Keeping Watch

For such large birds, Great Blue Herons can be somewhat difficult to find around here, to the point that it's easy to forget that the Puget Sound region is part of their year round range. But this particular bird had located a nice vantage point for itself, which, in turn, gave me a nice shot at it. The bird seems small in photograph, and so I considered cropping it down to make it seem larger, but I kind of like how unobtrusive the bird comes across as being at this angle.

Unwound

I was rummaging through some notes that I'd taken "back in the day," as it were, and found the following description of people serving time in prison.

They lose their humanity. They lose their full range of emotions. Their personality disappears. They (sic) eyes become blank. They seek deep, deep under what we know as depression. There is no enjoyment of even the smallest things because there are no small things to enjoy.

I wish that I'd thought to save more of the context of, and a link to, this statement, because it seems to be part of a much longer missive, and I'd like to read the rest of it. But, unfortunately, I didn't, and so this anonymous snippet will likely remain so, as a quick Google search of parts of it didn't reveal a source. But in that same series of notes, I also found the following argument for life in prison, as opposed to capital punishment.

We will avoid inflicting irreversible penalties.

This speaks to one of the strange contradictions of the criminal justice system as we think of it in the United States; the idea that the effects of being subjected to "dehumanizing" conditions, with all of the losses that the writer lists above, is reversible. Part of it it, I think, that we don't consider such mental and emotional damage, the loss of emotionality, personality and enjoyment, as being themselves part of the penalty that we exact from people when they are incarcerated. And if one of the arguments against sentencing people to death for crimes committed is that we don't want to be in a position of having done something irreversible for a crime that it turns out was not committed (at least not by the person convicted of it), that likely applies to a much wider range of sentences than might be initially evident.

The fact that death is forever is relative when compared to spending years behind bars. The only time I have ever heard anyone articulate that it's possible to somehow completely reverse the effect of a long period of imprisonment is in reference to the death penalty. Society can accept the fact the a person who spends a year in a combat zone can return and never be the same as they were when they left, but then determine that there is nothing "irreversible" about being in prison for a significant stretch of time?

This is the reason why I am dubious of the idea that there should be a financial benefit to doing away with capital punishment. The lengthy process of appeals and reviews that are mandated for sentencing someone to be executed should simply be applied to those sentenced to die behind bars. The idea that there is an absolutely reversible penalty, one that is somehow "safe" to apply to an innocent person is a fallacy.

There is an argument to made that being wrongly imprisoned for twenty years, and then put to death is no worse than being wrongly imprisoned for forty years, and then succumbing to old age. And no system is, or can be, perfect. False positives will occur, and they will condemn those who are innocent of the accusations leveled against them. While the late Justice Antonin Scalia (I believe) was excoriated for this stand, I believe that he was fundamentally correct when he effectively noted that there is no Constitutional right for the innocent to not be imprisoned. The standards deal with due process and reasonable doubt. Factual innocence is not part of the equation; if it could be reliably determined whether or not someone was genuinely guilty, a number of problems would have been resolved by now.

I don't know if there will ever be broad acceptance of the idea that there is no such thing as a reversible penalty. But time, once taken from a person, can never be returned to them. In that sense, it is like life itself.

Misattributed

The group More in Common has published the results of a new study that they've conducted, and it shows that, basically, Democrats and Republicans don't really understand what the "other side" thinks, in that they tend to ascribe a higher percentage of "extreme" views to the opposite party than polling bears out. For me, this is the rough equivalent of a study that informs us that water is wet. While I have a number of politically engaged friends and acquaintances, they don't really share their political viewpoints with me, outside of the occasional browbeating about which candidates they want me to vote for. And so where they stand on, for instance, whether most police officers are bad people or if properly controlled immigration will strengthen the nation are mysteries to me. Our conversations don't turn on such topics.

What I can usually put my finger on is the degree to which my friends trust corporate America. And the answer to that question is: not much. A surprising (to me, anyway) number of my friends have a deeply conspiratorial mindset when it comes to how businesses operate. And there is, to a degree, a similar conspiracy-minded view of politics, especially among some of the more politically engaged people I know. The idea that "the other side's" policies were designed to advance some hateful backroom scheme is fairly prevalent.

More in Common's research appears to bear this out. When asked to assess whether the other were "Brainwashed," "Hateful" or "Racist," large numbers of Democrats and Republicans alike were willing to lay these judgements. Republicans were slightly more charitable than Democrats, except when it came to assessing racism, where they were significantly less likely to call out Democrats than vice versa. Still, 71% of Republicans were willing to describe Democrats as racists, so that may not be as hopeful a sign as could be wished for.

David Brooks once pointed out that a lot of what is at work in the divide between liberal and conservative viewpoints in the United States, whether applied to domestic or international affairs, has simply to do with where and how people live, and thus what they understand is most useful for them. "Blue America" tends to live in areas of high population density, where the externalities of individual behavior are everyday things. "Red America," on the other hand, being less dense, has more concern with being able to do what they need to in order to look after themselves. To the degree what systems that work well for one group tend to make life difficult when applied to the other, there is a friction. And when people see that friction as intentional, anger develops. Understanding one another better would help bridge this gap, I believe, even though I understand that many people see half-measures and compromises as the same as inaction.

More in Common tends to somewhat disagree with my assumption that people understanding one another, and the problems that people are attempting to solve, would lead to a less-fractured polity:

That is because our analysis reveals a powerful polarization ecosystem that thrives off of outrage and division. Traditional media, social media platforms, friend networks, political candidates and consultants benefit from dividing Americans, exaggerating disagreements and inciting conflict. These forces of division must be held to account.

And this is where the whole exercise took a turn towards the ironic. As near as I can tell, the problem has never been that people don't want to be unified, it's that they believe that there are people who directly benefit from deliberately creating problems and blocking solutions. At the same time, people see themselves as above being taken in. The reason why 86% of Republicans are willing to describe Democrats as "Brainwashed," and 88% of Democrats are willing to return the favor isn't that they are unaware of "traditional media, social media platforms, friend networks, political candidates and consultants." It's that they're secure in their own objectivity and that of people who agree with them, and so it's only those who don't see the world properly who are being fooled. And this is perfectly reasonable; who would want to believe that their friends and the candidates they support for elective office are effectively colluding to make fools of them?

In this, More in Common's invocation of vague "forces of division" drives the very judgements of bad intention, poor character and limited discernment that they decry. According to More in Common's numbers, even though 86% percent of Republicans believe that Democrats are "Brainwashed," 31% of them also believe that Democrats are "Caring." As these numbers together add up to 117%, there must be some overlap. Even the less charitable opinions of Democrats about Republicans result in the numbers adding up to 107%. From this, we can guess that at least about one in six Republicans and at least about one in fourteen Democrats may believe that there are some number of their "opposites" that are caring people, brainwashed by "élites," because they don't understand that the people they receive their information from "benefit from dividing Americans, exaggerating disagreements and inciting conflict." In other words, they're blind to the conspiracy that manipulates them.

The message that "there are enemies; people just have to know who they really are," very often becomes "there are enemies; other people just have to know who they really are." In Yascha Mounk's column in The Atlantic that reports on the More in Common study, he notes:

What is corroding American politics is, specifically, negative partisanship: Although most liberals feel conflicted about the Democratic Party, they really hate the Republican Party. And even though most conservatives feel conflicted about the Republican Party, they really hate the Democratic Party.

And this makes perfect sense. If you understand a partisan apparatus of traditional media outlets, social media networks, groups of "friends," candidates chosen by powerful élites and consultants employed by the same exaggerating disagreements by portraying you as an extremist so as to divide the country and incite conflicts and, in the process turning people with the capacity to be honest, reasonable and caring into brainwashed, hateful racists, what's wrong with hating that? What's wrong with hating people who are deliberately sowing unnecessary dissension for their own benefit?

Once people understand that there are bad people in the world around them, they will look for them and they will likely find them. And not only in the places that one might want them to.

The Great Monster

One of the central conceits of H. P. Lovecraft's Mythos corpus is that there are these ancient and very powerful beings that exist out in the universe. They aren't hostile to humanity, they're just indifferent. But their power makes that indifference into a mortal threat.

While coming up to the door of my apartment a few days ago, I met a spider. As happens from time to time, he'd spun his web across the gap between the wall of the building and this post that runs between the balcony and the roof. Right in a space that I have to pass through in order to get to my door. So I come home, and find myself face to face with an arachnid, who that morning had likely marveled at its good fortune in finding such prime and unoccupied real estate.

Needless to say, that turned out to be a colossal error in judgment; and the end of one web, since I had no intention of winding up with it all over my face, hair and shirt.

And in that moment, I kind of understood how Mr. Lovecraft intended Cthulhu and company to interact with humanity. I had nothing against the spider. It simply had the misfortune to build a web in a spot that I needed to pass through. I wouldn't be surprised if it never even saw me clearly. From its point of view, there may have been somewhat of a strange, localized darkening of the sky, and then catastrophe struck. (The spider did survive. But if one can be traumatized, there's a spider therapist about to make a killing.)

I'd once read an interesting story about ants managing to communicate with humans and being able to ask favors; and how horribly wrong that could go. And that's a pretty good analog for how cultists might find their interactions with the Elder Gods. But the interaction with the spider speaks to what life in that world can suddenly be like for the rest of the inhabitants. The ones for whom life is normal until they find themselves face to face with a force so much greater than themselves that they can't even perceive it properly, that destroys their works and maybe even lives out of sheer indifference to their fates.

Painted Over

It's not uncommon to hear people refer to companies "greenwashing" or "wokewashing;" that is, using the language and/or imagery of environmental stewardship or social consciousness without really taking the necessary actions (or as much action as they'd like to appear to be) to further those ends. Part of this is a certain understandable (and sometimes, warranted) cynicism towards businesses, which, after all, at answerable to their shareholders and/or other owners to a much greater degree than they are to the public at large, let alone the specific subsets of people who consider themselves "green" or "woke." And there are others, like "redwashing," "pinkwashing," and "bluewashing" which I will admit were all new to me.

This is to be expected, I think. After all, environmental stewardship and social consciousness are, from the point of view of a business, brand assets, no less than a reputation for quality or perception of value. And these are also things that businesses (and governments), given half a chance, will fake if they can get away with it. Like the more garden-variety "whitewashing" (outside of the motion-picture industry, in which it has a different meaning), all of these are simply shortcuts to a better public image. Or, to perhaps use a term more favored in business, "efficiencies."

There is, as in many things, a perverse incentive at work. While a reputation for quality or for socially-conscious activism are brand assets, high-quality products and services or social consciousness can be expensive. And when the bottom line is important, that creates an incentive to attain the reputation, and the benefits thereof, with as little expenditure as can be managed. This can lead to companies looking for genuine efficiencies, finding ways to get the most bang for their buck, to reuse the cliché. But in a situation where genuine progress can be hard for a layperson to determine, there can be a temptation to stop at talking the talk. While security is a common area where this is seen; leading to the term "security theater," if it's not immediately evident when the walk is being walked, the fact that talk is cheap(er) will likely become something of a consideration.

Perverse incentives are built into the human experience from the outset. For any number of human activities, there is an "easy way" to an end, and as long as this is true, people will be attracted to them. Guarding against them takes what can be a remarkable amount of effort, and to the degree that we see that effort as detracting from more important activities, it's reasonable that people will skimp on it. Doing things the hard way, or even simply doing what was promised, is often a more difficult sell than we give it credit for, which is what makes it important.