President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court was predictable, as was the fuss that her nomination engendered.

Her critics’ main complaint against Judge Sotomayor is the claim that she’s biased in favor of her race, which is Hispanic. In her early career, she was on the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic lobbying group whose name means “the race.” One can imagine the denunciations that would ensue if a white Supreme Court nominee had been on the board of an organization promoting the interests of the Caucasian race — as, in fact, one was.*

On the other hand, such denunciations are misguided, whether applied to Hispanics, Caucasians, or to members of the local Rotary Club. There’s nothing wrong with having warm feelings toward one’s own people and seeking to advance their interests, as long as our actions are legal and consistent with our moral and professional obligations. Quite the opposite: such feelings are perfectly natural and normal.

Judge Sotomayor’s court  rulings are a different matter. In her work as a judge, she is obliged to treat all people impartially regardless of their race. If her work as a judge showed a bias in favor of Hispanics, that would be unacceptable. However, no one accuses her of such bias.

The Troubling Case of Ricci v. DeStefano

Judge Sotomayor has also been criticized for her ruling in the 2008 case of Ricci v. DeStefano. Eighteen firefighters (17 white, one Hispanic) in New Haven, Connecticut had passed a promotion exam that no black candidates passed. The city government threw out the test results, and the 17 white firefighters who passed the test sued the city for racial discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Judge Sotomayor was part of a three-judge panel that ruled against the firefighters.

I hope that in her confirmation hearings, Judge Sotomayor explains more completely why she ruled as she did in that case. In a survey of her major cases, The New York Times noted that Sotomayor normally explains her legal reasoning in detail, but the three-judge panel provided only an uninformative one-paragraph explanation of the decision. Certainly, it’s peculiar to have a panel of judges rule that a law against racial discrimination does in fact permit racial discrimination as long as it’s against whites. However, the problem might not be with Judge Sotomayor or the three-judge panel, but with previous court rulings about Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act.

In particular, the panel relied, as it had to, on the “Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications” doctrine. That doctrine outlaws job requirements that have a “disparate negative impact” on some protected group (principally women and African-Americans) unless an employer can prove that the requirements are necessary and that no alternative would have less disparate impact.

In Ricci v. DeStefano, the disparate impact was clear: None of the African-American candidates passed the promotion test, while 17 whites and one Hispanic did pass the test. The New Haven city government most likely wanted to avoid being sued by the African-American test-takers for racial bias, so it ended up being sued by the white test-takers for racial bias. Sometimes, you just can’t win. Judge Sotomayor seems to have ruled accordingly, and the case doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It might be a mistake to blame the mess on her, but she needs to explain it. (She also needs to explain her reasoning in the unrelated case of Didden v. Village of Port Chester, which dealt with property rights and eminent domain).

Applying the Law vs. Reading the Law

President Obama’s critics have also blasted him for nominating an ethnic woman to the court: a so-called “twofer,” because she fills two affirmative action quotas (non-white, non-male) at once. Instead, his critics argue, he should have sought “the best-qualified person,” presumably meaning a person with the most experience on the bench, who has made the largest number of important rulings, and who also would be approved by Republican radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.

They don’t consider the notion that, to paraphrase the Bible (Mark 2:27), “the law was made for people, not the other way around.” Applying the law requires more than just being able to read the law. Judges who know first-hand about the lives and problems of litigants can apply the law more intelligently and compassionately.

Supreme Court Justices Roberts, Scalia, and Alito are well-qualified by their life experience to understand the problems of bankers, oil company executives, and the idle rich. They are totally unqualified to understand the problems of minimum-wage workers at Wal-Mart or the victims of racial discrimination. To them, such people are a blank. To Judge Sotomayor, who has had different life experience, they are real people whose lives matter. Regardless of what the law says, a judge’s background makes a difference in how he or she interprets it. That’s why balancing the court with judges of various backgrounds is a good idea.

Fair enough on both sides. President Obama is a liberal. He wants a Supreme Court judge who agrees with him on most issues. Rush Limbaugh is what currently passes for a conservative. He wants a Supreme Court judge who agrees with him. As it happens (thank goodness), only one of them is president.

Historical Perspective: The Case of Trucksylvania

But let’s step back for a moment to view the situation more objectively. Arguments about current issues are often clouded by passions on both sides. We need to bypass those clouds.

It’s said that people who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. Many of the problems raised by Judge Sotomayor’s nomination were confronted and solved — well or poorly — long ago by Trucksylvania, a tiny but independent Central European duchy established in the year 996 by the Holy Roman Empire under Emperor Otto III.

Trucksylvania was founded as a homeland for truck drivers, which seems remarkably prescient when one considers that trucks wouldn’t be invented until 900 years later.

Though they had nothing to drive, no truck stops at which to eat, and no CB radios on which to say things like “breaker one-nine good buddy,” or “I’ve got a bear in the air,” truck drivers immigrated into Trucksylvania from all over Europe. Meanwhile, the previous inhabitants of Trucksylvania found themselves outnumbered and unwelcome, so many of them emigrated to other countries.

Over the centuries, the culture and institutions of Trucksylvania evolved more and more to reflect the abilities, aspirations, and ideals of truck drivers. People who easily adapted to the requirements of a truck-driving culture were successful and had lots of children for whom they provided the best nutrition and education. People who couldn’t adapt had trouble finding steady jobs. If they had any children at all, they had only a few badly-nourished, ill-educated offspring. If they could move elsewhere, they did.

Culture and heredity mutually reinforced each other, so that the physical and intellectual qualities of Trucksylvanians became ever more closely aligned with the requirements of their truck-driving culture. The children of truck drivers, just like the generations of peas in Gregor Mendel‘s laboratory, tended to inherit the traits of their parents. A social and economic hierarchy emerged, all based on truck-driving ability.

The most reliable though controversial measure of truck-driving aptitude was each person’s Peristaltic Quotient (PQ), which essentially measured the length of time that the person could drive without stopping to go to the loo.

A person’s PQ was defined as average food consumption in grams per day divided by average number of bowel movements per week. Thus, a person who consumed 700 grams of food per day and had seven bowel movements per week had a PQ of 100, which was about average for a Trucksylvanian. A person with an average PQ could drive a truck for a day without stopping; someone with a PQ over 140 could drive as long as two days without stopping.

Apart from the lack of any real trucks to drive, all was well as long as Trucksylvania remained a country “of, by, and for truck drivers.” But that was fated to change.

War with France

In the year 1250, Trucksylvania made a costly mistake when it went to war with France. Though the hardy truck drivers easily won the conflict, the French slaves they brought back to Trucksylvania were a more of a burden than an asset. The average French PQ was shockingly low by Trucksylvanian standards — a mere 85, compared with the Trucksylvanian average of 100.

A few of the French had enough truck-driving aptitude to function well in society, and a very small number of them even had PQs far above the Trucksylvanian average. Most of them, however, found it hard to adapt to a society and economic system based on truck driving. They knew how to bake soufflés; they excelled in creating perfumes and writing love poetry; they were good at mathematics; they even played a fair game of football. But their low average PQ meant that as a population, the French would never be able to compete on equal terms in a truck-driving society. They simply had to go to the bathroom too often.

In their own kind of society, the French would have done fine and it would have been the Trucksylvanians who had problems. But they weren’t in their own kind of society. They were in Trucksylvania. Soufflés were nothing. Truck driving was everything.

The Problem Becomes Acute

When Trucksylvania abolished slavery in 1275 and freed all of its French slaves, the problem became acute. The French population had grown too large to be sent back to its country of origin, so Trucksylvania could not use the approach that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln would support almost 600 years later of deporting former slaves. Somehow, Trucksylvania’s French residents had to be integrated into truck-driving society in spite of their low average PQ and their preoccupation with cooking.

Trucksylvanians of good conscience sympathized with the French but disagreed about what to do. Some pointed out that PQ, though important for truck driving, was only one of many important human qualities. They argued that all people, even the French, had the same human rights regardless of PQ. A few well-meaning people went so far as to argue that the whole idea of PQ was a myth because people’s PQ scores could often be raised somewhat by training and proper diet.

On the other side, some conservatives objected to the notion of trying to integrate the French into Trucksylvanian society. They pointed to the advice of English writer Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), a copy of whose book Physics and Politics had fallen through a temporal rift and landed in 13th-century Trucksylvania:

“A nation means a like body of men, because of that likeness capable of acting together, and because of that likeness inclined to obey similar rules.”

The idea of giving the French equal status in Trucksylvanian society was even worse, they said, quoting Bagehot once again:

“The mixture of persons of different race in the same commonwealth, unless one race had a complete ascendancy, tended to confuse all the relations of life, and all men’s notions of right and wrong; or by compelling men to tolerate in so near a relation as that of fellow-citizens differences upon the main points of human life, led to a general carelessness and scepticism, and encouraged the notion that right and wrong had no real existence, but are mere creatures of human opinion.”

A Compassionate Solution

Conservative objections notwithstanding, Trucksylvania had to give its French residents “a place at the table.” Their lack of truck-driving aptitude meant that their dinner would have to be subsidized by Trucksylvanians. But how to do it? Simply giving money as charity to the French would deprive them of self-respect and make them resent their Trucksylvanian benefactors. Oddly enough, the rulers of Trucksylvania were familiar with the Babylonian Talmud, which advised:

“Whoever shames his neighbor in public, it is as if he shed his blood.”

To help its French residents without shaming them, the Trucksylvanian government decided to give them extra points — the equivalent of a golf handicap — to compensate for their lack of truck-driving ability. The extra points would help them to get good jobs and enjoy social status even if in the aggregate, they never learned to drive as well as Trucksylvanians. In addition to the extra points, Trucksylvania would pour resources into better nutrition and education for the French, enabling them to make the most of whatever truck-driving potential they had.

Of course, to discriminate in favor of one group is equivalent to discriminating against any group not so favored. Ordinary Trucksylvanians, who failed to see the big picture, were angry that their government was treating them unfairly. The French weren’t too happy either, because they had escaped the stigma of being “charity cases” only to be tarred with the new stigma of being “handicap hires.”

But the rulers of Trucksylvania were creative. They needed to think of a reason why it was important for companies to have French employees. It had to be something that didn’t depend on truck-driving ability, which the French lacked. Yes, the reason would be completely bogus. However, the Trucksylvanians expected that if it were even slightly plausible, and if everyone pretended to believe it, then it just might work.

They found their reason: “diversity.” It was vitally important, they said, to have diversity in the workplace, in classrooms, and in every aspect of life. They warned that if you didn’t have diversity, then you couldn’t … uh, you couldn’t … Well, it wasn’t too clear what you couldn’t do, especially if “diversity” just meant that you had to have some French people on the payroll.

For the most part, however, Trucksylvanians accepted the government’s argument. They had little choice, inasmuch as it had been made “a firing offence” to question the value of diversity or to question the abilities of the French.

Tallying Up: “The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good”

So let’s tally up the achievement of Trucksylvania. It started with an unfair situation: French people brought against their will into a society where they didn’t quite fit and couldn’t quite compete. Not their fault. Nothing wrong with them except that they were French, with French attitudes and abilities, trying to live in a society tailored to the attitudes and abilities of Trucksylvanians.

The rulers of Trucksylvania added just a little more unfairness to counterbalance their original sin of having owned French slaves. They mixed in a dash of propaganda and a pinch of hypocrisy, then stirred well. The result was a society in which the majority of good people, regardless of their truck-driving ability, could have a place at the table: the dignity of being citizens and full participants in Trucksylvanian society.

As Voltaire said, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Trucksylvania’s solution wasn’t perfect. But it was good.

_______________________________________
*U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black (1886-1971) started his career as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but kept it a secret until after he was already serving on the Supreme Court. Ironically, Black became one of the court’s most energetic supporters of civil rights for African-Americans.

“Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct.”
–F.H. Bradley

It’s not poetic, nor even grammatically correct, but it’s a question that everyone eventually asks: “Why are we all so messed up?”

I can’t presume to offer the complete answer, but I do have a little piece of it to share. It has to do with epistemology.

Episte-whatsis?

Epistemology. That’s the study of how we acquire and test our knowledge, as well as how our knowledge is structured and what it means “to know something.”

For example, suppose I say that “I know there is an elephant in the closet.” What exactly am I saying? Common sense gives a threefold answer:

• I have adequate evidence to believe that there is an elephant in the closet. In other words, my belief is justified.
• There is, in fact, an elephant in the closet. In other words, my belief is true.
• I believe that there is an elephant in the closet. In other words, I really do believe what I claim.

Those three criteria are embodied in the usual definition of knowledge as “justified true belief.”

However, most situations are far more complicated than just having an elephant in your closet — however troublesome that might be. If you suspect that you have an elephant in your closet, it’s easy to find out. Just open the door and look. Then you know.

Harder than having an elephant in your closet

But consider a different kind of situation. This is a puzzle given by New York Times columnist John Tierney:

The printed version of Tierney's puzzle, scanned from a newspaper clipping.

My mother presented me with that puzzle after our weekly family dinner last Sunday night. Such are dinners at Mom and Dad’s house: It’s like being on a quiz show, except that you get a home-cooked meal and there are no cash prizes. Sitting at the dinner table are three medical doctors, an art historian, an entomologist-biochemist who looks like movie actress Anne Hathaway, a computer expert, a golf pro, a four-year-old prodigy, and me. Every one of us secretly believes that he or she is the smartest, and is determined to prove it. Over chicken and pasta, the conversation leaps from obscure diseases to medieval manuscripts, the life cycles of bugs, computer software, and the latest doings of Tiger Woods. Over dessert, an impromptu lesson in Spanish, German, or Hebrew for the boy. But I digress.

(Note: If you want to have a go at Tierney’s puzzle on your own, stop reading here. I’m going to start talking about the solution.)

My mother wanted to know the solution to the puzzle, which The New York Times columnist avowed had stumped him. She gave the puzzle to me because I’m the mathematics geek of the clan, am single, and therefore have the most free time. The figures looked at first glance like ancient numerals, perhaps from the Babylonian, Chinese, or Indian number systems. I wasn’t sure which. When I got home and looked them up, I found that they weren’t ancient numerals.

Then I latched onto the last word of the hint in the puzzle description: “knots.” An area of mathematics called “knot theory” investigates, among other things, what happens when you manipulate knot-like geometrical figures in certain ways. I didn’t know much about knot theory, and it wasn’t a perfect match anyway, but it was close enough for me to theorize that:

• The second and third figures on row 1 were rotations and twists of the first figure.
• The fifth figure on row 1 was a rotation of the fourth figure.

I concluded that there were two series of three figures each. For the answer, I needed a figure on row 2 that was a rotation or twist of the fourth and fifth figures on row 1:

• The fourth figure was a triangle pointing downward.
• The fifth figure was a horizontal line, as if the triangle had been rotated toward us in 3-D space and we were seeing it from the side.

Rotating the figure one more time, toward us in 3-D space, gives us a triangle pointing upward. That’s answer (c), which I triumphantly emailed to my mother and the other family members who had been present at dinner.

The Web to the rescue

I decided to check the Web to see if Tierney had posted an answer. However, the Web version of his puzzle included some vital information that wasn’t in the printed clipping:

The Web version of Tierney's puzzle.

The most important new information was that row 1 consisted not of five figures, but of four figures and a blank. And the horizontal line in fifth place, which didn’t look too different on the newspaper clipping, was clearly a different color on the Web page.

I took another look at the hint. It says something about mirroring, also part of knot theory. The next solution was easy. The first figure on row 1 is the numeral 1 paired with its mirror image. The second is the numeral 3 paired with its mirror image, the third is 5, and the fourth is 7. So the series is 1-3-5-7, consecutive odd numbers. The next figure should be the numeral 9 paired with its mirror image. And that makes the answer either (a) or (d), assuming that Tierney drew the nines in an eccentric way.

Well, duh. That wasn’t hard.

One of my brothers was unimpressed both with the puzzle and with my two solutions. He emailed three more puzzles that he thought might be more challenging:

Steve's puzzle #1. One possible answer is (D) because the line of figures moves from left to right, and (D) is the only one to the right of the last figure on row 1.

And a second puzzle:

Steve's puzzle #2. One possible answer is (A) because all the other objects are partly or entirely black.

And a third puzzle:

Steve's puzzle #3. One possible answer is (A) because all the others are waving their hands.

Yes, Virginia, there really is a point to all this.

The point of the discussion is this. Tierney’s puzzle deals with a very limited set of simple geometrical facts. It asks the reader to explain those facts and to predict another very simple geometrical fact. But even in that simple situation, different answers are possible. The answer you get depends not merely on the evidence, but on your background and interests. It also depends crucially on which pieces of evidence catch your attention.

The same applies to my brother Steve’s puzzles. For most people, the answer to puzzle 1 is obviously “B” because it would complete a series of progressively larger squares. Likewise in puzzle 2, the spatula is the only item that isn’t an animal, while in puzzle 3, the television character of “Barney” is the only item that isn’t a dictator.

However, other interpretations are possible. In puzzle 3, for example, the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin “does not belong” because he’s the only person not waving at least one hand. The fact that different solutions are possible makes it hard to design such puzzles for standardized tests, such as college aptitude tests. What such puzzles really measure is test-takers’ ability to find the solution that the test-designers expect. Truly creative people sometimes score badly on such tests because their solutions, though logical, are unexpected* and therefore “wrong.”

And all those puzzles represent very simple situations with very limited data sets that you evaluate to get a solution. Real-life situations involve hundreds or thousands of pieces of information that are connected, or not, in ways that are often unclear.

Real-life situations are even more prone to have multiple, equally-logical explanations. Which explanation you choose depends on your prior assumptions about the situation, about people, and about how the world works. It depends crucially on which pieces of evidence you spotlight, which pieces you ignore, and which pieces you outright reject. For example:

• Conservative economists who look in good faith at official economic data think it shows clearly that we must give more tax cuts to the rich and get rid of regulations that inconvenience giant corporations.
• Liberal economists who look in good faith at official economic data think it shows clearly that we must increase taxes on the rich and more aggressively regulate corporate misbehaviour.
• In the Middle Ages, doctors liked to treat illnesses with leeches. They noted that people treated with leeches often got better. But so did people not treated with leeches, a fact which the doctors’ theory caused them to discount in evaluating the merits of leech therapy.
• Scientists who contemplate the symmetry and elegance of the physical universe often get a feeling of transcendence. They conclude that it’s because the physical universe is all that exists and is just wonderful.
• Christians who contemplate the works of God and read the New Testament get a feeling of transcendence. They conclude that it’s because God is infinitely good, Jesus is right there with him, and that only Christians can go to Heaven.
• Muslims who contemplate the works of God and read the Qu’ran get a feeling of transcendence. They conclude that it’s because Allah is running things, Mohammed was right, and that only Muslims can go to Heaven.

A little intellectual humility

What it really comes down to is this: Most of what we consider our “knowledge” either consists of, or is based on, WAGs (wild-a**ed guesses) that we simply follow until something better comes along.

It’s relatively harmless until our WAGs combine with our arrogance to make us demonize and try to destroy people who disagree with us. What we need is a touch of humility: The awareness that however sure we are that we’re right, we still might be wrong. We should accordingly proceed with caution, giving due respect to the viewpoints, rights, lives — and the feelings — of others.

Of course, I might be wrong about that. But I’m sticking with it until something better comes along.

____________________________
*There is a relevant story about Nobel laureate physicist Niels Bohr, a pioneer of 20th-century atomic theory. When Bohr was a student, a professor supposedly gave the following problem on a test: “Use a barometer to determine the height of a tall building.” Obviously, the professor was expecting students to solve the problem by measuring the atmospheric pressure at the bottom and top of the building, but Bohr had a different solution. “Go to the top of the building. Tie a long piece of string to the barometer. Lower it to the ground. Measure the amount of string that you lowered over the side of the building, then add its length to the height of the barometer. The sum is the height of the building.” It’s not the expected answer, but it’s a correct answer.

Have you ever seen a car commercial on television?

Think about that commercial. The most important criteria for choosing a new car include:

• Reliability
• Safety
• Gas mileage
• Comfort and roominess
• Features such as satellite radio and GPS
• Price
• Warranty

Did the commercial emphasize those criteria as the car’s selling points?

Of course not. Instead, it showed endless video clips of the car zooming along the highway, looking attractive and powerful, suggesting that the person who drives it must also be attractive and powerful. If the driver was male, the car most likely zoomed past a bevy of admiring women on the sidewalk. The message, quite obviously, is Drive this car and you’ll get women. All that’s missing is the grunting of the cavemen.

Have you ever bought a car?

Think about that experience. Unless both it and you are quite unusual, the salesperson was trying to push your emotional buttons. Salespeople will talk about facts and figures if they must, but it’s not their tool of choice. Their main approach is to manipulate you emotionally. The car salesman’s motto is: “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.”

Let’s consider an example from a different field. This is from an October 3, 2000 debate about Medicare between Vice President Al Gore and presidential candidate George W. Bush (quoted in the book The Political Brain by Drew Westen):

A book by Drew Westen that examines the role of emotion in politics.

GORE: Under [Mr. Bush's] plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you now have under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18 and 47 percent, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he’s modeled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries. Let me give you one quick example. There’s a man here tonight named George McKinney from Milwaukee. He’s 70 years old, has high blood pressure, his wife has heart trouble. They have an income of $25,000 per year. They can’t pay for their prescription drugs. They’re some of the ones that go to Canada regularly in order to get their prescription drugs. Under my plan, half of their costs would be paid right away. Under Governor Bush’s plan, they would get not one penny for four or five years and then they would be forced to go into an HMO or to an insurance company and ask them for coverage, but there would be no limit on their premiums or deductibles or any of the terms and conditions.

BUSH: I cannot let this go by, the old-style Washington politics, if we’re going to scare you into the voting booth. Under my plan the man gets immediate help with prescription drugs. It’s called Immediate Helping Hand. Instead of squabbling and finger pointing, he gets immediate help. Let me say something …

JIM LEHRER (MODERATOR): You’re …

GORE: They get $25,000 a year income. That makes them ineligible.

BUSH: Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers. I’m beginning to think not only did he invent the Internet, but he invented the calculator. It’s fuzzy math.

Gore’s argument is mainly about facts and figures. Only after he’s presented the facts and figures does he give an example, probably as an attempt to connect emotionally with the audience because his advisors told him that he should.

Bush’s argument — well, he doesn’t really make one. He accuses Mr. Gore of engaging in “old-style Washington politics” and seems to claim that because his own plan is called “Immediate Helping Hand,” it provides immediate help to the man in Gore’s example.* He tells a joke about Gore inventing the electronic calculator and alludes to the Republican campaign’s outright lie that Gore said he invented the Internet.

Bush’s approach is to draw people’s attention away from policy issues and engage in emotional attacks on Gore’s character. Gore is all about the steak, but like many a car salesman, Bush only wants to talk about the sizzle.

My point isn’t that Mr. Bush is uniquely deceptive. He’s not. Mr. Bush provided many examples of such fact-avoidance and emotional manipulation, but one could also find them on the Democratic side. However, one of the most vivid examples comes from my own experience of watching the first 1980 debate between President Jimmy Carter and presidential candidate Ronald Reagan.

1980: Ronald Reagan vs. Jimmy Carter

I supported Mr. Reagan in his 1980 presidential campaign. To this day, I believe that he was a good man and a good president, apart from his tragic choice of George H.W. Bush as his vice president.**

After the first Reagan-Carter debate, however, I was despondent. I thought that Carter had pretty much destroyed Reagan in the debate. Carter was armed to the teeth with facts, figures, and logic. I knew many good arguments Reagan could have made for his positions, but he didn’t make them. All he offered was grandfatherly charm and quips such as “There you go again.” I thought Carter had won so decisively that there was virtually no chance Reagan could win the election.

Surprise. Most people who watched the debate thought the opposite: That Reagan had pretty much destroyed Carter. They didn’t want to hear about facts, figures, and logic. They liked Reagan, as did I. To them, that was what mattered. He was someone with whom they would have felt comfortable “having a beer.”

People Are Both Rational and Emotional

It’s hardly a hot news flash that both reason and emotion influence our beliefs. The irony in U.S. politics is that:

• Democrats often believe that people are just animals, but they tend to argue as if they believe that people are rational, intelligent beings who can be swayed by logic and evidence — such as all those “numbers” for which Mr. Bush derided Vice President Gore in their debate.
• Republicans claim to believe that people are children of God with the ability to reason. However, they tend to argue as if they believe that people are just stupid apes who can be manipulated into adopting false beliefs and supporting causes against their own interests.

And guess what? On both issues, the Republicans are right. People are indeed children of God with the ability to reason, but effective propaganda easily manipulates most of them, most of the time, into believing almost anything and supporting almost anything.

I say this with no feeling of superiority. During the 1990s, I was completely deceived by the Republican propaganda campaign against the Clinton administration. In place of affordable medical care for all Americans, we got embroiled in endless debates over issues that were at best unimportant and at worst completely manufactured. Did Mrs. Clinton profit from sweetheart stock trades years before her husband was elected president? Did the Clintons want to put their own friends in charge of the White House Travel Office? Did an embarrassed President Clinton try to cover up his affair with Monica Lewinsky? Did someone in the Clinton campaign, sometime, accept an illegal campaign contribution? Did White House lawyer Vincent Foster really commit suicide?

The most important good things that the Clintons wanted to do were blocked by the savage Republican attacks and the Clintons’ need to defend against them. What we got instead was the “giant sucking sound” of NAFTA, thank you very much. Multi-national corporations love it; Mexican and American working people, not so much.

When the time came to elect a new president in 2000, we were all so disgusted by the “Clinton scandals” that we allowed a regime into power far worse than the Clintons had ever dreamed of being. We traded political patronage and sexual dalliance — sins, to be sure, but relatively harmless ones — for war and illegal wiretapping and torture and stolen elections and the drowning of New Orleans.

The Propaganda War Against President Obama

The Republican establishment is now using a variation of the propaganda campaign it ran against the Clintons. The white-hot emotional pitches are there again. Based on no evidence at all, they scream that Obama was “really born in Kenya” and isn’t legally eligible to be president, that he’s really a Muslim instead of a Christian, and so forth.

Establishment Republicans don’t want to talk about any real issues except for abortion and “gay marriage” because those are the only real issues they’ve got. Almost all the other proposals they have are variations on their standard mantra: stick it to working people and consumers, slant the laws and tax code even more outrageously in favor of the rich, and let giant corporations do whatever they want.

They know that if Americans start thinking for themselves instead of blindly following emotional propaganda, they’ll demand affordable national healthcare, greater protection for workers and consumers, sensible business regulation, and an end to the tax code’s “free ride” for corporations and the super-rich. Those are all things that the Obama administration might deliver if it’s not blocked by the Republican attack machine.

So I have only one request: Think for yourself about the real issues that matter, and give your political support accordingly.

——————————————————–

*Mr. Bush seems to be fond of naming things in ways that suggest their opposite. For example, the Bush-Cheney administration’s “Clear Skies” law of 2003 increased the legal amount of air pollution, thereby promoting the opposite of “clear skies.”

**The choice would have been even more tragic if John Hinckley, the son of one of George H.W. Bush’s political financiers, had succeeded in his attempt to assassinate President Reagan, thereby enabling Bush to assume the presidency to which he felt entitled.