Tribalism as a reflex

I've been following the Trayvon Martin case since it went national. I don't see it as primarily a racial issue, though it definitely has racial tones in it, and I can easily see why blacks are roused to demonstrate. Anyone could be roused, but the case is going to have particular resonance for people who feel targeted for suspicion.

The Beginning

If I remember correctly, the national coverage started on Monday, March 19. By Friday, it was the biggest national story. Demonstrations had been organized. Al Sharpton was down in Florida. Obama, Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney all commented on the case. In general, they each said it was a tragedy that should be investigated thoroughly. For the life of me, I can't see anything wrong or offensive or even partisan in such a sentiment. It seems logical to me--someone dead by gunshot, therefore a need to investigate how and why and to determine if there was a crime.

Getting Nasty

How did we go from that logical sentiment to the conservative media circling the wagons? I can try to trace all the steps: Gingrich criticizing Obama for noting that Trayvon and he were could have been family (read: were the same race without saying 'race' or 'black'); the stupid hoodie comments by Geraldo Rivera. But then the reaction on the outer right seemed to go crazy. (Note: I'm not even going to touch the comments on various blogs because people are always trying to outdo one another in outrageous statements.)

Some conservative blogs, including some within the conservative mainstream, started trying to portray Trayvon as a thug, which is hard to do when he'd never been arrested. In lieu of an arrest record, they used his posed gangsta photos, his suspensions from school, and the braggadocio on his twitter account.

In the meantime, CNN was reporting all the developments regardless of whether they tended to support Zimmerman or the Martin family. They reported the statement from the unnamed neighbor who saw Trayvon over Zimmerman on the grass. They reported about the demonstrations, they displayed the video of Zimmerman in the police station and the picture of Trayvon with the gangsta-style gold tooth ornament. The only information they didn't pass on were the hacked emails (many of which weren't authentic) and the tweets.

It's not clear to me why part of the conservative media went so negative on Trayvon Martin. It was known that he was unarmed, so why is it important to show Trayvon was a thug?

When You Don't Know Why

I don't have a logical answer to this, so I have to reach for an emotional reason. This story got a lot of traction, and it fits many points that Democrats/liberals/progressives make: there is racial profiling that hurts blacks, even resulting in death; police don't fully investigate the deaths of young black males; black males are presumed to be guilty of something; assailants, even when known, can get away scot-free with killing a young black male. A new concern is that Florida's Stand-Your-Ground law will result in even more deaths of young blacks that aren't investigated or prosecuted.

The story works so well for Democratic/liberal/progressive narrative that conservatives are left grasping at anything they can to lessen the impact of the story. Not all conservatives have felt this need. Many are treating this as largely a legal and police procedural matter where the state investigators and the courts will have to determine if Zimmerman was justified or not. These sane conservatives haven't felt the need to defeat the story.

The others, however, tried to shred the story, criticizing the media (of course, a favorite target), black spokesmen, Obama, Hispanic organizations (for not tribally supporting Zimmerman), the special investigator, and most cravenly, the dead boy.

Why is it so important to defeat the story rather than letting it play out? Is all news a zero-sum game, where the points your opponents can make should be blocked whenever possible, no matter how?

For some partisans, this is undoubtedly true. But why can't some, who have more responsibility because of their roles on news sites, let go of the competition and let the Democrats win those points? Instead, in their unwavering, single-minded tribalism, they try to smear whomever they can, and just end looking like the foul sewer floaters that they have become.

Battle lines

 Photo credit: cleftintherock.org

Extras.

• Measured response by HotAir, Morning Joe, Allen West.
• Examples of needless attacks: at Karen Finney, Daily Caller, more Daily Caller, wagist, Nice Deb, National Review, and Christian News.
• Perhaps the first national reporting of the incident and its significance.
• Critique of local coverage.
• Detailed CNN coverage.
• Minute-by-minute timeline, with contradictions and uncertainties.
• Detailed account of Trayvon's family's actions in the first two weeks afterward. 

Disclosure: I lived in New York at the time of the Tawana Brawley case. I haven't forgiven Sharpton, and there is no way I can be fair or neutral about him.

Updates. There are too many to mention. Click on the label "Trayvon Martin" to see more.

Voting for a Mormon

It looks like American citizens will get to choose between a Mormon and a Muslim, radical liberation Christian this fall. I'm predicting that the religion of the candidates will make a difference to a paltry number of voters.

We won't see a decline in voting among Bible Belt Christians. I seriously doubt that there are many evangelicals who "just can't pull the lever for a Mormon." Some have already voted for him in the primaries. If they didn't vote for him, they probably voted for a Catholic (Santorum or Gingrich) and won't have any trouble voting for a Mormon when Obama is the alternative. Those few who are concerned about voting for a Mormon will likely get the OK from their pastors. Perhaps they'll also reflect on why it's now acceptable to vote for a Mormon despite all the suspicion that their churches regularly cast on the Mormon religion.

The whole Mormon issue was corruptly exploited by just a few campaigns and preachers during the early part of the primaries. Now that the primary season is winding down, I'm not seeing the issue stirred up on comment pages anymore. I can read the Washington Wire without being reminded how the founding myth of the Mormons is a crazy lie thought up by Joseph Smith (which I already knew, thank you) or how Romney wears magic underwear. I no longer need to remind myself how infinitesimally small the slice of voters influenced by such stupid, prejudicial statements is.

I predict this scourge won't return in the fall, at least not more than a few scattered comments. Perhaps this is wishful thinking on my part, but I don't think many Democratic partisans will be using this tactic to pry a few conservatives off the Romney (station) wagon. I'll be sure to report back if I'm wrong.

Mormon Homeschool: Make your own golden plates... (seriously)

Extra: While I'm saying offensive things about the origins of the Mormon religion, I also want to express my doubts about the literal existence of Abraham and Moses; that the Koran contains all the sayings of Mohammad; that Jesus was resurrected; that souls can be reincarnated; and that souls persist after the death of the body. I'm sceptical of all these tenets and a great many more. However, religion is very often a boon to the believers, and I wish them well. (But please, don't try to convince me--I'm so well inoculated against religious myth that the stories don't stand a chance.)

Here are some of the anti-Mormon comments I collected a few months ago:

"Q. How Many Wives did Romney’s Grandfather had? A. 5
Q. How Many Wives did Romney’s Great-Grandfather had? A. 12
Such great traditions! Even hard core islamists cannot beat that one."

"Mormans do have a crazy religion and Romneys faith is supposed to be questioned. I don’t want to hear about the crazy stories of Joseph Smith and his ilk. I asked a devout Christian what he thinks about the Mormon faith, and all he did was laugh. No Thank You"

"Is God really just a human being living on a planet that orbits the star called Kolob? Did the Angel Moroni really visit the lifelong criminal Joseph Smith in his tent and designate him as the latest prophet for Christianity? Uh, no."

"I cannot vote a person to the Presidency who follows the teachings of Joseph Smith. Romney and Huntsman are off my list..."  -- All from one comment page in WSJ, 12/14/11

Short: Editorial spin

You don't have to make up magnificent lies and conspiracy theories to be a biased commenter. In fact, a bit of subtlety can make the spin more believable. Here is the Wall Street Journal, writing about the extension of the payroll tax holiday:

"...then Messrs. Boehner and McConnell were gulled into going behind closed doors with the President, who dragged out negotiations and later emerged to sandbag them with his blame-the-GOP and soak-the-rich re-election strategy. Any difference between the parties on taxes and spending has been blurred in the interim."

Obama sounds like a political Svengali, gulling less wily, less experienced politicians into compromising positions. How evil of Obama, we are led to think.

If you bother to question the WSJ's version, you might wonder how two politicians experienced enough to rise to the offices of House Speaker and Senate Minority Leader could be lured into negotiations and then sandbagged. Could it be that they entered the negotiations with a terrible weak position? Why, yes indeed, that's a possibility. Maybe they also overplayed their hand, and their bluff was called, and they lost their shirts.

A Speaker of the House and a Minority Leader of the Senate should know their way around a political negotiation. So should the editors of the Wall Street Journal. Try this spin on someone else.

Diabolical!

  Photo credit: Salon.com

Short: What if, 2008

Imagine an alternative history where the matchup between Obama and Romney doesn't happen in 2012, but in 2008. The differences are amusing:

"When it comes to Mitt Romney, if the NY Times and the rest of the MSM dislikes him he must be doing something right.. . . He’s spent a great deal of his own money on his campaign, so nobody can accuse him of owing anything to anyone. You also have to admit that he has a certain presidential look about him that Americans respond to in the voting booth. He’s taking some flak for changing positions on some issues, but at least he hasn’t gone around sticking his finger in the eyes of the very people he’s trying to win over in the primary." -- The Lonely Conservative (emphasis added)

I don't think any Republican presidential candidate was going to win in 2008, not with economic turmoil. But even back in 2007, it was clear to at least one numerical analyst that Romney wouldn't win against Obama:

Electoral College Projection:  Obama 400, Romney 138

Short: Getting to small government

This piece from RedState was the most convincing argument for shrinking government that I've read. It eschews the name-calling, which helps make it readable. It doesn't dwell on resentment and ancient wrongs, but still manages to provide context for how government got as big as it is.

Though I don't share the view that government should be as small as this column advocates, I felt like I was walking in their shoes for the first time. It was a level-headed, compelling read.

The main point is that government growth is on auto-pilot due to the entitlements. To prevent entitlement spending from crowding the rest of the economy, it has to be reformed aggressively. That's a simple, coherent argument with a lot of merit. It neglects an important corollary: the possibly distressing effects for those who are dependent on those entitlements.Nevertheless, an interesting read that I recommend.

Photo credit: www.gettingfreedom.net

Short: Midwestern good sense and our deficit

I'm not the only one who likes to look at how we got to where we are. This sensible, very short and humble editorial looks at the Bush tax cuts. With one timely quote and one poignant contrast, the author captures a moment when we made a big mistake. Take a minute to read it.

Update 9/23/14. The original link was busted. In case that happens again. I'll quote from the editorial.

How did we get into the mess of having deficits of $1.5 trillion?

Norm Orenstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institutes, reminds people he and others said at the time that the cuts in capital gains taxes were going to be a huge drain on federal revenues... This was in and around 2000-2002. Says Orenstein: 'Guess what, it was a huge drain on federal revenues.' [Note: it should say 'Norm Ornstein.']

But we continued to cut taxes...

Here's the poignant contrast:

Another surprise: the report reminded people that Allen Greenspan was saying paying down all our debt would have negative economic implications, would hurt growth.

Who should we have followed--Ornstein or Greenspan? Oh, the regret!

 

Short pieces

I collect a lot of interesting links that I don't turn into blog posts for a variety of reasons. Often the link has an interesting hook, but I'm not exactly sure how it fits into a coherent discussion. Sometimes it's an absurd statement or idea and I'm stuck by the utter ridiculousness. But I don't want to write "look at those goofy people" all the time even though there's plenty of fodder.

The most interesting links have taught me something new. Those in particular I want to share. So I'll be doing more short pieces to see if it's worthwhile. I'll be pulling from my backlog first, so please excuse me and skip them if they feel dated.

Photo credit: www.insideiwm.com