COUP WATCH: Analyzing Hate Mail; The Cause of Sanity & More From Red Rock Eater News Service\r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nCOUP WATCH: Analyzing Hate Mail; The Cause of Sanity & More From Red Rock Eater News Service <\/b><\/p>
\r\n<\/p>
\r\n\r\nBy Phil Agre<\/b><\/p>
\r\n\r\n\r\nFrom - Sat Nov 25 21:13:36 2000<\/p>
\r\n\r\nI enclose another, extra-large batch of URL's, again with thanks to\r\nall the good people who contributed. But first, assorted comments.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n1<\/p>
\r\n\r\nFor a few days after the first outbreak of Republican gang violence\r\nin Florida, the hate mail fell silent for a couple days. One or two\r\nof the formerly most vituperative even said things like, I disagree\r\nwith you about everything else but I agree that the violence can't be\r\njustified. It was good. But now the hate mail has started up again,\r\nand it's even worse than before. Although the details vary, as you'd\r\nexpect, the great majority of the rhetorical moves fit neatly into a\r\nsmall number of categories, which follow:<\/p>
\r\n\r\n(1) The words \"partisan\" and \"bias\". In the time that I have been\r\nwriting about the current elections, I have received perhaps 100\r\nmessages telling me nothing except that I am either \"partisan\" or\r\n\"biased\". These words are outstanding examples of the perversity\r\nof the current jargon. They first entered into circulation when some\r\nAmericans called people like Newt Gingrich \"partisan\" for doing things\r\nlike training political candidates to describe their opponents with\r\nwords like decay, sick, pathetic, stagnation, corrupt, and traitors\r\n(LA Times 12\/19\/94). The jargon-speakers did something characteristic\r\nwith this: they accused their opponents of identifying as \"partisan\"\r\nany views other than their own.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n Notice how this works: it inflates\r\nthe word, deletes all mention of the justification for using it, and\r\nprojects both of these moves onto Them. Next, they started using the\r\nword \"partisan\" in the inflated, dishonest way that they had ascribed\r\nto their opponents. Again very characteristically, this gave them\r\nthe cover they needed to go around irrationally abusing people: it\r\nlet them think \"*they're* really the ones who are doing this to *us*\".<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThis is one reason why the speakers of the new jargon so cherish the\r\nslights that they sometimes experience: they now have new cover to\r\nemploy in abusing people. What is more, the word \"partisan\", like the\r\nword \"bias\", now means nothing except \"you have a different opinion\r\nthan mine\", except that having a different opinion is now ipso facto\r\nwrong -- not just mistaken but improper. Faced with the discomfort\r\nof differing views, you can now release the tension by flinging these\r\nempty words, thereby assaulting people while feeling inwardly that you\r\nare standing up for morality. And if they have a problem with that,\r\nthen of course you can ask surprised and accuse them of abusing *you*.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n(2) Bogus claims of double standards. These are pervasive. You\r\nmight say, for example, \"Jesse Jackson parachuted in and had 10,000\r\npeople marching, but when conservatives have 100 people expressing\r\ntheir views you call it fascism\". See how easy that was? See how\r\nthe grammatical parallelism locks in a certain construction of the\r\nsituation that happens to omit key facts, for example the people who\r\ngot kicked, punched, trampled, threatened, and screamed at, not to\r\nmention the people whose votes will now most likely never be counted?<\/p>
\r\n\r\nHere is another version: \"when Jesse Jackson does it you call it\r\ndemocracy, but when conservatives do it you call it fascism\". Note\r\nthe strategic vagueness of the phrase \"does it\". Did Jesse Jackson\r\napply the word \"thugs\" to peaceful bureaucrats and then order a gang\r\nof actual thugs to go attack them? Well, no. Once again, grammatical\r\nparallelism locks in a presupposition of moral equivalence without\r\nthe bother of a substantive argument. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nOne person, in trying to draw\r\na moral equivalence between Jackson's protests and the Republican\r\nriots accused Jackson of issuing a \"call to arms\" in Florida, the\r\ntrick being to use a metaphor in a way that deniably insinuates that\r\nit was literally true. But even if Jesse Jackson did once, one time,\r\nsomewhere, notwithstanding his life-long commitment to the principles\r\nof nonviolence of Martin Luther King, incite people to violence,\r\nnote how weak the double-standard argument is.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThis is the party\r\nof morality we are talking about -- the party of right and wrong, of\r\npersonal responsibility. And one of the basics of Right and Wrong 1A\r\nis that that \"they do it too\" is not an excuse! The double-standard\r\nargument is at best a diversion, a way to change the topic, to make\r\nThem into the issue instead of oneself. It is a way to dissociate in\r\none's own mind the fact that one is condoning and defending violence,\r\nand thereby to crush one more layer of one's own conscience.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n(3) Bogus claims of stereotyping. I said, and now repeat, that the\r\nRepublican party employed fascist tactics to shut down a vote-counting\r\nprocess that the feared they would lose. Rather than try to refute\r\nthis proposition, some have chosen to defocus it, and pretend that\r\nI have stereotyped all conservatives, or all Republicans, or all Bush\r\nsupporters, as fascists. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThat's a convenient approach for a number\r\nof reasons. Our society disapproves of stereotypes, and of course\r\nliberals have been in the forefront of that disapproval. Accusing\r\na putative liberal of stereotyping thus serves the double purpose\r\nof delegitimizing the putative liberal's argument and removing the\r\nmoral force from the accusations of stereotyping that liberals have\r\nlodged. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nIt is not true, of course, that everyone who voted for George\r\nW. Bush is a fascist. Many good people who voted for Bush because\r\nthey believed that Al Gore had told a large number of lies about his\r\nrecord; those people had been subjected to a disinformation campaign,\r\nso one could hardly blame them. Those same people, however, must\r\nnow face the fact that the party for which they voted organized a\r\nriot whose express purpose was to shut down the counting of votes.\r\nThe moral culpability for Bush voters who remain silent about this\r\nfact is growing day by day, and the more they remain silent the more\r\nwe are entitled to conclude that they have no problem with fascist\r\ntactics. We'll give them perhaps a week more.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n(4) Quite a few people have asserted that the violence in Miami simply\r\ndid not happen. Some people made this claim in response to a message\r\nin which I provided a URL for a video clip of a running mob knocking\r\ndown a cameraman and screaming at Miami election officials. I don't\r\nwhat more I can say to such people. And a reader directed me to the\r\ndiscussion of the Miami events at the Free Republic Web site (whose\r\nURL is http:\/\/www.freerepublic.com\/). <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThose folks simply took for\r\ngranted that the violence did not occur, and they set about planning\r\nto blast-fax the media with demands that it stop reporting its lies.\r\nThey also managed to blame the violence, without quite admitting that\r\nit happened, on planned provocations by the liberal media and so on.\r\nIn general my mailbox is filled with complicated language that places\r\nresponsibility for the violence on the people who were attacked, for\r\nexample asserting that they had \"incited\" the attacks by twisting the\r\nballots they were counting. (I am not making this up.)<\/p>
\r\n\r\n(5) Associative reasoning. Regular readers will be aware that one of\r\nthe central tactics of public relations is a primitive, sub-rational\r\nform of logic based on associations between concepts. Every argument\r\nis shorn of its logical connectives and reduced to a matter of\r\nbuilding or breaking associations. Thus, for example, some people ask\r\nme rhetorically whether *every* participant in the Miami protests was\r\nengaged in violence. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nIn a rational world this question is irrelevant\r\nto the point of being bizarre. But in the world of public relations\r\nit makes perfect sense: the complaint about Republican terror tactics\r\nin Miami is reduced to an attempt to associate Republican protesters\r\nwith violence, and the formulaic response is to insert a wedge between\r\nthose two concepts. Because associative reasoning is sub-rational\r\nit does not matter how large the wedge is: this kind of logic has no\r\nsense of proportion, and so one single protester who did not manage\r\nto land a punch is enough to snap the association and win the argument.\r\nArguments like this are confusing to people who do not understand\r\ntheir underlying logic, and their very senselessness often suffices\r\nto paralyze the audience: because they do not contain any rational\r\nargument, reason can get no foothold in trying to prepare a response.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n(6) Mind games. For all its positive value, the Internet can also be\r\na vast emotional cesspool, as every aggressive nut in the world goes\r\naround recruiting other people into his distorted personal dramas.\r\nIt takes two to play these games, and some responsibility must be\r\nallocated to the people who take the bait. One of the games, which\r\nI first identified some years ago, might be called Liberal Professor\r\nCloses His Mind To New Ideas. It has two major roles, Professor (P)\r\nand Questioner (Q), and goes like this:<\/p>
\r\n\r\n P: posts material to a large Internet mailing list that has any\r\n sort of political content<\/p>
\r\n\r\n Q: sends P a response that presents itself as an innocent comment\r\n full of high-minded language but in fact is utterly snide and\r\n laced with abusive innuendo<\/p>
\r\n\r\n P: takes offense and mails back a reply that reacts to the bait\r\n in any way<\/p>
\r\n\r\n Q: declares victory by adopting a tone of wounded innocence and\r\n professing shock and\/or rueful disappointment and\/or abusive\r\n indignation that a Liberal Professor Closes His Mind To New Ideas<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe cycle may repeat, with P taking more of the bait and Q escalating\r\nthe rhetoric of wounded innocence, grave injustice, unconscionable\r\nrudeness, abuse of authority, and so on. It takes very little for\r\nQ to portray himself (in my experience it is always a man) as the\r\nvictim of rude closed-mindedness. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe twisted logic is of course part\r\nof the game -- an invitation to play another round, double or nothing.\r\nThis stuff gets old after a while, and after many years of responding\r\nto nearly every message I got, I've now had to start deleting large\r\namounts of mail. I find that my policy of responding to everyone has\r\neroded my boundaries -- my inner intuitive sense of which people are\r\napproaching me in a constructive way and which are trying to bait me.\r\nSo I'm going to have to let some mail drop on the floor. My apologies\r\nif I mistakenly drop yours.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThose, then, are the major rhetorical devices of the people who have\r\nwritten to abuse me in response to RRE's coverage of the US election\r\ncontroversy. Of course, lots of other people have written me in\r\na constructive spirit as well, and my main point here (as I always\r\nsay, or at least mean, when I write about abusive e-mail) is not to\r\ncomplain but to dissect.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n Lots of people -- and I mean lots -- have\r\nto put up with the sorts of twisted rhetoric I describe. And lots of\r\nthose people have sat out the current election, either because they\r\nbecame demoralized through the constant rhetorical pelting they've\r\nhad to endure, or because they simply could not figure out what was\r\nwrong with the tidal wave of twisted language that now clogs the\r\nmedia. Those people have allowed disinformation and doubletalk to\r\ngo unrebutted, and many of them are dismayed to see the collapse into\r\nfar-right dissociation that is unfolding before us in Florida now.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nIt will be a long time until normal Americans will be able to rebuild\r\na movement for democracy that can stand up to the insanity, such\r\nis the destruction that has been inflicted on the English language\r\nin the last ten years. But there's no time like the present, while\r\nour attention is focused on an evil that is so open and above-board.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n2<\/p>
\r\n\r\nSeveral people have asked me where they can read more about the role\r\nof projection in politics. It would seem that we are stuck with it.\r\nThe answer is, I don't know of any political works that discuss the\r\nrole of projection, which I find surprising given what I perceive\r\nas overwhelming dominance of projection in contemporary political\r\ndiscourse. The best book about projection that I know, at least the\r\nbest for a general audience, is Robert Bly's \"A Little Book on the\r\nHuman Shadow\" (Harper and Row, 1988).<\/p>
\r\n\r\nBly uses the Jungian word\r\n\"shadow\" instead of \"projection\", but that doesn't mean you have to\r\nbuy the totality of Jung's theories. The idea is that people who\r\ndisown parts of themselves thereby acquire a \"shadow\": the disowned\r\nparts are still real and active, but they operate secretively,\r\nunder the cover of a darkness that one creates by dimming one's\r\nown consciousness. Some people disown the weak parts of themselves,\r\nor the emotional parts, or even (as in George W. Bush's case) the\r\nintelligent parts.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nFaced with the problem of getting rid of these\r\nparts of themselves, people often project those disowned, negatively\r\nvalued parts into other people. Someone who has homosexual feelings,\r\nfor example, might choose to disown them, project them, and thereby\r\ndevelop a hatred for homosexuals. This is perhaps one reason why\r\nconservative operatives are so often discovered to have hidden lives.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nWhat most concerns me in political terms is projective aggression --\r\nin other words, a shadow that consists of angry, aggressive impulses,\r\npresumably underlain by some kind of terror. People who exhibit\r\nprojective aggression are aggressive, but they experience their\r\naggression as being located in someone else, most commonly in the\r\nperson they are practicing their aggression upon.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThis kind of shadow\r\nis particularly dangerous because it feeds on itself: the aggressor\r\nexperiences himself as being under attack, and this only feeds the\r\naggression, so that more and more of his personality becomes shadow\r\nand less and less of the human being remains in the light. The mark\r\nof projective aggression is a sustained and cultivated pattern -- not\r\na random instance or two, not an occasional bad day, but something\r\ndeeply integrated into the personality -- of accusing others of doing\r\nprecisely what one is doing oneself. For example, having heard a\r\ncareful and detailed refutation of his views, the aggressor might\r\nsnap, \"you shouldn't dismiss my ideas so quickly!\". Observe how this\r\nworks: it is a false accusation -- his views were not dismissed --\r\nthat is also an example of itself -- he is dismissing the refutation\r\nhe has just heard. I have given many other, more serious examples.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n3<\/p>
\r\n\r\nSome people have been comparing the organized campaign of violence and\r\nintimidation in Florida to the situation in Germany in 1933. I don't\r\nthink the comparison is fair. The level of violence is much lower,\r\nthe propaganda is dramatically more sophisticated, the extreme economic\r\nconditions aren't there, and the pathological child-rearing practices\r\nthat produced the Holocaust with so many willing executioners are not\r\nmatched even by the worst of the brutality that is advocated by Focus\r\non the Family.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nNonetheless, I have been fascinated by the emotional climate of the\r\npresent campaign. It's not just the organized violence, which is\r\nsimply the culmination of a vastly more extensive trend over years:\r\nthe powerfully driven cultivation of projective aggression in all\r\nthings. It is crucial that no projection can happen except by\r\ndissociating a part of one's own self. <\/p>
\r\n\r\n\"Liberals\", in the currently\r\nfashionable jargon, are really a disowned part of the jargonmeister's\r\nown personality, denigrated and displaced into someone else, who then\r\nbecomes an object of dehumanizing scorn. People who use the jargon\r\nto rant about liberals, in other words, are actually scorning a large\r\npart of their own personalities. Although the think tanks who provide\r\nthe cultural ammunition for projective aggression operate for private\r\ngain, as a psychological and spiritual matter it is essentially a\r\nprivate drama that just happens to be played out on a public stage\r\nwith real victims.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nWhen large parts of the self are dissociated in this way, a certain\r\nemotional atmosphere takes over. We are seeing this atmosphere now.\r\nIt is sometimes called \"anger\", and no doubt the biological correlates\r\nof anger are all present. But it's not just anger. It goes much\r\ndeeper than that. It has an empty, rote quality; it is primitive\r\nand diffuse. It is thoroughly nonsensical. Its rhetoric increasingly\r\nconforms to a small repertoire of almost automatic patterns, such\r\nas the ones that I have described above. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe purpose of every single\r\none those patterns is dissociation: every crumb of rationality or\r\nconscience that might short-circuit the aggression is systematically\r\ncaught and thrown back at Them -- projected, in other words, into the\r\ndemonized object of the aggression. \"It is really them who ...\", and\r\n\"I can't stand listening to their sanctimonious ...\". It then becomes\r\npossible, for example, to steal an election by the most extreme and\r\novert measures while kidding oneself that one is actually preventing\r\n*them* from stealing the election.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nI am sure that this week's events are not unique in history. To the\r\ncontrary, I assume that the emotional atmosphere that surrounds the\r\nassault on democracy in Florida could be found in most of history's\r\nassaults on democracy. We can't know what it felt like to be part\r\nof history's other great reactions. But if we can somehow bottle\r\nthe emotional tone of the assaults on reason and the rule of law in\r\nFlorida this week -- all of them launched, as is the nature of these\r\nthings, under the guise of protecting reason and the rule of law --\r\nthen perhaps we will be able to understand what exactly it is that\r\nwent so wrong in other calamities from the past, including ones that\r\nwere much worse.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n4<\/p>
\r\n\r\nOne of the well-known downsides of the Electoral College is the\r\npotential for the situation that we have right now: a candidate who\r\nloses the popular vote but wins the electoral college vote. This\r\nsituation is more likely to happen in the future, given the increasing\r\nprecision of the poll-driven, marketing-oriented campaigning methods\r\nthat are being cultivated by both major parties, and so we need to\r\nunderstand the problem as well as possible. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nA prevailing myth about\r\nthe Electoral College is that it produces these pathological outcomes\r\nbecause of the winner-take-all rule: winning a state by 89% of the\r\nvote is the same in electoral terms as winning it by 51%, and so a\r\ncandidate who has a strong base of support in one region or another\r\ncan win the popular vote but lose to a candidate who has thin margins\r\nin other states. And certainly this does happen to a degree: George\r\nW. Bush won the southern and mountain states by larger margins than\r\nGore won much of the industrial midwest.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nYet the winner-take-all system has an important advantage. If we had\r\na direct national popular-vote system right now then the uproar in\r\nFlorida would be extended to the whole country. In particular, those\r\nstates which are completely dominated by a single party would have a\r\ngreat incentive to stuff the ballot box in favor of their candidate.\r\nIn my opinion this is reason enough to keep the winner-take-all rule.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nBut there is another factor as well: the Electoral College gives each\r\nstate a vote equal to the number of its Senators plus the number of\r\nits Representatives. This is a bias toward the rural states, which\r\ntend to be more conservative. Was it a deciding bias in the present\r\ncase?<\/p>
\r\n\r\nIt's easy enough to tell. I went back to the Electoral College\r\nresults thus far and re-added both Bush's and Gore's totals counting\r\nonly the Representatives, not the Senators -- in other words, reducing\r\neach state's electoral vote by two. The total electoral vote is thus\r\n436 instead of 536 (in other words, the membership of the House plus\r\none for the District of Columbia), and 219 votes are needed to win.\r\nDoes Al Gore have more than 219 votes without Florida? Easily: under\r\nthe House-only Electoral College system, Gore has 225 votes to Bush's\r\n188 votes. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThat does not itself mean, of course, that anyone should\r\nclaim a victory for Gore, except for the partial moral victory that\r\nhe has rightly earned. The rule of law requires that, barring extreme\r\nillegitimacy, we should stick with the rules until they can be changed.\r\nBut it does mean that the supposed anomaly was not random at all,\r\nbut is the consequence of a political bias that for historical reasons\r\nbecame lodged in our laws.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n5<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe Florida story has threatened to consume my life since Election\r\nDay, and I want to redeem all the time I've unfortunately spent on it\r\nby trying to draw some conclusions from the experience. When I lived\r\non the east coast, or in Europe, I could go to bed on Election Day,\r\nsafe in the knowledge that nothing important would be decided until\r\nI got up.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nIt doesn't work that way on the west coast, unfortunately,\r\nand when I started listening to the election returns on Tuesday\r\nafternoon it was like I had grabbed ahold of a live electric wire\r\nand couldn't let go. I had the radio on NPR and three or four browser\r\nwindows open the whole time, and I noticed afterward how natural it\r\nfelt to be able to watch county-level election returns coming in on\r\nthe cnn.com Web site. County-level, mind you, not just state level,\r\nand by Wednesday evening I was already cussing the news organizations\r\nfor not having precinct-level returns on their sites as well.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nAs\r\nthe race deadlocked in the small hours of the morning, my mind slowly\r\nclotted until I gave up, thought of some more numbers to check, gave\r\nup again, looked at some more numbers, went to bed after they called\r\nFlorida for Bush, got a feeling that something was wrong, discovered\r\nthat Florida had been uncalled, and finally gave up when NPR said that\r\nwe would officially have no winner that night.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nWhen I got up in the morning, I had another message I wanted to send\r\nout to RRE anyway, and I wanted to see what happened if I commented\r\non the Florida train wreck that was dimly taking form. In retrospect\r\nI was not thinking clearly. Long-time subscribers to this list are\r\naware that I want people to send me useful resources that relate to\r\nthe topics this list covers, and I often receive a fresh blast of\r\nsuch useful resources whenever I mention that I find a certain topic\r\ninteresting. Having declared an interest in the unfolding election-\r\nresults story, the blast began, and it did not quit for days.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nOne intuition I have in running this list is that the world is only\r\nloosely knitted together in social-network terms, and that something\r\nimportant can be happening in one social world without the other\r\nsocial worlds knowing about it. RRE's readers include a reasonably\r\ndiverse mix of people -- people who inhabit a reasonably diverse mix\r\nof social worlds. And so I, like management consultants and newspaper\r\npublishers and many other sorts of professional bridge-builders --\r\ncan provide a useful service as a kind of informational arbitrageur,\r\ngathering information from various social worlds and then broadcasting\r\nit all to people in various other social worlds. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nIn that sense RRE\r\nexists to reduce the world's fragmentation, or put another way to\r\nhelp (in its own small way) to create a widespread sense of the whole.\r\nThis function is especially important when something is new, whether\r\nthe medium-term newness of the many facets of the Internet or the\r\nhour-by-hour newness of the story emerging in Miami, and I soon\r\nrealized that the story in Miami had an awful lot of parts that nobody\r\nhad yet put together into a single coherent picture. And so even\r\nthough half the world's news-gathering operations had already sent\r\nhighly motivated professionals to the center of the action, I was\r\nstill curious to see what I could contribute. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nAnd not just curious.\r\nThe live electric wire still had control of me, and I think that on\r\nsome level I really believed that nobody would know about these events\r\nunless I publicized them. After all, once I sent out my first batch\r\nof notes and URL's on the emerging controversy, and once my 5000\r\nsubscribers had forwarded that message to their heaven-knows-how-many\r\nthousand friends, suddenly I had that many thousand people all primed\r\nto send me whatever interesting stuff they had come across. How many\r\nnewspapers have that?<\/p>
\r\n\r\nSo the stuff came pouring on in. Wednesday was okay; even though I\r\nhad work to do, I figured that I could give up one day for democracy.\r\nI've certainly worked enough evenings and weekends to have a day in\r\nthe bank. People sent me stuff, I packaged it up, and I sent it out.\r\nI engaged in rapid-fire correspondences with I-have-no-idea-how-many\r\npeople, often taking the form of \"do you have URL's to substantiate\r\nthat, or is it just a rumor?\", and then eventually taking the form\r\nof \"hurry up, I need this, I need that\". This was nonstop, literally,\r\nall through the day.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThursday was worse. The stuff kept pouring in.\r\nIf everyone sent me neatly packaged URL's, all prescreened, then that\r\nwould be okay. But in reality I was getting every possible description\r\nof stuff. I was overwhelmed. What to do? I could drop all the stuff\r\non the floor, but it seemed like I was doing something important that\r\nnobody else was going to do if I didn't.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nAnd the hate mail had started. It's unfair to call some of it \"hate\r\nmail\", since it was really a dramatically mixed bag. Some of these\r\npeople, motivated by a special combination of political strategy and\r\npersonality problems, were trying to provoke me with snide innuendoes,\r\nfalse accusations, and all-around craziness. Couldn't I ignore them?<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe problem is that there is no clear dividing line. Lots of people\r\nare angry but rational. Others pretend to be rational but then become\r\nirrational in an insidious way. Some of the crazy people are actually\r\nuseful and benign. There's every possible combination. For seven\r\nyears I've had a policy of responding to pretty much everyone who\r\nwrites me, but the sheer diversity of high-powered mind games was too\r\nmuch for me to deal with rationally. I've had to abandon that now.\r\nAnd that probably means that I am deleting, in some case unread, some\r\nmessages that are in fact rational and helpful. I don't see a way\r\naround it.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nIn any event, the hate mail was only one relatively small side of the\r\nstory. The major story was happening in Florida and elsewhere, and\r\nthe people who were getting my packages of URL's and comments were\r\ncontinuing to send me a steady stream of material. It was oppressive,\r\nto be honest, and I struggled with it. It was only after a couple of\r\ndays that I settled into a pattern.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nBy now I have sent out something\r\nlike fifteen packages of URL's containing well over 500 URL's in all,\r\nand I expect to reach 800 by the time the whole thing is over and\r\nwe return to our regularly scheduled programming. But the format of\r\nthese lists of URL's -- basically, the same format of title-plus-URL\r\nthat I use in my \"notes and recommendations\" and \"pointers\" messages --\r\nactually emerged over time. I had not originally thought in terms of\r\na policy; I never made a decision that said, \"I am going to cover this\r\nstory every day until it goes away\". Things were happening too fast\r\nfor that, and I was just struggling to keep up. The neat packages of\r\nURL's were actually something of a desperation measure at first, and\r\nit was only after a few days, perhaps on Friday, that I decided to let\r\nthe messages settle into that pattern.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nMeanwhile I was trying to get work done. The live electric wire was\r\none problem: no sooner would I start fashioning a new paragraph of\r\nscholarly prose then I would come up with another bright idea for my\r\nelection coverage, or else another hypothesis to check out on one of\r\nthe many formerly obscure (to me) Web sites where election-relevant\r\ninformation could be found.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nBreaking events were another problem:\r\nwhenever something happened, people would send me stuff, and I would\r\ncheck my mail as I habitually do and read it. Even though I had all\r\nsorts of friendly, helpful people sending me important and useful\r\ninformation, and even though I was gaining glory by sharing all of\r\nthis information with my 5000 subscribers and their unknown thousands\r\nof friends, I was feeling ever more oppressed to the point of a mild\r\ndespair. I hate feeling despair, though, and so I decided that I had\r\nto take action.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe solution that I hit upon was counterintuitive: I\r\ndidn't want to just drop the whole thing, and so I had to take control\r\nover it, and I did that by asking people to do research for me. Every\r\nperson who sent me any sort of constructive or supportive e-mail got a\r\nsimple thank-you response, together with a scripted request that they\r\ngo out and find URL's or other distributable resources relating to\r\none or another of the bewildering variety of issues that were burning\r\nat that particular moment.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThen Rich Cowan, who I knew slightly many years ago at MIT, started\r\nputting together his \"13 Myths\" article, and so I started dragooning\r\nmy subscribers into working for Rich. I was struck by how hard it\r\nwas to pin down the facts, and so I refused Rich's offer -- a request,\r\nreally -- that I list myself as coauthor of his piece. I was being a\r\nconduit, a switchboard, and I didn't have time to stand back and judge\r\nwhether I fundamentally agreed with his piece, much less whether I was\r\nconfident that he had 100% of his facts completely straight. Having\r\ntaken control of the situation in that way, by aggressively delegating\r\nand putting myself in charge to some degree rather than just passively\r\nbeing bombarded with both the good and the bad of my e-mail in-box, I\r\nmanaged to beat back the sense of oppressive semi-despair and actually\r\nget some work done.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n6<\/p>
\r\n\r\nIt was then that I began to notice the role that the Internet was\r\nplaying in the dynamics of the political events in Florida. Here was\r\na story that the whole country was truly focused on, to a degree if\r\nanything that was even greater than during the impeachment debacle.\r\nLiterally everyone was talking about it, and I imagined millions of\r\npeople on the Internet all pulling down complex Web pages from the\r\nnews organizations and major political sites. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nSome of those sites\r\ndid buckle under the pressure, particularly the New York Times, but\r\nbecause all of the major sites were using Akamai to distribute their\r\nservers, most of the sites survived perfectly well and even maintained\r\nreasonably good response times even when breaking events were clearly\r\ncausing massive coordinated downloads. The Internet of two years ago\r\nwould have collapsed under the impact of this story.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nI was also struck at how current the information on the various sites\r\nwas, and how rapidly it became available. At one point someone said,\r\n\"that lawsuit was announced on CNN five minutes ago; why aren't the\r\nbriefs up on the court Web site yet?\", and meant it seriously enough\r\nthat the impulse to spin conspiracy theories began to stir. We have\r\nrapidly become accustomed to the idea that even quite cumbersome\r\ndocuments from high-visibility legal and political events will be\r\nreadily found on the Web, and I received dozens of analyses, both\r\namateur and professional, of the statistical and legal aspects of\r\nthe controversy.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nMany people had clearly downloaded and read the\r\nFlorida election laws, for example, and I have to say that the state\r\nof Florida deserves congratulations for an infrastructure that was\r\nalready in place and operating smoothly before this controversy broke.\r\n(I spoke at a conference of the e-Florida initiative in January 1999,\r\njust as Jeb Bush had been inaugurated. They never paid me, though,\r\nand some day I will get around to suing them.) The Florida Supreme\r\nCourt had a video feed for its most momentous hearing, and even some\r\nof the county courts had the major documents available online.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nWe are also evidently quite accustomed to newspapers being online,\r\nand not just the major national papers but the regional papers as\r\nwell. I soon learned that the regional papers had a great deal of\r\ndetail that the national papers did not, particularly in the first\r\nfew days, and that they were breaking quite a few important stories.\r\nIn fact the regional papers remain crucial resources for dedicated\r\nstudents of the controversy to this day, and I took particular care\r\nto cultivate readers who would scan those papers for me every day.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nI also have to say that the reporting at the best three or four of\r\nthe regional newspapers was an incredible relief after a year-plus\r\nof the absolute garbage that the New York Times and Washington Post\r\nhad been publishing instead of reporting in a serious way on the\r\ncampaigns. The national press has been infected by a combination\r\nof echo-chamber celebrity spin and the corrosive trivialization that\r\nis epitomized by the loathesome Maureen Dowd. The reporters at the\r\nregional papers were refreshing for the simple reason that they did\r\ntheir jobs, and they made me realize how much I had missed ordinary\r\nold-fashioned journalism. Pulitzer Prizes for the staff at the Palm\r\nBeach Post!<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThat said, not everything in the civilian sectors of the Internet was\r\nsweetness and light. A lot of the amateur legal analyses were pretty\r\nbad, actually, and even some of the most celebrated college-professor\r\nstatistical analyses were complete bunk -- for example, applying\r\nvarious statistical operations that require normal distributions to\r\ndata that hadn't remotely been normalized. (Alas this was the one\r\nthat had gotten the widest distribution, and I swear that I received\r\nits URL from fifty different people. Fortunately the serious analyses\r\nthat followed did not change the outcome.)<\/p>
\r\n\r\nYou had your Free Republic\r\ntypes sharing their usual toxic swill of speculative semi-truth, and\r\nyou had your lazy thinkers complacently lecturing us all about how\r\nit was ever thus and everyone does it. You had your people, way too\r\nmany of them, who don't know how to spell the word \"liar\". You had\r\nyour jokes about the people in Palm Beach County who were supposedly\r\nsuch idiots, including a large number of \"jokes\" that falsified the\r\nissues but did so under the cover of being \"just a joke\". You had\r\nyour disinformation, but then the disinformation was originating with\r\nthe spin machine and being reprinted in the national press, so it\r\nwasn't the Internet's fault, except that the Internet was accelerating\r\nthe process by which the disinformation was becoming ineradicably\r\nembedded in the culture.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nEverything happened so fast. This wasn't just the Internet's doing,\r\nand in fact I'm sure that it was CNN's doing a hundred times more than\r\nit was the Internet's. (Internet people tend to wildly overestimate\r\nhow important they are compared to CNN.) <\/p>
\r\n\r\nI was particularly struck\r\nby how fast the famous butterfly ballot in Florida become a cultural\r\nicon. A friend who wrote one of the early scholarly analyses of\r\nthat ballot, lamented that he had been out of the office and had\r\nheard about the controversy late enough in the day that, his company's\r\nPR people informed him, he had missed the day's news cycle -- the day\r\nbeing Wednesday, one day after the election. People kept sending me\r\ndifferent analyses of the ballot and of the vote for Pat Buchanan in\r\nPalm Beach County, but already by Friday these were very old news and\r\nI had started throwing them out.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThis speed is mostly a bad thing, in my opinion, given that the first\r\ncontributions are not necessarily the most thoughtful, yet in fact\r\nI was surprised and relieved just how useful most of the early well-\r\npublicized materials actually were. The business of the confusing\r\nPalm Beach ballot is still mystifying, although that's largely because\r\nfew of the thousands of people who provided affidavits in the matter\r\nwanted to make a big stink about it -- they mostly just wanted their\r\nvotes to count -- and so few of those affidavits have yet seen the\r\nlight of day.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nMore recent evidence suggests that Palm Beach suffered\r\nfrom a range of problems, the real sleeper among which was the failure\r\nto empty the chad out of the Vote-O-Matic machines, as a result of\r\nthe overwhelming crowds at the polling station (and many other polling\r\nstations) who had been turned out by the Democrats' massive get-out-\r\nthe-vote campaigns. When you don't empty the chads from the voting\r\nmachine you get dimpled ballots -- the chads have nowhere to go -- and\r\nthis explains why the dimpled ballots occured most commonly in heavily\r\nDemocratic districts.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThis story doesn't conflict with the confusing-\r\nballot story, and in fact in retrospect most of the elements of the\r\noverall story were present in the first few days, but it has only\r\nbeen this weekend that the picture has started to come together. In\r\ngeneral, despite my distrust of the echo chamber effects of the 24\/7\r\ncelebrity news machine, I am impressed that so few real myths became\r\nentrenched in instantaneous news cycles -- as opposed to the partisan\r\nspin in the opinion columns -- of the first week of the election\r\ncontroversy.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n7<\/p>
\r\n\r\nSo what difference did it make that I've spent a few hours a day over\r\nthe last couple of weeks gathering up roughly 30 Web resources a day\r\nand sending them out? What difference did it make that I wrote my\r\nvarious short essays on the controversy that people could send around?\r\nI haven't the slightest idea, and maybe my next project should be\r\nto find out.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nAn Internet mailing list, except for the very largest,\r\nhas a much smaller circulation than a real newspaper. But it also\r\nhas a much higher rate of pass-along; I would suspect that the average\r\n\"copy\" of an RRE message -- that is, the 5000 copies that get sent\r\ndirectly to subscribers, not counting the people who read RRE in the\r\nWeb archives -- has many more readers than the average copy of any\r\nfirst-world newspaper. If Eudora did not mutilate forwarded messages\r\nby default -- I really have a grudge about that -- then the pass-along\r\nrate would surely be much higher.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nBut it's not just about the numbers of people who receive a message,\r\nbut about what they do with it. Some of my collections of URL's,\r\nespecially the early ones, did reach people who were on the front\r\nlines of the controversy, or so I am told by people who claimed to\r\nknow them. But a package of URL's can be useful in many other ways,\r\nand I cannot imagine what all those ways are, or which ones make\r\nthe most difference in the long run.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nOne citizen who is somewhat\r\nbetter informed is already a plus as far as a democracy is concerned;\r\na college professor who has better materials to circulate to the\r\nstudents in a class is a double-plus; a reporter or columnist who\r\ngets a bigger picture and might otherwise have written nonsense based\r\non the spinning of the operatives is a quadruple-plus and then some.\r\nBut maybe that's just the standard-average civics-class theory of\r\ndemocracy, as opposed to the real reality of the Internet's place in\r\nthe workings of a cognitively complicated, wildly diverse, admirably\r\nenergetic, moderately well-educated, thoroughly mass-mediated society.\r\nWe really don't know, and we aren't even asking the questions well.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nStill, in my view the fundamental issue in our society is not about\r\ntechnology but political culture. Do people roll over dead when\r\nthey confront organized campaigns of disinformation and doubletalk?\r\nDo they feel the confusion and despair that they are intended to\r\nfeel? Do they mobilize themselves to refute the nonsense, or do they\r\njust ignore it and hope it will go away? <\/p>
\r\n\r\nAl Gore clearly decided to\r\nignore most of the lies that were being told about him. I'm sure that\r\nhe wanted to rise above it all and win the campaign by sheer force\r\nof intellect and effort. Although I disagree with Gore about many\r\nthings, I do identify with him as a person; if I ran for president\r\nthen my campaign would be lousy too, and for many of the same reasons.\r\nBut then for all I know he was really compulsively recapitulating his\r\nfather's famous 1970 loss to the Republican smear campaign of Bill\r\nBrock; this year's campaign resembles that one in some ways, though\r\nnot all.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nWhatever else we learn from this year's election, I think we can\r\nconclude that ignoring the insanity of the operatives and echo chamber\r\nis not going to work, and that our sanity as individuals and a society\r\nhas already corroded to a much greater degree than we have realized.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe Internet is a tool; it does not create much that is new but\r\namplifies the forces that are already going on in the society. If\r\nwe lie down and allow our sanity to be crushed, then the Internet\r\nwill amplify that force and we will all go mad. The alternative is\r\nto rise up and confront the insanity, holding it steady through careful\r\nand responsible quotation long enough for it to lose its emotionally\r\nassaultive force and start revealing itself as the highly engineered\r\nnonsense that it is.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe temptation will always be to sink to their\r\nlevel, to ingest the insanity because of the false promises of power\r\nthat it holds out. That is precisely what the insanity wants, and\r\nthat is precisely the way in which the crazy people got crazy in the\r\nfirst place. The road to sanity is not through insanity, much less\r\nthrough violence.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe cause of sanity may call on us to be forceful\r\nin a moral sense, saying NO when we are assaulted with the corruption\r\nof our language. But fundamentally it calls on us to heal ourselves,\r\nto rid the disinformation and doubletalk from our minds, to spread\r\nrational analysis and plain language to the people who need it,\r\nto reconnect with the source of all sanity that lies beyond us, to\r\nrebuild the conditions of democracy, and to let go of the need to fix\r\nit all by ourselves, or else to give up.<\/p>
<\/p>
\r\n\r\n<\/p>
\r\n\r\npure refined projection
\r\n http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2000\/11\/26\/politics\/26CONS.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nPresidential Votes Disqualified in Florida
\r\n http:\/\/sun-sentinel.com\/news\/badvotes.htm<\/p>
\r\n\r\nA Burgher Rebellion in Dade County
\r\n http:\/\/opinionjournal.com\/columnists\/pgigot\/?id=65000673<\/p>
\r\n\r\nBad Weather and Vote Recounting in Palm Beach
\r\n http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2000\/ALLPOLITICS\/stories\/11\/25\/flock.debrief\/<\/p>
\r\n\r\nWho Won in Florida?
\r\n http:\/\/www.american-politics.com\/20001125WhoWonInFlorida.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\npro-Bush site
\r\n http:\/\/www.loudcitizen.com\/<\/p>
\r\n\r\nFlorida Absentee-Ballot Lawsuit Has Similarities to Alabama Case
\r\n http:\/\/www.al.com\/news\/mobile\/Nov2000\/22-a422429a.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nHarris' E-Mail: Another Story
\r\n
\r\nhttp:\/\/www.newsday.com\/campaign\/recs1123.htm<\/p>
\r\n\r\nPlaying With Fire
\r\n a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2000\/11\/25\/opinion\/25LEWI.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nVerbal, Real Brickbats Fly in Florida Election Protests
\r\n http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/print\/asection\/20001125\/t000113144.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nIn Praise of the Circus
\r\n http:\/\/www.tompaine.com\/news\/2000\/11\/24\/<\/p>
\r\n\r\nPartisan Intensity Increases in Legal Battles for Election
\r\n http:\/\/www.tampatrib.com\/MGA54Z9TYFC.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nPolitical Parade Surrounds Broward Count
\r\n http:\/\/cnews.tribune.com\/news\/story\/0,1162,oso-nation-83687,00.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nJudge in Seminole Suit Had Similar Absentee-Forms Problem
\r\n http:\/\/orlandosentinel.com\/automagic\/news\/2000-11-25\/ASECsjudge25112500.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nJudge Hears Overseas Vote Case, Scolds Bush Lawyer
\r\n http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/metro\/chicago\/ws\/item\/0,1308,46649-46819-48339,00.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nState Judge Rejects Major Review of Military Ballots
\r\n http:\/\/www.jacksonville.com\/tu-online\/stories\/112500\/met_4710746.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nGore Picks Up 400 Votes in Two Counties
\r\n http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2000\/11\/25\/politics\/25ELEC.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nAnything to Win
\r\n http:\/\/washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A53291-2000Nov22.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nBroward Carefully Races to Finish Count
\r\n http:\/\/www.gopbi.com\/partners\/pbpost\/epaper\/editions\/saturday\/news_11.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nDimpled Ballots Blamed on Faulty Machines
\r\n http:\/\/www.gopbi.com\/partners\/pbpost\/epaper\/editions\/saturday\/news_3.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nPhone Banks Lure Republican Faithful
\r\n http:\/\/www.gopbi.com\/partners\/pbpost\/epaper\/editions\/saturday\/news_1.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nBallot Chads Are Tough Cookies, Despite Negative Publicity
\r\n http:\/\/www.gopbi.com\/partners\/pbpost\/epaper\/editions\/friday\/news_14.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nIn Tangled Race, a \"Contest\" Looms
\r\n http:\/\/washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A56345-2000Nov24.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nFlorida Judge Resists on GI Votes
\r\n http:\/\/washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A56338-2000Nov24.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nCertification Challenge Would Transform Case
\r\n http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2000\/11\/25\/politics\/25CONT.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nGore Gains in Broward; Count Reaches Midpoint
\r\n http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2000\/11\/25\/politics\/25BROW.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nGored in Miami
\r\n http:\/\/www.salon.com\/politics\/feature\/2000\/11\/24\/cubans\/<\/p>
\r\n\r\nJustices Dust Off an 1887 Statute for Ballot Battle
\r\n http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/politics\/decision2000\/lat_legal001125.htm<\/p>
\r\n\r\nGore Opens Drive to Keep Democrats in the Fight
\r\n http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2000\/11\/25\/politics\/25STRA.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nUS Supreme Court to Hear Florida Recount Case
\r\n http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2000\/11\/25\/politics\/25SCOT.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nGore to Contest Recount Result in Palm Beach
\r\n http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2000\/11\/25\/politics\/25PALM.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\ntons of legal stuff
\r\n http:\/\/washingtonpost.com\/wp-srv\/onpolitics\/elections\/postelection2000coverage.htm#legal<\/p>
\r\n\r\nWinning by Intimidation
\r\n http:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/news\/494375.asp<\/p>
\r\n\r\nDemocrats Call for Federal Investigation
\r\n http:\/\/www.salon.com\/politics\/feature\/2000\/11\/24\/deutsch\/<\/p>
\r\n\r\nJoseph I. Lieberman on the Demonstrations
\r\n http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A56037-2000Nov24.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nVotomatic Inventor Says Indented Ballots Should Be Included
\r\n http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/sections\/politics\/DailyNews\/dimples001124.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nParty Operatives Start \"Spontaneous\" Demonstrations
\r\n http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/sections\/politics\/DailyNews\/ELECTION_protests001124.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nVocal Protesters Swarm Recount
\r\n http:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/news\/494352.asp<\/p>
\r\n\r\nJustices Exercised \"Equitable Power\" to Try to Resolve Vote Dispute
\r\n http:\/\/www.sun-sentinel.com\/news\/daily\/detail\/0,1136,36000000000131913,00.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nFlorida State Bird
\r\n http:\/\/dhr.dos.state.fl.us\/symbols\/bird.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nCanadian asylum application
\r\n http:\/\/www.cic.gc.ca\/english\/coming\/ehandc.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nFlorida Counties Holding Hearings to Decide Their Counts
\r\n http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2000\/ALLPOLITICS\/stories\/11\/24\/other.counties.ap\/<\/p>
\r\n\r\nBush reply to Gore in US Supreme Court
\r\n http:\/\/frwebgate.access.gpo.gov\/supremecourt\/00836-4.fdf<\/p>
\r\n\r\nHarris reply
\r\n http:\/\/frwebgate.access.gpo.gov\/supremecourt\/00836-5.fdf<\/p>
\r\n\r\nRepublican reply in US Supreme Court case on manual recounts
\r\n http:\/\/frwebgate.access.gpo.gov\/supremecourt\/00837-6.fdf<\/p>
\r\n\r\nScared of Florida Count, GOP Attacks Democracy
\r\n http:\/\/www.accessatlanta.com\/partners\/ajc\/epaper\/editions\/tuesday\/opinion_a3a1b19b10b2a1b210b2.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nend<\/p>
\r\n\r\nend
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"http:\/\/dlis.gseis.ucla.edu\/people\/pagre\/florida.html","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"\"Assorted comments\" including a penetrating analysis of hate mail & the twisted patterns of thought it shares with the larger rightwing assault on truth and reason. Another brilliant piece we're proud to republish from the Red Rock Eater News Service. Plus election-related links.","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2000\/11\/rre_f14.htm","filesize":"51.5 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2000\/11\/4699.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}