On getting George

As many of you know, I had a dog Chester Burnette for many years. At a certain point, we acquired Hubert Sumlin, who, appropriately enough, *adored* Chester Burnette.  Several years later, in mid-December, Chester died. Hubert immediately sank into an inconsolable grief. He wouldn't eat, wouldn't play, wouldn't do anything but lie on the couch and look miserable. I tried tempting him with the best dog food, with home-made gravy on his food, with the red ball, with anything. Within days, he was sick with grief. At about the third visit to the vet, the vet said that either we needed to get a new dog or we needed to put him on doggy Prozac (which might or might not work), but Hubert was going to die if we didn't do something.This was around December 30. The next day Jacob (who was six) and I were running errands near Town Lake Animal Control (aka "the pound"). I decided that he and I would "just look" at the dogs they had.

We went in, and I explained to the person at the front desk that we were really good with big dogs (who are very hard to place). We specifically wanted a Dane-mix. She gave us a list of Dane mixes, and we proceeded to look at dogs in 6x3 enclosures with concrete floors. It went better than you might expect for the first three or four dogs, with our discussing their advantages and disadvantages in a fairly distanced way. We could imagine this dog, who was attractive insofar as... but who might be a problem in that... Then Jacob and George saw each other.

Really, it was like the scene in West Side Story when Tony and Maria see each other and the whole world stops. George was on our list of "Dane-mix" but the dog had no Dane in him, and I knew that. With one ear up and one down, and neither of them even remotely appropriately sized for his head, and paws even more outsized for his body, this dog just grabbed Jacob's heart and wrapped it in his goofy ears. That was that.

So, still trying to maintain some semblance of objectivity, as though I was not going to take this dog home, I asked various questions of the staff, and indicated we were interested. Yeah. Interested. They took us to the front area, where we could play with the dog. Jacob and George (not yet named George) took to playing with each other, and the woman said, "Would you like to take this dog home?" and I said, "It's either that or I leave my son here."

She asked if we had proof that our dog at home had the necessary vaccinations, and I explained we hadn't brought any of that paperwork. (She was very kind at that point, and did not treat me like an idiot.) It turned out there was some urgency to the situation, as George was scheduled to be euthanized immediately. He had been there a month, with no takers. Because he was so big, he was taken for older than he was, and the fact that he still fell over his own feet (normal at 12 weeks) meant that prospective owners assumed he was retarded. I told her she could try calling our vet, but they were almost certainly closed. She knew the number of the back room, essentially, and decided to try.

I watched as she called. Someone answered, and the woman explained the question. She looked disappointed, and told me that the person who answered had politely explained that she was just a tech there to take care of animals who were being boarded and couldn't answer any questions about records. I said, "Tell her it's for Hubert." The TLAC person said, "I'm supposed to tell you that this would be for Hubert." Then she said, "Oh! Okay! Sure, I can wait!...Okay. Great! Okay! Yes, I promise! Yes, really!" and such.

A little flustered, she turned to me and said, "She says I have to give you a dog."

As George, Jacob, and I got into the car, Jacob asked me how one named a dog. I said, "Well, I generally name them after beings I really admire." Jacob thought for a bit, mused about naming him Scooby Doo, and then said, "George Washington."

We still have the "behavioral evaluation" they did of George at TLAC. It says: "Friendly & confident pup. High level of arousal. Very wiggly, jumps up a lot, somewhat mouthy, pushy & assertive w? body & paws. Resisted teeth exam, but forgiving."

I still maintain that is a perfect description of Jacob.

Hubert did five figure eights in the back yard when we brought George home. Jim was surprised, but took it all in stride.

Why I am a Christian

This came up on a friend's page, who asked the question, much as one might ask, "Why do you eat goose rather than turkey on Christmas Day?" I am taking the question in the spirit in which it was offered. That is, she was not inviting me to convert her to eating goose, something I would not presume to do, nor is she trying to persuade me to eat turkey. It was a question asked in wonderment, and it is something I will answer with wonderment.

But, first, some ground clearing. I don't normally explain my religious views. I take very seriously Jesus' recommendation that people pray in their closets. I think that piety too often becomes a performance, a kind of card one plays in a cynical moment (I could name various Presidential candidates, but I will refrain). I don't normally explain my eating habits, either. But, when friends ask, I answer. I take this as that kind of conversation.

Second, I don't believe in Hell. I do believe that God is not me. I mean, really, really NOT me. Nothing like me. I believe in an omniscient and omnipotent God; that is, a God who is wildly other from me. Since I don't know where my keys are, and I can't make my students staple their papers, I can't even imagined what it would be like to know everything and be all powerful. Therefore, I have NO clue what God's intentions are. I don't know that God requires faith in him as your savior (and I will argue into the ground anyone who presents texts they think mean that); I know very little about what God wants of other people--I'm plenty busy trying to figure out what God wants from me, and I assume God will do God's job a lot better than I. So, I don't believe that any explanation of my faith is a demonstration of why I am saved and you are not. Determining who is saved and who is not is God's job, not mine. When I can manage to take attendance on a regular basis, and get my Works Cited pages correct, and various other aspects of my job I screw up on a regular basis, I'll consider taking on God's job. Till then, any explanation of my faith is just that and nothing more.

God has that whole omniscient and omnipotent thing going, and I don't. I think most religious quarrels start from people forgetting that--they are not God; they can't even imagine what it is like to be God. Let God do God's job, and let's do (as competently as we are capable) the jobs we were given.

And here I go back to Ayer. There is a kind of knowledge that is falsifiable. Let's call that science. There is a kind that is not. Let's call that faith.That's like saying there are two horses, or two cars, or two fruits. Or whatever. That isn't to say that one is better than another, although under some circumstances one might be better than the other. If I want to get a load of dirt, a mini Cooper sucks, but if I just want to drive back and forth on a city street, it's awesome. Pretending that one only needs a pickup seems to me just as silly as pretending that one only needs a Cooper. Faith has different purposes from science.

Finally, I'll say that there seems to me an analogy about teaching writing. I often meet people who had terrible writing teachers, who seemed to think that their job was smacking students who made comma errors. And so people who think "teaching writing" means "smacking students who make comma errors" will tell me all the reasons that "teaching writing" sucks. And, really, I think they're right, if that's what "teaching writing" means. But that isn't all it means. But it's a confusing conversation to have because, really, there are people out there (a lot of them) who have this bigoted narrow AWFUL idea about teaching writing. So, I can't say, "But that isn't what 'teaching writing' means, because they know that's what it means--that's what almost every writing teacher has meant to them!The people who are the most devout atheist, in my experience, are people who think--for really, really, really good reason--that "having faith" means being aggressively stupid and actively hateful (like smacking students who make comma errors). And they're absolutely correct that that version of "having faith" is just awful. It makes a virtue of blind obedience and the most jaw-dropping versions of bigotry and ignorance and ... well, all that. They're right. That isn't bad.But, that isn't "having faith" is having faith anymore than smacking comma errors is "teaching writing."

So, having faith, for me, means having faith in the sublimity of God's creation, it is faith that I do not know the answers to much of anything right now, but that God will lead me there if, with patience, study, and humility, I keep asking the questions. I know that God asks that I be compassionate (especially toward those less fortunate), patient, and persistent. And I know that I completely and totally fail to do any of those things, and that God continues to ask me to do what I have never managed to do for more than moments at a time. I have no reason to think that God's will for me and the world is any different from one what gets to via good science (in fact, at the moments that the church has diverted most from God it has also invoked bad science). I believe that this is what Jesus said, and Jesus helps me on this path. If other people get by without this faith, good for them. If they have no faith or a different faith or ... well, whatever... good for them. If they are hateful and claim to speak for Jesus, I will bitch to high heaven. If they claim to speak for me, then I will get ugly. Perhaps I should be more compassionate to them; I honestly don't know how to manage that. But I do know that atheists and agnostics worry me a whole lot less than people who think they have God on their side.

Why I don't watch candidates' debates

I gave a quick explanation as to why I don’t watch debates, but I wanted to give a slightly longer one. I also wanted to explain my disappointment in how progressives are responding to the debates.

A very old criticism of American media is that it evades coverage of policies qua policies—instead, the media uses the “horse race” schema. So, when a candidate announces a budget, the media coverage consists of quotes from various people (on “both” sides) as to how this budget figures into the race between the major parties. An announcement of a policy is framed as a play by a football team.

The media doesn’t get experts who say whether the policy has been tried before, whether it worked, how it differs from things that have been tried. There are various explanations as to why the media does that, but I’m persuaded by the explanation that the “horse race” schema looks more balanced, and fits popular (and wrong) notions of objectivity. So, coverage that gave experts saying a policy is ineffective (even if “balanced” by people saying it is effective) is more likely to have people threaten to cancel the subscription or change the channel than the horse race schema.

But, a public sphere in which people do not debate policies is disastrous for a community.

I study history, especially instances when nation-states decided to adopt a bad policy (“bad” in the sense that it didn’t or couldn’t achieve the goals they said they had as a community, violated what they said their basic ethics were, undermined their ability to do what the community said was important, and/or actually destroyed the community). And a consistent feature of these incidents is that the community didn’t debate the policies qua policies, especially not the feasibility and solvency of the policies.

Instead, they framed the political sphere as an arena in which two parties engaged in combat for power. Party politics was seen as an expression of ingroup loyalty, so debating a policy qua a policy (because it necessarily requires listening to the opposition, and may involve conceding some points) was seen as weakness.

In other words, in those instances, the public sphere is a place in which one demonstrates one’s loyalty to one’s group, and not one in which one argues about policies.

The basic function of the “debates,” as they currently stand, is to enable and broadcast such performances.

The basic notion is that voters watch these performances, and decide who best performs loyalty to, and embodiment of, their group. This model is based on two absolutely false assumptions about politics and identity.

• First, it assumes that “character” matters—that what makes a person a good candidate is that s/he is the sort of person who makes good decisions.

• Second, it assumes that we can infer that “character” by watching something like a debate.

Those assumptions are both false because, especially certain kinds of people, and people under certain kinds of situations, tend to equate “character” with decisiveness.

The desire that people generally have is to reduce uncertainty, and this is often done through increasing ingroup identification. If people are already prone to authoritarianism (that is, uncomfortable with uncertainty), they will be more extremely drawn to more extreme groups because such groups reduce uncertainty. They aren’t “extreme” groups in the sense of being “far from center,” but in other ways:

Extremist groups have closed and carefully guarded boundaries, uniform attitudes,  values, and membership, and inflexible customs. They are rigidly and hierarchically structured with a  clearly delineated chain of authority, and substantial intolerance of internal dissent and criticism. Such groups are often ethnocentric, inward looking, and suspicious and disparaging of outsiders. They engage in relatively asocial and overtly assertive actions that resemble collective narcissism […]—grandiosity, self-importance, envy, arrogance, haughtiness, entitlement, exploitativeneness, excessive admiration, lack of empathy, fantasies of unlimited success, and feelings of special/unique/high status. (Hogg, 25, “Self-Uncertainty…” in Hogg and Blaylock, Extremism and the Psychology of Uncertainty).

Down that road lies fascism.

More important, perhaps, or not unrelated, down that road lies the complete failure to debate policies qua policies.

The preference for “decisiveness” signifies a desire for closure, an escape from uncertainty (an “escape from freedom” Fromm famously called it). Ariel Kruglanski and others did a study of fictional presidential candidates, one of which was “stable and consistent, capable of making quick decisions, and one who holds firm beliefs” and the other was “flexible and adaptive, capable of seeing multiple perspectives, and one who believes in challenging ideas.” The need for closure (that is, the more that a person desired to escape uncertainty) correlated to preferring the “decisive” candidate.

One of many problems with that response to uncertainty is that taking action—any action—quickly is presumed to be better than “sitting” (that’s always in the description) and thinking. And, of course, that’s patently false. Taking a bad action is worse than doing nothing.

Another problem is that decisiveness is assumed to be marked by how self-assured and dogmatic the candidate is. So, for instance, anyone paying attention should mark Romeny as incredibly low in terms of “decisiveness.” His continual advocacy of opposing policies, his reversing himself and reversing himself again, either signify indecisiveness or profound dishonesty. Either way, he does not have a good “character.”

Romney refuses to accept responsibility for his previous actions; he simply disowns them. His campaign has framed (and the media, with its horse race orientation, has helped him to do so) his previous actions and statements as Governor, as head of Bain, even as a candidate last spring as off-topic, and irrelevant to his future actions. His campaign has even (successfully, again with the collusion of the media) managed to keep the “details” of his budget off of the table for discussion—“details,” by the way, meaning “numbers that would make this even remotely plausible.”

But, people who value “character,” and look to the debates to enable them to judge character, don’t mean consistency, accuracy, responsibility, or even honesty. They mean performance of ingroup identify. They don’t mean honesty; they mean sincerity (and assume those are the same). They don’t mean consistency, they mean “certainty.” And by “certainty,” they don’t mean “accurate;” they mean “dogmatic” and “simple.” A person who is certain of him/herself, who says the situation is simple, and who dismisses deliberation and complexity, is a very reassuring kind of person to people who are uncomfortable with uncertainty.

Thus, that is what Romney conveyed, and Obama failed to convey, in the debates. To  see the media praise Romney for shifting the stasis from policy to “looking like he feels certain” is disheartening, but to be expected. It’s what the American media does. But to see progressives lose faith in Obama because he failed to go along with that shift is tremendously frustrating and saddening.

That many progressives are disappointed in Obama for his policies is not surprising, and can lead to an interesting discussion about policies and voting. But, really, progressives shouldn’t be condemning Obama for his failure to perform ingroup identification with “certainty” and “decisiveness.” Progressives should be rejected that whole debate as a red herring. Because it is.

Policies matter. Public debates should be about policy. They should not be opportunities for candidates to signify unwavering (for the time being) commitment to their membership in the ingroup. Of course, not everyone agrees with me. There have been those who have argued that disputing policies (“doctrines” in this translation) is a sign of dithering, and all we need is a great and decisive leader:

A nation inclines to doctrines only when it is poor in personalities. But when a man of historic greatness stands at its head, one who not only wants to lead but is able to do so, the people will follow him with its whole heart, giving him its willing and obedient allegiance. Even more, it will put all of its love and their blind confidence behind him and his work.

Why do delusional people put FACTS in caps?

A friend sent this along, inviting me to comment on it. I sent back a short reply, but decided it might be useful to do a slightly longer one. The quoted material (wandering around facebook, apparently) is pretty typical of a way of arguing that I run across a lot. It's closely associated with train wrecks in public deliberation--basically, it's a good example of how *not* to think, write, or argue about politics.

What strikes me about this method of "arguing" (it's really about asserting, and not even arguments) is that people who engage in it always insist on FACTS (and they almost always capitalize that word) when their own argument is singularly short on "facts," at least as defined by logicians, argumentation theorists, philosophers, lawyers, or anyone who thinks carefully about the issues of epistemology, ontology, and discourse. Loosely, there are various different ways that people in various fields define the term "fact." I'm not advocating any particular one, just pointing out that this kind of discourse doesn't rely on "facts" for its conclusions by *any* of the definitions. And that's interesting (I speculate below why people like this insist so strongly on FACTS when they don't actually use any to reach their conclusions).

1. A statement about external reality (that is, not about the subjective state of an individual) that can be seen by anyone who observes the phenomena. A statement about reality that you believe strongly, but is not shared by all observers, is an opinion, not a fact. The statement must be accepted as an accurate representation of reality by *all* observers, not just ones who agree with the conclusion.
   
2. A statement about external reality (again, not about the personal beliefs of an individual or even community) that can be falsified or verified through an appeal to criteria not particular to the situation (for instance, by some appeal to standards that apply across ingroup/outgroup membership).
   
3. A statement about an observable phenomenon to which people who are impartial (that is, have no stand on the issue) agree.
   
4. A statement to which all interlocutors agree (this is the legal definition, and it means a statement to which parties will stipulate).
   
5. A statement to which all observers agree (by this definition, a fact is not necessarily true, just not worth arguing about).
   

Most of the screed is opinion, and not about facts. Quite a few of the assertions are counterfactual (aka, not "facts" because they are false statements), some involve what could be called "facts" (at least by one of the definitions) but are unrelated to the conclusion the author (I assume either a woman or a gay man, since Romney stirs a fire in the author's pants [see the first argument], so I don't know if male or female--I'll call the author Terry, a nice, gender-neutral name that I like) draws. The main issue with the argument is that it appeals to premises I doubt Terry actually believes.

Okay, here is the screed:

I invite any arguments to these FACTS. I do not invite anything arguments with anything other than the subjects and statements posted. If you have to stray from what is on here, then I already know you know what is on here is true, or you'd stay with the subject.

It's a little unclear what "the subject" is--presumably, anyone who tries to argue about Romney's policies? And, of course, if that is the argument, it factually incorrect, and I doubt even the author agrees with the premise. The premise is: if you change the subject, it is because you agree with the assertions. Of course, a person might actually think the assertions are trivial, incoherent, are on the wrong stasis, or raise other issues.

If I were to say to Terry, if you change the subject (which I will decide if you have done), that means you agree with me, I doubt Terry would grant me those conditions.

TODAY'S MUST READ AND PAST ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW! Why Mitt Romney is Unlikable! A lot is being said in the media about Mitt Romney not being "likable" or that he doesn't "relate well" to people. Frankly, we struggled to understand why. So after much research, we have come up with a Top Ten List to explain this "unlikablility." Top Ten Reasons To Dislike Mitt Romney:
1. Drop-dead, collar-ad handsome with gracious, statesmanlike aura. Looks like every central casting's #1 choice for Commander-in-Chief.

Opinion, not a fact. It isn't something to which a neutral observer would agree, nor to which all interlocutors agree.

Probably more important, it appeals to a premise that is factually incorrect (and which I doubt Terry believes): that whether a person warms Terry's groin is even relevant to a person's being a good President. Plenty of terrible Presidents were good-looking (I don't know whether they would turn on Terry, since I don't know Terry's standards, but many people found them attractive). I doubt, for instance, that Terry would think that a President who raised taxes eleven times, tripled the deficit, increased unemployment, apologized for American repeatedly (he went on what some people call "the apology tour"), signed pro-choice legislation, and "ballooned" federal spending was a good President, right? Or that one who got the US into unnecessary wars, had such irresponsible money practices that he caused one of the worst panics and depressions, thoroughly politicized government hiring, and used the power of the government to destroy opposition political parties? (Granted, he threw mud in the faces of people who advocated state nullification of federal laws, which Terry may or may not like.) Both tremendously handsome men.Meanwhile, people like Lincoln and Eisenhower were not movie star good-looking. Nixon was ugly, and Clinton handsome. So, since Terry likes issuing challenges, here's a challenge: admit the criterion is irrelevant, or say that Eisenhower was not a good President.

2. Been married to ONE woman his entire life, and has been faithful to her, including through her bouts with breast cancer and MS.

Well, I suppose that makes him a better man than Reagan, Eisenhower, FDR, Bush, Gingrich, Jefferson, and, well, most Presidents. But, no better than Obama.

3. No scandals or skeletons in his closet. (How boring is that?)

Factually incorrect. Huge skeletons about what happened with Bain while he was taking money from them as CEO. There is also the issue of where he paid taxes when he voted in Massachussetts. (Can you say voter fraud?) Speaking of voter fraud, he hired a group that had already been caught repeatedly destroying Dem registration cards--do you want to call that intimidation or just corruption? And, of course, all that money he hid in Switzerland to evade taxes. Then there are all the lies he has told--about himself and his positions and Obama. There is all that bailout money he took (including re Detroit), his record of bullying gays, impersonating cops, evading Vietnam...and, well, seriously, too many to list. So, many, many skeletons.

4. Can't speak in a fake, southern, "black preacher voice" when necessary.

Factually incorrect. Of course he can.

5. Highly intelligent. Graduated cum laude from both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School...and by the way, his academic records are NOT sealed.

Factually incorrect. Terry has been listening to Limbaugh and the GOP noise machine which have been claiming that Obama's records are "sealed." Well, either Obama's aren't, or Romney's are. I don't care which way you call it, but you have to call it one way or the other. All academic records are private, and can't be released without the person's permission. Neither Obama nor Romney has released their academic records, as far as I know. (I also don't know how many people graduate cum laude per year--I think Terry is confusing cum laude with either magna or summa cum laude.) So, if Obama's academic records are "sealed," then so are Romney's.Btw, I think this is a cunning use of racist codewords. Academic records aren't sealed, but juvenile criminal records are. I think this is a deliberate attempt on the part of the GOP Noise Machine to associate Obama with criminality, 'cuz he's black. Terry's use of the word "sealed," and his/her failure to notice that Romney's are just as "sealed" (if you want "sealed" records, let's talk about Bush's) shows this strategy works with people like Terry.

6. Doesn't smoke or drink alcohol, and has never done drugs, not even in the counter-culture age when he went to college. Too square for today's America?

Well, a negative is non-falsifiable, so this only fits a few definitions of fact, but certainly this appeals to a premise I doubt Terry believes--that such characteristics are desirable in a President, since no Presidents would fit this criteria. I mean, if Terry wants to say that Washington was a terrible President, s/he can go for it.

7. Represents an America of "yesterday", where people believed in God, went to Church, didn't screw around, worked hard, and became a SUCCESS!

I'm particularly interested in this topos in people who insist on FACTS. Of course , this is all counterfactual--it's false even on the face of it (everyone became a success?). It's an appeal to nostalgia, to a belief about how things used to be. And, anyone with a shallow knowledge of history knows image of the past isn't true--belief in God has waxed and waned in the US, as has church attendance (which is high right now), premarital and extramarital sex also wax and wane, and working hard didn't always lead to people being a success. But, if Terry really thinks things used to be better, s/he can enjoy defending slavery and segregation. I wait with bated breath.So, just to be clear: not facts, but false assertions.

8. Has a family of five great sons....and none of them have police records or are in drug rehab. But of course, they were raised by a stay-at-home mom, and that "choice" deserves America's scorn.

Hey, just like Obama! Unless Terry thinks that having two daughters isn't as good as having sons. But, surely, Terry isn't a sexist bigot? And, of course, Jenna Bush did get busted for underage drinking and having a fake id. So, Terry thinks Bush wasn't fit to be President?

9. Oh yes.....he's a MORMON. We need to be very afraid of that very strange religion that teaches its members to be clean-living, patriotic, fiscally conservative, charitable, self-reliant, and honest.

I am SO glad that Terry thinks fear-mongering about religion is stupid. I do too. Oh, wait, Terry engages in it. So, Terry appeals to a premise s/he doesn't believe.

10. And one more point.....pundits say because of his wealth, he can't relate to ordinary Americans. I guess that's because he made that money HIMSELF.....as opposed to marrying it or inheriting it from Dad. Apparently, he didn't understand that actually working at a job and earning your own money made you unrelatable to Americans

Straw man. And sheer opinion. Actually, not even as informed as opinion. Terry has NO (the caps were for you, Terry) idea how Romney made his money. I want to emphasize that: Terry is making a claim on the basis of no evidence whatsoever because Romney has deliberately ensured that no one can have that evidence. And Terry says no skeletons? Really?No one knows about Romney's source of income, because, unlike every other recent Presidential candidate, he won't release his taxes--because the skeletons are rattling hard. So, Terry is kind of lying by claiming to have knowledge s/he doesn't have.

And then we get what these sorts of people do really often--a series of items (some of which really are facts) but are logically unrelated to any claim Terry seems to be making.

. ****************************** *********************** Personal Information: His full Name is: Willard Mitt Romney He was Born: March 12, 1947 and is 65 years old. His Father: George W. Romney, former Governor of the State of Michigan He was raised in Bloomfield Hills , Michigan He is Married to Ann Romney since 1969; they five children. Education: B.A. from Brigham Young University, J.D. and M.B.A. from Harvard University Religion: Mormon - The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints Working Background: After high school, he spent 30 months in France as a Mormon missionary.
After going to both Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School simultaneously, he passed the Michigan bar exam, but never worked as an attorney.
In 1984, he co-founded Bain Capital a private equity investment firm, one of the largest such firms in the United States.
In 1994, he ran for Senator of Massachusetts and lost to Ted Kennedy.
He was President and CEO of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.
In 2002, he was elected Governor of the State of Massachusetts where he eliminated a 1.5 billion deficit.
Some Interesting Facts about Romney: Bain Capital, starting with one small office supply store in Massachusetts, turned it into Staples; now over 2,000 stores employing 90,000 people.
Bain Capital also worked to perform the same kinds of business miracles again and again, with companies like Domino's, Sealy, Brookstone, Weather Channel,Burger King, Warner Music Group, Dollarama,Home Depot Supply and many others.
He was an unpaid volunteer campaign worker for his dad's gubernatorial campaign 1 year.
He was an unpaid intern in his dad's governor's office for eight years.
He was an unpaid bishop and state president of his church for ten years.
He was an unpaid President of the Salt Lake Olympic Committee for three years.
He took no salary and was the unpaid Governor of Massachusetts for four years.
He gave his entire inheritance from his father to charity.
Mitt Romney is one of the wealthiest self-made men in our country but has given more back to its citizens in terms of money, service and time than most men.
And in 2011 Mitt Romney gave over $4 million to charity, almost 19% of his income.... Just for comparison purposes, Obama gave 1% and Joe Biden gave $300 or .0013%.
Mitt Romney is Trustworthy: He will show us his birth certificate He will show us his high school and college transcripts. He will show us his social security card. He will show us his law degree. He will show us his draft notice. He will show us his medical records. He will show us his income tax records. He will show us he has nothing to hide. Mitt Romney's background, experience and trustworthiness show him to be a great leader and an excellent citizen for President of the United States.
You may think that Romney may not be the best representative the Republicans could have selected. At least I know what religion he is, and that he won't desecrate the flag, bow down to foreign powers, or practice fiscal irresponsibility. I know he has the ability to turn this financial debacle that the current regime has gotten us into. We won't like all the things necessary to recover from this debt, but someone with Romney's background can do it. But, on the minus side, he never was a "Community Organizer", never took drugs or smoked pot, never got drunk, did not associate with communists or terrorists, nor did he attend a church whose pastor called for God to damn the US.

This is a field day of unrelated and sometimes false statements, but I'll just mention the end--Terry knows what religion Obama is (Christian), assuming that Terry's knowledge is even remotely related to facts. The current regime hasn't gotten us into this debt--Bush did that (and that is a fact), with exactly the policies that Romney says he will follow. (You can dispute whether that is a fact, since one could plausibly argue that I have no more idea what Romney will actually do than Terry has any idea about how Romney made his money--we're both making wild guesses, because Romney won't say.) Romney's background doesn't make him able to handle the government; he can't do what he did at Bain (I'm not sure whether that's opinion or false claim on Terry's part). Terry needs to know more about the American Family Association; and keep in mind that Falwell said God had damned America. Various pastors at the "Values" summit Romney attended have made statements easily as extreme as Wright. Obama criticized Wright; has Romney criticized Robertson, Fischer, the FRI, FRC, or NARTH?Okay, so this is all a long way of saying that Terry has a lot of opinions, and no coherent argument (that is, the evidence doesn't merit the claims) and basically is saying, "OBAMA BLARGH!!!!! I LIKE ROMNEY!!!!" So, it's all opinion, a lot of irrelevant factoids, and a lot of lies. So, why does someone whose argument has no basis in fact put fact in caps? That's what I've noticed over and over. (And not just with Romney supporters--not all of whom are this disconnected from reality, and some of whom can make arguments grounded in facts, but they don't put FACTS in caps.) The people whose arguments are least connected to facts are the ones most likely to put the term in caps. Okay, so here are some notions people have tossed out.

• projection. They know, deep in their heart of hearts, that their beliefs have no basis in reality, and so engage in defensive projection.
• the Big Lie. They know, deep in their heart of hearts, that their beliefs have no basis in reality, and hope to persuade others to share them through insisting on how true they are. So, calling their beliefs (a mix of opinions and false statements) FACTS is a kind of braggadocio, hoping to cover how weak their case is.
• they really don't think in terms of external reality. That is, for them, a "fact" is a belief they hold strongly. They only engage in deductive reasoning, and therefore mean, by the word "fact," something like "a statement that must be true if my other beliefs are true." That means they are authoritarians, politically and epistemologically. Research says that people like this are wrong more than others, and wrong in the same ways (because they can't learn from their mistakes). They are especially wrong about themselves, often rewriting their own personal history in order to make their own sense of self coherent (that is, they can't admit they made mistakes, so simply claim they never made them).
• they are "social knowers." That is, they judge the accuracy of a statement by the extent to which people like them say these things. So, they sincerely believe that these statements MUST be true, since people like them say so. 

There is some research that suggests people tend to get more like this as they age--this position is cognitively easier (since it dismisses uncertainty) than various other positions, and people increasingly avoid cognitively challenging situations as they age.

Anyway, here's your long answer.

Why You Should Finish Your Diss

This started out as email, but then I thought, given the job market, maybe I should make it a note.

On January 30, 2009, Thomas Benton, in an article called "Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go" in the Chronicle of Higher Educationsaid that, among the bad reasons that students go on to graduate students in the humanities is that:

They received high grades and a lot of praise from their professors, and they are not finding similar encouragement outside of an academic environment. They want to return to a context in which they feel validated.

That may be true of the students with whom Benton works; I wouldn't know. It may be a sort of self-selection process, but that doesn’t describe the sort of students with whom I tend to work. On the contrary, they can find academia very not validating--these are people who could go to law school and do quite well (and they know it) and yet they choose to remain in academia. And sometimes they find it kind of grinding on the soul.

There are moments when there are crises of faith, and I think the job market has created more than the normal share. The problem that students seem to have, I think, is that they worry that they chose academia over something like law school because being an attorney seemed to be a career that would be both selfish and unfulfilling. It might be personally satisfying insofar as the pay is good, but the hours are long, and the work just seems to be cog-in-a-wheel kind of thing--helping corporations be corporations or something.

Yet, if graduate school is just an evasion of the "real" world (as Benton suggests), or a place one goes for personal validation, it's simply a stupider version of the attorney tradeoff--it's narcissistic, and the pay isn't even very good. If you're going to sell your soul and engage in pointless work, you at least ought to get a good price, right? And it's when students start thinking that way that they get a crisis of faith. When I thought someone was having a crisis of faith, I tried to describe why I think what we do matters (a previous note), but it's funny that it was entirely why our teaching matters. I said, in a nutshell, "We teach citizens that issues can be talked through and should be thought through, that difference is a virtue, and that divided we stand."

But, high school teachers do that, too, so why write a dissertation? Why publish? So, for what it's worth, I thought maybe describing the crisis of faith I had in graduate school might be helpful, especially since I've since come to two other stances regarding scholarship anyway.

In graduate school, I decided that there were, basically, three tiers of really productive scholars. The first tier is made up of people who constitute the primaries, really--people like Arendt, Derrida, Foucault, Habermas. The second tier is made up of people who interpret those folks (people like Benhabib, Culler, Eagleton). The third tier relies on the second tier in order to apply the arguments of the first to something--politics, literature, pedagogy. In graduate school I figured that, if I was lucky, and was firing on all cylinders, and held it at full throttle, I could run a good race, maybe, in the third tier. I still think that's true.

So, I said to various people, who the fuck needs another third tier scholar? And my answer at that point was: no one. But, I was a good teacher of undergrads, and a lame teacher of high school students. Hence, the answer was also: I would do enough scholarship to enable me to teach. I still think that's a perfectly fine answer, even though it's no longer my motivation. It's the "I love having dogs, and it means I have to pick up poop" approach to scholarship.

But, at some point, I got really interested in the questions my scholarship pursued, so I shifted to the second answer that third tier scholarship matters. My trying to figure out answer to various questions--why do some people like seeing themselves as voices in the wilderness, why are some people so recalcitrant about admitting error, why are some people terrified of complexity--made me a better teacher. So, I started doing scholarship because I was interested in what answers I could find in the research, and because I thought it helped me teach. And it does.

And then something funny started happening. I started meeting people who said that my scholarship helped them in their teaching and scholarship (Hi, Craig!). Granted, chances are that they're just really smart, and they read something smart into my work, but I'm fine with that. The point is that I stopped seeing my scholarship in really isolated (and profoundly narcissistic) ways. I'm not a scholar; I'm one of a bunch of people doing a certain kind of work--trying to think through American approaches to public argumentation, and trying to make it better. The militaristic way (since academia is given to militaristic metaphors) is that I'm a hoplite holding up my shield. The better metaphor, taken from Phaedrus is that scholarship--everyone's scholarship--is a seed thrown over the wall, and you hope someone comes along and waters it. So, I throw a seed, and I try to water the seeds I see.

Anyway, this is all a long way of saying that a dissertation won't change the world, but it might be a part of a life that can help change the world. I hope.

When you aren't sure you want to finish your Phd

[Someone else had posted a note about that long dark teatime of the soul that hits while writing a diss, especially when there are problems shaping the project, and I started trying to write back. It got too long, and I decided to post it. The fact is that I don't know, and I'm hoping that someone else has thought this through better than I.]

So, you've gotten to the point of ABD and then hit some kind of snag. A bad one.

I used to think that the metaphor of snag came from knitting or tatting or something along those lines, in which case it was a temporary setback that might, at worst, require that you undo a line or two and then do it right. But, I've come to realize it probably comes from steamboats. A snag was a dead tree that was in the water, and it could be really devastating--it could take down a boat, in which case, the goal was simply to get off the boat without drowning. This is all by way of saying that hitting a snag isn't a trivial thing.

When I was in grad school, and I and my friends would have moments of despair, people would say, "Oh you have to finish--you're so close." It made me want to kick someone in the shins. Writing a dissertation isn't some trivial task that one does at the end of coursework--it isn't like tying a bow on a present or something. Writing a dissertation is harder than all the coursework and exams put together.

And since some people seemed to hang on trying to write a dissertation they didn't want to write for reasons that weren't really very motivating and therefore just hovered and made themselves miserable, I came to think that people who didn't really want a Phd probably should go ahead and call it quits ABD. I didn't see any value in a Phd other than getting a job as a prof, so if you don't want a job as a prof, you should cut your losses.

When I nearly left academia, I was really surprised to find that my Phd was valued by people--all sorts of odd people in odd places. I was thinking about becoming a dog trainer, and the one I was working with loved the idea of having a Phd on his flyers. Someone I talked to about being a consultant also loved that idea (about having a Phd on his staff--not on the dog trainer's staff). If I had gone into law school, it would have helped that too. There are some fields where it's really an advantage to have a Phd--anything that involves consulting, for instance.

And then I started to notice that sometimes people seemed kind of wounded by having not finished. It was almost as though they never got over it, and were unable to see it as a decision they had made with their own agency. The decision to remain ABD was awful for them.

So then I started to think that maybe there were virtues in finishing a diss even if a person wasn't certain about wanting to become a prof.

What this means is that I have since then been not at all clear whether people who hit a snag should do everything they can to salvage the boat and get it going again, or should just swim to shore. I think it's really important that I give people good advice on that point, and I can't.

What's really hard for me about giving advice is that everyone loses heart--completely, totally, and down to the cellular level--at many moments in the process of writing a diss (and a book, for that matter). So, the fact that someone has moments of believing that scrubbing the men's room at a bus station would be preferable to writing a diss doesn't necessarily mean anything.

All I can think of is that so many people describe having a moment of complete and total horror at the idea of getting married--some of the people who've had those moments of horror get married and live happily ever after, and some of them get married and realize that moment had been a moment of truth. And I've never been able to figure out when it's just cold feet and when it's a glimpse of reality in regard to relationships or dissertations.

So, we're back at the beginning. You've hit a snag and don't know if you should push through. Should you? I don't know.

I have a sort of intuition about some of the things that seem to be good indicators. For instance, if you're a junkie for the teaching, then finish. If you love your project--if you find the question fascinating, or think it might be important--then finish. I couldn't stop thinking about something that John Muir wrote in his diary when he was trying to figure out how Yosemite Valley was formed--"In dreams I read sheets of glacial writing." If that is the case--if there is some question that has its hooks in you--but you don't want to be a prof, then write the diss you want to write. If your committee doesn't want you to write that diss, get a new committee.

If you don't particularly want the degree, and you don't care about the project, then cutting your losses might be wise. What if you have moments of wanting it? Moments of rage? Moments of interest and moments of boredom? Well, since that's how most people feel while finishing a Phd, I don't know.

Ten Bad Assumptions about Public Deliberation

1. Bad deliberations happen when and only when people have the wrong feelings (especially when the wrong people have them) and bad intentions (and people know when they have bad intentions).
2. Having the wrong feelings makes you (or signals that you are?) irrational; rationality is signaled by a tone (dispassionate, aware but dismissive of the opposition), diction, rationality markers, and expert data.
3. Hatred of an outgroup is always self-conscious and always total (you hate every single thing about them), so that you are rational about the outgroup if you did not consciously intend harm, and are able to identify any virtue in the outgroup.
4. The just world hypothesis—this world, with the current distribution of goods, is just; any other arrangement is unjust. The social order is grounded in the ontic logos.
5. Good decisions come from good people because good people have good judgment (and bad people have bad judgment).
6. Good judgment is signaled by having the right feelings (especially about me), espousing my values, and being certain.
7. Good judgment marks itself as happening in a moment of clarity, so people who have good judgment are certain; a person's degree of certainty is a consequence of the degree of clarity with which that person sees the situation (i.e., certainty is a cognitive state).
8. If a statement is true (which is determined by my agreeing with it) then it must be logical.
9. My memories of what the world was like when I was a child are accurate representations of what that world was like for everyone at the time.
10. That a particular method (of hermeneutics, conflict resolution, or political arrangement, or anything else) has repeatedly led to bad outcomes is no reasonto doubt the method, but can be attributed to the people who engaged in the method having had the wrong feelings and intentions. Recommitting to the method with new feelings will lead to good outcomes.