"How Not to be Stupid" →

Shane Parrish, interviewing Adam Robinson:

…When it comes to overloading our cognitive brains, the seven factors are: being outside of your circle of competence, stress, rushing or urgency, fixation on an outcome, information overload, being in a group where social cohesion comes into play, and being in the presence of an “authority.” Acting alone any of these are powerful enough, but together they dramatically increase the odds you are unaware that you’ve been cognitively compromised.

Here’s a good list of factors that cause mistakes. Note that a lot of them are often outside our immediate control!

And one that’s particularly relevant to news analysis is “in the presence of an authority, or being an authority.” A veeeeery common problem I see among “experts” is when they step outside their area of expertise but still think they know the answers. We all trick ourselves into thinking that because we are really good at one thing (and therefore very “smart”), our opinions must be just as valid on other topics (even though we know we’re not nearly as informed on them). One way to catch to yourself is noticing when you start using absolute statements, instead of describing the complexity or nuance of a situation.

21st Century "Divide and Conquer"

Troll farms going wild today with the chance, at last, to drive a wedge on the left.

I looked at the hashtag and so far haven't found a single one using a real name. https://t.co/EEn1En8njM

— Steven Bodzin (home) (@stevenbodzin) January 15, 2020

This is the hashtag:

The #WarrenIsASnake hashtag is helping me build my block list.

— David Neiwert (@DavidNeiwert) January 15, 2020

Political disagreements are being "weaponized" by unscrupulous political operatives through the use of auto-posting bots on social media. They flood a hashtag, making it look like a lot of people don't like someone. That hashtag rises on the "Trending" charts. That fake consensus then tricks people into feeling more hostile than they otherwise would, and it lowers the barriers to spread hate, polluting connections real people have with each other.

In this case, it looks like there's a current botnet campaign that's trying to worsen whatever bad blood exists between Sanders and Warren supporters, similar to how Russian operatives created spambots that endlessly harassed Clinton (and Sanders) supporters during the 2015/2016 primary (the "Bernie Bros" pejorative was created in part by this--a 2017 analysis found that the most prolific pro-Bernie/anti-Clinton accounts on Twitter turned out to be Russian bots). When you see something enraging, take a moment to chill and ask whether the source and the message are real.

We need to remain skeptical of what we see on social media when it's something that gets our blood pumping about political opponents, whether that's a trending harassment hashtag or it's an article from a news source we haven't heard of before. If it sounds too horrible to be true, there's a good chance it's fake news created to divide us. Not always(!), but often.

There are good reasons not to agree (and even REALLY not like) someone in politics, and if we care about democratic rule we need to have a lot more conversations with each other about why do and don't support people running for office. But we need to be careful not to be taken advantage of by bad actors. Keep an open mind. And remain skeptical.

"Trump’s Tariffs Are Raising Prices and Slashing Employment"

"Prices" and "Employment" aren't the whole picture, but Trump himself promised his trade "deals" would be a huge boost to the US economy and manufacturing. Now we're billions in the hole and having to bail out our farmers on top of that.

Kevin Drum, in Mother Jones:

If this study holds up, it means that Trump’s trade war is (a) costing American families about $1000 per year, (b) cratering employment in the affected sectors, (c) sending producer prices up, and (d) putting hundreds of American farmers face to face with bankruptcy…

"The Christmas Even Confessions of Chuck Todd"

This is elite media failure, summarized. As Jay Rosen points out in detail, Chuck Todd, NBC's political director, had been completely taken in by the GOP's near-total hypocrisy when it comes to the truth, and only now begins to understand he's been hoodwinked for years.

Ultimately, perhaps, it's all about money: the big ad-supported media, which are now mostly owned by billionaires, chase "gotcha" moments over long-term analysis that might question too much (like why life expectancy is declining for all but the super rich, in the wealthiest country in history, for the first time in nearly a hundred years). At the most basic level, though, it shows fatal flaws in what many journalism schools have taught as good practice, especially the idea that both "sides" need to be given equal coverage, even when there's only one that's right and/or the other constantly lies.

Assuming that all politicians are trying their best to speak the truth is an incredibly privileged assumption. These people have clearly never experienced the extreme media distortion in authoritarian countries. That’s where we’re headed, and they either learn how to counter the endless stream of bullshit from “conservative” “news” sources and spokespeople, or they’re just mouthpieces for it.

"The booming stock market shows America is diseased"

The stock market is endlessly talked about in financial news, but it means very little for how well most Americans are doing.

Ryan Cooper, in The Week:

…If we break the population into 10 groups (or deciles) based on how much stock they own, as Matt Bruenig does with the Survey of Consumer Finances of 2013, we find that the top decile accounts for 86.8 percent of all stocks. The next decile owns 9.5 percent, the third 2.8 percent, and the rest little or nothing.

In other words, the richest 10 percent of Americans own a giant super-majority of the stock market…

…

Stock markets, meanwhile, are supposed to "intermediate" between savers and borrowers — channeling investment to the best performing and most promising companies. But as Doug Henwood writes in his book Wall Street, it does not work like this at all. In reality, the stock market is a political-economic control mechanism. As Matt Stoller writes in his book Goliath, Wall Street raiders have continually pressured well-run corporations with low debt, high investment budgets, or high wages to cut costs and vomit forth profits for shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. Indeed, by buying a controlling share of stock with borrowed money, hostile takeover specialists can put the debt on the company's own books — thus effectively buying the company with its own assets and money.

Now, it wasn't always this way. In the post-Second World War generation, there were strong unions at most big corporations, which could protest or strike to defend their share of the corporate surplus. High top tax rates also made it less fruitful to try to grab down as much income as possible. But those days are long gone now. The fraction of GDP going to labor has fallen sharply since the 1980s, while the fraction going to corporate profits has increased sharply, and the share of income and wealth taken up by the very rich has skyrocketed.

This brings us to the deeper problem with an economy geared above all to goose stock prices. The broader economy, including all these public corporations, is still based on mass production and consumption. It follows that as inequality grows, the economy will sag and slow, because rich people disproportionately save their income rather than spend it, usually by buying financial assets like stocks. So as the financial markets are swamped by a tidal wave of profits, those stocks in turn become ever-more divorced from the health of the underlying corporate enterprise. The result is a marked tendency towards financial bubbles, as oceans of money slosh here and there looking for safe returns that can't exist because the mass public has little disposable income which would justify fresh investment in real enterprises.

…

The stock market is surging under Trump largely because of the massive tax cuts for corporations and the rich that Republicans passed in 2017. Contrary to their promises, corporations spent most of the windfall not on investment, but on dividends and share buybacks which fueled gains in the market. Wages, meanwhile, are up slightly, but not anywhere nearly as much as stocks. Overall growth is also weak. This means the stock boom is built on sand…

"Learning Nothing From The Ghost Of Congress Past"

While we consider a possible war with Iran, here's something to keep in mind:

Andrew Bacevich, writing in The American Conservative:

There is a lesson to be learned from the Washington Post’s publication of the “Afghanistan Papers,” which chronicle the corruption, ineptitude, dishonesty, and strategic disarray that have marked the Afghanistan war since its earliest days. That lesson is this: when it comes to war, the American people and their elected representatives will do just about anything to avoid the truth.

...

The uptick of interest in the Afghanistan war triggered by the Post is already subsiding. While perfunctory congressional hearings may yet occur, a meaningful response—one that would demand accountability, for example—is about as likely as a bipartisan resolution to the impeachment crisis.

This implicit willingness to write off a costly, unwinnable, and arguably unnecessary war should itself prompt sober reflection. What we have here is a demonstration of how pervasive and deeply rooted American militarism has become.

...

Take seriously the contents of the Afghanistan Papers and you’ll reach a different conclusion: we have become a nation given to misusing military power, abusing American soldiers, and averting our gaze from the results. U.S. military expenditures and the Pentagon’s array of foreign bases far exceed those of any other nation on the planet. In our willingness to use force, we (along with Israel) lead the pack. Putative adversaries such as China and Russia are models of self-restraint by comparison. And when it comes to cumulative body count, the United States is in a league of its own.

Yet since the end of the Cold War and especially since 9/11, U.S. forces have rarely accomplished the purposes for which they are committed, the Pentagon concealing failure by downsizing its purposes. Afghanistan offers a good example. What began as Operation Enduring Freedom has become in all but name Operation Decent Interval, the aim being to disengage in a manner that will appear responsible, if only for a few years until the bottom falls out.

"Only the Top 20 Percent Has Recovered Since the Great Recession"

Isabel V. Sawhill and Christopher Pulliam at Brookings Institution, “Six facts about wealth in the United States”:

While the middle class has seen modest growth of 7 percent in their net worth since 1995, it has not yet recovered to its previous peak in 2007. This tepid recovery is driven by declines in home-ownership and stock market participation since 2007—if you do not hold assets, you cannot benefit from recovery in asset prices.

In contrast, the wealthy have seen robust growth since 1995 and have fully recovered from the Great Recession. Median net worth for the top 80th-99th percentiles has increased by 149 percent since 1995. For the top one percent, it has grown by 187 percent from a far higher base, making it difficult to even see the wealth of the bottom 99 percent on the following chart!

The “United States” may have “recovered” from the Great Recession, but We, The People have not. After the savings and loan scandal of the 80s destroyed middle class savings, the credit-fueled stock bubble of the 90s destroyed middle class investments, and the housing bubble of the 00s destroyed the value of the last remaining safe asset most middle class folks had, the “economy” could recover, but without a sweeping debt relief and jobs program, all of the growth was destined to go to the people who hadn’t lost much (And never mind the poor who don’t have a say).

"Trump repeatedly claimed in 2011 and 2012 that Obama would start a war with Iran to win reelection"

Andrew Kaczynski, at CNN:

Trump has consistently criticized Obama's Iran policy -- the chief accomplishment of which was an internationally negotiated deal reached in 2015 that lifted sanctions in exchange for Iran ratcheting down its nuclear weapons program. The Trump administration reimposed all sanctions in 2018.

But before that deal, Trump routinely asserted that Obama would force a confrontation to boost his domestic prospects.

“There’s a tweet for everything.” He doesn’t care about anything but his own image, no matter how poorly he manages it, and no matter how much damage he causes to anyone else or our country.

We have no reason to believe there was an imminent attack, and every reason to suspect this was a stunt to bolster support and distract from impeachment.

His own top aids are giving mixed reports. This assassination, like a lot of Trump’s most consequential actions, likely wasn’t coordinated across government (he doesn’t have the patience or attention span), leaving the Departments of Defense and State scrambling to pick up the pieces.

As Jay Rosen said on Twitter:

He doesn't know anything. He doesn't care to learn. He has no policy views. Nothing he says can be trusted. He's not good at anything a president has to do. His model of leadership is the humiliation of others. These should be the six starting points for covering his presidency.

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) January 7, 2020