The nub of the issue might perhaps be best encapsulated in John Kerry’s recent statements at a WEF function:
“You know there’s a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you’re going to have some accountability on facts, etc. But look, if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence…”
"The dislike of and anguish over social media is just growing and growing. It is part of our problem, particularly in democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue. It's really hard to govern today. The referees we used to have to determine what is a fact and what isn't a fact have kind of been eviscerated, to a certain degree. And people go and self-select where they go for their news, for their information. And then you get into a vicious cycle...".
"Democracies around the world now are struggling with the absence of a sort of truth arbiter, and there’s no one who defines what facts really are."
In reality, however, the US courts have always provided consequences for disapproved speech. Blackstone’s Commentaries state:
“The liberty of the press . . . consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public; to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity.”
These actions, of course, required something akin to due process. Due process after the fact of publication, rather than prior restraint, is what Milton argued for in his Areopagitica. Perhaps because of the horrendously arbitary and random operation of what passes for a legal system in the United States, the currently existing channels for due process in this regard are insufficient to advance the governance aspirations of Kerry and the global nouvelle aristoi, and they wish to resurrect the Licensing Order of 1643 or even an Index Librorum Prohibitorum. After all, with AI available today, it should pose no technical problem at all for every potential comment or post on the internet to be instantly reviewed for conformity with established dogma, prior to publication. How could anyone possibly object?
Two possible objections that might be considered are (1) bureaucratic transaction costs to institutions, and (2) foreclosing informational advantages incurred through consensus decision-making. With respect to the first, Oliver Williamson famously questioned the wisdom of universally internalizing transactions within organizations, for example, observing that “Because internal organization experiences added bureaucratic costs, the firm is usefully thought as the organization of last resort: try markets, try hybrids (long term contractual relations into which security features have been crafted), and resort to firms when all else fails (compatatively).” Somewhat reminiscent of another sage who observed “Markets fail, use markets,” but, a warning about the sort of internal rivalries and unproductive competitions that beset every transaction process, that would include designing and implementing pre-approval processes.
The second consideration considers dissent, or disinformation, or whatever you want to call it, as a useful component of mutual aid, a source of information that even if misguided, helps to strengthen consensus. The evolutionary advantage of taking into account the views of minorities is perhaps illustrated in honeybee democracy in which a consensus decision is reached on such important matters as where to begin a new hive:
“We point out that a swarm's overall strategy of decision making is a “weighted additive strategy.” This strategy is the most accurate but also the most demanding in terms of information processing, because it takes account of all of the information relevant to a decision problem. Despite being composed of small-brained bees, swarms are able to use the weighted additive strategy by distributing among many bees both the task of evaluating the alternative sites and the task of identifying the best of these sites.”
Indeed one might well argue that the reason that the US is such a pathetic laggard with respect to social capital (https://solability.com/the-global-sustainable-competitiveness-index/the-index/social-capital ) is that our highly centralized government, ossified constitution, unaccountable bureaucracy, winner-take-all two party political system, and costly common law of defamation, already over-inhibit the sharing and application of useful information.
I would add one important point. The first two points under tl;dr apply in multiple ways -- not just with "the authority" meaning government, but also with "the authority" being the forum owner, or any third-party business or club that might smear, fire, or expel you for expressing views they disagree with.
Libertarians are too quick to assume that a private business owner can do no wrong by discriminating, but in my view that only holds when that field of business is sufficiently unregulated so that "Let dissenters create their own businesses and compete with us!" is actually a practical remedy. If it is not, then rules against that form of discrimination are necessary and right.
"As another example, I suspect that privately many in the elite supported gay marriage before it became safe to say so out loud."
I don't remember a time when it was not safe to "say" or think that. I would contend rather that it was more like your 2 + 2 = 4 example, in that no one much thought of it at all, and when they were finally forced to it was probably with an asterisk: i.e. an untruth [the marriage and 5 kids of David Sedaris's parents = the marriage of David and Hugh in daily practice, in difficulty, in importance, and in essentials (I'd give David and Hugh the edge on the side of the affection that is nice to find in a long marriage, but is hardly defining of marriage)] that is mostly harmless to nod along to, and a reason for a party. Both before, and in a way, after - when it has largely turned out to be, as predicted by the clear-eyed, a stage in the inexorable movement of the left's frontier, not a mass, inchoate desire for traditionalism on the part of gays. It was wholly disingenuously perpetrated, but it made some few people - especially lesbians - happy. A sweet friend of mine who had been with her partner (whom we all found rather dull) for so long, and whose life it wouldn't change at all, and who had no interest in giving a party or being the center of one, and moreover who had shown little interest in politicization, whether of her sexual orientation or much anything else - ran down to the courthouse, to be the first person so married in our county. I had not foreseen that.
So I understood that it meant a lot to her, and begrudge her nothing of course - but that doesn't mean it meant, then or now, the same thing to me. The saying, or rather, politely not saying, goes in the opposite direction you suggest, in my view.
The issue of algorithms is more complicated than the piece would like it to appear: the market is characterised by very few dominant players; the effects of the algorithms on people’s behaviour may be very strong, including an addictive component. Would you leave the issue of fetanyl use to be sorted out by market forces?
Absolutely. When you stop infantilizing people by usurping their moral agency, and start forcing them to take responsibility for their own actions, most (those who don’t want to end up lying unconscious in a ditch) will do so. Charities will take care of the ditch-destined.
As for “the market” you mention, I assume you are referring to media, where network effects can - and have - lead to a few very dominant companies. This also doesn’t bother me, as long as the state does not place regulatory barriers to the entry of new competitors. If people get fed up enough with misbehavior from the big boys, they’ll create and jump to something new, despite the network problem.
"most information sources—whether mainstream media, politicians, commentators, pundits, and so on—are not exclusively or even primarily concerned with imparting accurate beliefs to their audiences. Given this, most communication ends up being misleading in some way."
The best reason against censoring obvious misinformation isn't that it might go too far, it's that it is impossible to go far enough to reach near all of it. Otherwise we wouldn't have about a third of young adults having a favorable view of communism nor capitalism barely beating socialism as their preference.
When you discuss Walter Cronkite, you write, "As if there was no reason for no dissent." You mean, "As if there was no reason for dissent," right?
I particularly like your highlighting this because I hear a false narrative, even from regular conservatives and fans of Trump, about how great that era was because Cronkite was always someone you could trust. When I hear them say that, I think of a clip in a series on the Vietnam war that shows Cronkite in a U.S. bomber celebrating as it drops its bombs. I also think of his highlighting Barry Goldwater's time in Munich during the 1964 campaign that made it sound as if Goldwater was a Nazi sympathizer.
This translates to who decides (the never answered but always disputed foundational liberal question) which is always concealed in a world of "discourse" and "legitimacy" of governance because who decides determines what is prioritized and the decision maker by definition makes a decision based on what he or she or a group of he or shes prioritize (which is always a form of self interest but is typically masked in a manner of collective interests because blunt selfishness activates the unfairness/resentment response in the mammal/primate brain which then breeds instability)
I’m not sure what to say about this post. How Much Dissent is Optimal? In what context? You have two section headings that immediately jump out as defining context, Norms on Campus and Foreign Interference in Elections. The first two paragraphs of your Norms on Campus are not very clear. I’d like to sit down with you or take a walk and discuss more examples of disrespectful speech. You really haven’t provided enough information here for me to know whether I should agree or dissent. I’m actually really curious about your thoughts on campus speech. This seems important. Maybe you can elaborate on this section in a future post? Or maybe we can talk offline?
When I was a kid, though the Cold War was not at its hottest, but due to a time lag, I suppose, in implementing such things, our school curriculum occasionally betrayed a mild - but marked - anti-Commie propaganda in the fiction selections.
For instance, in grade school we read (by which is meant: read together for several weeks, drew pictures, wrote little themes about) a book called “The Gammage Cup” which I’ve never heard of since. Somewhat disappointingly - I liked it but never found anyone else who had read it.
It was a rather quirky and muddled call - in fact the protagonist was described as having a muddled mind - for individualism and freedom. Those who were offbeat, as by e.g. choosing to paint their door red rather than Muggle green (maybe JK Rowling read this book), were expelled - and immediately set about building a cozy, functioning commune with no commercial element as in the village they left. It wasn’t anarchy, as the practical one among them, she of the red door insanity, kept everybody mostly on task, and fed, while indulging some relaxation.
This was a crazy book, now that I think about it, not a very good one - with a strange climax in the form of the arrival of some foreign Others who I guess were the reason for the enforced conformity in the face of peril, in the first place; and a battle.
We children mostly took away the lesson that it’s best to paint your door whatever color you like, and be similarly brave in battle. Had we been asked I’m sure we would have all said we wanted to paint our doors red!
It amuses me to think they were trying their best - two or three years later, we were presented with “Anthem” - to inculcate in us a norm, a conformity of thought - around the superior virtues of individualism and, I dunno, free thought lol.
It’s almost kind of touching - they were trying to impart the strength to resist the Communist tyranny! I see in it the seeds of the disarming of the impulse though.
I was reminded of it by your title, and the idea of an “optimal” amount of dissent.
Given the inability of Vance, and other Republicans, to straightforwardly answer "Who won the US 2020 Presidential Election?", I lack your confidence "that the evidence for the Holocaust will continue to be convincing" to the political world, especially the current Republican party.
I think it's merely that the US right-wing power structure isn't pushing Holocaust Denial, in contrast to e.g. Election Denial or Climate Denial. If they were to push Holocaust Denial, I think we'd see hordes of supposed conservative intellectuals talking about how we should never assume - *sneer* - that history is settled, what about this now-refuted piece of Holocaust Evidence, and going on and on about how badly "heterodox Holocaust scholars" have been treated by the Jewish, err I mean, Liberal, establishment. I don't know what to do about it, but I'd argue that the concerns about it happening are well-supported.
Let us not forget a currently famous statement of the 2020 losing candidate:
"A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame."
This isn't identical to "The Jews, they're murdering our little children, those people that came in. They're killing the kids of the people that live there, for their blood". However, I would say a path from the former to the latter is pretty clear. And in that case, I'm 100% certain there would be right-wing media reaction of "But a Jew did kill a child in this incident! And the media didn't report that it was a Jewish killing!"
I mostly use libraries, so am used to - once a year - Banned Book Week when the libraries celebrate censorship. I guess I should clarify that they are celebrating the opposite in principle, by setting out books that have been censored - old chestnuts like "Catcher in the Rye" which was so successfully censored to the tune of, what, 50 million books? (Indeed, now that that sensibility and world is quaint, the book largely Wes Anderson-cinematic somehow despite not being filmed that I'm aware of, future sales will probably only be fueled by that coveted "banned book" sticker.)
But among the more obtuse librarians this clearly is Hanukkah and Christmas and the 4th of July all rolled into one, this proud display of the Banned Books, but not the ones the librarians themselves have banned, and more signally - the myriad books they've happily purged the library shelves of, over the years - not from malice or even judgment as to their contents - they never read them - but just because books meant little to them.
So I seldom or never go in bookstores, but recall once being in a Barnes & Noble during Banned Book Week, to find that the employees had on their anti-censorship stickers. Imagine: a bookseller against censorship! I thought that was kind of funny.
As there was a "performative" quality to their anti-censorship pat-ourselves-on-the-back celebrations - it doesn't surprise me that the performance is taking a sudden turn. Performers must be ready to do that, game for anything. But perhaps: pesky world! If only it had just been "Catcher in the Rye" and "Go Ask Alice" and lol "Where the Wild Things Are" (every 70s child's bookshelf) they'd not have been driven to this pass, of demanding a censorship bureau.
"Let me define “elite” for this purpose as someone with both a college degree and an expected lifetime income in the upper third of the population."
According to Exit polls, in 2020, when Trump only got 47% of the vote overall, he won white college grads with household income over $100,000 51%/48%.
I'd say your definition of elite it too broad.
Most of my co-workers make a lot more than $100k. We even get to talk to the Senate Finance Committee on occasion, at least as our industry is in the spotlight right now. But if you asked us if we were "elite" none of us would feel that way. We all talk about how little influence we have on DC outside maybe (and then not even really) our industry.
At my old company HQed in the northeast I think most were on the left but at my new company HQed in Florida I'm not so sure. I note that way more of my co-workers at this company have big families, while a lot at my old company were childless.
You made me wonder if zero dissent might be better. Of course it would be great if nobody had reason to dissent but we aren't in a utopia. Beyond that we get a lot of benefit from social cohesion when diss my is minimal. How does that stack up against improvements through dissent? Probably not well enough.
And then it hit me. We don't have to voice dissent to change things. We can lead by example. Maybe this is also a form of dissent, and it probably isn't an option in all situations, but maybe it's a useful path.
Not being able to voice dissent is not the same as there not being dissent. From a governance standpoint it is not good to only find out people are unhappy when they are burning down the palace, for instance. This is the problem with authoritarian states, or at least one of the biggest; the government never gets negative feedback even from within so corrective decisions are not made.
I think we need to agree on what we mean by no dissent. I would think we'd still have candidates, elections, and politicians would vote on legislation. These would all be contested and provide some indication of discontent.
... Actually, no dissent is the utopia I mentioned. It is everyone holding the same opinion. But if we mean something a bit less than that, everyone accepts governing decisions, we could still have elections and votes to determine our legislation.
Even still, you would need to have a very small number of governing decisions, because there will always be people on the “didn’t get the decision I wanted side” and as the number of decisions grows so too does the feeling that they never get what they want. Sooner or later that gets catastrophic for a society.
The nub of the issue might perhaps be best encapsulated in John Kerry’s recent statements at a WEF function:
“You know there’s a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you’re going to have some accountability on facts, etc. But look, if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence…”
"The dislike of and anguish over social media is just growing and growing. It is part of our problem, particularly in democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue. It's really hard to govern today. The referees we used to have to determine what is a fact and what isn't a fact have kind of been eviscerated, to a certain degree. And people go and self-select where they go for their news, for their information. And then you get into a vicious cycle...".
"Democracies around the world now are struggling with the absence of a sort of truth arbiter, and there’s no one who defines what facts really are."
In reality, however, the US courts have always provided consequences for disapproved speech. Blackstone’s Commentaries state:
“The liberty of the press . . . consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public; to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity.”
And indeed this is what we see all the time in such typical instances as the Michael Mann defamation case: https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-defamation-michael-mann-penn-state-61289ee2d8d2143768d28995c83899ef And the government certainly had not difficulty in providing a means of hammering Infowars out of existance: https://infowarslawsuit.com/
These actions, of course, required something akin to due process. Due process after the fact of publication, rather than prior restraint, is what Milton argued for in his Areopagitica. Perhaps because of the horrendously arbitary and random operation of what passes for a legal system in the United States, the currently existing channels for due process in this regard are insufficient to advance the governance aspirations of Kerry and the global nouvelle aristoi, and they wish to resurrect the Licensing Order of 1643 or even an Index Librorum Prohibitorum. After all, with AI available today, it should pose no technical problem at all for every potential comment or post on the internet to be instantly reviewed for conformity with established dogma, prior to publication. How could anyone possibly object?
Two possible objections that might be considered are (1) bureaucratic transaction costs to institutions, and (2) foreclosing informational advantages incurred through consensus decision-making. With respect to the first, Oliver Williamson famously questioned the wisdom of universally internalizing transactions within organizations, for example, observing that “Because internal organization experiences added bureaucratic costs, the firm is usefully thought as the organization of last resort: try markets, try hybrids (long term contractual relations into which security features have been crafted), and resort to firms when all else fails (compatatively).” Somewhat reminiscent of another sage who observed “Markets fail, use markets,” but, a warning about the sort of internal rivalries and unproductive competitions that beset every transaction process, that would include designing and implementing pre-approval processes.
The second consideration considers dissent, or disinformation, or whatever you want to call it, as a useful component of mutual aid, a source of information that even if misguided, helps to strengthen consensus. The evolutionary advantage of taking into account the views of minorities is perhaps illustrated in honeybee democracy in which a consensus decision is reached on such important matters as where to begin a new hive:
“We point out that a swarm's overall strategy of decision making is a “weighted additive strategy.” This strategy is the most accurate but also the most demanding in terms of information processing, because it takes account of all of the information relevant to a decision problem. Despite being composed of small-brained bees, swarms are able to use the weighted additive strategy by distributing among many bees both the task of evaluating the alternative sites and the task of identifying the best of these sites.”
(https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s002650050536 - as an aside, isn’t true that entomologists are doing the most interesting work in economics today? Seeley for the economics Nobel.)
Indeed one might well argue that the reason that the US is such a pathetic laggard with respect to social capital (https://solability.com/the-global-sustainable-competitiveness-index/the-index/social-capital ) is that our highly centralized government, ossified constitution, unaccountable bureaucracy, winner-take-all two party political system, and costly common law of defamation, already over-inhibit the sharing and application of useful information.
I would add one important point. The first two points under tl;dr apply in multiple ways -- not just with "the authority" meaning government, but also with "the authority" being the forum owner, or any third-party business or club that might smear, fire, or expel you for expressing views they disagree with.
Libertarians are too quick to assume that a private business owner can do no wrong by discriminating, but in my view that only holds when that field of business is sufficiently unregulated so that "Let dissenters create their own businesses and compete with us!" is actually a practical remedy. If it is not, then rules against that form of discrimination are necessary and right.
maybe you should have added to a college degree the caveat "in the humanities or social sciences" ?
it doesn't seem that the cathedral recruits heavily from STEM
which explains where they got their attitude towards dissent
I'm NOT saying that engineers would be better
I'm saying that the skills needed for admin come from fields where dissent can't really be settled
"As another example, I suspect that privately many in the elite supported gay marriage before it became safe to say so out loud."
I don't remember a time when it was not safe to "say" or think that. I would contend rather that it was more like your 2 + 2 = 4 example, in that no one much thought of it at all, and when they were finally forced to it was probably with an asterisk: i.e. an untruth [the marriage and 5 kids of David Sedaris's parents = the marriage of David and Hugh in daily practice, in difficulty, in importance, and in essentials (I'd give David and Hugh the edge on the side of the affection that is nice to find in a long marriage, but is hardly defining of marriage)] that is mostly harmless to nod along to, and a reason for a party. Both before, and in a way, after - when it has largely turned out to be, as predicted by the clear-eyed, a stage in the inexorable movement of the left's frontier, not a mass, inchoate desire for traditionalism on the part of gays. It was wholly disingenuously perpetrated, but it made some few people - especially lesbians - happy. A sweet friend of mine who had been with her partner (whom we all found rather dull) for so long, and whose life it wouldn't change at all, and who had no interest in giving a party or being the center of one, and moreover who had shown little interest in politicization, whether of her sexual orientation or much anything else - ran down to the courthouse, to be the first person so married in our county. I had not foreseen that.
So I understood that it meant a lot to her, and begrudge her nothing of course - but that doesn't mean it meant, then or now, the same thing to me. The saying, or rather, politely not saying, goes in the opposite direction you suggest, in my view.
The issue of algorithms is more complicated than the piece would like it to appear: the market is characterised by very few dominant players; the effects of the algorithms on people’s behaviour may be very strong, including an addictive component. Would you leave the issue of fetanyl use to be sorted out by market forces?
Absolutely. When you stop infantilizing people by usurping their moral agency, and start forcing them to take responsibility for their own actions, most (those who don’t want to end up lying unconscious in a ditch) will do so. Charities will take care of the ditch-destined.
As for “the market” you mention, I assume you are referring to media, where network effects can - and have - lead to a few very dominant companies. This also doesn’t bother me, as long as the state does not place regulatory barriers to the entry of new competitors. If people get fed up enough with misbehavior from the big boys, they’ll create and jump to something new, despite the network problem.
Excellent piece but this might be the best,
"most information sources—whether mainstream media, politicians, commentators, pundits, and so on—are not exclusively or even primarily concerned with imparting accurate beliefs to their audiences. Given this, most communication ends up being misleading in some way."
The best reason against censoring obvious misinformation isn't that it might go too far, it's that it is impossible to go far enough to reach near all of it. Otherwise we wouldn't have about a third of young adults having a favorable view of communism nor capitalism barely beating socialism as their preference.
Excellent post, Arnold.
When you discuss Walter Cronkite, you write, "As if there was no reason for no dissent." You mean, "As if there was no reason for dissent," right?
I particularly like your highlighting this because I hear a false narrative, even from regular conservatives and fans of Trump, about how great that era was because Cronkite was always someone you could trust. When I hear them say that, I think of a clip in a series on the Vietnam war that shows Cronkite in a U.S. bomber celebrating as it drops its bombs. I also think of his highlighting Barry Goldwater's time in Munich during the 1964 campaign that made it sound as if Goldwater was a Nazi sympathizer.
The fundamental question is: what is prioritized?
All trade offs and considerations stem from this.
This translates to who decides (the never answered but always disputed foundational liberal question) which is always concealed in a world of "discourse" and "legitimacy" of governance because who decides determines what is prioritized and the decision maker by definition makes a decision based on what he or she or a group of he or shes prioritize (which is always a form of self interest but is typically masked in a manner of collective interests because blunt selfishness activates the unfairness/resentment response in the mammal/primate brain which then breeds instability)
All dissent is optimal. If you curb dissent then you are just stomping on opinions that you don't like.
I’m not sure what to say about this post. How Much Dissent is Optimal? In what context? You have two section headings that immediately jump out as defining context, Norms on Campus and Foreign Interference in Elections. The first two paragraphs of your Norms on Campus are not very clear. I’d like to sit down with you or take a walk and discuss more examples of disrespectful speech. You really haven’t provided enough information here for me to know whether I should agree or dissent. I’m actually really curious about your thoughts on campus speech. This seems important. Maybe you can elaborate on this section in a future post? Or maybe we can talk offline?
10/10. Very sensible.
When I was a kid, though the Cold War was not at its hottest, but due to a time lag, I suppose, in implementing such things, our school curriculum occasionally betrayed a mild - but marked - anti-Commie propaganda in the fiction selections.
For instance, in grade school we read (by which is meant: read together for several weeks, drew pictures, wrote little themes about) a book called “The Gammage Cup” which I’ve never heard of since. Somewhat disappointingly - I liked it but never found anyone else who had read it.
It was a rather quirky and muddled call - in fact the protagonist was described as having a muddled mind - for individualism and freedom. Those who were offbeat, as by e.g. choosing to paint their door red rather than Muggle green (maybe JK Rowling read this book), were expelled - and immediately set about building a cozy, functioning commune with no commercial element as in the village they left. It wasn’t anarchy, as the practical one among them, she of the red door insanity, kept everybody mostly on task, and fed, while indulging some relaxation.
This was a crazy book, now that I think about it, not a very good one - with a strange climax in the form of the arrival of some foreign Others who I guess were the reason for the enforced conformity in the face of peril, in the first place; and a battle.
We children mostly took away the lesson that it’s best to paint your door whatever color you like, and be similarly brave in battle. Had we been asked I’m sure we would have all said we wanted to paint our doors red!
It amuses me to think they were trying their best - two or three years later, we were presented with “Anthem” - to inculcate in us a norm, a conformity of thought - around the superior virtues of individualism and, I dunno, free thought lol.
It’s almost kind of touching - they were trying to impart the strength to resist the Communist tyranny! I see in it the seeds of the disarming of the impulse though.
I was reminded of it by your title, and the idea of an “optimal” amount of dissent.
Given the inability of Vance, and other Republicans, to straightforwardly answer "Who won the US 2020 Presidential Election?", I lack your confidence "that the evidence for the Holocaust will continue to be convincing" to the political world, especially the current Republican party.
I think it's merely that the US right-wing power structure isn't pushing Holocaust Denial, in contrast to e.g. Election Denial or Climate Denial. If they were to push Holocaust Denial, I think we'd see hordes of supposed conservative intellectuals talking about how we should never assume - *sneer* - that history is settled, what about this now-refuted piece of Holocaust Evidence, and going on and on about how badly "heterodox Holocaust scholars" have been treated by the Jewish, err I mean, Liberal, establishment. I don't know what to do about it, but I'd argue that the concerns about it happening are well-supported.
Let us not forget a currently famous statement of the 2020 losing candidate:
"A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame."
This isn't identical to "The Jews, they're murdering our little children, those people that came in. They're killing the kids of the people that live there, for their blood". However, I would say a path from the former to the latter is pretty clear. And in that case, I'm 100% certain there would be right-wing media reaction of "But a Jew did kill a child in this incident! And the media didn't report that it was a Jewish killing!"
You mean like how this right-winger got a mob to kill a Jewish man when a child was injured in a traffic accident?
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/10/get-the-jew.php
I mostly use libraries, so am used to - once a year - Banned Book Week when the libraries celebrate censorship. I guess I should clarify that they are celebrating the opposite in principle, by setting out books that have been censored - old chestnuts like "Catcher in the Rye" which was so successfully censored to the tune of, what, 50 million books? (Indeed, now that that sensibility and world is quaint, the book largely Wes Anderson-cinematic somehow despite not being filmed that I'm aware of, future sales will probably only be fueled by that coveted "banned book" sticker.)
But among the more obtuse librarians this clearly is Hanukkah and Christmas and the 4th of July all rolled into one, this proud display of the Banned Books, but not the ones the librarians themselves have banned, and more signally - the myriad books they've happily purged the library shelves of, over the years - not from malice or even judgment as to their contents - they never read them - but just because books meant little to them.
So I seldom or never go in bookstores, but recall once being in a Barnes & Noble during Banned Book Week, to find that the employees had on their anti-censorship stickers. Imagine: a bookseller against censorship! I thought that was kind of funny.
As there was a "performative" quality to their anti-censorship pat-ourselves-on-the-back celebrations - it doesn't surprise me that the performance is taking a sudden turn. Performers must be ready to do that, game for anything. But perhaps: pesky world! If only it had just been "Catcher in the Rye" and "Go Ask Alice" and lol "Where the Wild Things Are" (every 70s child's bookshelf) they'd not have been driven to this pass, of demanding a censorship bureau.
"Let me define “elite” for this purpose as someone with both a college degree and an expected lifetime income in the upper third of the population."
According to Exit polls, in 2020, when Trump only got 47% of the vote overall, he won white college grads with household income over $100,000 51%/48%.
I'd say your definition of elite it too broad.
Most of my co-workers make a lot more than $100k. We even get to talk to the Senate Finance Committee on occasion, at least as our industry is in the spotlight right now. But if you asked us if we were "elite" none of us would feel that way. We all talk about how little influence we have on DC outside maybe (and then not even really) our industry.
At my old company HQed in the northeast I think most were on the left but at my new company HQed in Florida I'm not so sure. I note that way more of my co-workers at this company have big families, while a lot at my old company were childless.
You made me wonder if zero dissent might be better. Of course it would be great if nobody had reason to dissent but we aren't in a utopia. Beyond that we get a lot of benefit from social cohesion when diss my is minimal. How does that stack up against improvements through dissent? Probably not well enough.
And then it hit me. We don't have to voice dissent to change things. We can lead by example. Maybe this is also a form of dissent, and it probably isn't an option in all situations, but maybe it's a useful path.
Not being able to voice dissent is not the same as there not being dissent. From a governance standpoint it is not good to only find out people are unhappy when they are burning down the palace, for instance. This is the problem with authoritarian states, or at least one of the biggest; the government never gets negative feedback even from within so corrective decisions are not made.
I think we need to agree on what we mean by no dissent. I would think we'd still have candidates, elections, and politicians would vote on legislation. These would all be contested and provide some indication of discontent.
... Actually, no dissent is the utopia I mentioned. It is everyone holding the same opinion. But if we mean something a bit less than that, everyone accepts governing decisions, we could still have elections and votes to determine our legislation.
Even still, you would need to have a very small number of governing decisions, because there will always be people on the “didn’t get the decision I wanted side” and as the number of decisions grows so too does the feeling that they never get what they want. Sooner or later that gets catastrophic for a society.