Politics of Love

Discrimination is bad. That's why laws and principles are in place to protect the rights of people who are members of protected classes. The list of protected classes is long and growing. Today discrimination is prohibited based on:

race; color; creed; religion; national origin; citizenship; age; sex; disability status; marital status; parental status; sexual orientation; gender identity; political ideology; criminal history; genetic composition; and more.

In Seattle, Washington, women who breastfeed babies in public are a protected class shielded from discrimination.

For members of protected classes, discrimination is prohibited in employment, housing, and public accommodation. Members of protected classes cannot be denied access to public programs and cannot be excluded from public activities. Members are safeguarded from harassment. People with family or friends in a protected class get these protections too.

From this one might think good progress is being made in guaranteeing equal rights for all Americans. There's another view, however, which says these efforts are not enough.

US Senator Cory Booker spoke at the Democratic National Convention on July 25, 2016. He said observing tolerance for those in protected classes is not enough. Extending respect, dignity, support, and cooperation to others is not enough. Guaranteeing rights and ending discrimination, sometimes under the force of law, are not enough.

Senator Booker said society cannot function properly and our nation cannot work well unless people are loved. That the highest duty of a patriot is to love every fellow countrywoman and countryman. That the only way to ensure people have a sense of worth and value is for others to love them -- especially members of protected classes.

So it's not about acceptance, it's not about equal rights, it's not about ending discrimination anymore. It's about embracing people, celebrating their choices, and loving everyone everywhere.

The US Constitution has a Bill of Rights. Is it time to enact a "Bill of Love"?

Why Aren't There More Women in Public Office?

Women are underrepresented in elective political offices at federal, state, and local levels. Is this because of unfair treatment, lack of equal rights, repudiation of entitlements, discrimination, misogyny?  Here is one view from a study in 2012.

"Men Rule - The Continued Under-Representation of Women in U.S. Politics"
Women & Politics Institute - School of Public Affairs - American University
Washington, DC. - January 2012

Seven barriers to women running for office:

1. Women are substantially more likely than men to perceive the electoral environment as highly competitive and biased against female candidates.

2.  The way Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin's candidacies were treated in 2008 aggravated women's perceptions of gender bias in the electoral arena.

3. Women are much less likely than men to think they are qualified to run for office.

4. Female potential candidates are less competitive, less confident, and more risk averse than their male counterparts.

5. Women react more negatively than men to many aspects of modern campaigns.

6. Women are less likely than men to receive the suggestion to run for office — from anyone.

7. Women are still responsible for the majority of child care and household tasks.

end

Injustice

You are the victim of racial profiling by police. Now what do you do?  1) Refuse to follow instructions from police. 2) Go to court and rectify the injustice. Pick choice #2.

Communist Sentiment

“We will always defend the cooperation and friendship with all peoples of the world, including our political opponents.”

-- Fidel Castro, 88, former president of Cuba, in a letter written in Jan. 2015 about new efforts to normalize relations between the U.S. and Cuba. 

How better matters in the world might be today if more leaders in the United States could express a similar sentiment.

Outside Looking In

Folks in Arkansas like being outside, but that doesn’t extend to their politics.

Landowners and government officials in Missouri and Arkansas are concerned about a proclamation from the Secretary of the Interior designating the 700 miles long White River and it’s entire 17.8 million acre watershed as a National Blueway.

The authority to create National Blueways was asserted by Secretarial Order #3321 issued last year. Thus far the Connecticut River, which runs 410 miles through four states, and the White River have been designated as National Blueways. These mandates from the Department of the Interior are part of the America's Great Outdoors Initiative launched in 2010 by President Obama under the auspices of a Presidential Memorandum. The goal of the initiative is to reinforce community-level efforts aimed at conserving outdoor spaces and getting citizens outside.

The purpose of making the White River a National Blueway is to help federal, state, and local partners share management resources and best practices, and to improve the collaborative stewardship of the White River watershed. The designation doesn’t establish any new protections or regulations, but simply recognizes and supports existing local and regional conservation, recreation, and restoration efforts by coordinating ongoing federal, state, and local activities.

All this sounds fine, so what’s the concern? The problem is 1.2 million people who live, work and play in the watershed were not consulted in the matter. No public hearings, no public presentations, no discussions in state legislatures, no considerations in Congress. Partners supporting the White River National Blueway are primarily the Dept. of the Interior, the USDA Forest Service, and the Army Corps of Engineers, plus private conservation organizations like Ducks Unlimited, the National Wildlife Refuge Association, and The Nature Conservancy. Some other organizations signed on such as the Missouri Department of Conservation, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, the Arkansas Canoe Club, and the cities of Augusta and Clarendon, Arkansas. Despite all the talk in press releases about fostering community-level and local interactions, key stakeholders left out of the loop include: area residents, landowners, municipal governments, county officials, state legislatures, and Congress.

With this background, who can blame folks for being skeptical about whether this new program is truly a plan to promote river conservation and outdoor recreation or whether it is an effort to create new land use designations bypassing the considerations of citizens and elected officials? Some counties in the White River watershed are considering actions to abrogate the National Blueways designation within their boundaries. State wildlife and conservation organizations are withdrawing their support. State legislators are speaking out against the plan. Congressional delegations are asking the interior secretary to delay action until more is known about how areas within the National Blueway will be impacted.

A sad lesson about how not to create and lead a government program. When non-elected officials launch public plans without inviting public participation the result will be surprise, skepticism, and pushback. And when federal administrators talk about programs that include community-level partnerships, they must involve more than those who reside in and around the “community” of Washington, D.C.

The Death of Facts

Something’s been bothering me lately. I had trouble narrowing it down. It has to do with what does and does not matter to people today.

Consider the facts. Or, instead, don’t consider them, because it seems they may not matter very much anymore.

Everyone is biased, I have many biases, nothing new there. Early writers commented on the slant of self interest. Here’s the historian Thucydides in 431 BC: “... it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy." But the expression of bias has taken a nasty turn in modern times.

Today, hearing opposing facts can make people hold even more firmly to contradictory beliefs. Facts themselves have less power to correct misinformation. Facts are less likely to get people to change their minds. The more educated people are the more likely they are to disregard facts that conflict with their beliefs.

Several factors are driving the death of facts. Any threat to self esteem, especially admitting one is mistaken, is unbearable for many these days. Facts are insipidly dry -- folks today are used to being coddled, titillated and entertained before conceding their attention. And there is so much information floating around now that absorbing any portion of it is exhausting.

None of this represents new thinking. Old studies from 2005-2006 confirmed these notions, which were described by several researchers well before then. But if the assertions are true, if what has historically been bias has been transformed into blindness, if having the facts reduces the validity of an argument, then competent decision-making and effective governance are doomed for generations to come.

Readings:

Popular media. The Boston Globe reports facts don’t matter in political debates. July 2010.  Link

Journals. Paper concerning the persistence of political misperceptions. Political Behavior, Amer. Political Science Assoc. Nyhan & Reifler. June 2010.  Link

Journals. Paper about the impact of misinformation in democracy. The Journal of Politics. Aug. 2000.  Link

Pompous Americans

In the United States, government operations and political functions are in shambles over economic policies, spending, taxes, debt and deficits.  But that doesn’t stop the administration from sending out representatives to tell world leaders how to run their countries.  I would think someone like Secretary of State John Kerry would be embarrassed to lecture others about matters his countrymen are unable to manage successfully here at home.