Thought for the Day

[KnightHawk 2.0]

I would also like to add election poll workers to the list of essential workers.

I completely agree 1000% on both of your posts.

[Stavros]

Dr Anthony Fauci would be an obvious choice too.

[broncofan]

Dr Anthony Fauci would be an obvious choice too.

His dedication to public health as well as his integrity and professionalism are impressive. He's not infallible but he seems to be uniformly respected among infectious disease docs and epidemiologists. His work during the AIDS crisis makes him a heroic figure but for people who didn't know him he re-established himself as someone who even Trump occasionally hesitated to criticize because of his obvious integrity in the face of partisan fantasies.

In an era in which we're struggling to find public servants committed to public welfare, in the midst of what Obama aptly termed an "epistemological crisis", he was a truly incorruptible and honest person, even if he wasn't always able to break through.

[broncofan]

What is even more remarkable is that his role in promoting public health has overshadowed the fact that he is undoubtedly an influential scientist. Consider these facts from his bio:

"In 2003, an Institute for Scientific Information study indicated that in the twenty year period from 1983 to 2002, Dr. Fauci was the 13th most-cited scientist among the 2.5 to 3 million authors in all disciplines throughout the world who published articles in scientific journals during that time frame. Dr. Fauci was the world's 10th most-cited HIV/AIDS researcher in the period 1996-2006."

These accomplishments are especially noteworthy in light of the fact that Trump called him "wrong about everything" and right-wing science deniers tried to portray him as hapless. Yet he was never drawn into an ego contest. He didn't fall back on his credentials or his achievements in science to defend his record but maintained a laser-like focus on public health as he has for decades.

Good call Stavros.

[Stavros]

I think it is clear that Fauci gets cheap remarks from his President because the President is convinced he knows all there is to know, and that on that basis, nobody knows more than he does. It may help explain his lamentable performance this year, but I suspect it is also the case that he is genuinely uninterested in science. What is just as tragic is that he seems surrounded by people who share the same perspective, incapable of protecting centuries of American knowledge if it conflicts with their personal grip on power.

Contrast that with TIME's 'Kid of the Year' and the Honorees. This is what inspiration looks and sounds like, based on a solid commitment to the people and the world around them, and if some cynic steps forward to call that 'Virtue signalling' or some disparaging phrase, look again, because the ideas they are promoting are often cost-effective, practical and really can help change something, however small, for good.

I wonder how many 15 year olds would say in answer to the question about day to day reading: "My pop-culture news is actually MIT Tech Review. I read it constantly."

Here though is one important takeway, when Ms Rao says

"And then when I was in second or third grade, I started thinking about how can we use science and technology to create social change. I was like 10 when I told my parents that I wanted to research carbon nanotube sensor technology at the Denver Water quality research lab..."

I can imagine in some schools, even some parents saying no, or the opportunity to do such things just not exist. The worst thing that can happen to any child is for a parent, a teacher, a school, or an education authority to say no, or discourage, be it for lack of interest in the child, lack of money, lack of politics. This young woman must be in a nurturing and positive environment, but I wonder how many her age her might also be conscious of what they can do, have the same opportunity? It is a problem children face everywhere, not just in the US.

But such an inspring group of young people whose creative energy to do things that benefit others stands in contrast to the highest office in the land, mired in coruption and self-regard, campaigning for a lost cause. I know where my sympathies lie, and it is with the future these young people want to create.

https://time.com/5916772/kid-of-the-year-2020/

[Stavros]

"Trump will leave office having executed about a quarter of all federal death-row prisoners, despite waning support for capital punishment among both Democrats and Republicans.

In a recent interview with the Associated Press, William Barr defended the extension of executions into the post-election period, saying he will probably schedule more before he departs the justice department. A Biden administration, the attorney general said, should keep it up.
“I think the way to stop the death penalty is to repeal the death penalty,” Barr said. “But if you ask juries to impose and juries impose it, then it should be carried out.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...up-under-trump

Hmmmm...so to the man who held up a Bible outside a Washington DC church, and the man who give a speech defending, indeed, promoting Christian morals, what would Jesus say?

'Execute those Prisoners'

or

'Forgive those prisoners'.

Well, which is it?

[broncofan]

“I think the way to stop the death penalty is to repeal the death penalty,” Barr said. “But if you ask juries to impose and juries impose it, then it should be carried out.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...up-under-trump

Even if one believes the death penalty has a role in our criminal justice system and I don't, it doesn't follow that they believe its use should ever be sped up during a lame duck period. I am not defending its use, because even with procedural safeguards it's used in a biased and inconsistent way, but it's even worse if the process is expedited.

I do think there is a problem with vindictiveness in public life and the death penalty feeds into that. If it doesn't have a role in deterring crimes and the idea that it somehow provides abstract justice isn't all that coherent, its use must serve some need people have to believe bad people are punished. What purpose does the attendance of family members of the victims at executions have except to signify that closure depends on knowledge that the perpetrator is meeting the same fate as his victim (w/o denying any sympathy to these families)?

I say all of this because I've started to notice myself feeling vindictive towards people I think have violated our social compact and behaved disgracefully. But does that serve any purpose or is it really this feeling of frustration that causes people to abandon principle because they don't know how it can be maintained in others?

[Stavros]

I am sure as a law student you were asked in an essay or exam question to define the differance between justice and revenge. It goes back to the origins of human society, how animal sacrifices were used to replace human sacrifice, how the execution of humans replaced animal sacrifice, suggesting a regression in human development. Jesus on the Cross pleading that his be the last human to be murdered by another, yet hundreds of years later in England his followers enacted the most gruesme physical punishments on men, often Priests, who refused to recognize the King as the Head of the Church instead of the Pope. One such Bishop, whose name forget, was strung up in public and hanged until he was barely conscious, whereupon the noose was loosened, he was, in a manner of speaking, de-cocked rather than de-frocked, his torso slit open from his neck to his abdomen so that his intestines spilled out into the open, and then they severed his head, his arms and his feet, to leave this thing in four parts to die. No wonder that Foucault pointed out that the Guillotine when it was introduced was considered a human form of execution.

In these cases, Execution was a punishment, but also a warning, a threat -but a secure and open democracy does not need threats to function. Capital Puishment thus serves the crudest of human emotions and solves, closes nothing -are the families of the victim going to forget their child was murdered? If they are Christians, they are in every case obliged to forgive the murderer, and campaign for his release from prison. And how many prisoners on Death Row are innocent?

Revenge is not justice, for one is based on emotion, the other on reason. Just as the Proud Boys over this weekend chanted 'Destroy the GOP' so they also threatened the US with civil war, though as yet they and the other proto-Terrorist groups such as the III Percenters, the Oathkeepers and others, many of them employed as Law Enforcement Officers who wear the badges of their chosen band on their uniform, have actually killed anyone in authority.

So I suggest you not give in to the provocation which is designed to nudge you away from reason toward emotion, and retain your rational perspective. But it does beg the question, what is the new administration, in the White House and in Congress going to do when presented with the fact that LEOs openly identify with armed militias -should they not be fired and banned from holding public office? How can they swear an oath to defend a Constitution whose authority they repudiate?

What is to be done with Lawyers who, in seeking to reverse the decision of voters, argue in effect, that those votes be deemed illegal, even though they were legally cast -does this not morally ridicule the law, but in legal terms deny the application of voting law itself without the law being repealed? And is it just coincidence that in Michigan, it is not all of the votes in the State they want to be declared invalid, but only those in Counties where the majority of the population is Black?

A lot of the resentment expressed against Trump and his family is their perceived and actual violation of the norms and values that accompany high office, it is the reason why Bill Clinton's reputation was so badly damaged, while the 45th is shameless in his aim to make money from the Office -but is Biden going to just let this go and forget about it, or are all of these things signs that a rot settling into the US political system threatens to gnaw away at the whole?

[filghy2]

I say all of this because I've started to notice myself feeling vindictive towards people I think have violated our social compact and behaved disgracefully. But does that serve any purpose or is it really this feeling of frustration that causes people to abandon principle because they don't know how it can be maintained in others?

It depends what form that takes. Social norms have always been enforced by ostracism and withdrawal of cooperation from those who refuse to abide by them. I don't think it's abandoning principle to show that people can't expect to free ride on the civility of others without reciprocating.

The real problem is that this enforcement mechanism doesn't work so well under extreme tribalism where people don't care about being ostracised by the other side and know that they are unlikely to be ostracised by their own tribe as long as their actions are directed against others. But I think it's still important to try to show that people can't behave badly and not pay some price. Turning the other cheek and just focussing on setting a moral example isn't likely to achieve better outcomes.

[broncofan]

I am sure as a law student you were asked in an essay or exam question to define the differance between justice and revenge.

It's an important topic but we spent surprisingly little time on it. In Criminal law we spent a few weeks discussing the purposes of punishment and it was a mostly theoretical discussion in which we talked about types of deterrence and more abstract ideals of justice. The final exam included one fairly broad essay question asking us to analyze a particular punishment based on the various theories we had discussed.

Your post beautifully spells out the difference between justice and revenge and I agree with you about the death penalty. I think in some cases the same punishment can look either like an attempt to achieve justice or like revenge depending upon the reason the punishment is imposed. The more protections there are for defendants and the more the state tries to protect against inadvertently punishing the wrongfully accused, the less vindictive it looks.

Filghy, I agree with the entirety of your post. This first step is a reasonable response but when it doesn't work you can sometimes have a bit of a breakdown in people's character. It might even be necessary and difficult for people to ostracize those they otherwise like but think have behaved badly.

The way it works best is if the segment we're stigmatizing is small enough that they realize they have to change their behavior to be considered socially or morally acceptable. Take, for example, a public person making openly racist statements and using epithets. At this point, we can still stigmatize this and the vast majority of the population would accept the person has to at the least apologize.

But there's just too much solidarity on the right to stigmatize the things Trump is doing and too many people have decided their tribal loyalty is more important than even accepting reality. In principle I am against wishing people dead or celebrating people's deaths yet I've felt pretty mixed about the covid cases in the white house. I think, 2500 people died today because of their incompetence and they've cavalierly ignored public health warnings, I'm actually going to be annoyed if this is a walk in the park for them. In fact, it's probably more blunt than that and I wish some of them dead...there's no social value in that, and if they die of covid they don't take the place of someone else who died, but the frustration is at that level for me.

Wishing something is not the same as doing something or saying something harmful but it's on the path to social breakdown. We have no means of enforcing decent behavior among almost half the public through social ostracism and we're lucky if we can get partisan Republicans to do their jobs fairly when they're in positions of trust, either enforcing laws or interpreting them. It's a precarious position to be in.