Ari Kohen's Blog

Are you a beta male?

Sat, 05 Jan 2019 19:42:15 -0600

All morning, I’ve seen people posting on Facebook and Twitter...

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 13:29:03 -0600

All morning, I’ve seen people posting on Facebook and Twitter about how Elizabeth Warren can’t win because she won’t get votes from “the moderates.” Who are these “moderates” and what do we think they believe?! Why would they not vote for Warren if she was running against Trump?

To be honest, my sense is that, mostly, the people writing this critique just don’t want a woman to run for president. But, you know, maybe they actually think there’s some such “moderate” out there who is on the fence between Trump’s apparently moderate behavior and a hardcore radical like Warren.

It all just seems silly to me. I’d vote for literally anyone who ends up being the candidate running against Trump because Trump and his supporters are a cancer that’s destroying our country. So, yeah, it’s weird to me to debate whether any other candidate is acceptable.

Like, there’s some kind of belief out there that there are a hundred million people who are on the fence about Trump and a Leftist radical like Warren will force them into Trump’s arms? In reality, which “moderate” wouldn’t prefer the exhumed corpse of Karl Marx himself to Trump?

If you wouldn’t prefer the exhumed corpse of Karl Marx or Elizabeth Warren as president to Donald Trump’s second term, you’re not a moderate; you’re an extreme right-wing proto-fascist and the Democrats probably aren’t ever going to appeal to you.

I’ve read a lot over the past few days about Phil Zimbardo’s...

Sat, 16 Jun 2018 14:38:05 -0500

I’ve read a lot over the past few days about Phil Zimbardo’s iconic Stanford Prison Experiment, which is back in the news because people are now claiming it’s a fraud. What follows are some thoughts. But first, two disclosures: 1) I know Phil and have worked with him at a series of conferences devoted to the study of heroism. I’ve also recently published with him and several other excellent scholars on the topic. And I like him personally. Also, 2) I’m not a psychologist.

When I first met Phil, I certainly knew he was famous and I knew about the Stanford Prison Experiment, but I didn’t appreciate the level of fame he’d achieved within the field of psychology. I didn’t understand how the Experiment was taught for decades to students. I’m still just figuring that out.

As far as I can tell, many people now (like in the past three days) believe that Phil is a fraud and a liar. My sense is that these are totally wrong conclusions to draw but they make sense given the way the Experiment was presented and the way it achieved the status of gospel truth over the years.

On my reading, Phil’s experiment wasn’t set up well and as a result university researchers don’t do the sorts of experiments he did. Social scientists spend a lot of time learning research design and working within IRB parameters to avoid the problems that plague Phil’s experiment.

And yet Phil—and at least a generation of psych professors—presented the Stanford Prison Experiment as though it taught us something concrete about human nature. It probably can, but not what we were told it teaches. Phil presented it as teaching that people fall into their roles.

But Phil fell into his role. He fully, freely admits this. He played the warden’s part in the experiment and that was an experimental flaw. But he also embraced that role, got swallowed up by it to a dangerous degree such that he had to be confronted by a loved one to be stopped.

So, we learn an idiosyncratic lesson about Phil Zimbardo from the experiment. But we likely also learn that, at least to some extent, ordinary people are influenced to do bad things by an authority figure (which is, of course, also a conclusion from the problematic experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram).

I suspect that Phil couldn’t see the role that he played and the way it improperly impacted his experiment. Phil hypothesized a conclusion about human nature and by inserting himself into his study he inserted that bias into the study, yielding his conclusion. [It would be fascinating to ask Phil why he thinks he fell into the warden role the way he did.] This is what all the articles this week ought to point out: Phil Zimbardo had a Zimbardo-sized blind spot and it wrecked the experiment; it meant that he reached a conclusion based substantially (maybe entirely) on a bias he brought with him into his work.

That doesn’t make him a liar or a fraud; it makes him human. We all have blind spots when it comes to ourselves and our biases. But surely someone in the last 40+ years noticed this? Why haven’t psychology textbooks just said as much? That’s the only reason this feels like a bombshell.

If the big question is, “Why do ordinary people do terrible things?,” the answer ought not to be “Because Zimbardo proved it was human nature to fall into assigned roles.” The answer ought to be, “We don’t entirely know. Here are some possibilities.” And then explain the studies. Because those iconic studies are flawed and I guess I thought we all already knew that. They were designed in a different era, when social science research was a whole lot more free-wheeling, a whole lot less structured, and thus shouldn’t be taken to “prove” a whole lot.

Anyway, I guess that’s my take on L’affaire Zimbardo. The Stanford Prison Experiment was a mess and, like the Milgram experiment or the Kitty Genovese story, it provides us with a fascinating anecdote to describe a problem that needs further careful research.

Whose Luke Skywalker?

Mon, 18 Dec 2017 14:18:04 -0600

I’ve been thinking a lot about The Last Jedi since seeing it on Thursday night and I’ve been talking a lot about it since publishing my spoiler-filled critique of it on Friday afternoon. What follows contains Last Jedi spoilers, of course. So stop right here if you don’t want to read any of those.

What I essentially concluded is that my big problem with The Last Jedi is its treatment of Luke Skywalker, that “It’s a last chapter the character doesn’t deserve.” When I thought more about this, it occured to me that my interest in Luke Skywalker is probably very different from other people’s interest in him. When Timothy Zahn published Heir to the Empire in 1992, I devoured it. And then the next book and the next one. The idea with these books–and then the entire Expanded Universe that spun out from them–was to look at the galaxy in the immediate aftermath of the Rebellion’s victory over Endor and to follow the story of the Star Wars heroes. Those stories aren’t part of the Star Wars canon anymore and so Luke Skywalker’s arc in those stories doesn’t actually exist. But what stands out to me is that Timothy Zahn’s Luke Skywalker is much more Luke Skywalker-like, at least to me, than Rian Johnson’s Luke Skywalker.

Now, I might be wrong about all of this, but I’m going to theorize that people who love Return of the Jedi were hurt by Johnson’s portrayal of Luke and people who don’t watch ROTJ anymore weren’t. Most people, I think, have denigrated ROTJ over the years as being for kids or being a sort of preview of George Lucas’ madness (a sort of foreshadowing of the Jar Jar Binks-ification of Star Wars). Those Star Wars fans are no less fans than I am, but their Star Wars is realy all about A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. They were angry about the band in Jabba’s palace and the Ewoks and the Yub Nub song, and while they might have loved ROTJ when they were kids (as I did; it was the first one I saw), they really haven’t gone back to it.

So their Luke Skywalker is a whiny farm boy who was supposed to go to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters and the last time we see him, he’s crying and screaming at his evil dad while hanging from the edge of Cloud City.

He’s goofy and he’s awestruck when it comes to the Force and he’s incredibly naive, especially in comparison to Han and Leia. He races into the Death Star detention block and proclaims, with doe-eyed innocence, “I’m Luke Skywalker; I’m here to rescue you!”

But that’s not the Luke Skywalker who came of age after hitting rock bottom in Empire and who becomes a Jedi, sheds his moisture farmer robes for the black, constucts his own lightsaber, strolls into Jabba’s palace, and makes demands of the galaxy’s preeminant crime boss.

This is Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight, who ultimately endangers himself to save his father from the Dark Side. This is the Jedi who appears in Zahn’s trilogy of novels, set about five years after the deaths of the Emperor and Darth Vader. And so this is the Luke Skywalker I expected to see in Last Jedi, but it clearly isn’t the Luke Skywalker we got because it isn’t the Luke Skywalker that Johnson was thinking of. Johnson’s Skywalker is the padawan learner from Episodes IV and V, not the Jedi Knight from VI. Both his Luke and mine make mistakes–big ones, like trying to use a Jedi mind trick on a Hutt or standing on a trapdoor above a Rancor pit–and it’s easy to see how he could have lost Ben Solo during his training, especially because he’s arrogant and impetuous. But my Luke Skywalker doesn’t think about murdering his nephew in his sleep; he works to try to bring him back, just like he did with the father he never even knew.

A complicated Jedi Master Luke Skywalker is fine by me. A Luke who is less committed to the Jedi order than he is to the Force is fine by me. A Luke who approaches the idea of the Force as something more akin to Machiavelli’s fortuna rather than a power he possesses would be right on target. That, in fact, would fit in pretty well with the way the Force is discussed in the Clone Wars and Rebels tv shows. But Johnson’s Luke is fundamentally shaped by one searing moment of failure that he can’t process or move past, that leaves him ashamed and fearful rather than hopeful that something can be done about it. It’s the Empire’s Luke who confronts the Dark Side in his father and collapses under its weight, not ROTJ’s Luke whose sacrifice brings Anakin back to the Light. And it’s Rey who remains hopeful that Ben Solo can be redeemed, which just seems to make Johnson’s Luke even more angry and depressed.

Of course, in the end, Luke learns from Yoda again–this time about failure as a part of teaching learning–and, at the conclusion of his story, he’s my Luke again. And Rey, though she fails to rescue Ben Solo from Kylo Ren the way that Luke rescued Anakin from Darth Vader, might very well be positioned to renew the Jedi order.

I’m a massive Star Wars fan.I spent countless hours with my...

Fri, 15 Dec 2017 11:53:42 -0600

I’m a massive Star Wars fan.

I spent countless hours with my action figures and invented all sorts of storylines for Luke, Leia, Han, and Vader as they flew around in my hands or almost drowned in the quicksand of my Dagoba playset.

I own three different copies of the original trilogy on VHS and one on Blu-Ray. I saw the Special Edition re-releases on opening night and even drove a couple of hours to a special THX theater for them. I saw each of the prequels at midnight screenings and bought the DVDs as soon as they were released. I’ve watched every episode of Clone Wars and Rebels. I’ve read all the Expanded Universe novels and all the new Cannon novels. For all its repetitiveness, I was excited by The Force Awakens. And despite the stupidity and uselessness of the Saw Gerrera plotline, I thought Rogue One was a good idea that was mostly well-executed.

And so it’s with the heaviest of hearts that I declare this new movie isn’t for me. It’s almost certainly for someone else, not me.

My feelings about the prequels provide an interesting insight into why The Last Jedi doesn’t work for me. Even as I mostly didn’t like those movies, I didn’t like them in a way that still left me feeling exhilarated. Although George Lucas did something shockingly clunky and maybe unforgiveable with Episodes I-III, he also explained a lot. He got a solid dose of criticism for it, richly deserved, but he gave us backstory. It might not have been the backstory we wanted and it might have been delivered inelegantly, but it was backstory. We got to see the Republic in its last days; we got to see the Clone Wars; and we got to see Palpatine’s rise to power and Anakin’s fall.

The reason the prequels still managed to work for me is the reason The Last Jedi doesn’t work. It’s because I grew up with the original trilogy and basically waited my whole life for more of Luke Skywalker’s story. I care deeply about this galaxy, and about its heroes and villains. I want to know not only what happens but also why. And The Last Jedi doesn’t give the audience any of that.

Rian Johnson has made a fine movie. It looks great and there are some fantastically crafted battle sequences. I think there’s probably a new generation of fans who will like and care about Star Wars because of this new trilogy, but I have to believe they’ll do so because of the set up in The Force Awakens and not because of anything that happens in The Last Jedi. The reason for that assessment–and the reason it’s so disappointing to an old fan like me–is that The Last Jedi ultimately isn’t really about anything and it doesn’t deepen the plot of the Skywalker family saga in any meaningful way.

When The Force Awakens ended with Rey handing Luke his old lightsaber, I was exhilirated all over again. I knew I’d have to wait a couple of years, but I’d finally get to know what happened to Luke after Return of the Jedi. I assumed that the audience would get a satisfying farewell to Luke in the same way that Han Solo was treated with care and love in The Force Awakens. But The Last Jedi doesn’t do that. Luke is a curmudgeon now; he’s almost constantly brooding and despondent, maybe even angry, and he doesn’t seem to revere or even really respect the Force or the Jedi order anymore. And all of this out-of-character behavior is explained by a decision–to murder his young nephew because he has been corrupted by Snoke–that is exactly the opposite of the way Luke Skywalker–who risked everything to find the small scrap of good that remained in his father–behaved the last time we saw him.

It makes sense that Luke feels a deep shame at failing his apprentice and then an even deeper shame at thinking about killing him. And that would explain why he’s gone into hiding; I can see it as a motivating factor behind a couple of Obi-Wan’s decisions in A New Hope too. But Obi-Wan likes Luke and wants to help him become a Jedi; Luke is generally either indifferent or angry when it comes to Rey. Obi-Wan seems to have learned something from his failure but even when Yoda explains the importance of failure to him, Luke still doesn’t act like he can teach Rey anything. Instead, he mysteriously shows up to save the day and then equally mysteriously vanishes without teaching anyone anything. It’s a last chapter the character doesn’t deserve.

And, of course, Luke’s problem with Ben speaks to a broader issue with the film–and with the new trilogy as a whole. Luke says that, too late, he finally recognizes the extent of the darkness within his nephew. And we know that Ben was influenced or turned to the Dark Side by Snoke. So this gives us a real opportunity to learn more about the force-wielding Supreme Leader of the powerful First Order. Where did he come from? How did he corrupt Ben Solo right under Luke Skywalker’s nose? How did he come to rule over the First Order? And, come to think of it, where did the First Order even come from? And what’s up with the so-called Knights of Ren we first glimpsed in The Force Awakens?

And, of course, The Last Jedi answers exactly none of these questions. Snoke has no backstory and no continuing story either. He seemed to be incredibly powerful as a Dark Side Force user–he’s got Dark Side lightning and he rips thoughts from people’s minds–and then, in an instant, he was absolutely effortlessly dispatched by a much weaker opponent. Meanwhile, the Knights are Ren remain totally nonexistent. And the First Order has no backstory and its central characters are useless wastes of space, with Captain Phasma being perhaps the biggest overhyped nonentity in the history of the franchise. A long-dead Jedi master is far more integral to this movie than she is and Disney paid someone to write an entire novel to give her a backstory. None of this makes any sense, in terms of storytelling.

And that’s the shame of it all. The Force Awakens set up some big questions for this trilogy: Who are Rey’s parents? How did the First Order and the Resistance come to be? Who’s Snoke? What happened between Ben and Luke? Two of those questions are resolved by The Last Jedi, but in ways that just aren’t satisfying. And the other two big questions are left floating, like Leia, in the cold vacuum of space. Maybe, also like her, they’ll improbably be resurrected. But I can’t imagine how J.J. Abrams would accomplish this without an inelegant number of flashbacks or ridiculous exposition so I’m basically assuming we’re not going to get answers. Maybe it eventually gets filled in by the novels, as they started to do with Chuck Wendig’s trilogy, but if that’s the case then most people won’t know anything about those details.

And that points to my ultimate feeling about all of this: maybe most people don’t care. Maybe it doesn’t matter who everybody is or what motivates them or where they came from. It matters to me and that’s why the prequels still offer me something and why I read all the books. I want to know all about how the Force works and I want the characters I love (new and old) to have rich and interesting histories. When the original trilogy finished up in the early 1980s, no one really knew the backstory of Darth Vader and the Emperor. And I presume most people were fine with that. I don’t know if there were fan theories about Luke and Leia’s mother for a couple of decades, but I was certainly interested to know what happened when the prequels were released. So maybe Rey’s parentage doesn’t ultimately matter or maybe we’ll find out more at some point or maybe what we found out is all there is to know and maybe we’re all overdoing it with the hype surrounding the unanswered questions at the heart of this new trilogy. Maybe having all the answers isn’t necessary. But it’s something I want because I’ve been totally immersed in this universe since I was 7 years old and I’m an adult now. I’m willing to bet that my 7 year old son will love these movies and will play with the toys and won’t be bothered by any of the issues that bother me.

Whch is why I’m convinced that they’re not making Star Wars for me anymore. These movies are for a new generation of fan now. Maybe some day those fans will demand that someone fill in all the details for them and maybe it’ll happen. But I’m no longer assuming I’ll ever learn anything more about the universe that I love from these films, at least until they stop making them about the Skywalker family and turn their attention to something entirely new.

#MeToo, #IWill, and What Comes AfterPlease bear with me a moment for something uncomfortable.I...

Thu, 19 Oct 2017 13:19:44 -0500

#MeToo, #IWill, and What Comes After

Please bear with me a moment for something uncomfortable.

I haven’t written anything at all about the powerful #MeToo and #IWill campaigns on Twitter and Facebook. I didn’t write anything at the time because I didn’t want to signal that one of the good guys who stands up for women or pat myself on the back for times when I’ve done so; the issue is far too serious for that sort of thing, I think.

That isn’t to say that men who did those things ought to feel bad for having done them. I think people have seriously good intentions here. That said–and here’s the uncomfortable part–good intentions often don’t amount to much.

Fighting against the culture of pervasive sexual harassment and assault is going to require action on the part of men. And saying you’ll take action isn’t the same thing as *actually* taking action. From years of researching and teaching on the topic of heroism, I know a lot about bystander behavior. And one of the things that comes across loud and clear is that no one imagines themselves as a bystander in a crisis situation.

People look at a tragedy and say, “I know I’d help” or “I promise I’ll be a person you can turn to.” Except helpers remain relatively rare. And it’s not because people are bad or insincere in their desire to be a helper; it’s because standing up against injustice or rushing into danger is exceedingly hard to do in the moment. You can think about it today and you can commit to doing the hard thing, but that’s very different from actually doing it in the moment.

When the moment comes—when someone falls to the floor and needs CPR or when the boss makes inappropriate remarks about a female colleague—you have to make a snap decision…and people usually don’t have the clarity in that moment to know they’re making one of those big, important, difficult decisions. It happens too fast. You either help or you don’t; you either say something or you stay quiet. When asked about this moment later, heroes typically say something like, “I didn’t even think about it; I just did it.”

So, how do we become people who stand up and speak out? We have to practice. It feels like instinct or muscle memory for the hero because the hero has been in training for this moment for a long time. Which means that, if we’re serious about our #IWill promises, we have to start training ourselves now. We can’t expect to say we’ll do something one week in 2017 and actually do that thing five years from now, a year from now, or even next week. In fact, we need to understand that it’s almost a certainty that we won’t.

Here are two things you can do, starting today, that will make it more likely you’ll be the sort of person you want to be, the ally for the person you say you want to support:

1. Make yourself uncomfortable.

If you want to be a person who stands up to sexual harassment and abuse, you need to practice standing out…because that’s precisely what you’ll be doing when the situation arises. It’s hard to tell someone that what they’ve just said or done is inappropriate and needs to stop. It’s hard to intervene, especially if you’re dealing with a superior, a friend, or a family member, and it’s particularly hard to do all of this in public.

So practice calling attention to yourself. It’s uncomfortable to be the person who sticks out in a crowd, who isn’t going with the flow, but that’s exactly what you’ll need to do so you should start working on dealing with the awkward feeling now so you aren’t fighting the pressure to conform in the moment. The things that make you uncomfortable will be different from the things that make other people uncomfortable, so I can only offer general ideas here.

Maybe it’s wearing something that makes you stand out, like bright pink pants. Maybe it’s singing out loud when you’re walking down the street. Maybe it’s being completely honest when you’re asked for your opinion. Maybe it’s shaking hands or looking people in the eye during an entire conversation. You pick what works for you so you can practice having the experience of standing out.

2. Do small good things.

By this, I mean that you should be on the look-out for opportunities to help people in small ways. Because even small, cost-free helping behavior can get you in the habit and prime you for the more costly behavior toward which we’re trying to build.

Hold doors for others, including elevator doors, especially if it means delaying yourself a little longer than you’d normally like. Return someone’s shopping cart if you’re on your way into a store and they’ve just finished loading their car. Volunteer some of your time once a week for a cause or organization that matters to you. Ask people if they need anything when you get up to get something for yourself of if you’re leaving a room to which you’ll soon return.

The idea here is to work on becoming a person who notices opportunities to assist other people, so you might need to spend less time with earbuds in or looking at your phone. The more you’re paying attention to what’s happening around you, the more you’ll see that there are lots of times when people could benefit from some help even before they ask for it.

There are other things to do, of course, and once you start thinking this way—about practicing to be the person you want to be—I’m sure they’ll start coming to you. Feel free to help me make a longer list. This is just a beginning, but beginnings can be challenging so I encourage all of us to work together to get ourselves in the habit of standing up, speaking out, and becoming available as an ally for others.

Photo

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 16:33:15 -0500

A Predictable BDS Win at Tufts

Fri, 21 Apr 2017 08:56:34 -0500

A Predictable BDS Win at Tufts:

At least a few times a month, someone asks me about the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement because I teach a class on Israel every year. I get these questions because there are multiple pro-Israel groups in the United States that use the specter of BDS to raise money. These groups have succeeded over the past five years or so in convincing Americans–especially Christian Zionists and right-leaning Jews–that BDS is sweeping across college campuses in the US and represents some sort of dire threat to Israel.

The people who ask me about this issue are astounded and displeased when I tell them they’re being lied to, and they’re disinclined to believe me.

This morning someone sent me a post about a BDS resolution that was passed recently at Tufts University. The resolution was supported by 17 students and doesn’t seem to be binding on the university in any way, which means that it’s basically a certainty that Tufts won’t divest or boycott Israel. I’m linking to the article so you can read the whole thing; it’s written by the director of CAMERA (one of the groups that uses BDS to raise lots of money).

But this is the most important paragraph and please remember that it’s data offered to you by someone who *wants* you to worry about BDS on American campuses:

A key question is why such measures succeed on some campuses, but fail on many others — or never come up at all on the roughly 4,000 US college and university campuses. There have been (according to the AMCHA Initiative’s documentation) just over 100 such measures introduced in total over the last five years on 54 separate campuses, with slightly fewer than half passing.

What this means, of course, is that there were approximately 3,950 college campuses in this country where BDS has “never come up” and on the 54 campuses where it has come up in the past 5 years, it has passed a student government vote *less than half* the time. That’s approximately 25 campuses out of roughly 4,000.

And this is the major national movement that’s destroying colleges campuses and is a threat to Israel? No. That’s a totally nonexistent problem.

What If Some People Stood Up?

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 13:59:16 -0500

I’ve seen a few hundred of my friends share videos of a passenger being forcibly removed from a United flight because it was oversold. What I haven’t seen yet–which is why I’m writing about it–is any discussion of all the passengers who remain calmly seated while the man is dragged down the aisle. Every passenger sat still. Some voiced disapproval, but no one moved.

What do we think would have happened if all the other passengers had chosen to act on this man’s behalf instead of sitting still? What if some of them had stood up and walked off the flight instead of allowing one man to be physically removed in this ghastly manner?

50 Missiles and a Refugee Ban: Trump’s Syria “Strategy”

Fri, 07 Apr 2017 10:25:50 -0500

It seems to me important to note that there isn’t something wrong per se with involving the United States in the Syrian crisis in a meaningful way with the hope of bringing that crisis to an end and alleviating the terrible suffering of the Syrian people. In fact, I’ve been arguing about intervention in Syria for about six years now. There’s an extensive library of posts about Syria on this blog, going back to 2011.

To sit back and watch horror after unspeakable horror unfold is itself a choice; it is to actively choose not to involve ourselves in any sort of meaningful way that might bring those horrors to an end. We might choose non-intervention because we believe that we have no business interfering in the affairs of other states, that bombing a country doesn’t magically lead to good things happening there, or that we have such a bad track record of doing so that we ought not to keep doing it because we don’t know how to make things better.
I happen to be someone who doesn’t hold to these positions. Allowing harm on this level to occur feels, in its own way, criminal to me. But I also think we must spend time figuring out how to intervene in ways that advance the interests of the people on whose behalf we say we are intervening. Simply dropping bombs isn’t a long-term answer and neither is a decades-long military presence; if those are the only options we ever consider, we will continue to fail to make life better for people.

We’re not doing that difficult work. That’s something we all know. Launching 50 missiles at a Syrian airfield is an act of war undertaken without Congressional approval and it’s also the actions of a man with no plan whatsoever for what comes next. One week ago, the Trump administration indicated that Assad was likely to remain in power; a few days later, Assad launched a chemical weapons attack against civilians; the next day, the Trump administration spoke openly about regime change and unilateral miliary action against Assad. President Trump isn’t guided by any sort of careful foreign policy considerations; he and his team seem literally to be making it all up as they do, which means there’s no long-term plan for our involvement in Syria. By all accounts, there isn’t even a short-term plan. This missle strike was done to highlight Trump’s own humanity in response to the chemical attack, not to change our policy regarding the Syrian crisis, Assad himself, or the Syrian people who aren’t helped by this in any way and who President Trump continues to bar from entering our country as refugees. Nothing whatsoever has shifted, apart from media coverage (which today lauds President Trump for his meaningless action and looks away from Trump’s unprecedented scandals and inept attempts at governance).

If President Trump cared about the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria, he could immediately change his policy regarding Syrian refugees and he could begin to work closely with our allies around the world to craft a plan that might help bring about an end to the Syrian civil war. This would be incredibly difficult, of course, and there are no guarantees that any such plan would actually work. But it’s perfectly clear that no one on Trump’s staff has any relevant experience in this area or any real interest in learning and so we’re definitely not going to be doing those things that might actually make a difference in the lives of people who are suffering; we won’t even attempt it.

In the end, we have no idea what the fallout will be from this missile strike and neither does our President. There might be none, given that we seem to have notified the Russians and the Syrians beforehand. All we know this morning is that it didn’t accomplish anything at all with regard to making Syria a safer place for civilians and it sent the same dangerous message of uncertainty that this administration has been sending for months to our allies and our enemies alike.

TrumpWatch is creating an objective daily report on our objectively worst President

Mon, 20 Mar 2017 20:13:25 -0500

TrumpWatch is creating an objective daily report on our objectively worst President:

Hey Tumblr!

For the past 8 weeks, I’ve been writing up a daily briefing about the Trump presidency and the GOP-controlled Congress, trying to cut through as much of the noise as possible so people can focus on the truly important stuff that is impacting people’s lives and then take action by calling their elected officials armed with solid information.

You can follow and engage with each TrumpWatch Daily Updates on Facebook and Twitter.

Over at the Patreon page, I’m also encouraging people to donate if they find the posts useful. Each month, TrumpWatch patrons choose a pro-democracy or pro-refugee organization and donate our proceeds. For as little as $1 a week, YOU get a say in which organization gets the money. One vote per person, no electoral college. Last month, we donated to a refugee resettlement organization. This month, patrons chose the Anti-Defamation League due to the spike in anti-Semitic incidents all over the country.

Check out what I’m doing and tell your friends. Thanks!

For the low price of only $200K – make out your check...

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 11:14:03 -0600

For the low price of only $200K – make out your check directly to the Trump Organization – you can get a front row seat in the Situation Room and they’ll even serve you dinner too. And when you’re done watching an international crisis unfold, maybe take a photo with and provide the name of the guy holding the nuclear football and then publicly share it on Facebook?

Don’t worry, no background check required for any of this.

BUT HER EMAILS.

Some Thoughts on Betsy DeVos and Public Education

Mon, 06 Feb 2017 10:41:16 -0600

Over the past week or two, I’ve spent a fair amount of time, both online and offline, on the Betsy DeVos nomination for a bunch of reasons. The first is I’m from Detroit. There aren’t many people from Michigan who think her ideas about public education are good. And with good reason. We’ve seen it firsthand.

I’m also, now, from Nebraska. A lot of my students come from very small towns where there’s one school. Public education is crucial for them. These communities are too small for their school to survive on vouchers, or at least to maintain any sort of quality education for all. The notion that there will be competition amongst various charter schools for these tiny communities is obviously ridiculous on its face. Implementing DeVos’ ideas will wreck rural communities. People will either have to leave, settle for bad education, or drive their kids hours away to whichever school can draw in sufficient students to stay open.

The thing is, I’m involved in this issue for purely public interest reasons. I’d personally benefit from a voucher system. I’d actually make money! If the government gave me a check for, I don’t know, $10,000 per kid, and I paid my regular tuition for private day school, I’d actually come out ahead. I make no secret of the fact that I send my own kids to a private school and that I went to private schools myself. As a religious minority, I choose this for my kids because it helps to instill a sense of identity for them. (There are lots of other reasons I choose private school for them, but most of them boil down to things that public schools just can’t do for them given the resources available to them.)

But maybe this is why I’m a Democrat these days: I can tell when something that would personally benefit me is still the wrong thing to do. Even though I’d love to have that money in my pocket instead of paying as much as I do, I know that public education is good and necessary. I don’t choose it for my kids for a particular reason, not because I’m forced to by public schools that have failed. And, more than that, I want my neighbors to have quality schools. I want that so much that I pay for those schools with my taxes and then I also pay for my kids’ tuition out of pocket.

Public education is a public good even if I don’t personally use it. My kids, when grown up, will need their neighbors to have been educated. We can’t survive as a country if our public schools are garbage. One look at this most recent election should tell you that. We need to better fund our schools, not get rid of them through some misguided free market exercise. People who think otherwise are those who can afford not to worry about the state of public education or whose ideology wins over anything.

To take a “let’s see what happens” approach with an experiment on public education is absolute madness. If it fails, it’s our kids we fail.

Sometimes you only need three photos to understand everything...

Sat, 28 Jan 2017 09:33:17 -0600

Sometimes you only need three photos to understand everything that’s wrong.

Undocument immigrants who commit crimes in American cities...

Fri, 27 Jan 2017 09:14:57 -0600

Undocument immigrants who commit crimes in American cities aren’t protected by sanctuary city ordinances. Not all immigrants and refugees are undocumented. Not all immigrants and refugees commit crimes.

The Trump administration very much wants you to think of a criminal when you think of a refugee or an immigrant.

I’m the son of an immigrant and the grandson of refugees, who ultimately became immigrants. I’m a member of a religious minority in this country.

When people are arguing about whether or not to allow refugees or immigrants from certain countries because of their religion, it might be tempting to think of criminals because that’s what the President is telling you.

Think of my family instead.

CALL TO ACTION

Mon, 14 Nov 2016 13:25:56 -0600

Yesterday, Donald Trump named Steve Bannon to the very powerful position of chief strategist and senior advisor in his White House. For those who don’t know, Bannon has been the managing editor of Breitbart as it transitioned to a platform for white nationalism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and misogyny. He is seen by the so-called alt-right as one of their leaders.

This morning, I called my elected officials and asked them to make a statement against Mr. Bannon occupying this position, as it suggests to dangerous, hateful people that they have a good friend in the Oval Office. I am asking you to call this morning too. Call their local office (you can find the phone number via Google in one second), politely ask if the elected official has released a statement yet, explain that Mr. Bannon is a dangerous choice for such an important position, and ask for a call back. When you’ve called, please comment here and let us all know. Share this too.

If your Senator or Congressman/woman gets lots of calls at their local office today, they’ll hear about it. Please call. This matters. This is how we act together to protect our country and our fellow citizens.

Judaism and Trump's America

Sun, 13 Nov 2016 09:06:33 -0600

I haven’t known how to write this post so I hope you’ll bear with me as I try to get it right.

I put on a kippah one morning this week and I haven’t taken it off. I anticipate wearing it from now on.

I didn’t make this choice lightly. I’ve thought about wearing a kippah for a while now and I’ve talked with my wife about it several times. I am a relatively observant Jew within the Conservative branch of American Judaism. I keep kosher. I attend weekly religious services. My family observes the Jewish holidays. I attended a Jewish day school and I can read and understand Hebrew. I send my children to Jewish day school and Jewish daycare, as well as to religious school at our synagogue. I am an executive Board member of both the day school and the synagogue. Two of my grandparents are Holocaust survivors.

But I did not wear a kippah, an outward symbol of my Judaism. In part, it’s because I feared the consequences of doing so in a place like Nebraska. I am taking an educated guess when I say there are no more than 10-15 men in the entire state who wear a kippah in public, outside the synagogue, on a daily basis.

When I put on the kippah and went to work or for a walk or to a party where no one was Jewish, as I did this week, I felt conspicuous. I felt that people were looking at me differently than they would have otherwise. That’s not to say I felt hostility, just that I felt I was being noticed now. I was being noticed for who I was, as a Jew in a city and a state with very few Jews.

I wanted that attention this week and I will want it going forward in the weeks, months, and years ahead. I need it. Before this week, I was comfortable here. I could and did easily “pass” for a straight, white, middle class man who (given the percentages) was probably Christian. But I want people who see my kippah to know that I am different from others in this community. I’m done “passing” and, in particular, I’m done passing the burden of being different on to others who can’t pass because of how they look or wha they believe. Latinos, African-Americans, Arab-Americans, Asian-Americans, Indian-Americans, observant Muslims, other observant Jews–the list goes on–have shouldered this burden without me for long enough.

The other side of this coin is that I want my kippah to serve as a jolt or a reminder to people who voted for Donald Trump or who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton in this election of the costs and consequences of their choice. In the past year, I’ve personally been on the receiving end of countless messages of hate; these were directed at me as a Jew online. There were anti-Semitic images and language; there were memes expressing approval of the Holocaust; there were threats–veiled and straightforwardly stated–that Trump’s America should finish the job started by the Nazis. Every single one came from a Trump supporter.

The Trump campaign brought bigotry and anti-Semitism out into the mainstream. It embraced it by embracing the so-called “alt-right” and by putting one of its leaders, Steve Bannon, in a critical leadership position. It approvingly published comments from anti-Semites and white supremacists on its Twitter account, and it created ads that listed prominent Jews as members of a global financial system that is to blame for the economic woes of white working class Americans.

When people see my kippah, I want them to know that they voted to allow this to happen to me and to my family, either explicitly or tacitly. They surely aren’t all bigots themselves, but they made a choice to ignore all the bigotry wrapped up in the Trump campaign’s rhetoric and in its policy proposals because something else was more important to them than to stand up to bigotry. Over the past week, as swastikas have been painted on school buildings and community centers every day, people have told me that nothing bad will really happen. But what I know, deep down, is that there are thousands of people in my own community who would hurt me if their government told them to and tens of thousands more who wouldn’t stand against them. People who think this isn’t true need to see me as a Jew so they can start asking themselves how they’ll stand up for me and for everyone else who will need people to stand up for them in the coming weeks, months, and years.

I felt too scared to wear a kippah before, in Obama’s America, because I knew that anti-Semitism existed and that being different is risky. It’s scarier now because it feels much riskier. But I have to do it because this is who I am and because everyone needs to know it.

How Could It Happen Here

Sat, 24 Sep 2016 14:10:47 -0500

For months now, I’ve seen variants of the same article in virtually every online publication: “This is how fascism came to Germany.”

The premise each time is that there might exist similar conditions in the U.S. today and that we should be wary–maybe even terrified–because we have an authoritarian bully running for our highest office, we have people who feel disenchanted with establishment politics, we have serious economic issues, we have foreign policy troubles, and so on.

One thing that always strikes me is that this sort of article elides–or at least takes for granted–a very important problem, namely that we have millions of people in this country who are openly bigoted and who are reveling in the nastiness they feel empowered to shout out loud today.

Whatever else might have allowed Nazism to take root in Germany, we should make no mistake that hatred, bigotry, and xenophobia were an absolutely crucial component of the downfall of the Weimar Republic. What’s more, the willingness of so many people in America today to excuse the things said by Trump, by his sons, by his running mate, and by his supporters as somehow not serious or not a problem or not how they’ll act if they win is every bit as big an indicator of the danger we face as the outright misogynists, anti-Semites, homophobes, Islamophobes, and racists themselves.

Constitution Day

Sat, 17 Sep 2016 08:22:05 -0500

On the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, it’s important to point out that political parties–what the Founders called factions–didn’t exist in 1787. Parties really exploded onto the American political scene in the early 1790s, largely thanks to the personal enmity between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.

229 years later, partisanship has reached such extremes that a credible third-party candidate for the presidency is barred from participating in a national debate by rules effectively crafted by the two dominant parties. And, of course, millions of voters across the U.S.–and their party leaders–are so wrapped up in partisan politics that they’re supporting the candidacy of a demagogue who actively lies to them and whose candidacy is an exercise in determining just how high an extremist can rise using nothing but the strength of his personal brand and the anger and fear he stokes.

I suppose it’s not so surprising that we’ve ended up here. If the Founders couldn’t figure out that sometimes partisanship and personal animosity must take a backseat to more important considerations, why should anyone assume that we would figure it out? Still, even if it’s not surprising, it’s no less sad and awful.

Last night, someone at the Trump campaign posted a tweet that...

Thu, 28 Jul 2016 10:36:22 -0500

Last night, someone at the Trump campaign posted a tweet that was designed as a response to the various speeches being given by the Democrats this week in Philadelphia.

It’s easy to make fun of this sort of response or to simply say that the feeling it describes doesn’t match up with reality, but it’s incredibly important to pay attention to it because this feeling makes up almost the entirety of Trump’s support (from people who aren’t supporting for reasons centered around bigotry and xenophobia).

A great many of Trump’s supporters don’t feel like things are going well, don’t feel like America is great, don’t feel like we’re on the right track.

The real question is how to talk to those people and, rather than telling them they’re just wrong, find ways to highlight Trump’s utter lack of a plan to help them and contrast it with Clinton’s decades of experience with helping people. That’s what the DNC speeches have been trying to do, but a whole lot of those people aren’t watching. So now it’s the job of everyone else too.

Here is the entirety of Trump’s video on “Jobs”:

One of the things I’m most proud about is that I create jobs. Over the years, tens of thousands of jobs for our country. And I’ll do that for you. I will tell you this and I can say it with certainty: I will be the greatest jobs-producing president that God ever created. I love the subject, I love doing it, and I love helping people. And there’s nothing like helping people than getting them and their family great jobs.

And here’s what he says in his video on “The Economy”:

One of the things I’m gonna to do and largely with our great tax plan where everybody’s taxes is going down, we’re gonna grow our economy. We have to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt. So unfair, so totally unfair to our young people. We are not gonna to leave you with that burden.

You can find all the details of Trump’s tax plan on his website and I strongly encouage you to look them over. That’s also where he says a little more about jobs, mostly that lower tax rates for businesses will mean adding lots of jobs for Americans. Here are some reactions to that plan:

The Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center suggests that "Barring politically difficult spending cuts or tax increases, the Trump tax cuts would produce deficits of as much as $11.2 trillion over the next decade, which could swamp any salutary effects arising from lowering marginal effective tax rates on work, saving, and investment. We estimate that by 2036, with no change in spending or interest rates, the proposal would raise the national debt by nearly 80 percent of GDP. If interest rates rise in response to the burgeoning public debt, the increase in the debt could be much larger.” As far as I can tell, Trump hasn’t specified any spending cuts.

And, of course, the biggest benefits of Trump’s plan will go to the richest taxpayers. Here’s how Politifact characterized it, based on analysis by the Tax Policy Center:

While virtually everyone would pay less under the Trump plan, it offers particularly big benefits to the richest taxpayers.

The Tax Policy Center calculated that the average tax cuts for the top 1 percent would be $275,000, or 17.5 percent of after-tax income, and for the top 0.1 percent, they would be $1.3 million, or nearly 19 percent of after-tax income.

Middle-income households, meanwhile, would get a cut of $2,700, or a 4.9 percent reduction. Those making the least would see a cut, too, but only of $128 or so, working out to roughly 1 percent of after-tax income.

Here’s a piece from the Fiscal Times, which asks several experts to give their opinion on Trump’s plan. They’re all overwhelmingly negative.

Moody’s economists predicted a recession if Trump’s economic plans are enacted:

They envision a country with 3.5 million lost jobs, much larger debts and deficits, and an economy that will contract. The billionaire businessman’s tax cuts largely will benefit the wealthy while household incomes will stagnate and asset values fall, according to the report from Mark Zandi, Chris Lafakis, Dan White and Adam Ozimek.

A piece at Forbes concludes that “Trump’s tax plan is an entrepreneurial disaster. Trump’s tax agenda will effectively increase the middle class’ taxes and slow our economy to a standstill.”

The Tax Policy Center, by contrast, says the following about Clinton’s tax plan:

Clinton’s proposed tax increases [primarily on higher-income individuals] would decrease the federal debt by over $1.2 trillion over the next decade. The Tax Policy Center estimates that by 2036, with no change inspending orinterest rates, the proposal would decrease the national debt by 10.0 percent of GDP. Slower macroeconomic growth in response to higher marginal tax rates could reduce the net revenue gain and the decline in debt. However, if interest rates fall below the (low) baseline projections as government borrows less, the decline in the debt could be greater. The reduction in deficits and debt would be offset to the extent that any or all of the new revenue is earmarked to pay for new spending or tax cuts (which the Clinton campaign says are forthcoming).

Perhaps more important when it comes to providing a contrast with Trump on jobs and economy, here’s Hillary Clinton’s campaign page on the issues:

You can click on each of the headlines and get more information. There’s an overwhelming level of detail in these individual pages, almost too much for someone with limited time and/or casual interest. Take her page on jobs as an example. It’s worth spending a minute reading even just a couple of the ideas for the sake of comparison with Trump’s 20-second video. For the sake of ease, I took another screenshot:

Each one of the yellow underlined phrases takes you to another page with more information.

The difference between the amount of time and care the Clinton and Trump campaigns put into their Issues websites is stark and it highlights the way they’re approaching the seriousness of the feelings of those Americans who are, to use Trump’s campaign tweet, “living in poverty” and “despair.”

It’s easy enough to do the same analysis regarding their proposals for dealing with ISIS and with immigration. And so we should. And then we should share our findings with everyone who is even considering a vote for Trump in November, in no small part because the Trump campaign is actively discouraging his supporters from even listening to Clinton when she speaks tonight. The hallmark of a campaign with bad ideas or no ideas at all is to actively discourage voters from getting information.

So talk to people. But listen to what they’re telling you and don’t dismiss their feelings; they’re not idiots and they’re not wrong about how they feel. Instead, show them the ways in which the Clinton campaign is responding to how they feel, providing actual ideas that can work to reduce “poverty, violence and despair” rather than empty promises that, if enacted, will actually make them worse off.