Tribal truth fallacy

During the 2020 US presidential election campaign, one of the starkest visual differences between Trump and Biden supporters was in the wearing of masks. Most Biden supporters appeared to wear masks, whereas most Trump supporters didn’t.

Even during Trump’s announcement of his nomination of Judge Amy Barrett to the US Supreme Court, very few people in the White House Rose Garden were wearing a mask. Worse still, some of the guests were seen hugging and kissing each other. 

As a result, the White House has become a COVID-19 ‘hotspot’ or super-spreader location, with seven attendees at the Justice Amy Barrett nomination announcement testing positive for coronavirus – even President Trump and the First Lady. More people caught the virus at the White House election ‘celebration night’. 130 Secret Service agents have also tested positive.

It is clear that at least some, if not most, of Trump supporters refuse to wear masks on political grounds. They seem to associate mask wearing with what they perceive to be ‘liberal’ pro-science attitudes. It is also possible that some Biden supporters might wear masks as a form of visual political opposition to the Trump supporters. In either case, this is irrational tribal behaviour. 

A similar phenomenon may be occurring in the climate change debate. Some beliefs against human causes of climate change may be genuinely (but mistakenly) held on the basis of personal interpretation of the evidence. But at least some of the far-right wing opposition is due to a perception of climate science being some sort of left-wing plot against fossil fuel industries.

The far left is not immune from such irrational tribal behaviour either. At least some of the opposition to GMOs and vaccines seems to be based on ideological opposition to large agribusinesses and the pharmaceutical industry, rather than on evidence-based health concerns.

Another example is where some atheists oppose the idea of free will simply because Christians believe in it.  (This is despite the fact that prominent atheists such as Professor Daniel Dennett also believe in free will).

The tribal truth fallacy lies not in the falsity of beliefs about mask wearing, climate change, GMOs, vaccines or free will per se; but in the basis for these beliefs being identification with one’s own tribe or opposition to a rival tribe.

Nick Cohen pins some blame for Trump’s election on the Regressive Left

Why Evolution Is True

Several commenters on the Internet have blamed the Regressive Left (RL), for contributing to Trump’s victory, asserting that working-class whites, who were Trump’s major supporters, were turned off by the identity politics of liberal young people and Regressive Leftists. This thesis appeals to me because I despise the RL’s hypocrisy and arrogance and would love for Trump’s victory to have one salubrious effect—that of dissolving the RL. But as a scientist and skeptic, I am wary of supporting theses that emotionally appeal to me, and I’ve always doubted whether white working-class Americans even read anything by RLs, including feminists and liberals who support oppressive Muslim ideology.

Yet the RL-created-Trump idea is adumbrated by the estimable Nick Cohen in this week’s Guardian, in a piece called “If liberals want to stop the right winning, we must change.” He first blames Democrats in general for running a poor candidate, one who didn’t…

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Ken Burns eviscerates Donald Trump

 

Time for a real debate about our most important relationship

Mark Beeson, University of Western Australia

While still considered unlikely, there is now a real and growing possibility that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. And yet, despite the fact that Bill Shorten apparently considers him to be “barking mad”, there has been almost no serious discussion about what this might mean for Australia.

Indeed, there has been precious little foreign policy debate so far in the election campaign. No surprise about this, perhaps: foreign policy is usually something of an afterthought during election campaigns.

Australians are not unique in being rather uninterested in foreign affairs, but one might have thought this time things would be different. We are subjected to a fairly relentless bombardment about the supposed threats to national security and the deteriorating regional strategic environment, after all.

One of the reasons there is so little discussion of foreign and strategic policy is that there are few significant differences between the major parties, or about the received wisdom among most of the commentariat. Whatever your views of the Greens’ policies in this area may be, they are at least willing to question the basis of a conventional wisdom that has seen Australia take part in every major conflict since the second world war.

Such a debate looks timely, given that prominent figures from both Labor and the Coalition have expressed deep concern about the implications of a Trump presidency. Even John Howard, who is now held in remarkably high esteem throughout the country, has suggested that Trump is “too unstable to hold that high office”.

One might have thought that under such circumstances, where there is a bipartisan consensus on the dangers of a Trump presidency, there would be an informed discussion of what this might actually mean for the security policy that has formed the foundation of Australia’s defence since the second world war.

On the contrary, though, Malcolm Turnbull has attempted to shut down debate by suggesting that there should be no commentary on the politics of other countries during an election.

Opening up this debate might raise uncomfortable questions that neither of the major parties want to discuss. Most importantly, does it make sense for this country – or any other for that matter – to rely so heavily on a foreign power, no matter how intimate the relationship may have grown over the years?

Australian policy is essentially hostage to the preferences of the US and the expectations that they will always coincide with ours.

The dangers of such a strategy were revealed in the disastrous but entirely predictable decision to take part in the invasion of Iraq. Not only was this a folly of the grandest proportions, but it was also one that had no bearing on or relevance to Australia’s own security.

Important lessons could and should have been learned from this experience, which might be used to guide policy now when the potential threat is even more direct and unambiguous.

Australian policymakers and commentators have always assumed that what’s good for America in foreign policy terms will necessarily be good for Australia. This always looked like an exercise in wishful thinking and a dereliction of responsibility on the part of generations of Australian policymakers.

With the ascent of a potentially dangerous figure like Trump, who even prominent conservative commentators in the US have described as a fascist, the dangers of this policy are becoming painfully apparent.

Some debates are plainly too discomfiting to contemplate. It is noteworthy that, 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War, Barack Obama has been attempting to develop a close strategic relationship with the still notionally communist government in Hanoi. Quite why two million Vietnamese had to die in the conflict, not to mention 60,000 Americans and some 500 Australians, is not entirely clear in retrospect.

One of the problems of failing to confront uncomfortable realities in the past or the present is that it becomes impossible to learn potential lessons and adjust policy in the future. Vietnam and Iraq look like entirely avoidable and pointless conflicts from this distance, especially for Australia, which was not threatened by either country and had little to gain – other than the good opinion of our notional security guarantor.

But it’s an odd sort of security that involves the continuing expenditure of so much blood and treasure to ingratiate ourselves with another country. The potential folly of this policy could be demonstrated by president Trump, who has nothing but contempt for loyal allies that are judged to freeload on American power.

Outsourcing responsibility for foreign and security policy is not wise at the best of times. There is undoubtedly much to admire about the US. As hegemonic powers go, things might have been a lot worse. But the time has come to have a mature debate about our relationship with the US and the world more generally.

There is potentially much that Australia could do as a creative middle power in conjunction with regional partners like Japan, South Korea or Indonesia. However, until we have an independent policy position on critical foreign and strategic policies that affect this country, the chances of such initiatives coming about look remote.

Mark Beeson, Professor of International Politics, University of Western Australia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. (Reblogged by permission). Read the original article.