Huckleberry Finn and Political Correctness

Oh, my. It's happening again. Huck Finn has come under attack.
The book which Ernest Hemingway claimed is the well spring from which all meaningful American fiction emanates has been stricken from the curriculum, this time not from a public school, but from a private Quaker school in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, which just goes to show, public schools are not alone in their sad impotence to really educate young minds.

The problem is, the principal explained, the use of "the N word" and the depiction of Black slaves made some students uncomfortable.

Isn't that the point of education? 

First, allow me to say the "N word" is "Nigger." We should be brave and bold enough to use that word in polite company to face the ugly truth. Very religious Jews would not speak the word for "God" because they felt even giving the name a human voice would violate the reverence man should have for the supreme being. Now we have the same sort of thinking, in reverse.  "Nigger" is simply too vile a word to be used by sensitive souls. 

If the use of the word "Nigger" were the worst offense, one might say you are missing the most disturbing things. The fact is, slaves were thought of as children, with intelligence roughly the level of a very smart poodle, and Jim, the slave, is fairly infantile in his superstitions and in some of his fearful behavior. 

Of course, the climax of the book arrives when Huck, who has treated Jim with the casual contempt white boys of that time and place were wont to do faces the great choice of the book:  Jim, it turns out, has a family, a wife and child and if he can get to freedom, to a free state, he can work and then purchase their freedom, or maybe arrange for them to be stolen out of slavery. Huck and Jim arrive at a divide in the river, and if Huck helps Jim take the branch to freedom, Huck will violate the most serious rule of white Southern life--you keep the slaves down. 

Huck struggles with this choice. He knows what "right" is here: Return Jim to his rightful owners. But he has also gotten to know Jim as a human being, that is, he has seen the undeniable humanity in Jim and that is the real sin in Southern culture.  Finally, Huck says, well, then, I will go to Hell. I always knew I was headed there, so this will do it for sure.

It turns out, of course, Jim's owner had died and in her will set Jim free, but neither Huck nor Jim knew this. Tom Sawyer knew this, but did not tell either, until he had milked all the fun out of Jim's ignorance, proving the true venality of Mr. Sawyer. 

This is one of the most subversive books in American literature. Written as if it comes from the heart of the South, embracing the most hideous of Southern core values, but exposing the most basic problem with those values--the denial of one people's humanity by another people's arrogance and willful selfishness.

Central Friends School

None of this will be discussed at the Friend's school in Pennsylvania. The students there are too delicate to face the cruelty and the lessons buried deep within. 

A Sense of Grievance: The Gift Trump Gives Us

Lincoln and Stowe

The thing about a Republic is it can be manipulated by a small, excited minority. 

Clearly, the Republican Party is currently being driven by a minority segment which feels aggrieved, aggrieved about "Radical Islam" shooting up Americans and Parisians and Western white people, aggrieved about having a Black man as President, aggrieved about the very thought someone from the government might want to take away their guns. These people will show up, which as Woody Allen once noted, is 80% of life, not to mention politics. They will go to rallies and cheer and vote.

But, I am told,  they are actually only about 40% of the 300,000 million Americans who the President represents.

The problem is, they are the ones animated, while the rest of America is busy going shopping, going to their kids' soccer games, going out to restaurants and bars, watching the Patriots, thrilling to Steph Curry, buying new cars, mowing lawns, raking leaves, redoing kitchens and bathrooms, and doing all the things which have nothing to do with listening to Donald Trump blame Muslims and President Obama (not necessarily in that order) for everything wrong with the world today.

This morning, I heard the former Republican governor of Pennsylvania blame President Obama for Donald Trump! Wow, that was a neat trick. If President Obama had only been more emotional during his speech from the White House after the San Bernadino attack, then Trump would not have been able to step into that vacuum. 

Oh, I get it. Mr. Obama's cerebral, cool style is just no match for the white hot Trump and so all the oxygen in the room is sucked up by Mr. Trump. Got it.

When the war between the states broke out, the cerebral Mr. Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe at the White House.  In what may be an apocryphal story, the over 6 foot President bent down to shake the hand of the diminutive author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and said, "So, this is the little lady, who wrote the book, that started the great big war."

I love that story, and don't really care whether or not it is true--it is true in its point. Without the white hot passions of the anti slavery movement, there would have been no Civil War.  Until enough people could be pried away from the concerns of their daily doggy lives in New Hampshire and Minnesota and New York to care about the great wrong that was slavery, no regiments could be mustered.

Think about that. Men from farms in New Hampshire left those shires to enlist in a huge bureaucratic, undemocratic organization to go fight in South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, all over.  That took some motivation.  Likely, there were many who joined for the adventure, for dreams of glory, because they were unhappy with life at home, but they were animated by something.  

And one thing you can say for Mr. Trump: He animates people. So did Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, the Emperor of Japan, and Genghis Khan. Drove those crowds into a frenzy, did these guys. 

Lincoln gave wonderful, thoroughly thought out speeches about slavery and the Union. His debates with Stephen Douglas were thoughtful, powerful, but intentionally dispassionate in passionate times. In the midst of the Civil War, speaking before a multitude from the Capitol building, he delivered his Second Inaugural address which could have been a rousing call to arms, but was, instead, a thoughtful, reflective statement of the events leading up to the war and the reasons to continue fighting it. 

Of course, his best known address, at Gettysburg, would have left Ted Cruz and Donald Trump snoring. It had ringing phrases and deep understanding but it was understated and given the circumstances, dispassionate. That the war would be pursued to prevent a government of the people, by the people, for the people from vanishing from the face of the earth spoke to people who had attention spans beyond that of the average flea.  Not sure it would have rung so loud today among the people who rally for Mr. Trump. What the children want who Mr. Trump thrills are apocalyptic visions of the coming onslaught, a sort of invasion of the zombies, to which Mr. Trump, being a tough guy, will play the super hero. Oh, we'll all be so proud with all the winning. 

 Lincoln knew he could not motivate passions the way Stowe had. In fact, he was trying to cool down passions, but emotion ruled the day. His smile and wink to Ms. Stowe, if it happened, would have carried a measure of rebuke--here I was trying to calm everyone down, talk them back from the precipice and you got them all inflamed and we got war. 

Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz and Ms. Fiorina all invoke images of Radical Islamic nasties beheading people, slaughtering innocents and they raise the alarm with their Jeremiads.  In the midst of real threat to the existence of the Republic, Lincoln did not stoke fears. 

But maybe Harriet Beecher Stowe was right. We need some emotion to provoke action now and then.  Perhaps what we need now, to provoke the somnolent masses to go out and vote against the hucksters of hysteria  is a new Uncle Tom's Cabin about the logical consequences of Mr. Trumps ascension to the Presidency, a world in which Muslims are relegated to ghettos, with ID cards and a data base to track them. A world where high school students pack guns in school (and shoot each other while waiting for the Radical Islamic terrorists to show up), where eleven million immigrants are rounded up and deported, where a 1,000 mile wall of reinforced concrete is built along the Mexican border, where health care collapses. 

If we had that, maybe we'd have the war we need, to get the complacent masses who might actually not hate, fear and loathe Muslims to get off their couches and go vote.

Donald J. Trump: Internment Camps for American Muslims?

Japanese American on the way to Internment Camp 1942

The Donald was on CNN this morning saying that a poll showed 25% of Muslims living in America think violence against Americans by Muslims would be justified and 51% think we should live under Sharia law.

Everyone else this morning was talking about Mr. Trump saying we should not allow any more Muslims into the country. What got my attention was what he is saying about those already here.

In his interview with the hapless Chris Coumo, Mr. Trump alluded to a man Coumo had on earlier in the program, who defended Roosevelt's incarceration of Japanese Americans at the outset of World War II. Trump spoke approvingly of all that.

I couldn't help but fantasizing about a debate between me and the Donald, held by Trump rules: 

Mad Dog: Mr. Trump is doing well in the polls. Of course, 49% of his supporters, who say they will likely vote for him  in the primaries are active members or have been members of the Ku Klu Klan, or say they support the Klan's principles. So we know who he's appealing to.

Mr. Trump: I'm a big guy, a winner. I don't turn away voters because the scum media says they are stupid. You know who's stupid?  The media. They are just scum,  you know? They call these horrible people masterminds. Did you hear that after Paris? That guy, and he wasn't very smart, but they were calling him a "mastermind." Oh, they are looking everywhere for the "mastermind!" And kids go on line. They are impressionable. They want to be a mastermind, too. 

Mad Dog:  Yes, kids are impressionable, I have to agree with you on that. But I don't agree with 59% of your supporters who say we ought to invade Ethopia, because it worked so well for Mussolini.  

Mr. Trump: They say that? Well, I do think we should bomb the shit of ISIS and if they go there, well, okay.  Where'd you get that?

Mad Dog: It was a poll.

Mr. Trump: Oh, well, then.



Mad Dog: And I heard from a woman in the parking lot that vaccines cause autism, and some vaccines cause otherwise peaceful Muslims to just go postal. Maybe we ought to change that expression: Maybe we should say, "Go Muslim!"  Or maybe no, we should say, go all "Radical Islam."

Mr. Trump: You can't get Obama to say that. He won't say the words, "Radical Islam!"
What's up with that? Of course, you know, he was born in Kenya and sent here to take over and establish a caliphate. 

Mad Dog: Did the woman in the parking lot tell you that? Cause I heard that too, but it was the same woman who told me about the autism, so I don't know. I do know there's a poll that says 40% of Republicans think Obama is a Muslim.

Mr. Trump: He's such a disaster. I mean, what was that from the Oval Office the other night? The man cannot say, "Radical Islam?"  He is just a disaster. And clueless. How stupid does he think we are? I mean, our teachers told us we are stupid. Our bosses tell us we are stupid. The media tells us we are stupid. But it's not us who's stupid. It's them. They are stupid! All of them. Not us. But I went to the Ivy League.



















Mad Dog: I couldn't agree with you more. You know, I thought this was supposed to be a debate. But 55.5% of the people who are likely voters in the New Hampshire primary think you are smarter than their own governor, and she has said she doesn't want to let more refugees in until we have a chance to take a breath. And you know what religion most of those refugees are.  And now she's probably very happy she said that.  And 25% of the Muslims in New Hampshire say they want jihad and 54%, I got this from a poll, 54% say sharia law ought to replace the Constitution, and you know what that means. Good-bye Second Amendment. 

Mr. Trump:  And that's something you can forget about. Won't happen. Not if I'm President.  We'll arm school children.  And we'll be winning, so much. We'll get bored with winning, we'll be winning so much. We'll all be proud. Just so proud.  Did I tell you about how I won the bid for the Old Post Office Building in Washington, D.C. ? Won the bid from the Obama administration. Know why? Cause I'm a winner. We're all going to be winners when I'm President. Going to build a hotel there, so when I win the election, I'll have a place to stay until the Inauguration. And when I get into the White House, I'll redo it, like I did with the ice skating rink in Central Park. Ed Koch was so embarrassed about that rink. Couldn't get it done. But I got it done, under budget in 6 weeks. Ed was a good friend of mine. Nice guy, really. They named a bridge after him. A bridge to Queens.  But still. I mean, I'm from Queens, myself, sort of.  If those people in Paris had had guns--good-bye Jihadist scum bags!  

Mad Dog: Actually, you know, I think I've finally found something I disagree with you about:  You can have your AK-47. Give me a baseball bat and the element of surprise and I'll take those odds any day. It comes down to "DO you feel lucky, today?"

Mr. Trump: Hey, Clint Eastwood. Dirty Harry! My man. But I don't get it. You say that when you have the gun on the guy. "Do you feel lucky today?  A big magnum. 

Mad Dog: I know, but I just love saying that.

Strong and Wrong

"Better to be strong and wrong than right and weak," 
--attributed to Bill Clinton

Donald Trump has apparently taken this advice to heart.

Last night I saw the culminating episode in the seventh season of the "West Wing" toward which all the previous seasons and episodes have been moving: "The Debate."

In this episode the Republican candidate, a decent, liberal Republican, Arnold Vinnick (Alan Alda) turns to his Democratic rival, Matt Santos (Jimmy Smitts) after hearing the moderator lay out the rules--one minute answer, thirty second reply, yellow light goes on and you wrap up--and he says, "Let's skip these rules. Let's have a real debate."

This is, of course, what Aaron Sorkin and I and so many others would like to see--a Lincoln/Douglass debate where the candidates challenge each other and allow each other to reply at length. 

What ensues is a riveting, detailed examination of the souls of each ideology, Democrat and Republican.  Even as a lifelong left wing Democrat, I found myself agreeing with the Republican on education.  I do not believe the federal government ought to be pushing people toward college. I agree we need welders and mechanics and skilled laborers as much or more than we need philosophy and English majors.  But I agreed with the Democrat we cannot give up on public schools--it's just that we cannot expect public schools to heal all the ills of deprived youth. 
When Vinnick says "Headstart doesn't work" the audience gasps, but he points out test scores by the 6th grade are no better among kids who went to Headstart programs to which Santos replies, but those test scores were far better in 3rd grade; it's just that we gave up on those kids and allowed them to flounder after that. Headstart does what it is designed to do--it gets kids set up to learn in grades 1-3. 

When Santos attacks American pharmaceutical companies for pricing AIDS drugs out of the reach of Africans who need them, Vinnick replies that's not what's killing Africans; the lack of clean water is killing them. And why do they not have clean water?  High taxes. And  the audience laughs. But Vinnick says, (who knows how true this is) African countries tax their citizens who make $3,000 a year almost 30% in an effort to pay back national debt and at that level no economy can survive. So Vinnick, the Republican is making the argument Paul Krugman has been making about austerity in Europe and in Greece--you can't expect a nation to emerge from debt if you crush the economy with taxes. 

So the Republican scores some punches, but Santos gets in his licks. When Vinnick derides him as a liberal Santos points out it was liberals who ended slavery, got the Voting Rights Act passed to allow Blacks to vote, created Social Security and Medicare, ended the war in Vietnam, got women the vote. Throw that label at my feet and I'll pick it up and wear it as a badge of honor Santos says with a look of I'll spit in your eye. 

Santos scores well when he says the history of every Republican administration since Reagan is to cut taxes for the rich, promising to cut federal spending, but never cutting spending so deficits explode. And Vinnick is unwilling to specify where exactly he is willing to make cuts, because every cut loses votes among some group. This was the nub of the problem for Republicans in 2005 when the show aired and that has not changed. 

And on health care--and this show aired way before Ombamacare--Santos, the Democrat has to admit he doesn't much like his own program which will insure 15 million currently uninsured Americans, but it's all he can expect to get past Congress. He'd really like to make Medicare an option for everyone. "Just strike out that 65 and over" clause.  To which Vinnick erupts, "You'd force a government program on everyone?" To which Santos says, "Not force. Give them the option. And you know it is the best health insurance out there and a whole lot of people would chose it." Vinnick scoffs--embracing the Republican denial of Medicare. But Santos points out how much more efficient Medicare is than any private insurer--only a 2% administrative cost as opposed the 20% commercial insurance companies run.

What Santos does not say is Medicare is also the only health insurance where the company actually has the incentive to keep it's customers healthy as opposed to the mission to increase profit. What this means is Medicare pays for a good pair of shoes for diabetics every two years because avoiding foot abscesses is way cheaper than a single hospitalization.

What was so wonderful about the debate is it got past all the stupidity and got to the intelligent basis for disagreement. And when one candidate said something as if it was undeniable, the other was able to marshal facts and figures to blow it out of the water.  

Donald Trump would have vanished beneath the waves in a debate like this in less than a minute. Santos would have killed him not simply by challenging his baseless, blase assertions which are detached from reality but he would have vanquished Trump and any Republican on the grand ideology: You attack universal health care, and public schools, and any public program at all, but it's easy to just say no, no, no. Eventually, you have to say "yes."

Vinnick has appeared with border patrol officers on the Texas border saying he'd triple the number of patrolmen--how sad this was an issue then and we've not moved beyond it. Of course, Santos points out the number of patrolmen have already been tripled and made no difference. It's only 2005 and nobody's talking about building a wall. You know if Vinnick had proposed that Santos would point to the Maignot Line the French built to keep out the Germans after WWI.  Of course, the German's simply drove around it and flew over it--just as the Mexicans will do.

Just before the debate Santos meets with a pro choice women's group leader who is threatening to endorse the Republican because Santos is actually more conservative and believes in more restrictions than his Republican rival.  "Would you approve of abortion to chose the sex of a child?" Santos asks her. "Of course not." Santos smiles, "Well, then you are for limiting the reasons for abortion, just like me. The whole difference is where you draw the lines." The woman is left tongue tied, and it's a wonderful scene, one you would never see in real life. This is a world  where people dissect the lines along which choices about abortion may split party and religious lines, where possibilities for some accommodation on abortion might occur. But not in today's real world, where the Republicans have simply cut off all debate and are only interested in using abortion for votes.

"West Wing" creates  a world we'd like to see, where the Republican is actually mostly pro choice and really wants to engage in the actual issues which separate the two parties rather than these pseudo "values" arguments.  When Vinnick  assails Santos for wanting to control guns, Santos shrugs it off: "There are over 200 million guns in this country--I own 3 of them--there's no way to control guns. I'd control the bullets."

There is no good answer to gun deaths and violence in America, but there are possibilities for fresh approaches and watching this imaginary debate you see the power of good fiction--the power to imagine a better world, toward which we might move, if only the venality and weakness of real people did not stand in the way.

The Unaccountable Appeal of Donald Trump

Another day on the basement treadmill, listening to the Donald, this time coming from a rally in Manassas, Virginia.  
You cannot say it was a typical  stump speech, although it was, such as there is stump speech from Trump, beyond that rambling, free association string of stories about how he made his announcement of his Presidential campaign, coming down the elevator in Trump Tower, with his wife. And he reminds everyone the TV executives wanted to renew his contract for "The Apprentice" because it was making so much money, but he gave up all that so he could become President--such is the magnitude of his own patriotism, giving up a TV gig to serve as President. Such sacrifice. Makes you tear up. Makes you proud.

And there is the string of aspersions--Hillary Clinton's whole life has just been so corrupt--the unabashed hyperbole that just leaks out, sails free and is gone before you have time to really react:   Hillary is just so tired, she goes home and goes to sleep after a big rally like this one, whereas Trump, all pumped up, goes out to build another building, or maybe he goes out for a run around the battlefield. You'd be so proud. 

And there are jibes at the hateful Media, and the promise to build a thousand mile wall along the Mexican border, which he will make the Mexicans pay for, and it will be made  out of reinforced concrete and Rebar steel.  A thousand miles of concrete and Rebar. If we had a thousand miles of concrete and Rebar in New Hampshire, we could repair all the bridges. 

And the Chinese built a 30,000 mile wall without tractors or big trucks.  And that comment, too, sails past. Wait!  They built that wall, over how many years? And would that wall have prevented the peasant looking for a job from crossing into China or was it designed to prevent the Mongol hordes from launching a cavalry attack? And exactly how much good did it do?  And if the border with Mexico is 2000 miles and if the illegal immigrants can simply slide around the edges and come in from the Gulf of Mexico, how much good will Mr. Trump's wall  do? I really need to know more about the Mexican border. I need to know more about the great wall of China. And Rebar and concrete, I'm going to Google that, too.

I do know what Matt Santos, the Democratic candidate for President from West Wing, who  I wish was running against Mr. Trump said. He said if you built a wall and doubled or tripled the border guard you might cut the number of illegals getting past the defenses  from 90% to 80%, but the problem is not law enforcement; it's economic. 

But of course, for Mr. Trump it's all about law enforcement because he's heard of at least two cases of illegal immigrants committing murder or rape or both, and if that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about Mexican illegals, well, how stupid can you be?


A friend of mine from New Hampshire, a rock solid liberal Democrat, remarked how guilty she felt, listening to Trump, even though she disagrees with almost everything he says and hates some of it, but she finds herself smiling and enjoying the show. And he addresses this on stage. He says the media says he draws big crowds because he is entertaining, but, he insists to the crowd: "You're not here to be entertained. You're here to vote for me." And the crowd roars.

Which brings me to  the crowd.  The camera pans over them. These are scary people. What makes them scary is they don't look all that vulgar. It's not like "The Shoppers of Walmart" or anything. They look pretty ordinary, like normal folks, just like in the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." But they are not normal. They are smiling and nodding their heads and loving the Donald.  The Donald drags a few of them up on stage if they ask a question he particularly likes and he takes care to like a question from a Black person and from a serviceman. 
African Americans love me! Who else gets so much love from Black pastors? They say if I get 25% of the Black vote, it's all over. Well, I'm going to do better than that, because I'm a winner. I've been a winner all my life.

Hispanics love me! They love me because I give them jobs and I'll give them more jobs once I'm elected and we'll all be rich!

My mind starts to spin. I need to slow down and replay. But most of all I need to go through the transcript, if I could ever get one, to see what it is he says and how he gets his effects. 

How does a person like Hillary Clinton, who the Donald assures the crowd he will crush in the general election, ever respond? Part of what happens in an education is you learn to avoid doing what the Donald is doing--making generalizations without data to support your assertions. Making general statements--"Hillary: Her whole life has been just so corrupt"--which allow for a single exception to deflate. If there is one part of her life which is not corrupt, then you are wrong.  

And so forth. 

I can hardly imagine President Obama on the same stage as the Donald. How does an educated person deal with someone who does not value what we have been trained to value, like coherence in speech?

Obama is just an utter disaster. We all hate him. He's the worst President ever, and that goes back a thousand years.  Obama's kind of a wimp, you know?  It brings to mind the wonderful riposte of the Virginian Congressman, John Randolph,  who was belittled on the floor of the House by another Congressman who observed Randolph appeared hardly post pubertal, with no beard, child like skin, high voice and slight musculature. Randolph responded:

"You pride yourself on an animal faculty, in respect to which the negro is your equal and the jackass infinitely your superior."
.

Of course, this is the ante bellum, racist Congress, but it was the perfect response to the Frat boy of the era.

What can you say of Trump?

That he is possessed of that special self adoration of the boy who is rich enough to replace any mirror which reflects poorly on him.

Mr. Trump says he is  a born winner. Well, he was born rich, which in his mind is the same thing.

Mr. Trump basks in the love of Hispanics and Blacks; the Hispanics love him because he signs their paychecks. The Blacks love him because they are always entertained by a very stupid white boy.

Mr. Trump expects the Mexicans to pay for the wall he says he will build across the Mexican border. And Sam Houston and Davy Crockett thought Santa Anna would rebuild the Alamo for them. 

There is a fascinating character in the TV series, "Game of Thrones." His name is Joffrey and he is the beloved blonde son who inherits a throne and thinks he's earned it. While he has no sympathy for the downtrodden masses of his kingdom, he believes he deserves their adoration: Donald Trump might want to watch this. Every man needs a role model.

The Problem with Polls: Jill Lepore Strikes Again

Professor Lepore

In an era of identify theft (when people are reluctant to reveal any personal information), with cell phones replacing landlines, with caller ID, the task of people trying to do political polling is daunting. If you want to know how the affluent white female over 50 crowd sees Donald Trump, you have to ask a lot of personal questions, that is, if you can get her to pick up her home landline which has caller ID and you can't use robo calling for her cell phone, because that's illegal, so just getting people to talk to you and once you have, getting them to divulge their demographics is met with suspicion.

As Jill Lepore notes in her wonderful New Yorker piece on polling, in the 1930's the response rate to polls was over 90%--people who were asked to participate in opinion polls said yes over 90% of the time. Today that rate of response is in the single digits. One might ask, can you really get a representative sample of what people are thinking and how they are likely to behave--i.e, will they go to the polls and vote--when 95% of people won't talk to you. 

What does it say about those people who do respond? Are they not "atypical" to begin with, as witnessed by their very willingness to be interviewed and are you not basing your idea of "public opinion" on a cohort which is, ipso facto, atypical?

There are basically two types of polls:  1. Opinion polls which aim to tell what the public thinks about issues  2. Election polls which hope to predict the outcome of elections. 

Watching on Election night, I have often been stunned by how well the numbers models seem to work:  If Obama gets more than 30% in this particular part of this particular county in Pennsylvania, you can call the state for him when less than 20% of voting centers have finished their count in Pennsylvania.  Magic. Big numbers. How do they do that?  Of course, that sort of analysis is pretty distinct and different from polls, but still, it suggests social and political scientists might actually know what they are talking about.

On the other hand,  I always wince when I hear some politico say, "Well, Romney is not doing well with white women," or "Obama has a problem with white men."   The fact is, there are likely other fellow travelers with that demographic designation, "white men": like Southern, high school educated, gun owning, church going white men might not be fertile ground for Obama. But you didn't need a poll to tell you that.

On the other hand, canvassing in Hampton, New Hampshire, I met as many blue collar white gun-owning men who contradicted that conventional wisdom, who voiced support for Obama,  as I met those who fulfilled it. 

And talking to gun owners and gun enthusiasts, I find a great range of belief about the place of guns in a free society--Hillary Clinton may have tapped into that by saying gun owners should leave the NRA which does not represent them. She understands there are nuances in opinions beyond the "you will have to pry my gun from my cold dead fingers" crowd.

Watching West Wing and every morning show, polls are loosely quoted by people who haven't the faintest idea how those polls were conducted--by phone, by land line, by internet, by door to door? They don't even know exactly what question was asked.

People who take a poll by landline phone own landline phones which many young people do not.  The landliners tend to be older, and more conservative. 

People who respond to a poll voluntarily on the internet are not, by definition, randomly selected; they are self selected and tend to be more extreme.

Professor Lepore notes that in 1947 Herbert Blumer said public opinion simply does not exist, absent its measurement. "Pollsters proceed from the assumption that "public opinion" is an aggregation of individual opinions, each given equal weight." And this is something of an absurdity, because you are trying to make a single white woman with an income over $100K stand for all single affluent white women and she will depart from that cohort in all sorts of ways.

This is an old argument, really, not just in sociology, but in anthropology, where Ruth Bennedict and Margaret Mead once argued you could know all about an individual's values and beliefs if you simply knew the values of the culture in which he was raised, but it turned out each individual differed significantly from the norm for that group, when you actually got down to individual cases.

I see this all the time in my office, as people voice support for Mr. Obama's desire to keep our armies off Middle Eastern soil, support for unfettered gun rights, animosity toward shooters who kill patients at Planned Parenthood while expressing a horror of abortion.  An individual is often all over the map. How does a poll capture that?
People quote Rush Limbaugh without even knowing the source of their opinion.  How fluid that opinion may be, how it might affect the way they vote, if they vote, is an unknown.




In my world, I look at studies every week in the medical journals and the hard part of analysis of the study is the Methods section:   figuring out the details of what they did and how the approach they used may produce a false results. We are not given that sort of detail in most polls and certainly, Donald Trump doesn't want to know any of that, only that he won.

The problem for our political system is not there are polls; the problem is everyone from the candidates to the candidates' staffs, to the pundits, (even David Brooks and Mark Shields) read the conclusions rather than the Methods sections, so they don't really understand how limited the information they are holding up really is.

Greetings From Trumpland

"Those who do not remember the past

Japanese Americans on the way to concentration camps 

Are condemned

To repeat it."

--George Santayana

 "The Washington Post says it was a tail-gate style celebration!

Tail gate. That's like at a Michigan state football game. Thousands of people!"
--Donald Trump [alluding to  a Washington Post article which described a gathering of Muslims on a New Jersey roof top in a "tail gate like" fashion after the 9/11 attacks]

The first casualty of war

Is truth.
--variously attributed



A smile can hide

Good Times at Auschwitz

an ugly truth.

Rounding Them Up From the Database

No Sympathy

We are a nation of laws. And what we did to these people was legal.

God save America.