(Yeesh, Kim Davis supporters gather outside the judge’s home to hold him ‘in contempt of God’s court’. Whatever THAT means.)

Moreover, “While religious institutions are guaranteed protections against any government regulation or involvement in their religious life, the government is also protected from religious institutions attempt to garner political power over the nation. What this means is that anyone who functions as an agent of the state must remain religiously neutral, providing equal service, treatment, and rights to all people of all religious, ethical, social, and cultural backgrounds.”

Kim Davis and others have compared her stance to that of black civil rights icon Rosa Parks. I would argue she is the bus driver who refused to restart the bus until Rosa gave up her seat to a white man. Many gay rights advocates believe Davis has done the gay rights movement a huge favor by laying “bare the prejudiced, discriminatory beliefs that fuel the ‘religious liberty’ fire.”

Theoretically, there should be a compromise. Under Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act, “both public and private employers have a duty to exempt religious employees from generally applicable work rules, so long as this won’t create an ‘undue hardship’.”

This is a very important principle, which would allow a Muslim woman to wear a hijab or a Sikh man to wear a dastaar, if it didn’t interfere with the task. As an elected official, it wouldn’t apply to Kim Davis, though Kentucky’s religious freedom law might come into play.

If she is objecting to “issuing licenses with her name on them, because she believes (rightly or wrongly) that having her name on them is an endorsement of same-sex marriage,” there may be a mechanism “modifying the prescribed Kentucky marriage license form to remove the multiple references to Davis’ name,” – assuming it hasn’t already been done – “and thus to remove the personal nature of the authorization that Davis must provide on the current form.”

Just yesterday, her lawyer repeated the assertion that those licenses issued by her deputy clerks were invalid, and “those responsible for issuing the licenses without authorization could face ‘criminal penalties.'” After giving her every scintilla of the benefit of the doubt, this position proves to me, without question, that the issue is not really about the religious freedom of Kim Davis, but rather the religious tyranny of her and her followers.

The larger point is that the system, as it has, must continue to allow couples in Rowan County, KY the opportunity to marry, which the Supreme Court declared is a fundamental right as early as 1888.

Related: this pictured quote attributed to Donald Trump about Kim Davis is untrue. HE DIDN’T SAY IT, and in fact, was largely unaware of the issue until very recently. The Donald makes many inflammatory statements but does not need to be defamed by Facebook pranks.

The Lydster, Part 137: The GOP debates

Larry Wilmore, on Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show, asked if he had to explain to Trump Prejudice 101.

"I really don't know if Obama was born in the US" — “I really don’t know if Obama was born in the US”

The morning after the list of candidates who would appear on the Republic Presidential primetime debate on August 6, the Daughter wanted to stop the news broadcast so she could get the names.

I told her she had to get ready for camp, and that I would print out the roster of 10 who made the main stage (Trump, Bush, Walker, Huckabee, Carson, Cruz, Rubio, Paul, Christie, Kasich) and the seven who were relegated to an earlier event (Perry, Santorum, Jindal, Fiorina, Graham, Pataki, Gilmore).

Of course, she didn’t actually WATCH the debates – heck, neither did I – because sanity. Still, of the 17 candidates running, she can name more than half of them, which is more than most people. She’s particularly irritated by three:

3) Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana for his debacle of an announcement for President. (No, this is NOT faked.) “He can’t even win his own household!”

2) Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, who is a bully, and who she believes is more culpable for Bridgegate than he’s acknowledged.

1) Donald Trump, real estate guy, NOT because he said that President Obama was the worst President in history, but because Trump suggested that, as a result, there wouldn’t be another black president for generations.

Larry Wilmore, on Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show, asked if he had to explain to Trump Prejudice 101. Now, The Daughter doesn’t actually watch The Nightly Show, which is on at 11:30 p.m., but she saw the clip on CBS News This Morning.

Still, she has the makings of a political junkie.

The Donald v. McCain, et al.

I had this terrible thought recently: Donald Trump, whose corporations have filed for bankruptcy protection four times, could be President of the United States.

OK, I mean I don’t really believe that he could (do I?), but the skirmishes he has experienced recently have only enhanced his brand.

When he made those disparaging statements about Mexicans, the conventional wisdom was that it would hurt him politically. When his poll numbers went UP, early pundits suggested that they rose IN SPITE OF his comments. Now we’re pretty sure they went up BECAUSE OF his remarks.

He’s become a hero to those who are concerned about border security, and they don’t worry about the… lack of nuance, let’s say, in The Donald’s delivery. After Trump’s Phoenix, Arizona visit required securing a larger facility to hold the thousands of folks concerned about Mexican immigration, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) referred to them as “crazies.”

In retaliation, Trump attacked McCain’s military record, first saying that the former Vietnam War POW was not a hero, then, upon prompting, he says he is a hero, only because he was captured. On the subsequent news shows, he says that McCain IS a hero, and blames the media for distorting what he said.

(There’s a small group of Vietnam-era vets who seem to believe that McCain WAS no hero and ratted out the US to the North Vietnamese. Others believe that, as Senator, McCain buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.)

While there were veterans’ organizations that denounced Trump, there are others who embraced him as someone speaking on behalf of the less-than-stellar treatment our returning soldiers have often endured.

McCain’s friend Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who’s running for President, called Trump a “jackass,” and in response, Trump gave out Graham’s personal cellphone number.

The Donald also took a shot at former Texas governor Rick Perry, suggesting those glasses he’s now wearing don’t actually make him any smarter. I may have made a similar observation.

Trump is even being credited by some with getting President Obama to order flags over the Capitol and the White House lowered to half-staff, in respect of the five military service members murdered in Chattanooga.

Currently, Trump holds a double-digit lead over his nearest Republican opponent. The leading paper in Iowa, who referred to him as a “feckless blowhard”, called on him to drop out of the race, which he most assuredly won’t do anytime soon, certainly not before the August 6 debates. Perhaps in January, if he’s tired of the game.

Trump’s biggest problem and this is important to Iowa Republicans, is that he doesn’t sound like a born-again Christian.

Ultimately, I think that some people are impressed with the way he will take on all comers. Most of the folks, who appreciate The Donald bringing up issues they believe in, also know in their hearts that he doesn’t have the temperament to hold the highest office in the land.

Or so I’m counting on. David Kalish wrote a humorous column about dreaming about Trump, who has a case of NTBH, or “Need to be Hated” syndrome. I quipped that NTBH is currently covered under Obamacare, but as David noted, it wouldn’t be if Trump were elected.