At the time of this writing, most voters in the United States who are going to cast a ballot have probably made up their minds who they’re going to vote for in the Presidential race. In my case, my work was going to take me out of town for Election Day (today), so I cast an absentee ballot last week. (No, I’m not going to reveal who I voted for. You’re free to make assumptions and guesses, but one of my favorite aspects of the voting process is its anonymity and privacy.)

As the title suggests, this post concerns the campaign of Arizona Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate for President. Being the representative of the Republican Party, the expectation in the US is that he will be supported by social and theological conservatives, generally known here as “the Right.”

In recent days, I’ve started to notice that Senator McCain’s campaign is starting to take on some of the attributes of lesser-known elements of those on the theological Right, both in tone and substance. As a registered Republican, I’m not particularly happy or comfortable with this development.

Negative Campaigning

Like a lot of people in the US, I have a distinct distaste for negative campaigning. At the same time, I’ve grown so accustomed to it, it doesn’t surprise me anymore, and tends to just become background noise when I hear it. It frustrates and turns me off, regardless of who’s doing it–even “my” candidate.

Unfortunately, those of us in the tech industry are all-too-familiar with negative campaigns. Here, we tend to summarize it by it’s most common traits: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (commonly called “FUD”). Although generally associated with Microsoft in some of its early “campaigns” against rivals, it’s commonplace for many technology companies. The basic idea behind a good FUD campaign goes like this:

First and foremost, you should fear a solution from my competitor. Although they may be good people, their solution to the problem at hand has many negative outcomes that you should associate with them, even if those associations are almost impossible to prove. For my FUD approach to gain any traction, I have to cause you to accept that there are valid reasons for you to fear the opposition.

Second, you should feel a certain level of uncertainty about my competitor. Perhaps they are not as well-established as I am, or they have demonstrated some recent blunders in strategy. Uncertainty, by itself, would probably not sway you, but when I create a bit of this to go along with your fears, I’m creating an overall uneasiness that can be very effective.

Lastly, with the mood of suspicion that you’re developing, I can cast doubt over many things that without the fear and uncertainty, you’d have no reason to doubt. For example, I can look at recent announcements from the competition, and tell you “Knowing what you know now (from my recent revelations that created fear and uncertainty), can you believe that they are actually going to deliver on what they’ve promised?”

With FUD, I have set the stage for you to look for a better solution, almost entirely by discrediting what has already been presented. The best part of this is, I may be able to do this, even if I don’t have something better to offer, or have any offering at all.

FUD campaigns, ultimately, take many of the traditional debating techniques and approaches (Poisoning the Well, the Slippery Slope, the False Dilemma, and so on), and combining them in an effective whole. Why would I do this? I do so, because of the notion of elevating myself, by way of demoting others.

“Religious” Wars in Tech

In technology, there’s no shortage of case studies for FUD both ways. In recent years, the Mac vs PC/Windows dialog has degraded into a comedy of one-upmanship. For years, people assumed that Microsoft was the “king of FUD.” However, anyone who’s seen any of Apple’s Mac/PC ads would have to agree that the commercials concerning Vista have been largely (if not entirely) a FUD campaign.

Other examples would include the language wars of C++ vs Visual Basic, Nokia N95 vs iPhone, and the always-entertaining iPod vs anythingbutipod.com. In each case, you can frequently find a FUD campaign, and it generally seems to come from the side that doesn’t have the leading position (if not in marketshare, in public perception).

Old-Time Religion and “Angry Christians”

Having grown up in church, I have a fair amount of familiarity with different preaching styles. One style that has been “out of vogue” for some time now is the “hellfire and damnation” sermon. This sermon doesn’t attempt to persuade you to a point of faith by suggesting that God’s ultimate plan for your life is an “everlasting life” that begins today. No, this sermon persuades you that the eternal pain of Hell is so great and so horrible, that any reasonable person would choose Heaven (and any path that might lead to Heaven) instead.

On the plus side, a hellfire and damnation sermon doesn’t display the (apparently) naive nature of the “pie in the sky, by and by” Christian who seems to be the scorn of non-theists everywhere, who smiles about “God’s perfect plan,” apparently unaware of what may be going on around them. In contrast, the hellfire and damnation sermon seems to suggest that not only are you sinful trash, but you’re so trashy that even Satan himself might be disgusted with you, and might have something particularly nasty in store for you.

Having heard one such sermon, an Atheist friend of mine asked, “Why do the saved seem to take joy in hearing about the damnation of the lost?” It’s a valid question, and one that makes me glad that the hellfire and damnation style has gone by the wayside. (I’m not debating or critiquing the validity of any theology that may be presented in such a sermon. I’m criticizing the style of presenting the holy argument solely in the style of a FUD campaign.) It should come as no surprise that avoiding the hellfire and damnation style causes many pastors to be criticized for “softball” sermons.

Questions for McCain

All of this leads me to have some questions for the campaign of Senator McCain:

• Does a negative campaign signal that you have nothing positive to say? When I listen to Senator Obama’s campaign, I hear him criticizing your plans, your record, and your approach, but when I hear you, I see and hear mostly criticism of the man.
• Does the demonstrated inflexibility and adamant conviction of your supporters encourage discussion and change,  or does it only promote alienation, polarization, and stratification of the electorate?

Questions for Christians, Conservatives, and Liberals

Finally, all of this has me looking inward as well, and asking questions of a wider group:

• Are Christians being fair to expect non-Christians to consider an opposing view, when they are generally unwilling to do so? I’ve asked this question a few times recently, and the response I’ve found is… underwhelming, to say the least.
• Is either side (Conservative or Liberal) being fair to expect those from the other side to consider an opposing view when they are generally unwilling to do so?

Later today, we should have an idea of how effective the Republican Party’s FUD campaign has been in convincing voters in the US to support “anythingbutobama.” It remains to be seen whether, as a nation, we’re destined to continue shouting at each other, and growing more and more polarized in our views, even as we complain about the inflexibility and stubborness of the other side.

Amazingly, Christians have supported the behavior described below, and called it “conservative.” I’ve been guilty of supporting some of these behaviors myself. Now, I’m not naive enough to think that the Democratic Party is better–I’m just tired of giving the Republican Party a blank moral check, and trusting them to behave in a manner that pleases God. Being pro-life on abortion legislation doesn’t mean that the GOP values life the way God intends. One could argue that, based upon the demonstrated behavior of the last eight years, the opposite is true.

I’m more and more convinced that God will hold me accountable for not speaking out long ago… for not saying to the GOP “You will no longer be allowed to associate yourselves with people of faith. You’ve demonstrated that you’re not morally better, and in countless ways morally worse, than the liberal Democrats you so willingly demonize.”

I may not vote for a Democrat in November, but I’m feeling quite certain that I won’t be voting for the Republican ticket. They just don’t deserve another chance.

Link to the article:

We have been hearing since Reagan that “Government is the problem”; that government should get “out of the way”; that the private sector can always do it better and cheaper.

If one has this philosophy then it is natural to undermine government; to get it “out of the way”. Conservatives since Reagan have systematically undermined the efficacy of the government by gutting any agency which it views as “standing in the way”.

You appoint “your guys” no matter how incompetent; you oust the professionals; you gut their budgets. You oppose anything which might “impede” the private sector corporations – consumer protections; food inspections; road and bridge inspection; financial regulations.

You politicize the Justice Department, so that it finds nothing, even torture, objectionable. Anti-trust enforcement becomes non-existent.

You never lift a voice or use the bully pulpit against corporations shipping jobs wholesale overseas. Our retailers buy their inventory from China and you ship them our money, never insisting that China adjust its foreign exchange rate. Then you borrow the money back from China to plug our budget deficit, caused by corporate tax cuts and cuts for the top 1% of Americans. You ship the borrowed money to our oil suppliers and oppose any effort to reduce dependency by seeking alternative renewable sources of fuel. After all, you’re an oil man.

You start an unnecessary war costing hundreds of billions of dollars much of it going to favored construction companies doing work shoddy enough to electrocute ten soldiers in their showers. Hired thugs masquerading as “security details” rake in more of the money, answering to no one. You “rebuild” Iraq (which we never had to destroy anyway) while the Iraqis have almost $80 billion in the bank.

You shred the Constitution, abridge habeas corpus. You get elected by selling your “values” while robbing the country blind. You never talk about economics. You always scare the voters with the next bogeyman around the corner. When the media disagrees with you, you attack it as “unfair” with “liberal bias”. You start your own propaganda media outlets that parrot the party line.

You take the country into a permanent state of war with a volunteer army – a state so permanent no one even notices it anymore as they go to the mall. You ask nothing from them but their acquiescence. “Just go shopping folks!”

You want to spend a trillion dollars to rescue the financial sector, run up a half a trillion dollar budget deficit and still spew nonsense about “small government, deregulation and lower taxes”.

We are witnessing the impoverishment of America. ….and this Grand Old Party (remember it?) wants four more years.

Posted by: toritto | October 9, 2008 4:25 PM

Then again, if you’d prefer to continue believing everything your preferred candidate or party says, just keep reading the partisan stuff from each side. It makes it so much easier to believe falsehoods about the “other” candidate and ignore the truths about your own.

As for me, it’s not caused me to suddenly like one side more than the other, but it’s helped me sort through some of the misinformation about Governor Palin and Senator Obama. (Senator McCain and Senator Biden are more well-known, so it’s easier for me to spot blatant falsehoods.) Where I sit now is a position of having less respect for both candidates, and for their campaigns.

It should be an interesting November.

Then I thought, “Why bother?”

Such is the case with the various “9/11 Truth” sites. They invariably point to flawed research, connect dots from hearsay, and use faulty logic to make a case for “the official report isn’t really what happened.” One characteristic that is particularly noteworthy of such sites: They will not tolerate critical thinking to be applied to their “facts.”

Why Isn’t Everyone Talking About Ron Paul?
Yesterday, I noted an article in the WordPress Top Posts about Ron Paul and ABC Television marginalizing him, and being a Republican, wanted to see what they had to say. In spite of my reservations about the site hosting the article, I read it, and posted a couple of comments about the fact that few people offline seem to be talking about Ron Paul, even though he has a loyal and vocal following online.

My initial comments were met with the type of reception that you would expect from vocal supporters of a given candidate, even though I wasn’t attacking the candidate himself. The immediate suggestion was that if the mass media (apparently under unilateral control by some hidden entity) weren’t keeping the Good News of this candidate so well suppressed, then they would be as heartily supporting him as people online apparently are.

I found that assertion curious, so I read a bit more. That’s when it got interesting.

The ABC’s of Marginalizing?
The opening paragraph of Houston 9/11 Truth’s article suggests that ABC pronounced Mitt Romney the victor of a recent poll, and then proceeds to show graphics that display Ron Paul having won that poll, as well as a second poll. What they don’t tell you is that the poll that ABC was describing in the original article wasn’t an online poll at all, but was a traditional telephone canvassing poll (restricted to residents of Iowa), jointly produced by ABC & the Washington Post.

Accordingly, I left the following comment:

August 6, 2007 at 2:08 pm

Upon further inspection…

The poll results article linked at the top isn’t even talking about the online poll that’s referenced below. The article links to the actual poll (a PDF), so you can find it there.

If you’re going to slam ABC for marginalizing a candidate, at least make sure that you’re talking about the correct poll that they’re supposedly skewing the results of. Is this the kind of research that’s supposed to give this site credibility about 9/11???

Tim

I waited, noting that my comment was “awaiting moderation.” A few more comments appeared. My comment was still “awaiting moderation.” Hours later, more comments appeared, including the following insight from “Jeremy”:

August 7, 2007 at 2:40 am

MITT ROMNEY, what a joke….

Ron Paul 2008

It’s now a full day later, and both this comment of mine, another comment criticizing the site’s approach to truth, and (I suspect) any comment critical of the article or Ron Paul are… awaiting moderation.

My Question
So, to the writer/editor of “Houston 9/11 Truth,” I have one question: If the truth is that there is no conspiracy against Ron Paul, but his platform simply doesn’t have any broad appeal to the voters of America, could you handle that truth?

I suspect not.

“Why don’t you go make me some shoes, or maybe an X-Box?”

“Why don’t you go pick some cotton?”

These young men are in the 7th grade, in a school system that has been racially integrated (via system-wide busing) since 1975. Sadly, this kind of exchange is not that unusual.

Sticks and Stones
Now, I’m not naive enough to think that this kind of verbal jousting is unheard of between good friends, but these two young men are not friends. They attend class, but other than that, they don’t interact socially.

Where did they learn to be so verbally abusive? Where did they learn to spew forth with such hate-filled speech? From their parents? Maybe so. Where did their parents learn this?

Mean Media
Much has been made of the influence of violent video games on teenage and children’s behavior. Many are quick to point to the risks of kids being inundated with images of violence hour after hour, and a corresponding rise in violent behavior. There are conflicting studies, suggesting either a clear causal link, or no link at all.

I have to wonder, with the push toward clear labeling, is language, sex, and violence the only things that should be labeled “Mature”? What about hate speech? I know that inciting others to violence is against the law, as is speech that fits the legal requirement of “hate speech.”

Fair Use Quoting Hate Speech?
Recently, a blogger named Spocko was kicked off of his ISP by the Disney legal department for e-mailing KSFO radio’s advertisers, sending them audio clips of some of the hate-filled speech from hosts Morgan, Rodgers, and Sussman. Some advertisers have left, but many have remained. Even media watchdogs have begun monitoring the progress of the case. (Update: Spocko’s blog is now up again.)

Morgan, Rodgers, and Sussman should be grateful. Years ago, Al Franken and Rush Limbaugh paved the way for their style of insult-riddled, name-calling programming. The KSFO staff should call both of these pioneers and thank them personally.

(Note: The Following is Sarcasm)
Now it’s my turn. I want to thank Limbaugh and Franken for providing a clear model of intolerance and hate. Without their lead, these two young men in the Midwest, along with thousands and millions of others, might have to look into the history books to find slurs and derogatory comments.

It could be worse. These young men might have to find out how to have a dialog.

The hanging of Saddam brings new questions and new concerns, and clearly will not magically bring an end to violence in Iraq. What it does do, is bring closure to the reign of a tyrant.

Despot-ly Seeking WMDs
Lost in much of the current furor over Saddam’s hanging is the fact that he committed horrible crimes against the citizens of his country. Yes, he most likely did these horrible things with the complicit help of the United States (either by us supplying him with weapons, supporting his dictatorship, not removing him from power earlier, or all three), but that clearly does not release him from responsibility for his actions and choices.

Regardless of the culpability of the US in these matters (which I believe is not insignificant), Saddam tortured and murdered thousands, and made it obvious, even in the end, that he had no regrets about doing so. He was not, as he claimed, a bridge between Sunnis and Shiites. He was an enemy to a unified Iraq, other than to the degree that powerful dictators are able to completely suppress dissent.

Deposition Expedition
In holding our own government accountable (almost impossible, I know) for the amazingly poor choices of the past several years, we should not ignore the role that thousands and thousands of Iraqi’s have had in the institution of a new government. The recent trial of Saddam could not have happened the way it did without the Iraqi people turning out in huge numbers for last December’s elections.

Likewise, the execution of Saddam happened, not on a timetable or by a script set by the US (credible reports have US advisers stunned at how quickly the Iraqi government moved to hang him), but according to the wishes of those that the Iraqi people put into power. This is how it should be.

Post-Disposed
Next, there is the question of the sentence imposed. Tiffany points to the application of the death penalty to be barbaric, and something that puts the US (by its association with and support of the current Iraqi government) in the company of several third world countries.

At the outset, let me state that I have huge issues with the death penalty, but not from a philosophical standpoint. My issues are with the implementation of the death penalty, and the fact that it is so inconsistently applied (at least in the US).

In the case of Saddam, as was the case in Nuremberg, we have virtually no question of guilt. The evidence is public and overwhelming. Here, the only valid concerns about carrying out a death penalty sentence should be ethical questions (is it ethical for civilized people to put another human being to death, for any reason?), or concerns about further division of Iraqi society and sectarian violence.

Whether or not Saddam’s hanging with increase or decrease the violence in Iraq, either in the short term or long term, is something I can’t answer. There are wildly conflicting reports about how Sunnis and Shiites are reacting to his execution, and whether or not Saddam had more than a fragmented base of support remaining within the country. At the very least, he was a lightning rod for those who wanted Iraq to be a beacon of Islamic defiance of the West, and his death provides those same groups with a handy martyr.

With regard to the ethical and moral issues surrounding the death penalty, I think that it’s quite questionable to suggest that imprisoning someone until they die of natural causes, without any possible release from incarceration, is just as cruel, and no less ancient than executing someone. There is also the question of whether killing one person justifies killing another, and the similar argument that killing the killer makes society just as evil. What then, is the punishment for someone who kidnaps and imprisons another? Do we let them go, since imprisoning them would make society “just as bad?” Are we “just as evil” if we imprison the kidnapper, since we are doing the same thing? Rules of logic suggest that if the death penalty is to be discarded on such grounds, so too must be imprisonment.

In my view, Saddam has forfeited his “right to life” by his crimes, and society is just in taking that life away from him. It matters little, from the standpoint of justice, whether his life is taken by imprisonment, or by death. Either way, he has lost the remainder of his life. In fact, one could argue that prolonging his misery and suffering (by imprisoning him) is more cruel than killing him, where his suffering lasts only seconds.

Death Exposed
Lastly, there is the question of the public manner in which the sentence was carried out. Not only was the event televised in Iraq live (so to speak), but cell phone video has now surfaced, making the “proof of death” visible to all. Some are troubled by the public viewing of this, and by the insistence of the Iraqis to make it public.

I am not. I see two benefits to publicly broadcasting this event.

First, those whose lives had been virtually destroyed by Saddam have been living in fear that somehow, some way, he might escape justice, and return to power. After the first Gulf War, Saddam quickly moved to extract vengeance on those who had openly aided the opposing forces. How could the people of Iraq know, for certain, that he would not somehow return to power? Had his death been in secret, they might have forever wondered if it had been faked. Instead, it was clear to everyone in Iraq (and the rest of the world) that he was, indeed, dead.

Second, there is emotional closure for those who had suffered at Saddam’s hands. Vindictiveness and revenge are short-lived emotions (generally). In the same way that victims of any kind of physical or emotional abuse frequently feel “released from the bonds of the abuser,” the victims of Saddam can now be released from the bonds that he has held on them, even while in prison, even to recent days. They are now free. There is now no possibility of him returning to power, even if the US and allies were to suddenly leave Iraq, and the Bathists somehow regaining a political stronghold. (No matter how hard they might have tried, the Iraqis could not have guaranteed the Iraqi people that he would not one day be released from prison by some future, Saddam-favoring party.)

Given the above, I see no reason to stand in the way of a duly elected government in Iraq putting to death a ruthless and violent man, one who showed no remorse for his actions. Who am I to stand in the way of releasing them from the emotional bonds of Hussein’s reign?

Yes, we should hold our government accountable for its behavior over the last 20 years, not just in Iraq, and not just one party or the other. However, we should also refrain from suggesting that the hanging of Saddam Hussein is anything short of a victory for the nation of Iraq. Hopefully, 2007 will bring more victories, and not simply more bloodshed.

• Why is it that so many of us who are Christians… demand that the world is 6000-8000 years old, and come up with any number of bizarre explanations for how this is possible, but we’re perfectly willing to accept scientific explanations for how our Sony HD TV brings Billy Graham into our homes in such wonderful detail, and how the latest technology gadgetry works (thereby allowing us to spend less and less time with our children)?
• Why is it that we read parable after parable, proclaiming that we really do get it, and that some man didn’t actually have a beam in his eye when he was trying to remove the speck from another’s, but we can’t accept the possibility that one or more fragments from Genesis are “dumbed down” explanations of what happened?
• Why is it that even though Pat Robertson demonstrates his marginal sanity on virtually a daily basis, hundreds of thousands of Christians continue to listen to him?
• Why aren’t more Christians distancing themselves from Rush Limbaugh and his hate-mongering?
• Why aren’t we as upset about President Bush’s foul mouth as were (appropriately) about President Clinton’s inability to keep his pants zipped?
• Why is it that Christians aren’t just as upset about rampant materialism as we are about gay marriage?
• Why aren’t we as upset about the millions dying of malnutrition or AIDS as we are about the millions of abortions?
• Why aren’t we willing to stand up and say, “the intolerance of other faiths that we have demonstrated for so many years is not much different from the intolerance that we see in extremist groups engaged in terror bombings”?
• Why aren’t we just as concerned about the Lebanese child crying in the bombed-out apartment as we are for the Israeli pilot dropping the bombs?
• Why is it that we are perfectly willing to make our children more and more ignorant (of science, literature, social sciences), and call it “protecting them” or “nurturing them”?
• Why do we hive our children off in “Christian” schools instead of getting involved in the local public school, and making it a better institution?
• Why aren’t more of us called to be teachers in public schools, and teach our moral values to an entire generation by the way we live day-to-day (and not just by the scripture we quote on Sunday morning)?
• Why are we willing to build social silos… pockets of Christian relationships (businesses, clubs, sports organizations, and so on)… and then complain that “the world” doesn’t seem to want to knock on the door of our churches?
• Why do we say “worship is not about me, it’s about God,” and then complain that the music isn’t what we like, that the praise choruses aren’t familiar, and that the preacher seems to talk too long?

I must be too dumb to understand. Maybe Pat or Rush can explain it to me.

Depending on who you ask, I might be any one of these (or something much less pleasant). Why is it that we have such a strong tendency to put labels on people, and why does this seem to be more of an issue in our current society than in years past? Does the label used to identify me also define me?