Political values include general attitudes toward humanity -- whether and whom to trust, and whether to obey or rebel.

from 538.com

Note -- originally posted in 2009, but it still seems relevant.

Quote:by Tom Schaller @ 12:35 PM


I'm reading a compelling new book, Authoritarianism & Polarization in American Politics, co-written by Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler. (Disclosure: Jon is a longtime friend; we were in grad school together at Univ. of North Carolina.) The book is an examination of how authoritarian tendencies among American citizens inform and explain attitudes toward government, public policies and their fellow citizens. It is impossible to summarize the book properly in a blog post, but I wanted to hit on some of the points that struck me, many of which were unsurprising and yet startling to see demonstrated empirically.

The first point Hetherington and Weiler make is that authoritarianism is really about order--achieving it, maintaining it, and affirming it--and especially when citizens are uncertain or fearful. This, they say, is why authoritarians seek out and elevate, well, authorities--because authorities impose order on an otherwise disordered world. They provide a useful review the existing literature on authoritarian traits, which have been connected to negative racist stereotyping, a belief in biblical inerrancy, a preference for simple rather than complex problem-solving, and low levels of political information.

Hetherington and Weiler expand and update the authoritarian literature by applying it to contemporary controversies. For example, what they measure and define as "maximum authoritarian" types show much lower support for gay marriage and gay adoption (19 percent, 28 percent) than do "minimum authoritarians" (71 percent, 89 percent). Maximums are three times more likely than minimums to support the government use of wiretaps without a warrant in the war on terror (60 percent to 19 percent), and four times more likely to say it is unacceptable to criticize the president about fighting terrorism (33 percent to 8 percent).

And what do authoritarians look like? The table above--which I have reproduced from Table 3.2 (p. 39) of their book--shows average levels of authoritarianism by descriptive characteristics that, taken together, produce a composite image: rural, southern, under-educated, evangelical Protestant churchgoers. Is it any wonder that when George W. Bush was down to his bottom 30 percent of public support during his second term so much of that support derived from people fitting this profile? And although there is a strong connection between authoritarianism and conservatism (and thus Republicanism), as Hetherington and Weiler caution, authoritarianism is not bounded by party: Among 2008 Democratic primary voters there were significant splits on issues of race and immigration, smacking of authoritarian impulses, that played a role in support for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. "There is strong suggestive evidence that authoritarianism was a core reason for the voting behavior of nonblacks" in the Democratic primary, they conclude.

As for the current debate over health care, some of the same cleavages exist. In a recent piece for the Huffington Post, Weiler talks about race and authoritarianism in the context of the health reform debate: "In sum, there is reason to think that beneath the arguments about government intrusion into the health care market, death panels, and such, a much more visceral dynamic is at work. To be perfectly clear, it is far from the case that every opponent or skeptic of significant health-care reform is a racist or racially motivated in her or his thinking. But there is, at the least, very strong circumstantial evidence that views of race and beliefs about health care reform are linked significantly among many Americans, which probably explains why the debate on health care reform has caused a much stronger uproar in 2009 than it did in 1994."

Reading the book, I kept hearing echoes of Glenn Greenwalds's book, A Tragic Legacy. Greenwald's book is a character study of Bush43 and the Bush White House, its Manichean worldview, and what that meant for public policy. But an us-v-them, good-v-evil governing mentality is only possible in a democracy where authoritarian currents run deep enough to sustain (and re-elect) such leadership. The governing atmosphere Greenwald describes makes even more sense after reading Hetherington and Weiler.

Trump said he wants to abolish the federal minimum wage. Wow, such a champion of the working class.

How about a thread for technology?

***** The Fourth Turning Forum Archive *****

http://generationaldynamics.com/tftarchive

The first version of the Fourth Turning Forum archive is now online.

http://generationaldynamics.com/tftarchive

With the Fourth Turning Forum being killed on May 16, 2016, this
archive of some of the threads is presented as a public service to the
hundreds of people who have been members for many years.

This is a first version.  I hope to get some of the linking and
formatting working better.  If there's something you'd like to see,
let me know and I might be able to accomodate you.

The software to produce this archive has been written and can be rerun
at any time.  That means that I can still add new threads.  I can also
rerun it to capture any posts that are added to these threads before
May 16.

If this archive is missing any threads that you want, then let me know
as quickly as possible, before they're killed and disappear forever.

I know that I'm going to be going back through notes all week to see
if there are any more threads I want.  I urge everyone to do the same.

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum:    http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe


Here are the threads so far:

2016-18: The nest step down.
Alan Greenspan and the Great Depression
Archive of Strauss and Howe Discussion Thread (July 2 and 3, 2007)
Big Test for Generational Dynamics
Boomers & Silents; 2004-2024
China
Do you like Justin Bieber?
Doonesbury and The Invisible Boomers
Ethnic Russians rioting in Estonia
Financial Crisis
Gender Issues
Generation Zero - A film based on S&H
Generational Boundaries
Generational Dynamics - MIT - April 20 Presentation
Generational Dynamics World View
Generations and Sex
Global Warming
Humor
Iraq Today vs 1960s America
It's time for national healthcare
Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace
New Generational Dynamics Book -- Available online
New book updates Strauss & Howe's "The Fourth Turni
Objections to Generational Dynamics
Official 'Map Project' Thread
Pew Research: Digital 'Natives' Invade the Workplace
Philosophy, religion, science and turnings
Please vote: Correlate political and generational views
Political Archetypes
Political Polarization, Racial Tensions, and The Crisis era
Poll: Would Americans ditch Israel to avoid long gas lines?
Swine Flu
T4T Board Truth And Reconciliation Thread.
The Causes of the American Civil War
The Media and Us
The Singularity
The next pandemic
To all Fourth Turning Forum members:
Visionaries from the Consciousness Revolution
Wall Street in Wonderland
War of Spanish Succession
Web sites for Boomers
Who will become the next Gray Champion?
Why the 4T started in 2008 and NOT in 2001
You and Time Magazine
Your Career and Generational Theory
Sent  (STAMP: Sunday, May 08, 2016, 15:49:59 160508)

I'm mixing some threads here to create a lesson, basically on how an important  civil right (same-sex marriage) could come into being. Some are from the old Fourth Turning forms, and some are from Leip's "Election Atlas". Here I can do this without the banter characteristic of a Forum. This may be good for a civics lesson.

Let's start with the most amazing reality: this has happened while America has become more, and not less, sexually repressive, especially of domestic violence (which is not a right) and even more, the abominable deeds that we can all classify as sexual abuse of children. We are in the worst time ever to be involved in child pornography, a reality that almost everyone finds acceptable. This is also in a time, part of which reflects the rise of the Tea Party movement which melds every thread of religious and economic conservatism. Know well: gays and lesbians wanted to find their way into the mainstream of American life, and they did a good job of it. They distanced themselves as fully as straights from the infamous NAMBLA types. The less said about NAMBLA the better.

Same-sex couples have ended up with children; just like heterosexual couples they can be just as protective of those children as heterosexuals. Two gay men or two lesbians could be very hostile to any pervert showing an inappropriate interest in the child in their custody. Sexual exploitation of children is perversion; homosexuality isn't.

...Before anyone asks me what my stake is -- it is law and order. Having been gay-bashed, I came quickly to the conclusion was that the problem wasn't that I wasn't masculine enough; it was instead that some people think it acceptable to beat people that they deem homosexual. Difference is real. Human rights must be the law of the land. I came to the conclusion that standing for homosexual rights would promote law and order, the first of all civil rights. I changed my tune on homosexuality. I used to make 'gay jokes'. I quite making them when I realized that those contributed, even if subtly, to the danger of gay-bashing.

So here is the legal status of same-sex marriage at the beginning of 2003:





Same-sex marriage was not recognized as a legal right anywhere in America.

Things changed on May 17, 2004 as the result of a state court ruling that the Massachusetts law against same-sex marriage violated the state constitution. But only in Massachusetts, then only the first state to legalize SSM.

Legalization of SSM to 2004




Legalization from previous years (white)

from legal decisions made that year and valid from that year:

resulting from a state court decision invalidating an SSM ban

From here on, a number upon a state indicates the order in which the state recognizes or is compelled to recognize the validity of same-same-sex marriage permanently.

Legalization of SSM to 2008



California briefly legalized SSM as its state Supreme Court invalidated Proposition 8 -- but such was appealed, and SSM quickly vanished. I'm not counting short-lived legalization. But Connecticut would by a ruling that an SSM ban was unconstitutional.

California briefly legalized SSM as its state Supreme Court invalidated Proposition 8 -- but such was appealed, and SSM quickly vanished. I'm not counting short-lived legalization. But Connecticut would by a ruling that an SSM ban was unconstitutional.



Legalization from previous years (white)

from legal decisions made that year and valid from that year:

resulting from a state court decision invalidating an SSM ban

Same-sex marriage would remain strictly a Massachusetts phenomenon until

California briefly legalized SSM as its state Supreme Court invalidated Proposition 8 -- but such was appealed, and SSM quickly vanished. I'm not counting short-lived legalization. But Connecticut would legalize same-sex marriage with a State Supreme Court ruling that an SSM ban was unconstitutional.



Legalization from previous years (white)

from legal decisions made that year and valid from that year:

resulting from a state court decision invalidating an SSM ban

It gets more interesting in 2009.

California briefly legalized SSM as its state Supreme Court invalidated Proposition 8 -- but such was appealed, and SSM quickly vanished. I'm not counting short-lived legalization. But Connecticut would by a ruling that an SSM ban was unconstitutional.




In a mere five days, Iowa (April 3, through a state court decision) and Vermont (April 7, through legislation) ratified same-sex marriage. In May, Maine legalized it through legislation, as would New Hampshire in June. But Maine would repeal the legislation in November, so that would not count in my scheme.

The Council of the District of Columbia would enact a law legalizing same-sex marriage in November -- but that would not take effect until 2010. DC will be shown when SSM becomes possible in 2010.

Legalization from previous years (white)

from legal decisions made that year and valid from that year:

resulting from a state court decision invalidating an SSM ban
resulting from state legislation

Isao Tomita (冨田 勲 Tomita Isao?, 22 April 1932 – 5 May 2016), often known simply as Tomita, was a Japanese music composer, regarded as one of the pioneers of electronic music and space music, and as one of the most famous producers of analog synthesizer arrangements. In addition to creating note-by-note realizations, Tomita made extensive use of the sound design capabilities of his instrument, using synthesizers to create new sounds to accompany and enhance his electronic realizations of acoustic instruments. He also made effective use of analog music sequencers and the Mellotron and featured futuristic science fiction themes, while laying the foundations for synth-pop music and trance-like rhythms. Many of his albums are electronic versions and adaptations of famous classical music pieces and he received four Grammy Award nominations for his 1974 album Snowflakes Are Dancing.

By the late 1960s, Isao turned to electronic music with the impetus of Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog's work with synthesizers. Isao acquired a Moog III synthesizer and began building his home studio. He eventually realized that synthesizers could be used to create entirely new sounds in addition to mimicking other instruments. His first electronic album was Electric Samurai: Switched on Rock, released in Japan in 1972 and in the United States in 1974. The album featured electronic renditions of contemporary rock and pop songs, while utilizing speech synthesis in place of a human voice. He then started arranging Claude Debussy's impressionist pieces for synthesizer and, in 1974, the album Snowflakes are Dancing was released; it became a worldwide success and was responsible for popularizing several aspects of synthesizer programming. The album's contents included ambience, realistic string simulations; an early attempt to synthesize the sound of a symphony orchestra; whistles, and abstract bell-like sounds, as well as a number of processing effects including: reverberation, phase shifting, flanging, and ring modulation. Quadrophonic versions of the album provided a spatial audio effect using four speakers. A particularly significant achievement was its polyphonic sound, created prior to the era of polyphonic synthesizers. Tomita created the album's polyphony as Carlos had done before him, with the use of multitrack recording, recording each voice of a piece one at a time, on a separate tape track, and then mixing the result to stereo or quad. It took 14 months to produce the album. In his early albums, he also made effective use of analog music sequencers, which he used for repeated pitch, filter or effects changes. Tomita's modular human whistle sounds would also be copied in the presets of later electronic instruments. His version of "Arabesque No. 1" was later used as the theme to the astronomy television series Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer (originally titled Star Hustler) seen on most PBS stations; in Japan, parts of his version of "Rêverie" were used for the opening and closing of Fuji TV's transmissions; in Spain, "Arabesque No. 1" was also used for the intro and the outro for the children TV program "Planeta Imaginario" (imaginary planet).

Following the success of Snowflakes Are Dancing, Tomita released a number of "classically" themed albums, including arrangements of: Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird, Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and Gustav Holst's The Planets. Holst: The Planets introduced a science fiction "space theme" This album sparked controversy on its release, as Imogen Holst, daughter of Gustav Holst, refused permission for her father's work to be interpreted in this way. The album was withdrawn, and is, consequently, rare in its original vinyl form.

While working on his classical synthesizer albums, Tomita also composed numerous scores for Japanese television and films, including the Zatoichi television series, two Zatoichi feature films, the Oshi Samurai (Mute Samurai) television series and the Toho science fiction disaster film, Catastrophe 1999, The Prophesies of Nostradamus (U.S. title: Last Days of Planet Earth) in 1974. The latter blends synthesizer performances with pop-rock and orchestral instruments. It and a few other partial and complete scores of the period have been released on LP and later CD over the years in Japan. While not bootlegs, at least some of these releases were issued by film and television production companies without Tomita's artistic approval.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isao_Tomita

An interesting take on how one generation is seeking to drain other generations so they can hopefully coast to retirement before civilization collapses.

Kinser,

I have to thank you.  You and your eclectic perspectives on things always make for an interesting read.

Further, you inspired me to break out some reading that I've not looked at for over fifty years, back when I was an undergraduate.  And even then, I think I wasn't up to the material, or mature enough to really consider it, or still too unsophisticated and too much of a backwoods boy to think about it.

I've both skimmed and carefully re-read all or part of The Communist Manifesto, Wage-Labour and Capital, Value Price and Profit, and The Poverty of Philosopy.

As a side-study I've also been reading the biography of Jean Jaures, the brilliant French socialist whose life ended all too soon, to an assassin's bullet.  One can only wonder if Jaures and his fellows could have made their influence more felt, that WW-I might have even been avoided?

Back to Marx - I'm sure that I'm not the advocate of Marx that you are, but I've found that my re-reading his stuff is fascinating.  He got a lot of it right in my opinion.  And the general theory pans out occasionally.  Of course, it seems to me that it falls way short in other areas.

In any case thanks.  I've enjoyed this detour in my reading.  Re-reading is often an excellent diversion!

what's going on with you?

I got offered that other job. After reviewing all the pros and cons about it balanced against health concerns, I have ended up staying where I am. For now, I may or may not regret my decision, but ultimately I can't do a lot of things requiring me in full sunlight for numerous hours of the day. On the personal front, I have gotten business cards and a website beyond Facebook up and running for my sewing. April was my best month ever for personal sales. I was really grateful for this since right after all that my rescue kitty was determined to be a diabetic, a week at the veterinarian clinic later and a shot a day of insulin, he is on the mend. I'm just really grateful my beloved kitty is going to be ok.

I want to make sure this is posted here.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/...pshot&_r=0