Bernie Sanders supporters are becoming insufferable

Remember when it was Ron Paul supporters who were seen as insufferable little twats? Many Bernie supporters could give them a run for their money.

There's the sexism (calling Hillary a bitch and a cunt, and taking cheap shots at her looks as if her appearance has anything to do with anything) and the racism (when they realized that minorities weren't defecting to Bernie en masse as they had hoped, many Bernie supporters became indistinguishable from Trump supporters, with talk of "stupid" and "ignorant" blacks who can't possible wrap their simple minds around politics and are just voting blindly for Clinton). Bill Maher recently pointed out the irony of Bernie supporters suddenly turning on Elizabeth Warren (who at one time was the very person the liberal wing of the Democratic Party wanted to be their candidate, and who some Bernie supporters would still like to see on a ticket with him) for committing the unforgivable sin of refusing to pick a side during the Primaries.

Just today I was reading an article about Lena Dunham speaking at a Clinton campaign event, and her description of the backlash she has received from Bern-ites over her support for Hillary:

"I have received more hostility for voting for a qualified female candidate than I have ever received anywhere from the American right wing. The fact that other members of the Democratic Party have spoken to me like I was an ill-informed child for voting for someone who represents everything I think this country should be is outrageous."

source: refinery29.com

Then there's the "If I don't get my way, I'm taking my ball and going home!" attitude of many of them, with threats to vote for Trump--a candidate who has used appeals to bigotry to fuel his campaign more openly than any candidate in my lifetime--to "get back" at Hillary, or to not vote at all (which, let's face it, is just as good as a vote for Trump).

There's the insane double standard imposed upon Hillary in which Bernie is allowed to get up on stage day after day and not-so-subtly imply that she is an evil corporate whore who will sell out your children's futures, and no one has a problem with this. But let Hillary say the most innocuous thing and people go, "Can you believe what a bitch she was when she was talking about Bernie?!?!?!" It's a well-document phenomenon--when men are forceful they are seen as strong and confident; when women are forceful they are seen as hectoring shrews.

Bernie's supporters trend younger than Hillary's, so it could just be their immaturity showing through rather than genuine sexism or racism on their part, but either way it is very ugly. It also reflects poorly on the person they support, whether said reflection is justified or not.

When it comes to politics passions run deep. Heck, this may be many Bernie supporters' first time at the rodeo, and thus they are getting a hint at their first real tasted of electoral defeat. Whatever the case may be, it's time to face the facts (and the delegate math): Barring some strange turn in events Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for the White House, and the real enemy--the Orange One--awaits. It's time to get over this intra-party fighting over who is more pure and gear up for November.

How We Can Improve Our Election System

A few ideas about how we can improve the election system here in the U.S.:

A One-Year Election Cycle

Would-be candidates would be forbidden from forming PAC’s, taking campaign contributions or actively campaigning in any way until the November of the year prior to the election. Election Day doesn’t fall on the same day of the month each election year, so the one year mark could be set at November 2^nd, which is the earliest possible day that an election could be held (i.e. the Tuesday after the first Monday of November). Assuming that primary season would still begin in February--and that the parties still held their conventions in June--that would give candidates about three months to prepare for primary season, which itself would be approximately four months long.

Campaign Finance Reform

No more dark money, and no more corporate donations. Campaign donations can only be made by individuals, whether directly to a candidate, a PAC, the DNC and/or RNC, etc. PACs must be transparent about who is giving them money, and how they are using it. Unions can vocalize support for candidates, however donations must be made individually by any members who wish to do so. There should be a reasonable cap on how much money any one individual can donate to a candidate; this will help even the playing field and prevent millionaires and billionaires from singlehandedly funding a candidate’s entire campaign.

Automatic Voter Registration

Upon registering for a state I.D. or driver’s license all eligible citizens would automatically be registered to vote. Some states, such as California and Oregon, already have similar practices. Prior to an automatic registration bill being signed into law in 2015 California has an estimated 6.6 million eligible voters who were not registered. Automatic voter registration would prevent problems when unregistered voters--some of whom may not even realize there is a problem with their registration record--leave their registration status unresolved until just before an election.

Make Election Day an Election Weekend

Holding elections on a Tuesday, when most working Americans are…well, working, has the potential to disenfranchise many voters who cannot get to the polls during normal polling hours. Some states have laws on the books allowing workers to take time off to vote if certain conditions are met, but most states do not. A solution would be to have a three-day Election Weekend, Friday-Sunday. People who may not be able to get time off during the week would now have the opportunity to vote on the weekend. Voters who follow the Sabbath (understood to begin at sundown on Friday and end at sundown on Saturday) could vote early on Friday, late on Saturday, and all day Sunday. Those who attend church on Sunday would potentially have all of Friday and Saturday to vote, as well as Sunday after church service.

Compulsory Voting

This one I’m not strong on. There are obvious downsides to making voting compulsory, but an argument could be made that the pros outweigh the cons. Voting for president would be compulsory for all voters unless they have a valid reason why they cannot vote, i.e. religious objections to voting, mental, physical or intellectually disabilities that make it unreasonably difficult for them to vote, etc. Eligible voters who fulfill their obligation, or who can give a valid reason why they could not do so (as discussed above) would be eligible for a tax credit. Eligible voters who do not vote, and do not have a valid reason, would be ineligible for this credit.

Leave Redistricting to Independent Commissions

While I have focused primarily on presidential elections until now, congressional and legislative elections are also important, and in many states are tainted by partisan politics and Gerrymandering. We should leave the job of drawing up congressional and legislative districts to independent, non-partisan (or bipartisan) commissions. No party should be able to draw up districts to rig the game in their favor simply because they control a state legislature.

Eliminate the Electoral College System

The candidate who gets more votes should win. That’s about all I have to say about that. For more detailed criticism of the Electoral College system you can click here.

Morality Without Religion

In my last post I touched on the per capita rape and murder rates in nations that are highly religious versus nations that have lower rates of religiosity. In this post I will discuss the false equation of religion with morality by taking a look at children brought up with religion and without it, the morals exhibited by these children and the long-term effects these methods may have on the adults these children will become.

What we would expect to see in religious children, particularly those raised within Abrahamic (i.e. Judeo-Christian-Islamic) religions--which the studies references further on seem to focus on--are high rates of qualities held as virtues within these religions, e.g. empathy, altruism, forgiveness, generosity, etc. If one believes that religion is key to the development of a moral code then we should certainly see these qualities manifest themselves much more clearly in religious children when compared to irreligious children, who the “religion equals morality” crowd would argue have a weak or malformed moral code, or have no moral code at all. Let’s see if this is what we find.

One study, often referred to in the media as “the sticker study”, looked at more than a thousand children, aged 5-12, representing diverse ethno-racial backgrounds. The children studied came from six different countries (the United States, Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey and South Africa), and their religious breakdown was 24% Christian, 43% Muslim and 28% not religious. Smaller numbers of children belonging to other religions were not compared.

Originally published in Current Biology, the study was led by Professor Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago. The study gauged altruism using “the dictator game”, in which each child was given thirty stickers and told to choose how many to share with another child. The results were used to calculate a generosity score. The results revealed that irreligious children shared more stickers, while the religious children were less generous. All of the groups compared saw a drop in generosity with age, though religious children consistently scored lower, suggesting that the longer a child was exposed to religion, the less generous and altruistic they became. Meanwhile the parents of the religious children were more likely to consider their children to be “more empathetic and more sensitive to the plight of others”, even as the results seemed to prove differently.

On the issue of sensitivity to perceived injustice, and the harshness of responses to that injustice, the children were shown videos depicting incidents of mild interpersonal harm (e.g. pushing or bumping), and then were asked to judge the “meanness” of the act, and to rate an appropriate level of punishment for the perpetrator. Overall the religious children rated the acts they witnessed as meaner than did the irreligious children, and favored harsher penalties. So much for “turn the other cheek”.

 Source: Forbes

How does one explain these results? One factor Decety points to is a psychological phenomenon known as “moral licensing”, in which a person will justify committing an immoral act because they’ve already done something they consider to be a “good” act.

“It’s an unconscious bias,” Decety explains. “They don’t even see that’s not compatible with what they’ve been learning in church.”

For nearly forty years Vern Bengston, professor of gerontology and sociology at USC, has overseen the Longitudinal Study of Generations, the "largest study of religion and family life conducted across several generational cohorts in the United States”. In 2013 Bengston added secular families to his study in response to a rise of irreligion in society. What he found were “high levels of family solidarity and emotional closeness” between parents and youth in irreligious households, as well as strong ethical standards and moral values.

“Many nonreligious parents were more coherent and passionate about their ethical principles than some of the ‘religious' parents in our study,” Bengston said. “The vast majority appeared to live goal-filled lives characterized by moral direction and sense of life having a purpose.”

Some of the personal qualities taught within (and held in high regard by) secular families were rational problem solving, personal autonomy, independence of thought and empathy, as well as a willingness to question beliefs.

Irreligious families seem to be keen believers in the Golden Rule, which can be stated as: One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself. This is quite different from the moral lesson taught, whether explicitly or implicitly, within many religious families: that one should behave well out of the promise of divine reward and/or fear of divine punishment.

Studies have shown that, while growing up, irreligious teens are less susceptible to peer pressure, less likely to try to fit in with the “cool” crowd, and as adults (on average) tend to be "less vengeful, less nationalistic, less militaristic, less authoritarian and more tolerant”, than their religious counterparts. A 2010 Duke University study also showed that secular adults were less likely to exhibit racism than religious adults.

None of this is meant to give the impression that all people raised with religion are selfish, vengeful, or racist people, or that all people raised with secular ideals are selfless do-gooders who live in complete harmony with the rest of society. When one looks at the big picture, however, it would seem that a moral code based in reason--in which a strong sense of empathy is impressed upon children, and which allows for them to question everything, even the very moral lessons they are being taught--is more likely to have a better outcome, and result in children with  a stronger sense of empathy and generosity toward their fellow man, than one based on instructing children that they should behave a certain way because a book says so, and that if they don’t they will be punished by an omnipotent being.

sources:

 http://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2015/11/05/religion-morality/#566ee069670e
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-oe-0115-zuckerman-secular-parenting-20150115-story.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/religious-children-less-altruistic-secular-kids-study
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/nonreligious-children-are-more-generous
http://psr.sagepub.com/content/14/1/126.abstract

Religion, Morality and Crime

 [NOTE: This was originally written in October, 2014, and may not reflect the latest statistics.]

As an atheist I have come to expect that in any debate about religion with believers someone will eventually ask the question, "Without religion, what's to stop people from raping/robbing/murdering each other?". My first thought is usually, "Well, it's good to know that the only thing stopping you from doing those things is the fear of divine punishment." With this question in mind, I decided to look up the per capita rape and murder rates by country, as well as rates of "irreligion" in those same countries. Here's what I found:

Countries that are less religious:
Sweden
Rate of irrelegion: 88%
Murder (per 100,000): 0.7
Rape (per 100,000): 63.5

Denmark
Rate of irrelegion: 83%
Murder (per 100,000): 0.8
Rape (per 100,000): 6.4

United Kingdom
Rate of irrelegion: 76%
Murder (per 100,000): 1.0
Rape (per 100,000): ??

Japan
Rate of irrelegion: 71%
Murder (per 100,000): 0.3
Rape (per 100,000): 1.0


Countries that are more religious:
Afghanistan
Rate of irrelegion: 3%
Murder (per 100,000): 6.5
Rape (per 100,000): ??

Rwanda
Rate of irrelegion: 5%
Murder (per 100,000): 23.1
Rape (per 100,000): ??

South Africa
Rate of irrelegion: 20%
Murder (per 100,000): 31.0
Rape (per 100,000): 132.4

Mexico
Rate of irrelegion: 44%
Murder (per 100,000): 21.5
Rape (per 100,000): 13.2


United States
Rate of irrelegion: 36%
Murder (per 100,000): 4.7
Rape (per 100,000): 27.3

There is a pattern among this sample. The less religious countries have far fewer murders and, with the exception of Sweden, fewer rapes as well ( though I couldn't find rape stats for all of the countries). Of course, I'm sure you could find another set of countries that would yield the opposite results, with the less religious countries having higher rates of violent crime, but I used this set of nations to prove a point. If more religion equals more morality, how does one explain these statistics?

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_by_country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Rape-rate#country

The Genius of ISIS

(NOTE: This piece was originally written three days after the terror attacks in Paris in November, 2015.)

First, let's go back. On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda pulled off the deadliest terror attack in American history, killing nearly 3,000 people, destroying the Twin Towers and severely damaging the Pentagon. I would argue that al-Qaeda's greatest success was not scored on 9/11. Their greatest success came after. You see, we here in the West are very predictable people. When a shock to the system occurs, our brains shut off and we react strictly from the gut. Thinking deeply about things is seen as hesitation, while knee-jerk reactions based on a shallow reading of events is often seen as strength. In the wake or midst of some frightening or terrible event we always overreact, both politically and militarily, and the people cheer as they watch their rights erode in the name of safety.

So no, al-Qaeda's greatest triumph wasn't 9/11 itself; their great victory can be found in our reaction to 9/11. Now we live with the Patriot Act and the NDAA, the NSA bulk collection of our phone calls and snooping of our e-mails (Constitution be damned). Now we must look at our own government through a lens of paranoia and distrust. We fought two wars that cost trillions of dollars and the lives of thousands of American soldiers, as well as over a hundred thousand civilian lives in the countries who were the target of our just crusade. Here at home we saw a predictable rise in Islamophobia. Attacks on mosques (as well as attempts by some politicians and so-called patriot groups to ban the building of mosques altogether), attacks on Muslims (as well as many Sikhs due to the confusion among many dimwitted bigots of the differences between Sikhs and Muslims).

We had people harassing Muslim-Americans from the West Coast (I recall a story about a Muslim-American group that held an anti-domestic violence banquet, and a group of "patriots" were stationed right outside, screaming at men in the company of their wives and children that they were all child molesters) to the East Coast (remember when Republican Peter King wanted to set up HUAC-style hearings to investigate the "loyalty" of Muslim-Americans in government?). Time and again Muslim-Americans were told that they will always be "other", that they will always be suspect, that they will never be "real" Americans. They are told by society at large that they are born guilty, and that no amount of patriotism or loyalty will wash away that guilt.

So now this. The new kid on the block is ISIS. Despite repeated claims by conservatives that ISIS represents a war on Christianity by Muslims, the truth is that the vast majority of ISIS's victims are their fellow Muslims. What many fail to see is ISIS's true aim. George Orwell wrote:

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power...Power is not a means; it is an end...The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.

Just as Ingsoc dressed its quest for power in revolutionary robes, so ISIS dresses its own quest in religious ones. And of what use is power if there is no one to exert that power over?

Right now tens of thousands of civilians a day are fleeing the power of ISIS, and these people are landing on the shores of Europe. These are people who have left their entire lives behind them to get on a raft with their children and take a trip that they must accept might very likely end with a watery death, all for a chance to live without the threat of death squads and death from the sky. Well, for ISIS this just won't do. How to put a stop to it? That's a simple question when you are dealing with an enemy as predictable as the West. Slip a couple terrorists in among the refugees and viola!, Western governments now have the reason they've been looking for to stop the refugees at the border, to block them out, to send them back. If a violent death awaits them when they are sent back, well, that's between them and their God. We're just protecting ourselves.

But stopping the exodus of potential victims is only one part of the plan. Other parts are playing out just as predictably. The smartest thing about the recent Paris attack (and the Charlie Hebdo attack before it), is that they knew enough to attack white folks. Anyone remember the attack last month in Turkey, where a peace rally was bombed and ninety-seven people died? Remember any "we stand with Turkey" rallies? How about the terrorist bombing in Lebanon just days ago that killed forty civilians? No? Nobody? Precisely. Killing tan-skinned Muslims is good for terrifying the locals, but it gets little play in Western media. From a PR standpoint it's small potatoes. Attacking fair-skinned people where they live? Now that gets attention.

After Charlie Hebdo there were reprisal attacks against Muslim civilians and businesses in France, and I see no reason to think the same won't happen again. French President Hollande wants to have a three month state of emergency, during which civil rights will be cheerfully disregarded, and suspicion will be treated as accomplished fact.

Here in the States someone just tried to burn down a mosque. There may very well be more attacks on Muslim-Americans (and Sikh-Americans...again, the whole thing about xenophobic extremists not being overly smart). Several Governors are threatening to refuse to take Syrian refugees. (How they plan to prevent refugees from being brought to their states, or traveling there freely if they arrive first in another state, none of them have said.) We have contenders for the Presidency of the United States declaring that only Christian refugees should be accepted, and Muslim refugees forbidden. There are increasing calls for an all-out ground war, so another trillion dollars and thousands more American soldiers' lives can be wasted. We have ridiculous threats to "nuke the Middle East" proposed by amateur foreign policy “experts”.

And all the while disaffected Muslims in America, in France and in the rest of Europe are hearing the message loud and clear: You are not one of us. You will never be one of us. You will always be "other".

They are listening. And some of them, regrettably, will come to believe it is true.

And that is the genius if ISIS. In one stroke they have insured that we will help them by: A) Putting a cork in the exodus of their victims from the territories they control (so they can continue exerting power for power's sake), and B) Our predictable knee-jerk position of xenophobia and Islamophobia will be a better recruitment tool than they could ever have dreamed of.

Hats off to you ISIS. Well played. I can only hope that one day we will actually learn enough from our mistakes to keep from repeating them. But I'm not holding my breath.