Commentary

Flavors of populism   Recently updated !

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged ethics philosophy on by

Nailing down populism is difficult. Merriam-Webster says it’s “a political philosophy or movement that represents or is claimed to represent the interests of ordinary people especially against the Establishment.” The idea that “the people” should rule sounds left-wing, but we tend to think of populism as right-wing. It sounds like another way of saying “pro-democracy,” but that doesn’t get to its core.

Cas Mudde’s idea hits the target better. It’s as an ideology that divides society into two antagonistic camps, the “pure people” versus the “corrupt elite.” The elite isn’t necessarily the party in control of the government. The MAGA movement is populist, even though Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress. What it sees as the corrupt elite is the academic institutions, the news media, the entertainment industry, all those who deal with information on a large scale. The “purity” of the people also plays an important role; immigrants and children of immigrants don’t count, at least until they’ve undergone a purification process of many years.

Another form of populism in the US comes from the left. It emphasizes “the people” above all else, stressing the first three words of the Constitution rather than the “inalienable rights” of the Declaration of Independence. It sees the elite establishment as one of wealth, often claiming an “oligarchy” runs the country while the president and Congress are just their pawns.

Populism is opposed to liberalism because it takes the Will of the People (or what it claims is their will) as the highest standard. People have no rights that the People can’t legitimately take away. When populists succeed, they establish their own ruling elite, directing the economy, and above all controlling information. It’s called “socialism” or “fascism” depending on which side runs it, but there’s little difference. It’s almost always illiberal because it places the popular will ahead of individual rights. Liberal democracy regards the democratic process as a tool for keeping any single faction from dominating the government and suppressing minorities; populist democracy treats the will of the “pure people” as an end in itself, entitled to stomp on outsiders and minorities.

In principle, populists should yield if they think the majority opposes them. In practice, they think the majority always supports what they want. We’re all inclined to overestimate the number of people who agree with us, because we talk to such people so often. Populist leaders, though, need to shape the popular will to match their own. This means using their power to promote their views and suppress opposing ones. Populists are rarely big on free expression for anyone but themselves.

Today we’re caught in a battle between the left populists and right populists, and the liberal alternative often has a hard time getting heard. This doesn’t bode well if either side ultimately gains full power.

Speech limits on your property

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged ethics SanityProject on by

The First Amendment applies only to governments. You are free to banish people from your property if you don’t like what they say, provided the law otherwise allows it. That doesn’t mean it’s always a good idea, though.

A few years ago, some stores posted announcements that they’d banish customers who expressed racist ideas. This was a bad idea, and it’s rare today. Untrained employees would have to eavesdrop on conversations, and they could easily misunderstand what they overheard. And once you start going down that road, is there any reason to stop with just one idea? Banning people for expressing socialist ideas would make as much (or little) sense. Best not to try to police people’s opinions. People can still be kicked out for being disruptive or harassing people, regardless of what opinions motivate them. It’s bad business to 86 customers for their ideas.

In your home, you have more leeway, but courtesy imposes some limits. If someone expressed ideas I strongly objected to, I might explain why I thought they were wrong, or I might say that I don’t want to have that discussion here. If the visitor persisted, I might have to say, “Drop it or take it outside,” and follow through if necessary. Be careful about debating such people. A well-prepared person with lots of memorized arguments can often out-debate a more reasonable person who doesn’t have a stock of comebacks and citations at hand.

I’d object less strongly to abstract ideas than to proposals for violence. Anyone who advocates direct violence except for defensive purposes will be lucky to get a warning from me. Supporting racial pseudo-science in the abstract would annoy me, but I’d be more polite about it.

On the Internet, I can block, mute, or ignore people who say disgusting things. I make frequent use of this option, though I try to remember that letting them see what I say may lead them to better thinking. My own peace of mind has to come first, though.

Standard Reader and the Decentralized Web

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged Internet standard.site technology on by

Thanks to Debbie Ohi, I’ve found a reader for sites that use Standard Site lexicons. Appropriately enough, it’s called Standard Reader. It’s still rough, but I like what it’s aiming for. You can search for publications from various sites and subscribe to them. Once you have some subscriptions, your recommendations are based on them and nothing else.

Supposedly you can log in with an existing Bluesky account. I couldn’t figure out how to do that. The first time I tried to register, I got a Captcha with incomprehensible instructions. The second time I got one that made sense. Here’s what I’ve subscribed to so far.

  • Debbie’s Blatherings – by Debbie Ridpath Ohi
  • Aaron Ross Powell
  • Standard.site
  • Atmosphere Community
  • Connected Places

Supposedly I can change my handle to my own domain, and there ought to be a way to add my site to the index; I haven’t figured that out either. Some of the tools I’ve seen are tied to Bluesky, which they shouldn’t have to be.

I’m still working on publishing this blog to the ATmosphere, as the network of AT protocol services is called. A lot of this stuff is still at the experimental level. Some of the approaches being taken won’t scale up; you can have a list of a thousand sites, but not a million. Better discovery tools will be necessary, and their maintainers will have to defend them against spammers.

Returning to the decentralized Web

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged Internet standard.site technology on by

The original idea of the World Wide Web was decentralization of information. Anyone with an Internet connection can set up a website. Others can link to it so that people will discover it. Somehow, though, it’s lost its way. Big “social media” sites dominate it. They let you find a lot of people you know or are interested in in one place. But this advantage comes at a price. On most of these sites, the software controls which posts you see and who is recommended to you. They’re more vulnerable to government censorship than smaller, more agile sites. People complain about them but keep using them.

It’s getting worse. Some countries are banning social media access by young people. There’s talk of legally requiring people who post to these sites to disclose their identity. This will discourage the expression of dissent and intimidate people who want to discuss problems they aren’t even comfortable telling their own families about.

The solution has always been there. It’s decentralization. Blogs and forums hosted on the creators’ own machines or for a monthly fee on a server. The RSS and Atom protocols let you subscribe to most of them without handing them any information. The main problem is finding the ones you’re interested in. Some work is now being done on a set of lexicons built on the AT protocol called standard.site, which will help with discovery and identity.

A lexicon is a schema for metadata; standard.site lets you publish information about your website in a way that lets it be aggregated. If you create a record for your website, it includes at least the name and URL, and it can include things like an icon, a description, and labels. What you do with a standard.site record once you’ve made it isn’t clear to me; I assume you need to submit it to an aggregator that lets people search for sites that interest them. There could be lots of aggregators, catering to different interests. If the idea catches on, search engines might use them to improve the relevance of their results.

There are some client applications for standard.site, but I’m still looking for one that I’m comfortable with. Ironically for a discovery aid, the name makes finding information difficult; a search on “standard.site” turns up mostly irrelevant results.

If you know more or have other ideas for decentralization, let me know.

Tribalist thinking

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged psychology racism SanityProject on by

Tribal psychology, the tendency to divide the world into “us” and “them,” goes back to early human history. It gets its name because in earlier times, survival required loyalty to the tribe and suspicion of outsiders. In modern society, people of all kinds mix, but people still feel uncomfortable about those who are different from them. Sometimes they construct differences where there’s no real issue. Fan groups are a mostly harmless example. Red Sox fans hate the Yankees and Yankees fans hate the Red Sox, but it’s usually in fun. Science fiction fans disparage non-fans as “mundanes,” usually as a joke but sometimes with real disdain.

Problems arise when people use tribalist inclinations to treat outsiders as inferior or evil. That course can lead to violence, systemic discrimination, and legal persecution. It hurts members of the in-group as well, giving them fewer opportunities for valuable interactions and limiting them economically. It’s the antithesis of the liberal worldview, the idea that people should be regarded on their individual merits and have certain rights regardless of who they are.

People sometimes try to make sense of tribalism by reducing it to a single cause. Racism is an especially nasty form of it, but it’s only one of the foundations. Many on the left treat it as humanity’s Original Sin and ascribe all kinds of group hostility to racial attitudes, but it’s just one of the factors. Its influence has declined from past centuries. When it was acceptable, people used it to disparage groups that looked different. Today it’s less acceptable, so people define their groups in other ways.

Nationalism rose as a force in the nineteenth century, and it’s powerful today. Hostility based on foreignness is often considered acceptable, and many people have ferocious disdain for immigrants. People are often hostile to those with a different language or accent. Religion isn’t as powerful a factor as it was when you could be executed for heresy, but there’s a widespread view that (Evangelical) Christianity should get preferential legal status, and some countries still enforce state religions.

Irrational rage is useful for promoting hostility, the more irrational and enraged the better. This seems strange but makes historical sense. If an invading tribe posed a threat, the leaders had to stir the men up to fight. It isn’t easy to get calm, clear-headed people to march against people who want to kill them. The leaders of both sides needed fury to beat the other side. Today fury stirs people up even if they aren’t in combat. An enraged crowd is also good for electing candidates and forming mass protests.

It’s the “us vs. them” thinking which is at the core. The specifics of who’s “us” and who’s “them” vary with the fashions.