"The Bell Curve" - A Bogus (Pseudo-scientific) Brief For Racism & Inequality

Protesters at Middlebury College in July, 2017, and  social pseudo-scientist Charles Murray, who marched his way into eugenics infamy with his (co-authored) academic farce, 'The Bell Curve'.


Let us concede we live in treacherous times with bastardized memes and subtle mind viruses regularly unleashed on an unsuspecting populace.  In this deformed mental and intellectual atmosphere, Donnie Dotard and his lame tweets is only the most obnoxious example.  More generally,  climate denial propaganda, economic misinformation and irrational conspiracy  ideations  - such as spawned by Q Anon - are a dime a dozen.  And sadly,  relatively few Americans possess the critical thinking skills to parse BS from fact and distinguish fake news from the genuine article..

Into this moral and intellectual vacuum any kind of poseur, dilettante, or crank can seemingly make an impression, especially if he or she can generate some facsimile of genuine academic work,  i.e. a veneer of actual scholarship.  No one has performed better in this ersatz scholarship category than Charles Murray co-author of 'The Bell Curve'.  Indeed that co-authored parody of scholarship  paved the way for his later work, 'Coming Apart'  wherein we learned that all those poor whites -  displaced from their jobs -  could have landed on their feet had their IQs only been high enough.  But sadly, they weren't, so they are left to pound sand and cry for government help - like those displaced, forlorn coal miners now scratching for aid in Kentucky.

So both books have merely served to advance Murray's pet general narrative that a certain segment of Americans are destined to be in the underclass-  by virtue of lower IQ, genetically traced--   and we ought to get used to it. Even writing (with his co-author Herrnstein) at the end of The Bell Curve.:

"It is time once again for America to try living with inequality, as life is lived..."

As "life is lived"?  Such a reprehensible statement smacks of Social Darwinism as promulgated by Herbert Spencer, the British philosopher who had no patience for such niceties as government assistance.  He deemed the poor and infirm “unfit” if they couldn’t compete for resources without state assistance and it was their lot to be eliminated if they couldn’t manage. As Spencer put it (Social Darwinism in American Thought, American Historical Association, 1955):

"The whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the world of them, and make room for better.."

Author Richard Hofstadter points out (pp. 41-42) Spencer absolutely repudiated all state assistance to the poor, the needy, physically feeble, or infirm. In terms of the role of natural selection in “social evolution” such aid amounted to unwanted artificial interference in nature. Not to mention, meddling in the “natural development” of a superior society.  As Spencer put it (ibid.):

"If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well that they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best that they should die. "


Again, this could have been lifted right out of a Nazi Eugenics tract.  Just as Herrnstein and Murray's Bell Curve bilge.


So in perspective, taking  Messrs. Herrnstein and Murray's conclusion at face value, the Democratic candidates ought to just abandon their proposals to create a "wealth tax", i.e. to tax accumulated wealth instead of income. (WSJ, yesterday, p. A1).   As noted in the article:

"Liberals see extreme inequality as morally wrong  and socially divisive and regard the current system which taxes income generated by wealth more lightly than wages  as especially objectionable and  a contributor to wealth gaps such as between blacks and whites."

Whereas in Murray and Herrnstein's Bell Curve, one can simply lay the blame at a "genetic" disparity in IQ between blacks and whites.  Hence, how can a wealth tax or even a highly progressive income tax correct what nature has already pre-ordained?    That then leads to the authors' chapter on dysgenesis.

What is that all about?  Basically they use suspect research and citations, which they either mischaracterize or inflate, to attempt to make the case that blacks are intellectually inferior genetically to whites.  At the core of this dysgensis effort one beholds this skewed Bell curve:



How did they arrive at such a skewed graphic?  Well, they began by asking: "How do African-Americans compare with blacks in Africa on cognitive tests?"

Sounds simple enough, no?  But the devil as always is in the details.  The pair thus started with the null hypothesis that 'there should be no significant difference between the IQs of black Africans and African-Americans'.   This was based on testing the effects of discrimination (as African-Americans experience every day) and genes. Hence, black Africans - say in Cameroon - ought to have higher IQ scores  than African- Americans IF low IQ scores for the latter are a result of discrimination rather than genes.

To try to get to an answer the pair cite as their authority Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster.  So they cite a Lynn paper from 1991 in which he "estimated the median black African IQ to be 75... about 10 points lower than for American blacks."

Murray and Herrnstein then conclude that the difference cannot be accounted for by the "special circumstance" of African-Americans (i.e. discrimination), hence genetics must explain the difference. To try to bolster this view  (that African -Americans have higher IQs than black Africans) the pair then cite a Ken Owen paper from 1992. writing: "The IQ of coloured students in South Africa - of mixed racial background- has been found to be similar to that of American blacks."

Now note where this is going. All of a sudden we have the white genetic component entering via the "mixed" background of the South African students.   The implication almost doesn't have to be outright stated: The addition of Caucasian genes to African genes - in both S Africa and the U.S. - results in a 10 point higher IQ score over native Africans.  What accounts for the difference? Well, obviously the whities' higher IQ  genes have entered the picture!

But here's the bugbear:  In a footnote the pair cite the Owen 1992 paper as seeming to "prove" the IQ increment peculiar to both S. African mixed race students and American blacks. (Interestingly, the actual reference doesn't appear in The Bell Curve's bibliography. GO figure.)  Maybe the reason for non-inclusion is that Owen's work is not properly characterized.  For one thing, he used the nonverbal Ravens' Progressive Matrices (thought to be less culturally biased than standard IQ test)

Owen found that out of a possible maximum raw score of 60, whites scored 45, Indians scored 42, mixed race (coloreds) scored 37 and blacks scored 27.  Seems straightforward, no?   Not quite. The second bugbear was that the test's developer, John Raven, repeatedly insisted there could be no translation of his test into IQ scores. Hence, Herrnstein and Murray were confabulating IQs out of thin air.

Worse, the source for another  Lynn citation (accepted as valid by the Bell Curve pair)  that "Zambians had a lamentably low average IQ of 75" was given as Pons [1974]; Crawford -Nutt, 1978."

But in an astounding research misfire of stupendous proportions - one more likely for a green 1st year social science student- Herrnstein and Murray failed to note that Lynn had taken the Pons' data from Crawford-Nutt's paper and converted it into a bogus IQ average of 75.   At the same time the pair failed to recognize that Lynn chose to outright ignore the substance of Crawford-Nutt's paper which reported that 228 Soweto black HS students scored an average of 45 on the matrices test, or higher than the 44 scored by same age whites.   Most appalling 5 of 6 studies were omitted from Lynn's 1991 summary - by which time the average African IQ had gone down to 69.  Selection bias on steroids, anyone?

As described by one book review of  The  Bell Curve in Scientific American  (Feb., 1995) from which the preceding graphic was obtained:

"Lynn's distortions and misrepresentations of the data constitute a truly venomous racism, combined with scandalous disregard for scientific objectivity."

Adding pointedly:

"Lynn is widely known among academics to be an associate editor of the racist journal Mankind Quarterly and a major recipient of support from the nativist, eugenically oriented Pioneer Fund. It is a matter of shame and disgrace that two eminent social scientists- fully aware of the sensitivity of the issues they address - take Lynn as their scientific tutor and uncritically accept his surveys of research."

But, of course, given Murray and Herrnstein's conclusions, it is impossible to decouple their work from a clear and intentional agenda:  to attack affirmative action, .e.g.

"Affirmative action, in education and the workplace alike, is leaking a poison into the American soul."

And argue for accepting inequality (see earlier quote) as a natural norm.

Indeed, the revealing quotes of this dysfunctional pair of academics  tells me they damned well knew the unsavory nature and pseudoscience underpinning Lynn's work, but used it anyway. They used it because it advanced their own deformed elitist agenda based on their pet prejudices and presumptions, i.e. that genetics  really does separate the human family by IQ, and we ought to accept inequality instead of fighting it.  Should we then be charitable to Murray and Herrnstein for possibly being over confident in giving so much sway to Lynn's research? Hell no! Examining this book as a scientific researcher it is clearly so full of blatant holes, slipshod methodology  and  questionable sourcing that if it was submitted to physics referees - in terms of a physics context (using similar regression analyses) - it would be rejected outright.  Much like the daft papers of climate deniers are by reputable climate journals.

For example, one of the first things the budding researcher learns in any science - when applying statistics - is  not to conflate or confuse correlation with causation. And yet the Bell Curve duo commit this fundamental transgression  in spades.  We see this in the ridiculously (and excessively) long section of their book featuring analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Survey Of Labor Market Experience of Youth (NLSY for short).  The data, even without doing a single regression analysis do show a correlation between IQ and socio-economic status.

But to besiege  the reader with a blizzard of charts, graphs, tables etc. to extrapolate to a conclusion that IQ (inherited of course) translates into better paying jobs and higher socioeconomic status is simply twaddle.  It posits that the correlations obtained are actually causative.  As the SciAm reviewer of the book put it (ibid.):

"The core of Herrnstein-Murray's message is phrased with a beguiling simplicity: 'Putting it all together, success and failure in the American economy, and all that goes with it, are increasingly a matter of the genes that people inherit."


So if you are a sanitation worker, or wait staff person, instead of say a high end investment banker or stock broker, then you have to blame your low IQ genes.  Interestingly, members of Mensa - to provide an example of an inversion of the above- are often asked: "If you're so smart why aren't you rich?"

Well, for a lot of reasons!  Kudos here must go to Dr. Steven Mason in his article 'Let's Get Dumb' in one issue of Intertel's  Integra (October, p. 26, 2014). Mason, in about 5 pages,  shows that very often being smart isn't the asset so many believe, but an actual liability.  Especially in terms of 'making it in our money obsessed capitalist culture

 As Mason points out, in conjunction with this 'why aren't you rich' theme (p. 27):

"There are several reasons for this being the case. One is that employers don't especially like employees who are smarter than themselves. The result is that many of my friends belonging to high IQ societies wind up underemployed, working at jobs far below their potential."

Hey, Herrnstein and Murray, how do you process that?

Mason also notes that "kids hate those geeks who screw up the grading curve".  These kids, who aren't afraid to show their smarts are also the most victimized and bullied. No surprise then how back in 1978 my niece Vanessa expressed fear and shame at repeatedly outshining her classmates at St. Joseph Convent school in Trinidad, and asked advice. She was leaning to "dumbing down" her profile and being less conspicuous. I advised against it and told her to do it only if she felt it was critical to her ongoing emotional balance.

Perhaps the most provocative insight rendered by Dr. Mason concerns the communication gap between people of significantly different IQ. He writes (ibid.):

"It's been demonstrated, though not widely publicized in this PC culture, that complete and effective communication between those separated by more than fifteen IQ points is unlikely. It means there is no way, repeat NO WAY, that people with IQs of 115 are ever going to explain to people with IQs of 85 why it's important to graduate high school."

By the same token, it likely means a communication gap will exist between those of IQ 110-115 and those of Mensa or Intertel  IQ level (130-135) on matters of politics, including deep politics  (and I warrant most 115'ers don't even know what it means), science, philosophy, history and economics. The gap is simply too vast to be bridged.  Now carry this gap into the typical American work scenario and what do you see?  Likely enmity breaking out especially if the Mensan or Intertel member doesn't play sufficiently dumb over time. (Again explaining why  - if outed- they will not get that promotion and hence, well, remain at a lower socioeconomic station.  But this is not because of low IQ as the Bell Curve Bozos claim, but rather being enmeshed in an anti-intellectual culture .)

Taken at a more fundamental level, Mason's thesis indicates that the upper two or so IQ percentile of Americans will never be able to communicate effectively and completely with most of the rest of the population.  This gets most glaringly exposed in the political domain. Again, the need of so many voters to base their choices on atmospherics and optics ("Is he a guy I can have a beer with?") is downright disheartening. It makes me want to scream, "No you dummy! Don't worry about the damned beer but what he can do in office!"

And this  emotional tendency (often of swing voters) surely explains many of the puzzling election results over the years, from electing Gee Dumbya Bush in 2000, to the deranged semi-imbecile, criminal and grifter Donald Trump in 2016.  The takeaway?  The practical intelligence that helped put such losers into office has to be exceedingly low. So even if one is a top flight investment banker  or history professor and had voted Bush in 2000,  2004, and Trump in 2016, his working intellect can't be all that great irrespective of what Herrnstein-Murray claim.  Even Harvard Prof Harvey Mansfield attributed Trump's  election to the "lower half of the IQ curve."  And that includes all those business CEOs, market quants, and other "upper socioeconomic class" hotshots.  Oh sure, they got their tax cuts - but look what Trump's trade war has cost them, and we haven't gone beyond a technical recession yet.

Speaking of that:  the Southern Poverty Law Center has noted many criticisms of The Bell Curve, most notably Charles Lane’s thorough takedown in The New York Review of Books, have pointed out that Murray’s attempts to link social inequality to genes are based on the work of explicitly racist scientists. In an afterward to the book, Murray rejects criticisms that rest on the fact that “we cite thirteen scholars who have received funding from the Pioneer Fund, founded and run by men who were "Nazi sympathizers, eugenicists, and advocates of white racial superiority.” Murray contends that the racist pseudo-scientists he cites “are some of the most respected psychologists of our time” and that “the relationship between the founder of the Pioneer Fund and today’s Pioneer Fund is roughly analogous to that between Henry Ford and today’s Ford Foundation."

To me, such woeful blindness and shoddy work is deliberate and totally disqualifies Murray (and Herrnstein)  from claiming any objective insight into socioeconomic status and its relation to IQ.   At  the same time it shows me that those students who protested his effort to spout racist, eugenic -based rubbish at Middlebury College  2 years ago were totally justified. Indeed, as critical thinking citizens it was incumbent on them to block the dissemination of toxic racist propaganda disguised as scholarly research.

Indeed, not to do so allows the proliferation of racist memes and the sort of degenerate codswallop recently put out in a WSJ op-ed by  Heather MacDonald ('Trump Isn't The One Dividing Us By Race',  August 19, p. A19)  Let us note this hack is the author of 'The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture'.    One can only imagine here that Ms. MacDonald is a firm acolyte of the Charles Murray Bell Curve cult. Especially when she argues (WSJ, ibid.) the racial divisiveness is the product of diversity acknowledgement and "its main propagation by the academic left and mass media".   To see her spouting her balderdash live on you tube (at Hillsdale College) check out this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE-_weLRLK4
  
Getting back to the authors of The Bell Curve, truth be told what these two have produced  is no more scholarly than Gerald Posner's 'Case Closed' which tried to finalize the specious Warren Report as the last word on the Kennedy assassination.  JFK Assassination experts document twelve of the most serious “Posnerisms” here:

http://assassinationweb.com/twpos.htm

See also:

"Coming Apart?" - Charles Murray's Arguments After..

Sadly, By Extolling A Treasonous Rebel Rat, John Kelly Shows He Lacks Any Honor

"Today the racist tribe is once again as paranoid and angry as it was before the Civil War. As they did then, they are cheating and lying constantly, from blatantly suppressing the vote to violating democratic norms and rules to using every lever of institutional machinery to preserve their power, such as their stunning refusal to consider a Supreme Court justice named by a president of the opposing party.

As we've seen, this isn't new. But it's as dangerous as it's ever been. The country isn't going to physically break in two this time, and the issues around racism and modernism are more diffuse. It's a different nation and a different world. But the stakes are actually much higher."   - Heather Digby Parton in salon.com 'John Kelly's Ignorance and the Dark Legacy of the Civil War'.

I already, in a previous post,  exposed John Kelly as the Trump bitch he really is, i.e.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/10/kelly-proves-hes-trumps-bitch-like.html

This was  after his performance a  couple of weeks ago,  falsely making claims about black congresswoman Frederica Wilson.This SOB has now revealed his true disgusting colors, not only as Dotard's little bitch in refusing to apologize for his calumny,  but now going on the air for the rightwing freak Laura Ingraham to babble bunkum on the cause of the Civil War.

For those who missed it Kelly was the guest for the premiere of Laura Ingraham’s new show on the Fox (as in "FAUX") News Channel on Monday night.  It was the perfect opportunity for this racist asshole to once more demagogue his  gibberish on national TV (albeit TV for the Gooprs and fake news addicts).

Kelly was asked about the decision of a church in Alexandria, Va., to remove plaques honoring George Washington and Robert E. Lee. Recall that earlier, I noted the mayor of New Orleans had properly removed the statue of Robert E. Lee from Lee Circle there, e.g.


I  already expressed my objection to the Johnny Reb nonsense spouted by a woman (Diana Belles) writing in our local Colorado Springs Independent.  Belles defended Southern monuments, stating the attacks on the Rebel flag and monuments were  “dragging Confederates through a cesspool of misinformation”,    I wrote a reply which was published a week later;  That reply can be read at this link:

https://www.csindy.com/coloradosprings/reader-what-civil-war-history-did-you-study/Content?oid=5869315

 I have not changed from that viewpoint one iota, and view the display of both Confederate flag and Nazi swastika as wrong headed attributions to defeated tyrannies and evil systems. And believe me, I don't use the word "evil" loosely.  In this case I mean  the subjugation  of large populations - viewed as "inferior"  by an entrenched and illegitimate government -  and their systematic degradation and elimination.  This was done via chattel slavery in the Confederacy and via concentration camps and gas chambers in Nazi Germany.

.

The Confederate battle flag, like the Nazi swastika, is the emblem of hateful aggressive losers. After the Civil War, given the South lost, all its paraphernalia including flags and monuments ought to have been  interred at landfills or retired  to museums (like swastikas in Germany). Instead they had found their way to rise above state capitols, such as in South Carolina and Mississippi, or in church yards like in Alexandria, VA.   

As of August 2016, there were  1,503 public commemorations of the Confederacy, even excluding the battlefields and cemeteries: 718 monuments and statutes still stood, and 109 public schools, 80 counties and cities, and 10 U.S. military bases bore the names of Lee, Jefferson Davis, and other Confederate icons, according to a tally by the Southern Poverty Law Center

Anyway,  the clueless dolt Kelly responded to Ingraham's query thusly:

"I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man.  He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.”

First, this bullshit shows how little Kelly knows about Lee, the  "honorable man",  who once demanded a slave be properly flogged for impudence to the slave owner. This included having brine poured into the open wounds  afterward.   What few may know is that Lee actually - by his leading the rebellion - had more Americans killed than Hitler did in WWII. While earlier I'd only suspected Kelly was a racist, Johnny Reb sympathizer and slime ball (by his dismissive, hateful swill about Ms. Wilson),  this latest spiel  on FOX proves it - at least to me. 

Second, rather than seeing him as Trump's "minder", I now see him as perfectly matched to the Swine-in -chief. "Two peas in a pod", if you will, or better, two hogs in a pig pen.  Maybe the filth of the bigger swine rubbed off on the lesser one.  For all intents, Kelly has now effectively become Dotard's doppelganger.

Third, one is prompted to recommend this pompous  idiot go back to school to take some real Civil War history classes, such as I recommended to Ms. Belles.

According to History professor Stephanie McCurry, based at Columbia University and author of “Confederate Reckoning: Politics and Power in the Civil War South.”

“It’s the Jim Crow version of the causes of the Civil War. I mean, it tracks all of the major talking points of this pro-Confederate view of the Civil War.”

In other words, Kelly is just another unreconstructed Johnny Reb. No better than the other defenders of this loathsome historical pustule - including  Nevada rancher and scofflaw Cliven Bundy. Recall Bundy's infamous words back in April,  2014:

"I wanna tell yuh one more thing I know about the Nigras! Weren't they better off as slaves, pickin'  cotton  and havin' a family life  and doin' things or are they better off under government subsidies ? They didn't get no more freedom they got less freedom"

Incredibly, Kelly went even farther with his comments, actually appearing to defend treason which is what Southern secession really was. Kelly made several specious points. 1) That Lee was honorable. 2) That fighting for state  (i.e. the secessionist traitors) was more important than fighting for country. 3) That a lack of compromise led to the war and 4)  That good people on both sides were fighting for conscientious reasons.

Bunkum item (4) ought to ring a loud bell, echoing Trump's claim back in August - after the Charlottsville mayhem  - that there were "fine people on both sides":  the Nazi side carrying their torches and swastikas, and the anti-Nazi protesters' side.

Both McCurry and David Blight, a history professor at Yale University and author of “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory,” broadly rejected all of Kelly's codswallop.

According to Prof. Blight:

"This is profound ignorance, that’s what one has to say first, at least of pretty basic things about the American historical narrative,” Blight said. “I mean, it’s one thing to hear it from Trump, who, let’s be honest, just really doesn’t know any history and has demonstrated it over and over and over. But General Kelly has a long history in the American military.”

SO what's Kelly's excuse? Is there any way one can be generous in one's interpretation of Kelly's latest gig?  I see only two ways: 1) Kelly has Alzheimer's disease  or some other variant  of dementia. Then his fractious performances - both after his ugly remarks on Ms. Wilson and now his defense of the indefensible -   are manifest symptoms. 

Or (2) : Trump insisted he go on and adhere to a specific script under some serious threat. We don't know what that threat might be. 

Failing those options, one is left only to conclude that: a) Kelly  a know nothing like Trump, especially on American history, or b) his proximity to Trump has contaminated him right down to his essence.   There's very little else one can conclude because there aren't enough real excuses for a former military guy to know so damned little!

For example, the idea that compromise might have been possible was rejected out of hand by both McCurry and Blight.  As Blight facetiously asked :

“It was not about slavery, it was about honorable men fighting for honorable causes?”

Then answering his question in a WaPo interview:

“Well, what was the cause? . . . In 1861, they were very clear on what the causes of the war were. The reason there was no compromise possible was that people in the country could not agree over the wisdom of the continued and expanding enslavement of millions of African Americans.”

Also, Kelly appears to forget his American History that there were actually  a number of compromises on slavery that led up to the Civil War, from the drafting of the Constitution to the addition of new states to the Union.   It is particularly disturbing he couldn't reference the Crittenden Compromise,  e.g.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crittenden_Compromise

Prof. Blight explained:

“Any serious person who knows anything about this can look at the late 1850s and then the secession crisis and know that they tried all kinds of compromise measures during the secession winter, and nothing worked. Nothing was viable.”

One thing we can all conclude from this latest deplorable episode is that Kelly isn't fit to stand watch over a dog kennel, far less mind President Dotard.  He also lacks any sense of honor as well as intelligence.

If Kelly is all we have standing between us and Trump grabbing the nuclear football, then God (or the Force) help us all.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/08/yes-all-confederate-monuments-need-to.html

 

Was SPLC Wrong to Educate Middlebury Students On Covert Hate Monger Charles Murray?

Protesters at Middlebury College not long ago, and subversive, racist - eugenicist hate monger Charles Murray.

Let us concede we live in treacherous times for bastardized memes and subtle mind viruses to be unleashed on an unsuspecting populace, especially by those endowed with an academic cachet or more or less benign appearance. There is no doubt,  not one, that if Josef Goebbels had re-materialized at Middlebury College four months ago and brandished a thesis that Jews were inferior and hence needed to be eliminated, there'd have been an unholy outcry. And oh yeah, a lot more than screaming and pulling fire alarms would have gone on. Also that there would have been no mistaking such a screed for "free speech".  In fact, if erupted from Middlebury's students they'd have been lauded rather than now vilified for "attacking free speech" regarding Charles Murray's attempted appearance.

The screeching of most of the media - including some overpaid moron named Carl M. Cannon at 'Real Clear Politics' -e.g.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/03/19/the_hate_group_that_incited_the_middlebury_melee_133377.html

 has been that the great Murray was delivered a hate -filled beat down and after all he does hold a "doctorate from MIT" and is a member of the "esteemed American Enterprise Institute".

But before our compadres on the Right do backflips in exultation at Murray's claimed respectability, let us bear in mind that the Jew-hating  Joseph Goebbels also  obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1921. So a doctorate is no assurance of respectability or moral probity. After all,  this eugenics -imbued mastermind of Nazi propaganda is the one who developed numerous tracts comparing Jews to vermin, paving the way for the Final solution.



As for the American Enterprise Institute, which the ignorant hack Cannon praises, e.g. "this Washington-based think tank is devoted to 'defending human dignity, expanding human potential, and building a freer and safer world."  (sic, barf) let's not overlook the applicable facts here:

The AEI  were the ones offering scientists up to $10,000 each to write tracts and op -ed pieces denying global warming.  As reported by the UK Guardian "letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered."

Real charming bunch of individuals devoted to "human dignity" there. They'd allow humanity the "freedom" to burn in an unbearable hothouse world - devoid of polar ice caps and glaciers, coastal cities sinking, diseases rampant-  because they've enabled liars and propagandist schmucks to brainwash people into thinking climate change is a myth or hoax.

According to The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), of which I've been a member for over 15 years, Murray - like the AEI -  "advocates the total elimination of the welfare state, affirmative action and the Department of Education, arguing that public policy cannot overcome the innate deficiencies that cause unequal social and educational outcomes".

This academic reprobate's central thesis (in The Bell Curve) is that:

"the United States has experienced dysgenic pressures throughout either most of the century (the optimists) or all of the century (the pessimists). Women of all races and ethnic groups follow this pattern in similar fashion. There is some evidence that blacks and Latinos are experiencing even more severe dysgenic pressures than whites, which could lead to further divergence between whites and other groups in future generations.”"

A section that could have come straight out of Goebbel's hands.   What are Murray's "dysgenic pressures"?  They are the selection effects, factors responsible for the reduction of a population's intelligence arising from a regressive gene pool.  In this case,  because blacks and Latinos exhibit lower average I.Q.s than whites (or Orientals) they impact the aggregate gene pool adversely sending the overall intelligence lower.

Note that while Murray has loudly insisted he's not espousing eugenics, the very use of the term "dysgenic" - which recognizes negative eugenics, show that he is.

One here is led to reference Goebbel's tract (The Nazi -Sozi, 1932) cited by Konrad Heiden in his monograph The Fuehrer, :

"Certainly the Jew is also a man, but the flea is also an animal. And the other animals do not harbor and cultivate the flea but exterminate it"

To be sure, Goebbels in his tract is blunt, crude and merciless. There is no effort to disguise exactly what his eugenics theme means.  This is unlike Murray's which basically says the same thing (pertaining to Latinos and blacks),  but is couched in academic lingo (delivered in the guise of a serious academician)  to disarm any would be critics.  Thus, because Murray offers an academic patina he is to be treated respectfully and given a fair hearing for his toxic ideas, mind viruses and memes.  "Free speech", after all. But under SPLC tutelage the Middlebury students weren't fooled and were not about to confer respect, gravitas or dignity to a racist rapscallion.

The SPLC again:

"Many criticisms of The Bell Curve, most notably Charles Lane’s thorough takedown in The New York Review of Books, have pointed out that Murray’s attempts to link social inequality to genes are based on the work of explicitly racist scientists. In an afterward to the book, Murray rejects criticisms that rest on the fact that “we cite thirteen scholars who have received funding from the Pioneer Fund, founded and run ([Lane] alleged) by men who were Nazi sympathizers, eugenicists, and advocates of white racial superiority.” Murray contends that the racist pseudo-scientists he cites “are some of the most respected psychologists of our time” and that “the relationship between the founder of the Pioneer Fund and today’s Pioneer Fund is roughly analogous to that between Henry Ford and today’s Ford Foundation.”

In fact, the Pioneer Fund’s ties to eugenics and white supremacy are not nearly as historically remote as Murray would have his readers believe. The president of the Pioneer Fund at the time The Bell Curve was written was Harry Weyher, who was a personal friend of the Fund’s founder, Wickliffe Draper, and shared his supposedly archaic views on race. Just two months after the initial publication of The Bell Curve, Weyher gave an interview in which he argued, among other things, that desegregation had “wreck[ed] the school system.”

Russ Bellant, author of 'Old Nazis, The New Right And The Republican Party', South End Press, 1991) traces the current incarnation of the Pioneer Fund back to the Reagan era with the likes of Ralph Scott and Roger Pearson both of whom "received tens of thousands of dollars from the Pioneer Fund which assists researchers attempting to prove Black inferiority".

So we return to the central question: Should an idea - no matter how abhorrent and toxic  - be able to receive an unopposed hearing anywhere?  Especially at a university? And the answer now, as before  when I posted about it (Jan. 9. 2015) , is absolutely not! 

As I noted then:

"There is a vast gulf between what clueless humans call "freedom of expression" and moral communication.  The key difference is that moral communication does not incite to violence, by castigating and vilifying a whole people. And yes, that means words and cartoons can act as murderous weapons! They embed themselves in the mind, especially of those already with axes to grind, and incite them to take precipitous action.

And lest we take that as a freak exception let us recall how Limbaugh once referred to Leftists as "cockroaches" e.g.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/02/951587/-Limbaugh-Leftists-are-cockroaches#


And the Nazis during the Third Reich regularly depicted the Jews in cartoons and films as "rats". E.g.

http://sefershoah.wordpress.com/nazi-propaganda/

Was this free expression or free speech, given the horrific effect it had? Of course not! It was the most scurrilous, vile refuse and propaganda masquerading as speech. No form of propaganda is defensible, whether in books, film or cartoons. This is not free speech but hate speech. It defiles the user as it does the target, reducing each - via dehumanization. See the Nazi material produced on the Jews in the preceding link."

Back to the SPLC again:

"Murray and Herrnstein described Richard Lynn, whose work they relied on more than any other individual, as “a leading scholar of racial and ethnic differences.” In his many subsequent defenses of Lynn, Murray neglected to mention the many serious methodological criticisms of Lynn’s work, or his contributions to white supremacist publications including VDARE.com, American Renaissance and Mankind Quarterly, the last of which Lynn also serves on the editorial staff of.

The Bell Curve not only relied on “tainted sources” like Lynn, but is itself making a fundamentally eugenic argument. The central, and most controversial chapter of the book, focuses on the threat of “dysgenesis,” a term that Murray and Herrnstein claimed to have borrowed from population biology, but which in actuality was coined and has been used exclusively by eugenicists to describe the problem that their policy proposals were intended to fix. Dysgenesis refers to the supposed genetic deterioration of a population, but while Murray and Herrnstein wrote as though it represents mainstream science, dysgenesis is not considered to be a real phenomenon by modern evolutionary biologists. It is widely accepted only among the “scholars of racial and ethnic differences” that appear so prominently in The Bell Curve’s bibliography."

In other words, like Goebbels' own distorted eugenics (applied to Jews),  Murray and Herrnstein's is also tainted by pseudo-science, yet has the disproportional effect of undermining the fundamental fabric of our society if taken seriously. Again, why should anyone have to waste gray matter rebutting this offal any more than Goebbel's comparison of Jews to fleas? The point is there is no intellectual rebuttal possible that will persuade the minions who emotionally  gravitate to these toxic notions, given they use the notions as points of support for their racist beliefs. Hence, best to not to allow the emotional chords to be excited in the first place!

We may conclude the students at Middlebury were right to disrupt Murray as they likewise would have been to disrupt Josef Goebbels.  (They were not right to engage in any physical force or assaults, obviously ) The reason is that hate speech, irrespective of any academic veneer, merits no special place or respect and absolutely no dignifying by resort to a "free speech" ruse to peddle it.  As the notorious Gen. Hudson Austin opined after slaughtering hundreds in the Spice Island of Grenada (before U.S. forces arrived in Operation Urgent Fury in 1983): "My biggest gift was being allowed free speech on the radio to pave the way for my purge!"

Hudson had been enabled - by the deft use of hate speech and propaganda - broadcast over Grenada's government radio, to enlist enough support to put hundreds of his political opponents  (to the New Jewel Movement) in the Richmond Hill prison. There,  antiaircraft weapons were subsequently used to slaughter Austin's hapless victims, after they were forced into the prison courtyard.

Most Americans never knew or heard about that, only about the invasion of the island nation which all the Caricom nations (including Barbados) had called for.

But Charles Murray would never advocate that!   Maybe not, directly. But it is but one small step to deem a race inferior before some faction will believe it is entitled to wipe out the group so designated. Let's not fool ourselves.

It is ironic beyond belief that Morris Dees is ridiculed in Cannon's piece using ad hominem ("a shyster") while the SPLC is deemed a "hate group", even as Murray and the AEI are extolled as the bearers of light and human dignity.  But this merely discloses how perverted the intellectual landscape and critical thinking basis  has become in the U.S., to the point the pro-Trump and right wing media and its memes now hold so much sway.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/steven-rosenfeld/74109/study-how-breitbart-medias-disinformation-created-the-paranoid-fact-averse-nation-that-elected-tru

The White House Needs To Shut Up About Election Recount

Depiction of Obama from 2011 when he was ready to cave on Social Security (COLA) cuts, like he wants to cave on recounts now. But we need leaders with balls, not appeasing wimps.

It is incredible that now,  with Hillary Clinton backing the election recounts in three states (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania),  the White House wants to interject its two cents that "the American people have spoken" and Hillary and Jill Stein need to put a halt to it. (This according to the UK Guardian yesterday). No fucking way, not with what's on the line. It is especially incredible to many that Obama - clearly the source of these statements - given he hates conflict,  could so easily be ready to see his legacy ripped apart step by step. Hell, Obama's White House ought to be the first on board to support these recounts given all the irregularities reported, including provisional ballots not being counted.

It isn't just a matter of the pitiful political IQ Trump brings to the table, accentuated yesterday with a series of petulant tweets at the level of a dyspeptic 3-year old: "Very unfair! No Way! This is a Green Party scam to fill up their coffers!!"    It's particularly choice Trump is squealing like a stuck pig given he'd be the first in line to do recounts- and in all the states he lost - if the situation was reversed. Oh, and here's the kicker showing this splenetic blowhard pretender fails the reality test for President:

"I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally!"

Seriously,  Sherlock? In fact, as numerous credible sources including Politifact have shown,  there isn't a scintilla of evidence for this off the wall claim. A claim which merely shows Trump  - now nicknamed 'Donald Dump'  by the Left - belongs more in a rubber room at Bellevue than the Oval Office.

By now, everyone not living under a rock is aware of the  outbreaks of bigotry and racist violence perpetrated on innocents in the wake of Trump's aberrational  electoral vote "victory". Many of us worried, and it's now been vindicated with over 1,000 reports to the Southern Poverty Law Center, that the troglodytes and knuckle draggers would interpret the Trump electoral college win (he didn't win the popular vote) as license to commit all manner of hate crimes and  domestic terrorism. We have now seen this reprehensible behavior in spades.

Now include on top of that the "abominables row" of cabinet and other agency picks (which David Axelrod has called the "Monster's Ball") and you can understand why millions of sane citizens are terrified. Ryan Holmes of Chicago, quoted in yesterday's Denver Post (p. 4B) said:

"I am frightened of what's to come. Sad and less hopeful of the future."

That sentiment is shared by nearly 53 percent of the populace who saw their votes flushed down the toilet because GOP gubernators had been gaming their electronic voting systems since at least April,, as originally reported by Bob Fritakis and Harvey Wasserman ('The Fix May Already Be In For GOP To Steal The 2016 Election') As they noted in part:

There is no way to verify the official tally on the electronic machines on which the majority of Americans will vote this fall. Nearly all the machines are a decade old, most are controlled by a single company (ES&S, owned by Warren Buffett) and the courts have ruled that the software is proprietary, making the vote counts beyond public scrutiny. In fact, they are beyond all independent monitoring altogether. In many key swing states (including Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and Arizona) GOP governors and secretaries of state will have a free hand to flip the vote count to whatever they want it to be without detection or accountability. This could turn control of our government over to the GOP come November, as it did in 2000 and 2004.

Obama and his White House, meanwhile, appear to be oblivious - given their response to the recounts - that the nation's voting majority are aghast as Trump has made appalling decisions in staffing his administration.  This includes appointing racist bomb thrower Steven Bannon to be a "strategist" and appointing  pro-Confederate Jeff Sessions as Attorney General.  The cast of "abominables" changes almost hour to hour but one thing has been established, these inveterate assholes will hurl this country back at least 50 years, demolishing most advances made with tears, sweat, toil and grit. The "Dump" menagerie includes the likes of climate denier Myron Ebell, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/11/trump-appoints-denier-loser-looneytune.html

Whose staffing of the EPA and other agencies will burn up all our climate change regs in a monster coal pit fire.

Then there is the screwball Betsy DeVos that has been appointed to Education Secretary who is dedicated to converting U.S. public schools into vast educational ghettoes- where resources amount to string and cellotape and only poor kids are found.

As Matthew Rosza of salon.com has written:

"DeVos, is a woman who never went to public school, nor sent her children to public school, nor worked for public schools. She does, however, come from a wealthy family that has donated millions to the Republican Party. And she would be terrible for public education in this country"

Adding:

"DeVos also serves on the board of the Acton Institute, which merges corporate interests with dominion theology, or the belief that Christians should take control of political and social institutions. Earlier this month, the Acton Institute published a blog post titled, “Bring back child labor: Work is a gift our kids can handle.”.


Bring back child labor?  This derelict nut case is to be in charge of public education and one can imagine her replacing education with child labor for  6 hours a day at all public schools under the rubric "they will learn by doing".  No wonder so many are appalled, including that the hijacking of the Supreme Court could easily bring back back room abortions ....or coat hangars.

Trump, by his very picks,  is not about unifying this nation but rending it asunder with his reckless decision making and arrogance. The fool needs to be stopped, and short of the state electors coming to their senses on December 19th to cast the electoral ballots, we need this recount to do the job.

This despite the media - including the so-called liberal- already mounting a campaign to normalize Trump and his fascist pool of anti-government degenerates.. 

The last thing needed in this mix is the White House adding its two cents to try to make this election appear normal and Trump being the "choice of most Americans". (See link at bottom which skewers this nonsense.)  No, a majority of us didn't make that choice at all, so don't perturb the results with verbal effluent and snide PR. In a genuine democracy - which doesn't depend on an artificial anachronism - Hillary Clinton would now be President Elect by virtue of a 2.4 million popular vote win.  That outcome is still possible, no matter what Donald Dump barks on his Twitter, if these recounts are done faithfully, including all the provisional ballots.

Let Trump tweet until he's hysterical with rage, he merely proves each day how unfit he is for the job.. Since he wants so desperately to keep his fingers in the 73 odd outposts of the Trump empire maybe it's best he do that, since he clearly doesn't wish to devote 100 percent of time and energy to being a President. Especially for ALL the people!

As for the White House, it ought to be cheering Jill Stein's efforts, given that her success - especially in overturning the electoral vote totals- will ensure Obama of retaining his legacy, policies - including Obamacare.   If those policies and legacy mean anything to him he will now put a sock in it, as they say, regarding Stein's (and now Clinton's) recount efforts.

See also:  "The Voters Rejected Trump":

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/jack-lessenberry/70081/the-voters-rejected-trump

And:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/steven-rosenfeld/70121/trump-campaign-and-gop-allies-in-full-legal-panic-as-recounts-could-create-electoral-college-crisi

How Explain The Multiple Acts Of Racist Violence In The Wake Of Trump's Ascension?

Trump in one particular outburst of bigoted memes during the primaries.

"White people, no matter what pain they're in, have a responsibility to reject anybody who stands in front of a camera who spews racism, sexism, misogyny,...I don't care what your race is, but especially if you're white because you belong to the race that's been in power forever. This is country founded on genocide and built on the backs of slaves. So you have a special responsibility as a white person to always reject anybody who uses racism, who spews this hatred ...White people have a special responsibility now to stand in front of any abuse or attack on people of color or immigrants. Do not call yourself a Christian if you are not willing to put your body in front of whoever is attacking an innocent."  - Michael Moore, on AM Joy this morning.

By now, everyone not living under a rock is aware of the  outbreaks of bigotry and racist violence perpetrated on innocents in the wake of Trump's aberrational victory. Many of us worried, and it's now been vindicated, that the troglodytes and knuckle draggers would interpret the Trump electoral college win (he didn't win the popular vote) as license to commit all manner of hatred crime and  domestic terrorism. Even at Trump's alma mater - supposedly part of the "Ivy League' - reports appearing in The Denver Post today noted special online groups to support "the daily lynching". Many black students are understandably terrified.

Meanwhile, Trump's seeds of campaign venom have seeped into middle schools and high schools, with restroom doors papered over with signs such as "Whites Only", and "No cotton pickers!". The Post also reported on a vicious incident at the University of New Mexico in which a Muslim student's Hajib was snatched off her head by a muscle-bound white baboon wearing a Trump cap and T-shirt with "Make America Great Again".   She was fairly traumatized by the incident as it happened in a library while she was studying.

Other Muslim students and families around the country are living in stark terror at the prospect of the next acts of terror and hate directed against them.. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), America's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, on Thursday called on Trump to "repudiate alleged attacks on Muslim students at universities in Louisiana and California reportedly by some of his supporters".

For its part, Human Rights Watch said Trump should "abandon campaign rhetoric that seemed to reject many of the United States’ core human rights obligations".

"He found a path to the White House through a campaign marked by misogyny, racism, and xenophobia, but that’s not a route to successful governance. President-elect Trump should commit to leading the US in a manner that fully respects and promotes human rights for everyone," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is also monitoring the hate crimes as they are reported, with thousands so far. Including one postal worker filling up at a Massachusetts gas station who yelled at a Hispanic male: "Go back to your own country! This is Trump land now!"

Where does this originate?  How has Trump's venom managed to find willing brains to receive it? Neurobiologist Robert Ornstein in his book: New World, New Mind, Paladin Books, 1991, diagnoses the inherent problem to a tee. He traces it to the ?old Brain" or "old Mind" - a relic of our own evolution which can be traced back to our ape-like ancestors.

Ornstein notes how this "old Mind" of a nation or people can be ramped up collectively and reinforced if its leaders also display and act on their own 'old Mind' prejudices, beliefs, instincts etc. For example he cited the classic case of Reagan( p. 172):

"..the old mind has never been so much in evidence in American politics as in the second half of the Reagan administration"

People became so detached from their critical reasoning centers by Reagan's avuncular pose and malarkey that they failed to see how brutal and vicious his policies actually were, including tossing over a half  million mentally ill out onto the streets. The populace' old Mind  then was its own worst enemy in failing to perceive the very real damage the Reaganites were perpetrating .

Interestingly, all of Ornstein's postulates could easily be applied today to the hate memes let loose by Trump and now finding willing "old brains" (irrespective of actual chronological age)  ready to act on them.  Again, Trump's own bigotry-laced rhetoric disabled their critical thinking faculties to render them like programmed apes. Feeding into the Old Mind's propensities is the patented American tradition of "faith in the future" and blind optimism. As Ornstein writes, p. 175:

"Memories are transformed to suit our attitudes, and they are transformed in a way that helps the blinkered mind get on and succeed in life. We tend to remember not how difficult our past life has been and often hold a simplified optimism about our family and work history, and our past in general"

Thus has the white working class placed a false hope in Trump to live by his promises and deliver jobs, failing to realize that he lacks the ultimate power to do so.  If the corporations themselves refuse to create new jobs, and instead merely ship them offshore - or use automation -  there is no way Trump can change that. He can't simply rule by decree.  So these voters who placed so much stock in his words have been driven by a simplified optimism, and will learn in the end they cast their futures on the hollow words of an empty suit.

Are the voters' old Minds therefore attracted to those of the candidates they voted for? Ornstein again (p. 177):

"Perhaps the most serious political problem faced by society is the attraction of the old mind of the public to old-minded leaders. It is a problem that plagues all nations, and both the Democratic and Republican leaders of the United States."

The Trump phenomenon then can be seen as the apotheosis of nearly 60 million voters in the U.S. being hooked into the old mind of Trump, basically commandeered as puppets to do its bidding. Trump's disgusting rhetoric - as on the campaign trail:

"encouraged the public's hate and national chauvinism when a New-minded administration would have worked to reduce it. "

Can the unleashing of hate and vitriol be brought under control? Only time will tell, but one thing for sure, it will require new leaders with "new minds" to effect a real change. One can only hope the Dems can up with such leaders in the new election cycle and perhaps from the time the next congress is seated.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/69809/why-we-need-a-new-democratic-party

Trump's Seeds Of Hate Spill Into Schools

Trump mocking a disabled reporter ten months ago in SC. Students have picked up on his antics and used them to bully minorities.

As millions of Americans wince and shudder at the prospect of the third presidential debate tonight we are informed (CBS Early Show) that Trump plans to go lower than ever.  His off the rails M.O.  will continue now directed at lowering turnout, especially on the D side. How does he plan to achieve this? According to two former campaign strategists interviewed on CBS, he will seek to impugn the entire election process as one giant "fraud". A "rigged election". He will, in addition, spill venom onto the HRC leaked emails. All this to try to entice prospective voters - who perhaps still haven't made up their minds - to avoid the polls.

At the same time, as this degenerate, misinforming fiasco unfolds (see link to another article about it at end of this post) millions of students will also be watching tonight, soaking it in. Many will be of high school age and again exposed to the sewer pit of American politics. Will they channel or act out what 'the Donald' spews out? We don't know but the signs are not  encouraging, as new surveys disclose the leakage of hatred into secondary students' brains.

It probably was inevitable that as the ignominy of the Trump campaign reached ever lower levels of the sewer, the sludge would begin to ooze out and contaminate more than our political landscape. Now, the evidence shows it has not only driven our national discourse to new lows but even insinuated itself into our students, educational system.

In a recent 'Intelligence Report', the Southern Poverty Law Center presented a survey showing that what it called “The Trump Effect” has infected ever younger minds. Specifically, it found that “students have been emboldened by the divisive, often juvenile rhetoric in the campaign. Teachers have noted an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail.”

More than 67 percent of educators in the SPLC study said children of immigrants and other students of color had expressed concerns about what might happen to them or their families after the election. More than 40 percent of the teachers reported being hesitant about teaching about the election. The survey drew more than 5,000 comments from educators across the United States.

Here in Colorado, the Trump Effect and its hate spillover has focused the spotlight on a clique of  15-odd students at a Boulder High School (Boulder Preparatory High ) calling itself  the “Fourth Reich’s Official Group Chat”  on Facebook. Members talked about starting a movement to kill minorities including Mexicans, Jews and African-Americans as well as other groups targeted by Trump in his assorted outbursts, according to a Boulder police report.

Those like the SPLC who monitor hate groups, assert the Boulder incidents appeared to be much more than simple youthful rebellion, calling it "a product of a dangerously overheated political environment" that has also "seen an increase in bullying and intimidation of fellow students."

After the ring leader offed himself on September 21, to “show his allegiance to the Nazi party and the killing of Jewish people,” according to a police report, the other instigators have also received their comeuppance. Boulder Prep headmistress Lili Adeli said Monday one of the students is in the school’s restorative justice program and is in the process of being allowed back in the school. Another wants to be readmitted, while two others have declined to go back to the school and a fifth student is under a restraining order.

Adeli heself is convinced "mental problems" played a role in the FB hate fest, but that assumes over the top expressions of hate are mental issues. If so, one can rightly ask why Trump himself is walking around yapping in dog whistle form about "rigged elections" and "voter fraud" when he ought to be in a straight jacket at Bellevue.

Meanwhile, Becki Cohn-Vargas, director of the anti-hate organization Not In Our School, points to an April survey of 2,000 K-12 teachers who suggest the rhetoric from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is inciting more anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant sentiment in classrooms.  It is clear from Cohn-Vargas survey that kids are picking up on what's happening in this vile campaign- the "worst in American history" according to CBS' Bob Schieffer.  They are especially seeing how Trump is able to get away with his bully boy antics and even outright admissions of assault on women with whom he comes into contact.  Since they observe no payback, naturally many kids who are from dysfunctional backgrounds will believe they can get away with this stuff too.

According to Cohn-Vargas, quoted in yesterday's Denver Post:

"The fact is with this type of election campaign, it’s given license to young people to do hateful things and to repeat those activities online and elsewhere. We’ve definitely seen in an uptick on those types of activities.”

She added that the surge of social media and a 24-hour news churn that recycles biased viewpoints only encourages kids and adults to "drag their already hateful thoughts into the open."  After all, they reason, if Trump can spew his hateful rot then why can't they?  As Cohn-Vargas put it (ibid.):

"It’s appealing for a young person who feels alienated to pick up on one of those groups and be a part of that,”

If this is so, it might also account for the  yen of too many young fools to want to join the ISIS bugs. Michael Langone,  counseling psychologist who tracks cult activity in the United States, said the same strain of alienation that attracts kids to Nazi ideals also leads to young adults signing up for the Islamic State terrorist group. All these kids - like Trump - are losers at heart and want to inflate their identities beyond loser status. The easiest way to do that is to pledge allegiance to the most psychotic nuts - which used to be the Nazis, but now replaced by ISIS.

Langone says:

"We’ve seen many young men who go over to fight for ISIS (the Islamic State) and they are not particularly religious and they were looking for something to make them feel more significant,”

He insists it's the "function of a cult" but I believe it's even more fundamental: it's actually the absence of any moral capacity, as defined by Ethicist Cheryl Mendelson.

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/richard-eskow/69442/the-last-debate-how-low-will-it-go

Excerpt:

"What’s worse than a political debate that fails to give voters the information they need? One that misinforms them, while at the same time demeaning the democratic process. The final 2016 presidential debate takes place Wednesday night, and expectations are low.

Donald Trump will undoubtedly disgorge more of his predictable and already tiresome tirades. Words will once again pour out in randomly shuffled stacks, like cards dealt by a drunken croupier. One imagines him under the hot lights, reeking of narcissism, Trump “Success” aftershave, and flop sweat."