A Trump-campaign-endorsed group called "Black Voices for Trump" is moving in to clean up riot-ravaged neighborhoods.
Exit, Voice and Loyalty
In part because of my county's local upheaval, but also because of the national balkanization, I've been reflecting on Albert Hirschman's 1970 "Exit, Voice and Loyalty." The thesis is that if people don't feel they have a way to influence a response to an institution's problems (voice), they'll vote with their feet (exit). Loyalty discourages exit, but can be built only by supporting voice. I guess you could say voice = loyalty and gag = exit.
It works for me. If I feel I can speak up and achieve healthy change, I'm not only more likely to stick around, I'm also more committed to the institution. Remember a time you've had a problem with a merchant, which was promptly fixed when you spoke up. Not only do you not take your business elsewhere, you're positively warm about sticking with the store and recommending it to your friends. It works that way for local government, too, not to mention clubs, friends, and marriages: any conflict successfully resolved makes you want to stick around. A silent resentment festers until one day you hit the road. In the meantime, the attitude tends to be "Fine, be that way, but you'd better not count on me for anything, because, oh, are you listening now that you need something from me?"
If you block both exit and voice, you not only forfeit loyalty, you back people into a corner in which sullen disengagement or even violence will seem the only choices.
On a lighter note
My pastor's hair isn't anything like any of these, nor is his theology, thank goodness.
The little people
Salena Zito continues her valuable and nearly solo effort to listen to what real voters think. I read constantly that it's intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that Trump is incompetent, dishonest, and divisively racist. Clearly I lack the imagination to understand how anyone reaches these positions, and I take some comfort from the fact that a large swathe of voters are as puzzled as I am.
Mahoning Valley, Ohio, suffered when a GM plant was shut down. Biden's campaign blames President Trump, just as it blames him for COVID deaths and the lockdown's brutal destruction of jobs--but voters don't necessarily see it that way, according to Paul Sracic, a political science professor at Youngstown State University:
“These voters are not hung up on how Trump talks," said Sracic. "He delivered on the issue that they care about: trade. On that issue, he is the most honest politician that they’ve ever heard.”
* * *
“Ironically, the closing of a manufacturing plant might actually increase support for Trump’s anti-globalization message,” he said. "This also goes to COVID-19. To argue that Trump is to blame for the explosion of cases and deaths in the U.S. assumes that Americans agree on a way that the virus could have been stopped. Masks and lockdowns, however, remain hugely controversial."
Sracic says the national press located far from this region and national Democrats holed up in the same bubble see a floundering president too preoccupied with bashing his opponents on Twitter to deal with a national crisis such as COVID-19, his supporters in the Mahoning Valley and in similar places may see a president who, for the first time in their lives, says what they believe about globalization and has actually delivered on some of his explicit promises.
“Democrats seem to think they steal these voters back by arguing, on the one hand, that Trump is incompetent, and on the other hand, that Democrats also want to protect American jobs and have a better plan [than] Trump. These are going to be hard sells,” said Sracic.
“How was renegotiating NAFTA to provide more protection for labor incompetent? Because it didn’t go far enough? Is a politician like Joe Biden who voted for NAFTA, been in government for nearly 50 years, eight as Vice-President, while never changing a word of NAFTA, going to be able to make this argument effectively and believably?” Sracic wonders, adding: “The result could be even more votes for Trump.”
Wedgies
Michael Goodwin, like many commentators this week, sees a preference cascade building over revulsion for the pretense rioters, looters, arsonists, and murders are "protestors." Then he touched on an issue that's puzzled me for a long time:
A laughably biased [Saturday NYT] story on the campaign dynamics called the president’s handling of the coronavirus the most important issue and reduced crime to a “wedge” issue, meaning it is divisive without being significant.In every election someone complains that an opponent's effective issue is only a "wedge" issue. Goodwin explains the implication well: the issue doesn't deserve attention, but inexplicably is costing votes on one's preferred side. So what do we mean by insignificant? Obviously the issue is significant enough to a lot of voters to make them switch sides over it. All that's left is the complaint that those bad voters are switching sides over an issue we good guys are convinced is "insignificant." Well, keep that attitude up and see how it works for you.
Every time the mask slips on the Marxism that increasingly motivates the mainstream Democratic Party, I'm torn between a hope and a fear. The hope is that normal people will turn their backs once and for all. The fear is that fewer and fewer people seem to understand what's wrong with Marxism. The execrable Vicki Osterweil isn't beating around the bush:
[Looting] does a number of important things. It gets people what they need for free immediately, which means that they are capable of living and reproducing their lives without having to rely on jobs or a wage—which, during COVID times, is widely unreliable or, particularly in these communities is often not available, or it comes at great risk. That's looting's most basic tactical power as a political mode of action.
It also attacks the very way in which food and things are distributed. It attacks the idea of property, and it attacks the idea that in order for someone to have a roof over their head or have a meal ticket, they have to work for a boss, in order to buy things that people just like them somewhere else in the world had to make under the same conditions. It points to the way in which that's unjust. And the reason that the world is organized that way, obviously, is for the profit of the people who own the stores and the factories. So you get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free.
Osterweil defends looting on the ground that not only should people not be put to the pain of paying for what they need, they shouldn't even have to pay for whatever they want. By paying, all they're doing is supporting the same system that forced distant strangers to make the goodies as a condition of receiving a living wage. In the socialist paradise, distant strangers would satisfy our desire for widescreen TVs out of solidarity, and we would naturally reciprocate. A century of murder and famine will never convince Osterweil that she's a deadly raving fool, or many voters that they should never cast a ballot for any party that doesn't ride her out of town on a rail.
More panic about blind spots
A lot of people are getting that sinking feeling, apparently. Here's another NYT piece from someone who just noticed that you can find out a lot about what those "silent majority" voters think if you look at their unfashionable Facebook pages instead of spending all your time on Twitter. (I won't link to the NYT, but you can find this article by searching for "What If Facebook Is the Real Silent Majority?"
Listen, liberals. If you don’t think Donald Trump can get re-elected in November, you need to spend more time on Facebook.They're just now learning that it can be frustrating to deal with a media machine hostile to one's own narrative:
Pro-Trump political influencers have spent years building a well-oiled media machine that swarms around every major news story, creating a torrent of viral commentary that reliably drowns out both the mainstream media and the liberal opposition.
The result is a kind of parallel media universe that left-of-center Facebook users may never encounter, but that has been stunningly effective in shaping its own version of reality. Inside the right-wing Facebook bubble, President Trump’s response to Covid-19 has been strong and effective, Joe Biden is barely capable of forming sentences, and Black Lives Matter is a dangerous group of violent looters.
Um, well, yeah.
Maybe Mr. Trump’s “silent majority,” in other words, only seems silent because we’re not looking at their Facebook feeds.
“We live in two different countries right now,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist and digital director of Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign. Facebook’s media ecosystem, he said, is “a huge blind spot for people who are up to speed on what’s on the front page of The New York Times and what’s leading the hour on CNN.”The closing argument is that right-wingers have an unfair advantage in emotional engagement, and Facebook doesn't help censor them enough.
Chaser from the Atlantic:
After the 2016 election, the Times admitted that it had somehow missed the story, and it earnestly set about at self-correction. Like many other outlets, the paper sent reporters to talk to Americans who had put Trump in the White House. It was a new beat, almost a foreign bureau—heartland reporting—but that focus soon faded as the president’s daily depredations consumed the media’s attention. This election year, news organizations grown more activist might miss the story again, this time on principle—as they avoid stories that don’t support their preferred narrative. Trump supporters are hoping for it. . . . Nothing will harm a campaign like the wishful thinking, fearful hesitation, or sheer complacency that fails to address what voters can plainly see.As Glenn Reynolds warns nearly every day, though, don't get cocky.
Yep, that would be the problem
The Guardian is starting to panic, too:
But the right has a very clear message and they hammer it home with relentless force: the Democrats want lawless anarchy in the streets and destructive socialist economic policy, your children will not be safe. There will be mob rule, riots, looting. Immigrants will pour across the border. Anarchy and mayhem will take hold. The Republicans are the voice of our patriotic heroes, while Democrats want to tear down the Washington Monument, defund the police, and silence your political opinions with their “cancel culture”.
Of course, a great deal of this is utterly ridiculous, considering that the Democratic candidate is Joe Biden rather than Bernie Sanders. Those of us on the left certainly wish Biden would promise full socialism, amnesty for unauthorized immigrants, and prison abolition. But Biden won’t even support popular social democratic policies like Medicare for All, and by appointing controversial “top cop” Kamala Harris as his running mate, he’s doing anything but show support for “anarchists” and rioters. Biden is a conservative Democrat who supported the Iraq war and helped to build the contemporary system of mass incarceration, which is why those of us on the left are so deeply unenthused about having to drag ourselves to the polls for him.
. . . Trump’s message is a simple and powerful one: I love America, they hate America, I will create greatness, they will create poverty, violence and misery.
North Country Blues
News that President Trump is sweeping the Minnesota Iron Range brought to mind this song.
They complain in the East that they're paying too high;
They say that your ore ain't worth digging.
They'd rather go down to South American town
Where the miners work almost for nothing.
If that's not Trump, I don't know what is. It's time for a realignment.
Made in the U.S.A.
The Spectator didn't much like President Trump's acceptance speech, but I did:
Then he went for the jugular, ‘Joe Biden is not a savior of America’s soul,’ he said.
‘He is the destroyer of America’s jobs, and if given the chance, he will be the destroyer of America’s greatness. For 47 years, Joe Biden took the donations of blue-collar workers, gave them hugs, and even kisses, and told them he felt their pain, and then he flew back to Washington and voted to ship our jobs to China and many other distant lands.
‘Joe Biden spent his entire career outsourcing their dreams and the dreams of American workers, offshoring their jobs, opening their borders and sending their sons and daughters to fight in endless foreign wars, wars that never ended.’
* * *
‘Biden’s record is a shameful roll call of the most catastrophic betrayals and blunders in our lifetime… He has spent his entire career on the wrong side of history. Biden voted for the NAFTA disaster, the single worst trade deal ever enacted. He supported China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, one of the greatest economic disasters of all time. After those Biden calamities, the United States lost one in four manufacturing jobs. We laid off workers in Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and many other states. They did not want to hear Biden’s hollow words of empathy. They wanted their jobs back.’
. . . ‘Joe Biden’s agenda is Made in China. Mine is Made in the USA.’ Trump defended his record on COVID-19, widely seen as his weakest point in this election. He contrasted all his achievements with what he said Biden would do. He echoed the ‘Trojan horse for socialism’ theme which Mike Pence has touched on. Biden, he said, would not stand up to the ‘wild-eyed radicals’ and added that Biden would ‘abolish cash bail, immediately releasing 400,000 criminals onto the streets and into your neighborhoods. When asked if he supports cutting police funding, Joe Biden replied, “yes, absolutely“.’
Trump also pointed out that the Democrats had not mentioned ‘the rioters and criminals spreading mayhem in Democrat-run cities’ in their convention. ‘Now, they are starting to mention it because their poll numbers are going down like a rock in water,’ he added.
Pushing Back on the Narrative of Modern Systemic Racism
A former infantryman and current electrical engineer takes on the narrative of modern systemic racism and white privilege.
The New York Times gets the memo
Don Lemon let the cat out of the bag by complaining that the rioting was affecting the polling now, you guys, time to cut it out. By the next day the memo clearly had gone out to practically everyone, because the messaging was disciplined and unified. The New York Times made it official by running a piece that actually quotes moderate voters and attempts to explain their disgust with the collapse of law and order and the paralysis of leaders in its face.
I try not to link to the NYT, but you can read excerpts from it here at Powerline.
Backup Contact Info
I'd like to have a way to stay in touch with the regulars if the blog ever goes away, or if we ever decide to have a reunion party (Can it be a "re" union if we've never met?) or whatnot.
I'm putting a contact email in the comments for anyone else who is interested in staying in touch. Just send me an email and I'll add you to the list.
Laboratories of democracy
My messy local government spat over tax policy, debt, and voters' rights is still evolving. To my amazement, the relatively non-functional county government managed to get its act together in time to put our proposed bond on the November ballot by the August 17 deadline, thus ensuring that (if we win voter approval) we can borrow our funds by early 2021 and not blow the construction schedule for our new courthouse or imperil our partial grant funding.
Meanwhile, the comparatively transparent and orderly city government simply didn't. They'd just witnessed a rapid and successful petition effort to force an election on the county's separate $20MM bond proposal to build a courthouse. The city was using the same negative-notice bond proposal statute to attempt to borrow its own $20MM for a city hall without an election. The petitioners moved off their county bond triumph to mount a petition drive on the city bond. It was obvious they would quickly succeed--it took only one weekend--but their deadline for presenting the petition was the day after the deadline for putting the city bond on the ballot. The city, which should have taken the same pre-emptive action the county took, simply missed its deadline to put the city bond on the November ballot. Denial? Fury? Distraction? Inability to escape the bubble of their like-minded friends? I really don't get it. They're usually pretty sober. Now the city has to wait until next May for an election to approve its bond, if they don't abandon the bond effort completely. This is disastrous for the city but not an overwhelming problem for the petitioners. It makes no sense.
Meanwhile, as we all gear up for a November election on the county bond, both the county and the city boosters seem to want to continue to spend time complaining about those deplorable voters who exercised their right to demand an election. Why, oh why, did they demand it at the last minute? Why didn't they get comfortable with the proposed bonds, as the government leaders vaguely hoped they would, though without troubling themselves to inform or convince anyone that $40 million in debt was a fine idea? I find myself having to say repeatedly that the city and the county had complete control over their own schedules for when to publish the twin 45-day notices of intent to borrow without an election, both of which were always and by statute subject to the right of voters to petition for an election. The voters could not force the city or county to publish the notices weeks or months earlier, but I cannot find any reason why the city or county couldn't have done so. The numbers may not have been crystal clear last spring, but they're not crystal clear now, either. You pick the best number you can and try to borrow that, explaining to the public as best you can why it's the right number. What is the difficulty here?
There is also continued grousing over the idea that 5% of voters can override the presumptive will of most voters to approve these wonderful bonds. My own view: the alternative is to let 5 people control the bond decision for the entire city full of voters, and another 5 people control the bond decision for the entire county full of voters. At least this way, all the voters will get a chance to decide how wonderful the bonds are.
Did either the county or the city leadership deliberately wait until the last minute? I can't think why they would, but I guess it's possible. They're not talking. They're just resentful it didn't work. I understand the resentment, in a way, but I'll be darned if I can understand why they think it's a good idea to keep talking about the resentment when what they really need is to win a vote on the bonds. They should be falling all over themselves to congratulate the voters on their franchise rights, and working hard to give them good facts and arguments in favor of the bonds. Instead, they're up to their usual strategies of fighting transparency with a bitter determination born of the conviction that it's simply wrong to distrust them and joggle their expert elbows. Monday's Commissioners Court meeting was practically a morality play entitled "what local government officials act like when you presume to ask questions and they despise you for it."
Not many people watched the Democratic National Convention
. . . and that's the good news, says Glenn Reynolds.
He also says he got an unusual amount of hate speech for this USA weekly article, which he attributes to people having moved from the denial to the anger stage of bereavement.
Choosing America
Cuban-American Maximo Alvarez warns us what his father warned him when they arrived in this county: Don't lose this place. If we let happen here what we let happen in Cuba, there is nowhere else to go.
How transmissible is COVID really?
A Chinese study (I know, I know) of 391 primary COVID cases did some good work sorting out the incidence of transmission to the patients' aggregate 3,410 close contacts--about 9 close contacts per index patient. It found that only 3.7% of those close contacts caught the disease. Of that 3.7%, 6.3% of cases were asymptomatic, 16.8% were mild, 73.1% were moderate, and 10.1% were severe or critical. That means less than half a percent of the close contacts of the original patients picked up a severe or critical disease as a result.
There was considerable difference in the kind of contact that encouraged transmission as well. The transmission rate to household members was 10.3%, much higher than the average 3.7% rate. The transmission rate to healthcare workers was 1.0%, much lower than the average rate. The transmission rate on public transportation was even lower: 0.1%.
It also makes a big difference whether the index case is mild or severe. For asymptomatic index cases, the transmission rate was only 0.3%. For mild index cases, it was 3.3%; for moderate cases, 5.6%; and for severe or critical cases, 6.2%. The highest transmission rate was for index cases "with expectoration," 13.6%. The overall transmission rate for all kinds of cases without expectoration was 3.0%.
The lesson here is that the transmission rate is surprisingly low, even for obviously ill index patients, and the biggest societal risk factor is the size of their group of "close contacts." If infected people managed to keep their close contacts under 9, they'd be spreading their illness even less on average. That might prove difficult for severely ill people who require intensive care, but it shouldn't be that hard for anyone with a moderate case. The spread rate for asymptomatic cases is so small--a tenth or twentieth of the spread rate for symptomatic cases--that it barely figures into public policy.
The bottom line is that the disease will bounce off of 86% even of people in close contact with an "expectorating" COVID patient. It will bounce off an astounding 99.7% of people whose only exposure is to a completely asymptomatic COVID patient.
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