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Lawrence R. Jacobs

additional category: politics

“To succeed, reformers must foresee the paths to failure”

Star Tribune,
12 December 2021

James Madison and his posse of Constitution writers deliberately booby-trapped the process of making government decisions in America to blunt large, quick change.

The barriers to change should be the starting point for advocates. Their challenge is to tailor strategy to neutralize or circumvent known barriers. Failure to anticipate barriers is a failure of leadership.

“Policy is politics” is an axiom of former Rep. Vin Weber, R-Minn. The path to political success is through policy, and vice versa. But impassioned advocates – on the left and the right – are remarkably disinterested in designing policy to fit circumstances and this handicaps them.

Here are down-to-earth lessons from generations of community organizers and strategists on the left and right.

First, search for allies to build a coalition of well-organized groups that stretches beyond purists. [...]

Next, focus on the future when designing policy today.

Change is possible but only if the possibility of defeat is anticipated and understood. Many of the big shifts in policy in America only occurred after reformers studied failure and designed policy to circumvent it.

text checked (see note) December 2021

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Samuel Johnson
quoted in “Did You Know...” by Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo

published in the Star Tribune 12 April 2003

The plaintiff and the defendant in an action at law are like two men ducking their heads in a bucket and daring each other to remain longest underwater.

Topic:

Law

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Syl Jones

additional category: politics

“A retreat, but not from the truth”

Star Tribune,
10 June 2007

Beyond party affiliation and labels, what we’re seeing in latter-day America is nothing less than a merger of wills from both sides aimed at maintaining the power elites. No president — I don’t care who he or she is — will remove those new military bases from what has become our 51st state, Iraq. No president will stop genuflecting at the phrase “support the troops” long enough to note that what poses as patriotism is actually patronage of defense contractors.

Simply saying such things provokes hatemongering, name-calling and no-holds-barred personal attacks on the Internet and in other media. We can no longer have a conversation about anything other than “American Idol” in this country. Every opinion becomes an opportunity for character assassination.

This makes the United States a frightening place to be at the moment. Not as frightening as Iraq, where we’ve been training jihadists and common criminals in the art of guerrilla warfare since the invasion. And not as frightening as it’s going to be here, either, once the apocalyptic scenarios that we know are coming finally arrive.

Topics:

Propaganda

War

Patriotism

“Online comments: An art form”

Star Tribune,
9 June 2009

We professional Internet responders represent Americana at its best and we don’t want anybody sanitizing it. [...] Just imagine how much better the Lincoln-Douglass debates would have been if we’d had the Internet:

Lincoln: Slavery is an abomination.

Douglas: So is your mama.

Cool, huh?

Topics:

Technology

Professionalism

text checked (see note) Jun 2007; Jun 2009

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Andreas Kluth
“Peace departs when we feel for some, not for others”

Bloomberg Opinion,
published in the Star Tribune February 4, 2024

To pass on their genes more widely, our ancestors learned to cooperate, and therefore, with the aid of mirror neurons and other cognitive adaptations, to “feel into” other human minds. That’s the concept the British psychologist Edward Titchener captured in 1909 with the neologism “empathy.”

Along with empathy, though, Homo sapiens evolved a bias toward “parochial altruism,” which combines favoritism toward the in-group with hostility toward an out-group. Our ancestors were more likely to survive and procreate if they bonded with their tribe and subdued common enemies. We today still default to pitting Us against Them.

When we stop empathizing with certain groups, we typically exaggerate their Otherness.

Topic:

Empathy

Human nature may have programmed us to empathize within our tribe and hate others. But it also allows us to understand this predicament and to break out of the cycle.

We can examine the narratives we tell ourselves and discard those that are harmful. Studies have shown that simple listening and validation — a form of empathy — can be enough to build bridges.

To live in peace at home and in the world, we have to extend our empathy to all people. Experience tells us that this will be hard, and that we will often fail. All the more reason to keep trying.

text checked (see note) Feb 2024

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Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar
“What fear has wrought: an unseemly policy of cruelty”

written for the Washington Post,
published in the Star Tribune May 20, 2007

These assertions that “torture works” may reassure a fearful public, but it is a false security. We don’t know what’s been gained through this fear-driven program. But we do know the consequences.

As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture — only for the toughest cases, only when nothing else works — the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking tme bomb. Any degree of “flexibility” about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone — the rare exception fast becoming the rule.

To understand the impact this has had on the ground, look at the military’s mental health assessment report released earlier this month. The study shows a disturbing level of tolerance for abuse of prisoners in some situations.

Topic:

Torture

Victory in this kind of war comes when the enemy loses legitimacy in the society from which it seeks recruits and thus loses its “recuperative power.”

The torture methods [...] have nurtured the recuperative power of the enemy. This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it.

Topic:

Victory

Charles C. Krulak was Marine Corps commandant from 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994.

text checked (see note) May 2007

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Brian Lambert
“Global warming calls for truth, not ‘balance’ game,”

published in the Star Tribune June 22, 2007

One thing for which I’ve always envied conservatives is that their fundamental message is such an easy sell. Boiled to its essence it is this: “YOU have already done more than your share. If sacrifices and changes need to be made at all, they should be made by others. Support us and we’ll protect you from change.” Short of saying, “We’ll pay you for your vote,” it doesn’t get much more simplistically appealing than that.

Topic:

Conservatism

Any newspaper or TV station that holds up a hand and says, “Thanks, but no thanks” to the next scientifically suspect opinion disputing “the hoax” of global warming will inevitably be hit with charges of bias. That’s how the system is gamed these days. Those charges will come from the same crowd that first denied any warming was happening, then moved to accepting global warming but denying a human involvement, and now to essentially saying, “OK, it’s warming and carbon dioxide is involved ... but there’s nothing we can do that’ll have any significant effect, and the only thing we’ll achieve is the destruction of a lifestyle that is the envy of the rest of the planet.”

Selling a credulous public the too-good-to-be-true nostrum that nothing more should ever be asked of them may win elections, but it’s not a game any honest journalist can play.

Topics:

Climate change

Journalism

text checked (see note) Jun 2007

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Anne Lamott
“Christian feminist had to speak out on abortion rights,”

written for the Los Angeles Times;
published in the Star Tribune February 16, 2006

I wanted to express calmly, eloquently, that prochoice people understand that there are two lives involved in an abortion — one born (the pregnant woman) and one not (the fetus) — but that the born person must be allowed to decide what is right.

But as a Christian and a feminist, the most important message I can carry and fight for is the sacredness of each human life, and reproductive rights for all women is a crucial part of that: It is a moral necessity that we not be forced to bring children into the world for whom we cannot be responsible and adoring and present. We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society.

text checked (see note) Feb 2006

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Kristofer Layon
“Left-handed marriage: A slippery slope”

Counterpoint in the Star Tribune November 12, 2009

Right-handedness is a nearly universal human institution. Across the world and throughout history, marriage has been almost exclusively right-handed. That’s not because of anti-left-handed bigotry, but because marriage is anchored in a primal biological and social fact: Most people are right-handed, and tend to have right-handed children.

Left-handed marriage would not — as advocates claim — merely extend the benefits of marriage to more people. Such a redefinition would compel us to repudiate time-honored ideas of social organization.

Topic:

Same-sex marriage

Once right-handed relationships are stripped of their organic purpose, why restrict relationships to people who use their hands properly? People who eat with their fingers, people like doctors who insist on writing illegibly, and people who use only their thumbs to text on their cell phones: All will want society to recognize and respect their relationships.

text checked (see note) Nov 2009

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Peter M. Leschak
“To write, perchance to think, in the age of chatbots”

published in the Star Tribune, July 4, 2023

Jerry Seinfeld famously noted a study showing that people’s No. 1 fear is public speaking, and death is No. 2. He quipped: “This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

Topic:

Fear

But now: Let me attest that this essay you’re reading was written by a human being with no assistance from a chatbot. Will such statements — perhaps notarized, or subject to blockchain authentication — become routine? And if that happens, how long before the software dominates by default — the path of least resistance and least cost?

text checked (see note) Jul 2023

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Los Angeles Times
“Food Police, may we introduce Common Sense”

editorial; reprinted in the Star Tribune August 13, 2009

If there’s anything good about putting warning notices on packages of frankfurters, it’s that the labels could say: Beware of Dog.

Topic:

Hot dogs

text checked (see note) Aug 2009

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Background graphic copyright © 2003 by Hal Keen