Month: August 2025

Back when it appeared that being pro-democracy was good for business, companies  such as Coca Cola, Delta and Major League Baseball condemned Georgia’s restrictive voter laws and some even took action by taking their business out of the state. This angered Senator Mitch McConnell and he warned corporations to “…stay out of politics.” Unironically, he hastened to add that this does not include political contributions. This statement exemplified the Republican view that corporations should be paying politicians to do politics for them and not doing it themselves.   

McConnell went on to threaten corporations, asserting that they were acting like a “woke parallel government.” While Republicans advanced the narrative that the out-of-control left was pushing cancel culture, Republicans urged consumers to boycott these companies to pressure them into changing their behavior. They also called for state legislatures to punish these companies using the power of the state.

Some might accuse the right and McConnell of being inconsistent. On the one hand, this does have some plausibility. After all, when the right attacks what they call “cancel culture” they profess to value free expression and contend that the left is acting wrongly by coercing corporations into doing their bidding. Alternatively, they accuse the corporations of being woke and imposing their values on others and thus presumably imposing on consumer choice by restricting or changing products. But McConnell was explicitly threatening corporations with the power of the state. Republicans profess to accept that corporations are people, that they thus have free speech rights, and that money is speech. As such, this violated their professed principles: they were the ones trying to cancel free speech. McConnell also explicitly advanced two inconsistent views: corporations should stay out of politics while making political contributions.  But that is impossible: campaign contributions are political by nature.

It is interesting to compare this past situation with what happened to Tesla. After Elon Musk set out in apparent ignorance and malice to chainsaw the government, Tesla became the target of boycotts and even sabotage. While the right has famously boycotted “woke” companies, Trump claimed that the boycott was illegal and essentially did a commercial for Tesla.

On the other hand, if one ignores the surface rhetoric of the Republicans and McConnell and attempts to sort out their likely principle, then the inconsistency is dissolved. McConnell’s core principle seems to be that corporations should do what benefits McConnell. Engaging in political speech that opposes the Republican agenda of voter restriction was contrary to McConnell and Republican interests, so they threatened corporations to “cancel” their speech. Corporate contributions to McConnell and his fellow Republicans serve their interests, so they wanted the money to keep flowing. Corporate contributions to the Democrats also help the Republicans as Democrats who accept corporate money act in the interests of these corporations, which is what Republicans usually want.

The Republican party has shifted from a traditional pro-business approach to focus more on appealing to the Trump base and this has put them at odds with corporations. But one should not be tempted to think that the Republicans are going leftist and becoming pro-worker and anti-business.

The left has historically been critical of corporate involvement in politics for a variety of reasons. One is that corporations have great economic power and court rulings have enabled them to translate this directly into effectively unlimited political power. The other is that corporations tend to use their economic and political powers in ways that are detrimental to what the left professes to care about such as the environment and people outside of the top 1%. The left has, however, learned to adapt to this corporate power. Some people have figured out that they can influence corporations through consumer pressure and thus, somewhat ironically, sometimes get corporations to support what the right would tend to see as leftist, such as maximizing citizen participation in elections. It is not that corporations were taken over by woke leftists; they were simply keeping an eye on the bottom line: they rely on consumers for their profits and need to ensure that they present the right brand and products to maximize profits. Because most Americans were not on the far right, appealing to most consumers sometimes made corporations appear to be on the left in some ways.

But, as I have argued in other essays, these corporations are do not have leftist policies that would harm their bottom line. Corporations focus on profits and act accordingly. We did not see, for example, Amazon embracing unions. We did not see McDonald’s rushing to raise workers’ salaries and benefits. As such, the alleged wokeness of corporations was mostly just marketing and branding. If they were truly leftist, then they would not have operated as they did. That said, these corporations have done things that Republicans saw as contrary to their interests.

I do partially agree with McConnell: corporate influence in politics needs to be reduced. McConnell gets this when he is the one being harmed. But my view is based on a broader principle: I am not solely concerned with the harm to me; I am concerned about the general harm. When corporations acted in ways McConnell liked, he was happy to allow them unlimited expression. But if they expressed views he disliked, he was quick to threaten to “cancel” them for exercising the powers the Republicans gave them. McConnell’s solution was for the state to use its coercive power to threaten corporations into acting as Republicans wish. But this does not address the underlying problem: corporations have disproportionate power, and this is corrosive to democracy. Reducing that power would still allow the corporate rulers to express themselves, but it would allow others to use their freedom of expression more effectively. As my usual analogy goes, corporate America has a stadium sound system to blast its speech while most citizens are limited to trying to yell over that blast. So, we should not “cancel” corporations, but their power needs to checked and balanced.

Big corporations possess incredible economic power and many on the left are critical of how this power is used against people. For example, Amazon is infamous for putting such severe restraints on workers that they sometimes have to urinate in bottles. Thanks to Republicans and pro-corporate Democrats, laws and court rulings (such as Citizens United)  enabled these corporations to translate economic power directly into political power. This is also criticized by many on the left and they note how the United States is an oligarchy rather than a democracy. This political power manifests itself in such things as anti-union laws, de-regulation, and tax breaks. With the re-election of Trump, America has largely abandoned the pretense of being a democracy and rulership has been openly handed to the billionaire class.

In the past, Republicans favored increasing the economic power of corporations and often assisted them in increasing their political power. This might have been partially motivated by their pro-business ideology, but it was certainly motivated by the contributions and benefits they received for advancing these interests.  As such, it seemed odd when Republicans started professing opposition to some corporations. Social media and tech companies seem to be the favorite targets, despite the efforts of their billionaire owners to buy influence with Trump.

While Republicans profess to favor deregulation and embrace the free market, they were very angry about social media and tech companies and claimed  these companies were part of cancel culture.  I do understand why they are so angry. For years, social media companies profited from extremism—including that of the American right and it must have felt like a betrayal when they briefly took steps to counter extremism. While the narrative on the right is that these companies became woke or that out-of-control leftists took control, this was not the case. These companies acted based on pragmatism focused on profit. When Facebook changed its policy once again in response to Trump’s election, that was also pragmatism. Zuckerberg wants to make money and avoid prison.

Just a few years ago, extremism had damaged the brands of these companies, and they were under pressure to do something. There might have been some concern that their enabling extremism had gone too far. While they were accusations that they had gone “woke” their business practices revealed that they are not woke leftists. For example, Amazon is virulently anti-union, and Facebook is hardly a worker’s paradise. And now they are eager to appease Trump, although he has excellent reasons to ensure that they remain afraid of what he might have done to them.

Republicans did have pragmatic reasons to be angry at these social media and tech companies for acting against extremism and enforcing their terms of service. First, a significant percentage of the right’s base consists of active extremists, and they are very useful to Republicans. Second, the Republican party relies heavily on “moderate” racism, sexism, xenophobia, and intolerance as political tools.

One could argue that such people are not racists, they are just very concerned that brown people are illegally entering the United States to commit crimes, steal jobs, exploit social services, vote illegally, spread disease, and replace white Americans.  One problem with these views is that they are not supported by facts. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes. While the impact of migration on the economy is complicated, the evidence is that there is a positive link between immigration and economic growth. The old racist trope of diseased migrants is untrue; in fact migrants help fight disease. And, of course, the replacement hypothesis is an absurd racist hobgoblin.

Interestingly, Paul Waldman makes a solid case that Republicans want critics to call their policies “racist” and this is part of their plan. As he notes, “…they know that their political success depends on motivating their base through a particular racial narrative…” If Waldman is right, then it can be argued that the tech companies were helping the Republicans at the same time they were hurting them. After all, while the tech companies “purge” of social media did hurt the right, it also handed them a victimization narrative that they exploited to activate their base. With Trump’s re-election, social media and tech companies have essentially surrendered to him, although one might argue that they are happy to go along with him.

In addition to racism, the right also uses disinformation and misinformation in their political battles. As noted in other essays on cancellation, the cancel culture narrative of the right was built largely on disinformation. At best it is based on hyperbole. The right’s response to the pandemic was also an exercise in disinformation and misinformation. And, of course, the biggest disinformation campaign was the big lie about the 2020 presidential election. This lie was the foundation for nationwide efforts to restrict voting access, most famously in Georgia. Since Republicans rely extensively on these tools, it makes sense that they were angry about social media companies “cancelling” their lies and that Trump set out to capture these companies after his re-election. Trump understands the power of propaganda and its critical role in his power.

While the Republicans did so for narrowly selfish reasons, they were right to be critical of the power of the social media and tech companies as these companies present real dangers. As I have argued elsewhere, these companies control most mediums of expression available to the masses. While they are not covered by the First Amendment, their power to limit free expression is concerning as they can effectively silence and amplify as they wish.

Leftists have long argued that this gives them too much power, and the right agreed—at least when it involved their very narrow and selfish interests. But the right wants social media to be a safe space for racism, sexism, xenophobia, misinformation, and disinformation. As such, while there is a very real problem with social media, the solution cannot be to simply let the far right do as they wish as they would simply spread hate and lies to advance their political goals. This is not to say that the left is composed of angels; harmful activity and lies of the left also need to be kept in check while allowing maximum freedom of expression. As always, there must be a balance between the freedom of expression and protecting people from harm.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MarkZuckerberg-crop.jpg

Back in the last pandemic, the right was busy with their eternal manufactured culture war. Manufacturing this war often involves using hyperbole and lies. Some years ago, the right was outraged about  Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head. The right claimed Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head were cancelled by the left. In my adopted state of Florida and other states, the right has been active purging school libraries and managing educational content to ensure it is ideologically acceptable. It is, one must infer, only cancellation when the left is accused of doing it.

As I noted in earlier essays, Dr. Seuss’ books have not been banned. While the right’s narrative around Dr. Seuss implied that popular books such as the Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham were cancelled,  the reality is that Dr. Seuss’ estate chose to stop publishing six books because they  contain illustrations that “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.” These books seem to have been  poor sellers and most people seem unfamiliar with them.

Politicians and pundits on the right generally did not focus on these six books, and instead mislead the public by implying either that all Dr. Seuss books had been cancelled or the popular books had been cancelled. For example, Ted Cruz sold signed (by him) copies of Green Eggs and Ham and raised $125,000. He claimed that this was strike back against cancel culture. While Cruz has a history with that book, it is not one of the six books that the estate decided to stop selling  making this a bit of absurdist political theater.

At the time, the right was clever to not focus on the six books that were taken out of print. Some of them do have racist content and at the time explicitly defending racist content would have been less than ideal.  However, the right’s base gets the message: the right has not rushed to battle censorship in general, such as efforts to get books removed from libraries. Instead, they focus on defending what seems to be racist and sexist content.

There were also good reasons to use the popular books as their examples: “cancelling” Green Eggs and Ham would be absurd.  By lying, the right can claim that “the left” is crazy and out of control. To use an analogy, consider Coca Cola’s decision to stop manufacturing Tab. Imagine someone wanted to make that into a culture war issue, but realized that most people do not care about Tab and Tab sales were very weak. So instead of talking about Tab, they held up cans of Coke and Diet Coke, implying that these sodas had been “cancelled” despite being readily available. Imagine Ted Cruz selling signed cans of Coke, claiming that he will use the money to strike back against cancel culture. The same thing happened with Dr. Seuss: the estate stopped publishing their version of Tab but are still selling their Coke and Diet Coke.

As I have argued before, when companies change their product lines it is usually because they think doing so will increase profits. If the “radical left” controlled companies to the degree the right claimed, they would use that power in more meaningful ways, such as forcing companies to improve wages, benefits and working conditions. As such, the idea that the out-of-control left is abusing hapless companies is absurd. Now, onto branding.

Some years ago, Hasbro decided to change the Mr. Potato Head brand to Potato Head. Mr. Potato Head and Mrs. Potato Head are still available and sold under those names. The company did make the statement that “Hasbro is making sure all feel welcome in the Potato Head world by officially dropping the Mr. from the Mr. Potato Head brand name and logo to promote gender equality and inclusion.” There is no evidence that Hasbro was subject to coercion or forced to make this decision.

Some on the right claimed Mr. Potato Head had been cancelled but were not clear about what they meant. Some seem to have meant that Mr. Potato Head would no longer be manufactured, which was not true. Others might have simply been angry that Hasbro changed “Mr. Potato Head” to “Potato Head” while maintaining the Mr. and Mrs. versions of the toys. On the face of it, this seemed to be a silly fight: a toy company slightly changed the brand name for a toy line while retaining the toys. A deeper look reveals that it was, in fact, a silly fight.

But from a political standpoint, this was a clever move: by misleading their base about the facts, they generated outrage against “the left” and distracted them away from the fact that the Republicans seem to have little in the way of policies or interest in engaging with meaningful problems. They also do not need to do anything: there is no problem to solve, no results to achieve. There is just an opportunity for unfounded outrage that will feed the base until they can find a situation suitable for manufacturing pointless outrage.

Corporations changing their products and brands does not appear to create any meaningful problems  as they are simply changing to maximize their profits. Consumer tastes and values change over time and that is what happened then and what will continue to happen. There was nothing sinister going on in these cases, no problem to solve, no need of state action. The right is simply manufacturing a problem where none currently exists, other than the “problem” that consumers change over time.

From a pragmatic standpoint, Republicans generally oppose D.C. statehood because it would almost certainly result in two Democratic senators and some Democratic House members. Democrats generally support statehood for this reason. Whatever objections the Republicans raise against D.C. statehood must be considered in the context of 1889 and 1890. During this time, the Republican party adopted a pro big business stance that cost them the popular majority. In response, they used their control of Congress to add six new states—a strategy that has paid off to this day. Modern Republicans can say that they were not involved in that process; they merely continue to benefit from it. They could even condemn the political strategy used back then, since doing so involves no risk and no cost. But should D.C. become a state?

One of the main tactics used by Republicans to argue against D.C. statehood is claiming that the Democrats have bad motives: they want to use any political advantage to bring about their “socialist utopia.” On the one hand, this can be seen as a Wicked Motivation fallacy. This is a type of ad hominem (or genetic fallacy) in which a claim is rejected because the person or group making the claim is alleged to have a wicked motive. The form looks like this:

 

Premise 1: Person or Group A makes claim C.

Premise 2: A has wicked motives.

Conclusion: C is false.

 

This is a fallacy because motivations do not prove or disprove a claim. It is reasonable to consider motives when assessing credibility or morality, but that is distinct from determining whether a claim is true. For example, this is clearly bad logic:

 

Premise 1: Bill says that police should not murder citizens.

Premise 2: But Bill hates the police and just wants to signal his virtues to the other libs.

Conclusion: Police should murder citizens.

 

In the case of D.C. statehood, the wicked motives fallacy would look like this:

 

Premise 1: The Democrats claim D.C. should be a state.

Premise 2: The Democrats just want power so they can jam their socialist utopia down the throat of America.

Conclusion: D.C. should not be a state.

 

To be fair to the Republicans, they can make their case as a utilitarian moral argument. The gist is that D.C. should not be a state because if it were a state, then the Democrats would be able to advance their polices and (Republicans claim) these policies would do more harm than good (for those who matter). The Democrats’ likely counter would be that their policies would do more good than harm (for those who matter). Interestingly, both parties can be right. The Democrats’ policies might be less beneficial to those who matter to the Republicans while being more beneficial to those who matter to the Democrats. Those siding with the Republicans will find their moral case appealing: the Democrats would likely help the less well-off (and themselves) more than the Republicans would and this would be wrong (from the Republican perspective). Laying aside the utilitarian arguments, there is the question of whether D.C. qualifies as a state. The easy answer is it does. The traditional requirements of statehood (established in 1953) are:

 

 

These conditions have all been met. While some claim that D.C.’s population is too low to be a state, it has a population of 692,683 while Wyoming only has a population of 578,759. As such, if Wyoming has enough people to be a state, then so does D.C. Republicans could advance the argument that the people of D.C. fail to meet the first condition using the classic method of lying.  But should Republicans oppose statehood?

From a selfish and pragmatic standpoint, the Republicans should oppose D.C. statehood: they are a (numerical) minority party and hold office disproportionately to the number of people they represent. This is enabled by a diverse set of political strategies ranging from gerrymandering to voter suppression. This approach explicitly rejects the notion of majority rule and the idea that political legitimacy rests on the consent of the governed. That is, this rejects democracy. But what if you accept majority rule and the idea that legitimacy depends on consent?

As it now stands, the people of D.C. are not represented in Congress and are not able to provide their consent (via representative). D.C. does get electoral college votes, despite not being a state, but this system has its own anti-democratic and anti-majority rule issues. Since I consistently hold to the foundational principles of representative democracy, I believe that D.C. should be a state: it meets the requirements and to deny its citizens representation is undemocratic. Or perhaps “unrepresentative” is a better term.

It could be countered that the citizens of D.C. choose to live there and thus voluntarily forgo representation; but one could have made that argument for any state before it became a state: people elected to live in parts of the country that were not (yet) states. So, if this argument were good, then it would apply to all the (non-original) states. But this is absurd.

At this point, an obvious attack against me is to point out that I tend to favor the Democrats over the Republicans and hence I am also operating based on wicked motives. That is, I just want the Democrats to win, and I would have a different position if the Republicans wanted to make part of Florida or Texas into a new state.

My reply is that my motives are irrelevant to the truth of my claims and the quality of my logic. Also, if the Republican proposed states met the conditions that qualify D.C. for statehood, then I would be consistent: they should also become states. This could, of course, lead to an absurd situation in which the political parties start carving up existing states to gain more senate seats and electoral college votes. The difference between creating a state out of a non-state and carving up existing states could be relevant to the argument, so a principled case could be made both for supporting D.C. as a state and rejecting carving up existing states to gain senate seats. That said, a case could be made for splitting up large population states to give the people slightly more proportional representation. For example, the tiny population of Wyoming gets the same number of senators as the hugely populated states of California, Texas and Florida. But that is a matter for another time.

In closing, D.C. does meet the requirements for statehood and its citizens are morally entitled to due representation in congress. As such, D.C. should be a state. The same reasoning applies to Puerto Rico, provided the citizens want it to become a state. And yes, I would have to accept North and South Texas, East and West Florida and so on if the Republicans wanted to start breaking up states in accord with the requirements of statehood.

During the last pandemic, I contracted COVID and it was the sickest I have been in my life. Not being a member of the ruling class, I had to rely solely on my immune system to get through it. I did not die but have had some lasting effects: persistent fatigue and breathing issues. These make running challenging and I struggle to get in over 40 miles a week, but it is likely that my years of running contributed to my ability to get through COVID.

When the vaccines became available to older Americans, I waited my turn. Florida eventually made them available to educators, but Governor DeSantis pointedly excluded higher education faculty and staff. Like most faculty at public colleges, I was required to return to the classroom. I was not overly concerned; surviving COVID is supposed to grant long-lasting immunity and being fired would be far more dangerous than getting COVID again.

Like everyone else on campus, I had to get bi-weekly COVID tests. Eventually the governor allowed everyone over 50 to get the vaccine, and I was able to get my first shot of Moderna at the community vaccination site on campus. I felt a bit rough after that shot. While waiting for my second shot, the possible issues with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine made the news and there were worries about vaccine availability. Fortunately, I was able to get my second shot.

While I got my vaccinations as soon as I could, some were hesitant. In some cases, this hesitation was rational: the vaccines were rolled out quickly by for-profit corporations and emergency use authorization were issued to allow their deployment. While testing was conducted, the timescale of the tests was limited, and possible long-term side effects were obviously a mystery at that time. Medical experts made educated estimates that the short-term benefits (not dying of COVID) outweigh any likely long-term effects. But these estimates were made based on many unknowns and it was (and is) rational to consider possible long-term consequences. That said, vaccines are well understood, and these vaccines were not crazy radical departures from established science. Given what we knew then, the rational bet favored getting the vaccine. Given what we know now, people should get the vaccine. Unfortunately, the current regime is appallingly anti-health and anti-science.

People also opposed getting vaccinated because of ideological reasons and this has only strengthened. Parents have, perhaps from the very best intentions, have condemned their children to illness and even death from preventable illnesses, like measles.

 Trump and some of his fellow Republicans politicized the pandemic for short term political gain at the expense of the well-being of citizens. While it is certain that some would resist vaccination on ideological grounds no matter what politicians say, Trump and his fellows fed this view and increased the size and intensity of the resistance to vaccination. Vaccination, like mask wearing, also became a macho issue: manly men might think that they do not need to be vaccinated.

At this point, the ideological battle is largely lost, and disease is emerging victorious across the United States. Biden did not try to compel people to get vaccinated, understanding that this would have caused people to double down on their opposition and give credence to the tyranny narrative. Instead, medical experts tried and are still trying to get employers, local doctors, and local leaders to encourage people to get vaccinated. Appeals to the public good have been weakened and the right seems to have completely abandoned this notion in so far as it involves people contributing to the public good. But there are those who will, correctly, point out that vaccination is not without risk.

When I first wrote about vaccination,  about 7 million people were vaccinated with the J&J vaccine. Six women between the ages of 18 and 48 developed cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) 6-13 days after getting their shot and one woman died. In response, the vaccine was suspended. Addressing this sort of situation is challenging. If you approach it with cold rationality and focus on the statistics, then you seem an uncaring monster, even when your objective is the safety and well-being of people. If you approach it emotionally and focus on the individuals impacted, then you seem caring and concerned. But making broad policy decisions based on such feelings can lead to large scale suffering and death. The solution is to follow our good dead friends Confucius and Aristotle: to hit the mean between the two extremes. If we are too coldly rational, then we will be seen as monsters and our efforts to do good will face opposition. If we are too emotional, then we can make bad decisions that hurt the many from a desire to protect the very few.

In terms of the cold facts, even if we assume that the vaccine caused the clots, then the odds of dying are (based on the available data) were about 1 in 7 million (for women 18-48). The odds of getting CVST are about 1 in 1 million (for women aged 18-48). These are objectively very good odds compared to other things that can kill you. The most sensible comparison is to the risk of death from COVID. While there are many factors that figure into your chances of dying from COVID, a person’s chances of dying from COVID are 36 to 78,571 times greater than dying from CVST from getting the J&J shot. There is also to cold fact that so far only women 18-48 have suffered from clotting, so people in other demographics might have no chance of dying from the vaccine. As such, if the choice is between the J&J vaccine or nothing, then the rational choice would have been the J&J vaccine. Likewise for other vaccinations, if we follow the cold calculations of survival.

As others have done, it is also instructive to re-consider the J&J vaccine in the context of other medications. While the types of clots caused are not identical, the odds of getting a blood clot from oral contraceptives is 3-9 in 10,000. The odds of getting a clot when not on oral contraceptive is 1-5 in 10,000 women and the odds of a women getting one while pregnant is 5-20 in 10,000. Like all analogies, this comparison is imperfect, but it does illustrate that even common medications are not without significant risk. Even the ubiquitous NSAIDs can have very serious side effects including death. While it might be thought that all these risks are the fault of irresponsible and greedy corporations, risks can be due simply to the interaction between chemicals and human bodies. After all, people can die from reactions to naturally occurring foods such as peanuts and shellfish.  Because of the complexity of human biochemistry and the variations between people, there is almost always the risk that a small percentage of the population will have an adverse or even fatal reaction to a pharmaceutical product, even when due care is taken. This is not to say that we should simply tolerate dangerous medicines, just that we need to be aware of what are likely to be unavoidable risks. 

As a final consideration, there are those who still argue that vaccination is a personal choice and they should be free to decide. On the one hand, they are right: a person has a general moral right to refuse medical treatment and vaccination. However, this does not entail that they have a right to freedom from all consequences of making this choice. To use an obvious analogy, a person can refuse to get the vaccinations that are required to travel to certain places, but this comes at the cost of not being able to travel. To use another analogy, a person has the right to own a car without brakes, but they do not have the right to take it out on the road.

On the other hand, the principle of harm would morally warrant requiring people to get vaccinated: the unvaccinated are reservoirs of the disease and “breeding grounds” for disease mutations. They could thus extend future pandemics significantly and thus endanger others and the economy. To the degree that they incubate new strains, they would also make it so that people would need to keep getting vaccinations against these strains. In short, this “freedom” would do considerable damage to society, which is good grounds for limiting a freedom. But as vaccines are part of the culture war, requiring them is becoming increasingly difficult, though doing so is as morally warranted as requiring people to have working brakes before getting on the road.

In closing, while vaccines are not without risk, vaccination is a safe and effective method of reducing the risk of getting sick or dying of a preventable disease. This is not to say that people should accept all vaccines uncritically, that would be a straw man of my position.

In epistemology, the problem of other minds is the challenge of proving that other beings have thoughts and feelings analogous to my own. A practical version of the problem is how to tell when someone is honest: how do I know their words match what they believe? But the version I am concerned with here is the problem of racist minds. That is, how do I know when someone is a racist? Racism, like dishonesty, comes in degrees. Just as everyone is a bit dishonest, everyone is a bit racist. But a person should not be labeled a liar unless they are significantly dishonest. The same applies to being a racist and a person should not be labeled as a racist unless their racism is significant. There is, of course, no exact boundary line defining when a person should be considered a liar or a racist. Fortunately, we can get by with imprecise standards and accept the existence of grey areas. To demand a precise line would, of course, fall for the line drawing fallacy.

It is important to distinguish racists from people who seem racist. One reason is that an accusation of racism can have serious consequences, and such claims should not be made lightly. Another reason is that racists should be exposed for what they are. What is needed are reliable tests for sorting out racists from non-racists.

The need for a test also arises in the classic problem of other minds. Descartes proposed a language-based test to solve the problem in the context of animals. Roughly put, if something uses true language, then it has a mind and thinks. Turing created his own variation on this test, one that is more famous than Descartes’ test. In the case of testing for racism, it is assumed that people have minds and that problem is bypassed (or ignored) for practical reasons.

It might be wondered why tests are needed. After all, many assume the only true racists are the blatant racists: they burn crosses, have Swastika tattoos, and openly use racist language. While these racists are easy to spot, there are more subtle racists who work at avoiding detection. In fact, coded racism has been a strategy in the United States for decades, most famously explained by Lee Atwater:

 

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

 

This illustrates the challenge of determining whether a person is racist: there are coded words and phrases used by racists that are not openly racist in their normal meaning, and they have many uses. First, they allow a racist plausible deniability: they can claim to be using the word or phrase in a non-racist manner. Second, it allows racists to recruit non-racists. People who are, for example, concerned about welfare fraud can be drawn into racism through that gateway. Third, it allows racists to signal each other while making the “normies” think critics are crazy. As an illustration, when I have tried to explain various code phrases used by racists to “normies” they often think I am either making it up or I accept a wacky woke conspiracy theory. So how does one pierce the veil and solve the problem of racist minds? Here are two useful guides.

As noted above, there code words and phrases used by racists that have non-racist surface meanings. One example is the use of “China virus” by Trump and his fellows during the last pandemic. On the face of it, this seems non-racist: they are referencing where the virus comes from. As I have argued in earlier essays, this use of “China virus” is racist. It makes use of the well-worn racist trope of foreigners bringing disease and Trump’s followers got the message: anti-Asian violence increased dramatically. But one might say, surely there are many people who use such words and phrases without racist intent. That is true and is what gives the racists cover and an opportunity for plausible denial. If only racists used a phrase or word, it would be dead giveaway.

So how does one know when a person is using such words and phrases in a racist manner and when they are not? One easy test is to see how they react to being informed of the racist connotation of the word or phrase. For example, if someone uses “China virus”, then one can inform them it has racist implications and is used by racists. If the person persists in using it despite being aware of its implications, then it is reasonable to conclude they are being racist. It might be objected that a non-racist might want to persist in using the term to “own the libs” or because they refuse to be “politically correct.” While this has some appeal, it can also be a strategy for concealing racism. It is, after all, reasonable to infer that a person who is dedicated to “owning the libs” in this manner is a racist.

To use an analogy, imagine someone who likes setting off fireworks in their backyard. They learn their neighbor has PTSD because they lost an arm, an eye, and friends to IEDs in Iraq and the fireworks really bother her. If they persist in setting of the fireworks despite this knowledge, it would be reasonable to believe they are an ass. After all, a decent person would not do that, even if they believed they had the right to do so. Likewise, a person who persists in using words and phrases that are racist code in contexts where the code is racist would provide evidence they are a racist. Or an ass.

 As the Atwater quote also notes, racism is often coded into policies and their justifications.  Migration provides a good example of this sort of coding. Only the most blatant racists would openly say that they want to keep non-whites out of the United States because of white supremacy. As such, racists have adopted the approach of arguing for restrictions that focus on non-whites using justifications that are not openly racist. The stock reasons given are that migrants are coming here to commit crimes, steal jobs, steal social services and that migrants are bringing diseases.

On the face of it, these are not racist reasons: the arguments for restricting immigration use economic and safety concerns. It just happens that these restrictions target non-white migrants. So how does one distinguish between racists and non-racists who advance such arguments? After all, racists have worked hard to recruit non-racists into using their arguments and they can have considerable appeal. A sensible person would, after all, be concerned if migrants were committing crimes, stealing jobs, and spreading disease.

In most cases where the racists advance coded arguments, they are also making untrue or misleading claims.  This allows for an effective test. Using the migration example, the claims that migrants are stealing jobs, committing crimes and so on are either false or presented in a misleading manner.

If a person is a non-racist and supports, for example, restrictions on migration because they believe these claims, then proving that these claims are false would change their mind. So, if Sally supports restrictions on migration because of her concerns that migrants are doing all those terrible things she is told they do but she learns that these claims are not true or greatly exaggerated, then her position should change. If Sally is a racist, then these are not her real reasons—so she will not change her mind and will persist in lying and exaggerating. As such, a good general test is to find cases where a person claims to believe something that is coded racism and not supported by evidence. If the person is not a racist, they should be amendable to changing their views when the reasons they profess for accepting their views are disproven.

It can be countered that people can become very invested in beliefs and double-down in the face of disproof. Might there not be cases in which a non-racist simply refuses to accept disproof about, for example, claims about migrants? This is certainly possible, but one must wonder why they would be so committed to holding to a disproven view. It makes sense for a racist to do this since their belief is based on racism. But a non-racist would be irrational to do this; although it must be admitted that people are often irrational. As such, the test would not be able to reliably distinguish between racists and people with an irrational commitment to such views.

But, going back to the fireworks analogy, this would seem to be like a person who insists they are not an ass, they just refuse to believe that their neighbor is bothered by the fireworks despite all the overwhelming evidence. This is logically possible, but the better explanation would be that they are, in fact, an ass.

Transgender people, especially transgender athletes are now among the favored targets of the right. Pretending to be concerned about fairness for women, Republican lawmakers have been busy passing laws banning transgender athletes from competition.

On the face of it, these laws seem aimed at saying to the Republican base “we hate and fear transgender people as much as we think you do so keep voting for us.” Obviously, proponents of these laws do not make this claim; they pretend they are very concerned about women and girls being treated fairly.

Republicans profess to be the party of small government, but these laws expand the involvement of the state and as could have agents of the state looking at genitals. This is the same party that raged against mask mandates as too invasive. But, as they have established, the Republican party has no respect for ethics, consistency or logic.

Like Republicans, I profess a belief in minimal government but differ in being consistent.  I have argued in other essays that the state should limit its use of law to cases in which a harm needs to be addressed by law and the good the law outweighs any harms of the law. Those who back the transathlete bans have been hard pressed to find meaningful harms. While inconsistent with their professed love of small government and freedom, these laws are consistent with their approach to voter rights in that they support imposing restrictions where no meaningful harm exists.  But perhaps they are motivated by their professed principle of fairness to women. Let us test this hypothesis.

If the Republicans believe laws should ensure women are treated fairly, then they should pass other laws aimed at addressing serious inequalities between men and women. One example is the persistent pay gap between men and women. In Florida, women make 85 cents for every dollar made by men. This is a harm being done to women and is unfair, yet while the Republican controlled government of Florida was busy with ant-transgender laws, they have been uninterested in this pay gap. One could counter that this is a concern for the private sector, but one can then point to the gender pay gap in Florida government: something the government could and should address. One could also run down a checklist of the areas where women are treated unfairly relative to men and look for evidence that the Republicans have addressed these cases of unfairness. As such, the claim that they are motivated by concerns about fair treatment of women and girls is just another lie. If they were truly motivated by this principle, they would be actively addressing the significant unfairness faced by women and girls and not just focused on ant-transgender laws wearing the mask of fairness.

As a practical response, whenever the Republicans make the fairness argument against transgender athletes, they should be immediately challenged about what else they are going to do to adress fairness. For example, if they are so concerned about fairness, they should ratify the ERA. 

 

Before, during and after the 2020 election many Republicans followed Trump’s lead and lied about widespread voter/election fraud. Trump and his allies had their days in court, losing all but one case. Trump’s allies never claimed fraud in court and confined their lies to the public forum. Using their false claims of widespread fraud and pointing to the doubt their lies created, they claimed they needed to take actions aimed at trying to restrict voting.

As election fraud is not widespread, they had no significant problem to address. Instead, the restrictions they imposed, such as those in Georgia, are clearly aimed at suppressing black voters. They are not aimed at voter fraud, as a brief reflection on most restrictions will reveal. As an illustration, one law limits early voting to the hours of 9 to 5 (county registrars can extend this to 7 to 7). How this would reduce fraud is unclear, but it makes it harder for voters with less flexible schedules. As another example, Republicans done things to increase the lines at polling places predominantly used by minorities while making it a misdemeanor to provide voters with water. There is no plausible account of how this would counter fraud.

If the Republican arguments are taken at face value, the following principles would seem to be in operation. The first is that politicians must address the concerns of the public (even when politicians manufacture the concerns). The second is that restriction of fundamental rights is warranted to address even miniscule problems that cause little harm. So, let us apply these principles to gun control. I do not, of course, expect a consistency argument to affect Republicans as they have little respect for truth, ethics or logic.

Most Americans claim that gun violence is a problem and most Americans support gun control. Given the Republican argument about voting laws, it follows that politicians must act to restrict gun rights. After all, if public concerns about (lies about) election fraud warrant restricting voting rights, then public concerns about guns warrants restricting gun rights. But the actions of Republicans show their professed principle is also a lie: they do not apply it consistently and only use it to “justify” actions they want to take for other reasons. Now to the addressing of harms.

While data on gun violence is limited, there were 19,379 deaths caused by gun violence in the United States in 2020. This excludes deaths caused by suicide using a gun; that number was 24.090 in 202o. In contrast, a careful review of claims about voter/election fraud in 2020 revealed that the number of cases is vanishingly small. If the Republican argument warrants restrictions on voting, then it would (by analogical reasoning) provide exceptionally strong support for gun control laws. After all, if voting must be carefully restricted by law to address a vanishingly small number of cases (that were caught and dealt with using current laws) then the much more significant harms arising from gun ownership must be addressed with new laws of equal or greater restrictiveness.

One could counter that passing gun control laws would violate the Second Amendment; but the obvious response is that the right to vote is more fundamental than any constitutional right. After all, the moral legitimacy of the law depends on the consent of the governed and restricting the right to vote reduces the legitimacy of the state in proportion to those restrictions.

One could, of course, embrace the state of nature argument of Thomas Hobbes and contend that the right of self-defense is the most fundamental right. While this has some appeal, this would not show that the restrictions on voting rights are warranted. Reasoning that it is acceptable to restrict one basic right but not another because the other is more basic is poor logic. To illustrate, this would be like arguing that enslaving people or stealing their property is acceptable because the right to life is more basic than these other rights (since liberty and property rights require one to be alive). Once again, Republican action shows that their concern is not with mitigating harms. If they cared about mitigating harm to citizens, they would be applying this principle consistently. As such, their actions reveal their true principles: they want to suppress voting so they can gain and hold onto power illegitimately and they want to serve the interest of the gun lobby over the safety of the American people.

In response to each mass shooting, Democrats usually propose gun control legislation while Republicans offer “thoughts and prayers” while blocking the Democrats as best they can.  Some years ago, Republican Senator John Kennedy said that “We do not need more gun control. We need more idiot control.” He then endeavored to make an argument by analogy to counter arguments for gun control. In this argument, Kennedy asserted that “…And I’m not trying to equate these two, but we have a lot of drunk drivers in America that kill a lot of people. We ought to try to combat that too. But I think what many folks on my side of the aisle are saying is that the answer is not to get rid of all sober drivers.”

Given what he said, he seemed to be comparing mass shooters with drunk drivers. While that seems clear, sorting out the rest of the argument requires a bit more work. Looking at it in the most charitable way, his inference seems to be that because getting rid of sober drivers would not solve the problem of drunk drivers, it follows (by analogy) that getting rid of non-mass shooter gun owners would not solve the problem of mass shootings. On this interpretation, he is right but right in a vacuous way: getting rid of people who do not do something would not solve the problem of people who do that thing.

But since his reply is to proposals for gun regulation, what he seemed to be inferring is that since getting rid of sober drivers would not stop drunk driving, gun control should be rejected. This reasoning requires that  proposed gun control methods be on par with eliminating sober drivers. I think he might have meant taking away everyone’s cars (including those of sober drivers) as a means of addressing drunk driving. As such, the analogy would only hold in the case of proposals to take away all guns. While there have been such proposals, they are generally not made by mainstream Democrats. So, while the analogy does apply to proposals to eliminate all guns, it does not apply to proposals to increase gun control, such as universal background checks or even assault weapon bans. An assault weapon ban would be analogous to addressing drunk driving by getting rid of vehicles favored by drunk drivers and are also unusually good at causing death and injury. As an aside, one problem with how some Republicans debate gun control is that they make straw person arguments: asserting that the plan is to take away all guns. This is a bad faith argument as there are many other approaches to gun control. The usual response to pointing this out is the Slippery Slope fallacy: asserting that even moderate proposals must lead to taking away all guns. This is also a bad faith argument.

As others noted, Kennedy made a strategic error with this analogy. While it was intended to refute gun control proposals, his comparison invited people to compare guns and cars. Just as some people support eliminating all privately owned guns, there those who propose eliminating privately owned cars for similar reasons: private ownership and the operation of dangerous machines results in many preventable deaths. As such, one could accept the analogy and turn it around: we should handle both problems by eliminating private ownership and the operation of deadly machines. But most people do not want to eliminate private ownership of cars or guns. However, Kennedy’s car analogy can still be used in favor of gun control.

As others have noted, cars are strictly regulated. To legally drive, one must be licensed and insured. Cars must be registered with the state and licensed. Their use is also regulated, and safety features are mandatory. When people are incapable of operating a vehicle safely or get convicted of certain crimes (like driving drunk), then they lose the right to drive. This is because cars are dangerous machines and can do a great deal of harm, even by accident.

Going with Kennedy’s automotive analogy, the same should apply to guns. A person should be licensed and insured to own one, their operation should be carefully regulated, and safety features should be mandated by law. When a person cannot possess a firearm safely or they commit certain crimes, they should lose their right to possess a gun.

The obvious reply is that on some interpretations of the Second Amendment, individual gun ownership is a constitutional right and hence such restrictions would be unconstitutional. One obvious counter is that existing restrictions on guns are constitutional (that is, they have not been struck down) and there are well-established precedents for limiting this right. And, of course, all rights are restricted and limited. For example, the First Amendment has many limitations many of which have been imposed by pro-gun Republicans who giveth to the Second with one hand and taketh from the First with the other. Another obvious reply is to point out that the Republicans who oppose gun control are the same ones who pass laws to restrict voting rights. The right to vote is the foundation of democracy and if they are willing to restrict this right on the grounds of their (usually false) claims about the harms of almost non-existent voter fraud, they have no principled way to object to strict gun control laws as the harms of not having adequate gun control are evident. Perhaps a bi—partisan solution is to have people vote by shooting ballots with guns: every citizen of voting ages gets a gun and the right to vote.

In epistemology the problem of the external world is the challenge of proving that I know that entities exist other than me. Even if it is assumed that there is an external world, there remains the problem of other minds: the challenge of proving that I can know that there is at least one other being that has a mind. A common version of this problem tends to assume other beings exist, and the challenge is to prove that I can know that these other beings have (or lack) minds. Our good dead friend Descartes offered the best-known effort to solve the problem of the external world and in trying to solve this problem he also, perhaps unintentionally, attempted to solve the problem of other minds.

In his Meditations Descartes set out to create an infallible foundation of knowledge starting with his method of doubting his beliefs until he found a belief he could not doubt.  As part of this project, he hoped to solve the problem of the external world. After his doubting spree in the first Meditation, he took his belief that he thinks and the belief that he exists to both be certain and indubitable.  In trying to prove that something exists other than him, Descartes attempts to prove that God exists. And so, he attempted to solve the problem of the external world by solving a version of the problem of other minds. Proving that God exists would prove that another mind exists and that something exists other than him, thus solving a limited version of each problem.

While Descartes grinds through a plethora of proofs, his key reasoning for the purposes of this essay is his notion that the cause of a belief must contain as much reality as the belief itself. Roughly put, you can think of this reasoning as analogous to inferring that whatever charged a mobile phone battery must have at least as much power as in in the battery (assuming the battery charged from zero). Descartes based this reasoning on the principle that something cannot arise from nothing.

Roughly put, Descartes claimed that his idea of God is such that he could not be the cause of this idea—it had to be caused by something external to him. For example, Descartes notes that God is perfect and argues that he could not get the idea of a perfect being from his imperfect self. As another example, Descartes claims that God is infinite and that he (Descartes) could not create the idea of infinity from himself. From this he infers that God exists. He then goes on to argue that since God is perfect it follows that God is not a deceiver. Descartes then concludes that since God created us, we can generally trust our senses and thus we can infer that there is an external world. While this does not address the common version of the problem of other minds, it does offer a solution to the narrowest version: it does attempt to show that Descartes is not the only mind. In philosophical terms, success would refute solipsism. That is the philosophical view that I am the only being in existence. Or, alternatively, it could be taken as the view that I am the only mind (thinking being) that exists. While I think that Descartes’ efforts failed, his attempted solution to the problem of other minds provides a model that I will steal. My goal is modest: I am not trying to prove that other people have minds, I am just endeavoring to show that there is at least one other mind. I will do this with an aesthetic argument that was inspired by the combination of watching Wandavision and teaching Epistemology via Zoom during the last pandemic.

While teaching my Epistemology class at squares on Zoom I mentioned Wandavision as an example and had the realization that the quality of the show could be used to argue for the existence of other minds. While Descartes argued that the cause of an idea must equal or exceed the reality of the idea, I will replace this with the principle that the cause of an idea must equal or exceed the quality of the idea in terms of creativity. As such, to show that something exists other than me, I just need to find an idea (or ideas) whose content exceeds my own creativity. That is, I need to find ideas that I could not create. This is extremely easy.

Wandavision, the show that inspired this argument, exceeds my creative abilities as I lack the skill and talent to write such a series. I can obviously say the same about many other movies, books, and stories since they are beyond my skill to create. As a writer, I am aware of the limits of my abilities and can safely draw these conclusions. I can also add other art, such as music and drawing. I know my skills at music (none) and drawing (very limited) and know that I lack the ability to create most works I have heard or seen. Since I could not create such works, there must be at least one other mind that is creating them. There might be only one other mind and it could be electing to create works of varying degrees. Or there might be many other minds creating these works. This does not, of course, show that there is an external world of the sort I think exists. It could be (as Descartes considered) just me and one other being who is causing all these ideas in my mind. While I would condemn the deception, I must thank them for the high-quality work they create for me. As such, I can infer that at least one other mind exists and that I am not alone. But there are, as always, counter arguments.

One obvious counter argument is that I have an unknown talent or skill that allows me to create without being aware I am doing so. That is, I cannot consciously create things of such quality but can somehow do so without being aware I am doing it. One could point to dreams as an obvious example of how this might work: the best explanation for dreams is that their content comes from me although I (usually) lack conscious control. My reply is to point out that my dreams do not match the quality of the works I encounter in the waking world in terms of the stories. Any art I see or music I hear in my dreams are always mere copies from when I am awake (or think I am awake) or of low quality. As such, I would seem to lack such a hidden and unknown faculty of creativity. I do agree it is not a logical impossibility that I have such a faculty, but there is no evidence for its existing beyond explaining my aesthetic experiences without any other mind existing, which would be ad hoc.

A second obvious counter is to allow that something exists other than me, but this is not another mind. That is, the aesthetic experiences are created in a “mechanical” way without the sort of thinking that would be done by a mind. To use an analogy, this would be like having an AI creating content without having a mind. There are two responses to this. The first is that this would still entail that I was not the only being in existence as there would also be this creator entity. The second is that such a high degree of creativity would seem to require a mind. It would pass tests analogous to the Turing test and thus it would be reasonable to infer there is at least one other mind behind these creative works.

In closing, there are two main possibilities. The first is that I alone exist, and I have an unknown faculty of creativity that vastly exceeds my known skills and talents (and I can never consciously use these hidden abilities). The second is that at least one other being exists and is creating these works that are beyond my skill.