US close to ending buried nuke waste cleanup at Idaho site

By Keith Ridler, The Associated Press

Posted Jan 3, 2022

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A lengthy project to dig up and remove radoactive and hazardous waste buried for decades in unlined pits at a nuclear facility that sits atop a giant aquifer in eastern Idaho is nearly finished, U.S. officials said.

The U.S. Department of Energy said last week that it removed the final amount of specifically-targeted buried waste from a 97-acre (39-hectare) landfill at its 890-square-mile (2,300-square-kilometer) site that includes the Idaho National Laboratory.

The targeted radioactive waste included plutonium-contaminated filters, graphite molds, sludges containing solvents and oxidized uranium generated during nuclear weapons production work at the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado. Some radioactive and hazardous remains in the Idaho landfill that will receive an earthen cover.

The waste from Rocky Flats was packaged in storage drums and boxes before being sent from 1954 to 1970 to the high-desert, sagebrush steppe of eastern Idaho where it was buried in unlined pits and trenches. The area lies about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of the city of Idaho Falls.

The cleanup project, started in 2005, is named the Accelerated Retrieval Project and is one of about a dozen cleanup efforts of nuclear waste finished or ongoing at the Energy Department site.

The project involving the landfill is part of a 2008 agreement between the Energy Department and state officials that required the department to dig up and remove specific types and amounts of radioactive and hazardous material.

The agency said it removed about 13,500 cubic yards (10,300 cubic meters) of material — which is the equivalent of nearly 50,000 storage drums each containing 55 gallons (208 liters).

Most of the waste is being sent to the U.S. government’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico for permanent disposal. Some waste will be sent to other off-site repositories that could be commercial or Energy Department sites.

The Energy Department said it is 18 months ahead of schedule in its cleanup of the landfill.

“The buried waste was the primary concern of our stakeholders since the beginning of the cleanup program,” Connie Flohr, manager of the Idaho Cleanup Project for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management, said in a statement. “Completing exhumation early will allow us to get an earlier start on construction of the final cover.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson represents the area that benefits from millions of federal dollars brought into the state by research work done at the Idaho National Laboratory.

“What exciting news for DOE and the Idaho Cleanup project,” he said on Twitter about the landfill work. “A successful clean-up means protection for the region and the Snake River Plain Aquifer.”

The Lake Erie-sized Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer supplies farms and cities in the region. A 2020 U.S. Geological Survey report said radioactive and chemical contamination in the aquifer had decreased or remained constant in recent years. It attributed the decreases to radioactive decay, changes in waste-disposal methods, cleanup efforts and dilution from water coming into the aquifer.

The report said contamination levels at all but a handful of nearly 180 wells are below acceptable standards for drinking water as set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The nuclear site started operating in the late 1940s under the Atomic Energy Commission, a forerunner to the Energy Department, and contamination of the aquifer began in 1952, according to the U.S. Geological Survey report.

Contamination reached the aquifer through injection wells, unlined percolation ponds, pits into which radioactive material from other states was dumped, and accidental spills mainly during the Cold War era before regulations to protect the environment were put in place.

Tritium accounted for most of the radioactivity in water discharged into the aquifer, the U.S. Geological Survey report said, but also included strontium-90, cesium-137, iodine-129, plutonium isotopes, uranium isotopes, neptunium-237, americium-241, and technetium-99.

In 1989, the area became a Superfund site when it was was added to the National Priorities List for Uncontrolled Hazardous Waste Sites.

The Energy Department shipped nuclear waste to Idaho until a series of lawsuits between the state and the federal government in the 1990s led to a 1995 settlement agreement.

The agreement was seen as a way to prevent the state from becoming a high-level nuclear waste repository. It also required cleanup and removal of existing nuclear waste, which continues.

Keith Ridler, The Associated Press

'In 2022, Let's Tax the Rich': 10 Billionaires Added $402 Billion to Their Fortunes in 2021

"It's taxes or pitchforks," declared one progressive advocacy group.

Activists demand an increase in federal taxes on big corporations on May 17, 2021 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo: Gerardo Mora/Getty Images for MoveOn)

JAKE JOHNSON

January 3, 2022

The world's 10 richest billionaires added roughly $402 billion to their collective wealth in 2021, a year marked by continued suffering and economic dislocation fueled by the global coronavirus pandemic.

"Heading into 2022, the 10 wealthiest individuals in the world are all worth more than $100 billion," CNBC noted, citing the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which tracks and ranks the fortunes of the planet's richest people.

"History paints a bleak picture of what happens to extremely unequal societies."

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Sunday that the staggering growth of billionaire wealth amid a worldwide public health emergency and economic crisis should compel Congress to finally redress the fundamental injustices of the U.S. tax system.

"In 2022," said Jayapal, "let's tax the rich and invest in our communities."

At the top of the Billionaires Index at the close of 2021 was Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who added over $121 billion to his wealth last year as the pandemic both took and completely upended lives, pushing tens of millions of people into poverty and intensifying preexisting inequities. Just behind Musk on the list was former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who tacked $5 billion onto his net worth in 2021, leaving him with a total fortune of $195 billion.

In November, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) outlined a proposal by which Musk—now the richest man in the world—and other U.S. billionaires could donate just 0.36% of their pandemic wealth gains to help 42 million people facing starvation.

"The $6.6 billion required would help those in most need in the following way: one meal a day, the basic needed to survive—costing $0.43 per person per day, averaged out across the 43 countries," the WFP said. "This would feed 42 million people for one year, and avert the risk of famine."

The billionaires have not taken the WFP up on its modest plan to save millions of lives with a miniscule fraction of their pandemic profits.

The investigative outlet ProPublica reported in June that Musk, along with other U.S. billionaires, "paid $0 in federal income taxes" in 2018. Late last year, Musk garnered widespread publicity for selling off a portion of his Tesla stock, triggering a significant taxable event.

But as Bob Lord, an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, observed in a recent blog post, Musk "has paid tax in 2021—lots of it—because doing so was by far his best option."

"Did he pay more tax than any American in history, as he claims? Probably," Lord wrote. "But he also received compensation of more than $20 billion, which almost certainly dwarfs the compensation any other CEO in American history has ever been paid, from a company with profits not remotely commensurate with that level of compensation."

The updated billionaire wealth figures come as Democrats in Congress are struggling to chart a path forward for their flagship social spending and climate legislation, which has been held up by corporate-backed Sen. Joe Manchin (D-Wa.).

The House-passed version of the Build Back Better Act includes a surtax on millionaires and other measures to help fund the bill's investments and reduce out-of-control inequality. According to the Washington Post, Manchin recently told the Biden White House that he would be willing to support "some version" of a tax targeting billionaires, an idea that the West Virginia Democrat criticized in October.

"While the specifics of what Manchin would support remain unclear, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has unveiled a tax aimed at the accrued wealth of America’s approximately 700 billionaires," the Post noted. "The measure is aimed at addressing the massive gains of the wealthiest Americans with a federal tax and probably would be unprecedented in how few people it affected... Congress' nonpartisan scorekeeper has estimated it could raise as much as $550 billion over 10 years, or pay for more than one-quarter of the Democrats' spending bill."

In a social media post on New Year's Day, the Patriotic Millionaires—a group composed of wealthy supporters of progressive taxation—warned that "history paints a bleak picture of what happens to extremely unequal societies."

"For the well-being of rich and poor alike, it's time to confront inequality and choose to tax the rich," the group wrote. "If you don't, then all the talk at Davos won't change what’s coming—it's taxes or pitchforks."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Warnings From the Far North

Forces profound and alarming are reshaping the upper reaches of the North Pacific and Arctic oceans, breaking the food chain that supports billions of creatures and one of the world’s most important fisheries.

January 3, 2022 by Pressenza 


“Forces profound and alarming are reshaping the upper reaches of the North Pacific and Arctic oceans, breaking the food chain that supports billions of creatures and one of the world’s most important fisheries.”

(Source: Susanne Rust, Unprecedented Die-offs, Melting Ice: Climate Change is Wreaking Havoc in the Arctic and Beyond, Los Angeles Times, December 17, 2021)

“Breaking the food chain that supports billions of creatures” is horrific to contemplate. It sends a powerful signal of trouble dead ahead. In that regard, scientists agree that what happens up North signals what’s in store to the South, and what’s happening up North is a gut-wrenching reality of life on a knife’s edge of catastrophe.

It’s never been more urgent and timely for the world to change its ways and abandon the current economic maelstrom that haunts all life on the planet. The pros and cons of capitalism’s experiment with neoliberal tendencies that enrich the few and bury the many should be debated in the context of strained resources throughout the biosphere, including all life forms. The GDP-to-infinity paradigm is barreling towards a wall of impending extinction. It’s already on a fast track.

In the aforementioned LA Times, aka The Times, article: “Kuletz, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist who has been observing birds in Alaska since the late 1970s, said she’s never before seen the large-scale changes of recent years. In 2013, the dead birds did not show signs of being emaciated, but in 2017, hundreds to thousands more began to wash up dead on beaches with clear signs of starvation.” Ibid.

A team from The Times traveled to Alaska and spoke with dozens of scientists conducting field research in the Bering Sea and the High Arctic from whence they describe the harsh reality of a vastly/rapidly changing climate system that threatens basic food resources for marine life, as well as for humanity.

The fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming are all over the discernable shifts of sea life and/or loss of species captured in a whirlwind of unpredictability. According to boots-on-the-ground scientists in the far north, these radical shifts in the ecosystem have… “ramifications that stretch far beyond the Arctic. Moreover, the Bering Sea is one of the planet’s major fishing grounds.”

Janet Duffy-Anderson, a marine scientist who leads surveys of the Bering Sea for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center said: “Globally, cold-water ecosystems support the world’s fisheries. Halibut, all of the cod, all of the benthic crabs, lobsters, this is the majority of the food source for the world.”

She emphasized the fact that the ripple effect of what’s happening in the far north could shut down fisheries as well as leave migrating animals starving for food, which, in fact, is already omnipresent. And, of concern: “Alaska is a bellwether for what other systems can expect.”

The top of the marine food chain is in deep trouble. Since 2019 hundreds of gray whales have died along North America’s Pacific coastline. Many of the whales appeared skinny or underfed.

Addressing the whale issue, another scientific study from a year ago stated: “It is now the third year that gray whales have been found in very poor condition or dead in large numbers along the west coast of Mexico, USA and Canada, and scientists have raised their concerns. An international study suggests that starvation is contributing to these mortalities.” (Source: Mary Lou Jones and Steven Swartz -Aarhus University- A Large Number of Gray Whales are Starving and Dying in the Eastern North Pacific, ScienceDaily, January 22, 2021)

When the top of the marine food chain (whales) starve, it’s only too obvious that the lower levels are failing. This one fact is cause for serious concern and thus demands action by the leaders of the world to commit to a series of international studies of marine life and ocean conditions with recommendations on how to solve the anthropogenic cause of excessive greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet, it appears that as some species in the far north struggle, some do adapt and even thrive. Thus, there may be some tradeoffs on a slightly positive note, but still, it’s the emaciated animals en mass that cannot be overlooked. The fact of the matter, stated in The Times: “Data from a Bering Sea mooring shows the average temperature throughout the water column has risen markedly in the last several years: in 2018, water temperatures were 9 degrees above the historical average.”

It should be noted that if overall global temperatures averaged 9 degrees above average, it would be “lights out” for terrestrial life.

Warmer waters appear to be at the heart of the problem, e.g., as the planet warms both humans and wildlife become more vulnerable to infectious diseases that were previously confined to certain specific locations and environments. Additionally, toxic algae that kill marine life thrives in warmer waters. Plus, marine animals do not naturally mature and reproduce as waters warm far above historical averages. Furthermore, ocean acidification, caused by excessive CO2, is already threatening sea life by reducing carbonate, a key building block in seawater.

Only recently, a death march of extreme heat hit the Pacific. A study in Canada showed the enormous impact of heat, as an estimated one billion sea creatures off the coast of Vancouver died because of excessive ocean heat. According to professor Christopher Harley, University of British Columbia: “”I’ve been working in the Pacific Northwest for most of the past 25 years, and I have not seen anything like this here. This is far more extensive than anything I’ve ever seen.” (Source: Heat Wave Killed An Estimated 1 Billion Sea Creatures, And Scientists Fear Even Worse, NPR Environment, July 9, 2021)

The oceans are suffering a triple whammy, and as a result, scientists believe it is distinctly possible that life in the wondrous blue seas could be gone by mid-century unless humanity changes course. Overfishing, pollution, and climate change are battering the oceans. It’s all human-caused. The question then becomes, if humans have caused the onslaught, can they reverse it, or at least stop?

In all, it’s becoming only too apparent that to maintain life on the planet, the world economy needs to stabilize by massive reduction of greenhouse gases accompanied by flat-line economic activity, forget the death wish of GDP up and up “whatever percent every quarter,” which runs roughshod over the planet’s ecosystems. Worshipping GDP growth is akin to idolatry, and its moral corollary is greed. Maybe try worldwide socialism and see how that works for the planet’s life-sourcing ecosystems.

Not only that, but plain and simple, we’re running out of nature’s resourcefulness. “Today’s seas contain only 10% of the marlin, tuna, sharks and other large predators that were found in the 1950s… Overfishing puts the whole ocean ecosystem out of balance.” (Source: Katie Pavid, Will the Ocean Really Be Dead In 50 Years? Natural History Museum, London)

Of additional interest, the documentary Seaspiracy/Netflix by Disrupt Studios, March 2021 is an eye-opener on the goings-on of marine life, what’s left of it, in the oceans.

Museum scientists have studied past periods of climate change: “Research leader Prof Richard Twitchett says, ‘We have a really good idea of what oceans look like when the climate warms. It has happened to Earth many times before, and here in the Museum we have collections of fossil animals and plants that date back millions of years, so we can see how they responded. The rocks and fossils show us that as temperature increased in the past, oxygen levels fell and huge areas of the seafloor became uninhabitable,” Ibid.

“The same oceans that nourished human evolution are poised to unleash misery on a global scale unless the carbon pollution destabilizing Earth’s marine environment is brought to heel.” (Source: Oceans Turning From Friend to Foe, Warns Landmark UN Climate Report, Agence France Presse, August 29, 2019)

—

This post was previously published on pressenza.com and under a Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.0.

The dairy industry is determined to pour itself down our throats

Photo by Amber Kipp on Unsplash
herd of cows inside building
Jennifer Barckley and
Independent Media Institute January 04, 2022

When author and historian James Truslow Adams introduced “the American dream” into common parlance in his 1931 book The Epic of America, he wasn’t suggesting that fulfilling it would require the democratically elected U.S. government to dictate what Americans ought to eat and drink or which industries they ought to fund through their hard-earned tax dollars. But that is what the U.S. government has been doing for decades by subsidizing the dairy industry—an industry that popular opinion has already left behind.

The real American dream is at odds with turning taxpayer dollars into wealth for one industry over another. An example of this is the promotion of the American dairy industry by the government. It’s the reason why the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been telling people that dairy deserves its own food group and has promoted the idea that most adults and children should “eat or drink about three cups of dairy each day,” to ensure they are getting the required nutrients to stay healthy. This is, however, contradictory to the facts provided by the National Institutes of Health. According to the agency, between 30 and 50 million Americans are intolerant to lactose (the sugar found in milk), “including 95 percent of Asian Americans, 60-80 percent of African Americans and Ashkenazi Jews, 80-100 percent of Native Americans, and 50-80 percent of Hispanics,” compared to people of northern European descent who have a “high lactose tolerance.”

In fact, some studies connect the consumption of dairy products with a higher risk of certain cancers, including prostate cancer in men and endometrial cancer in postmenopausal women. Further, countries that have the highest rates of milk consumption also have the “highest rates of osteoporosis.” According to a study by Uppsala University in Sweden, the consumption of milk has even been associated with higher mortality in both men and women, according to a 2014 article in the Washington Post.

But these facts haven’t stopped the USDA in its quest to drive the demand for dairy. According to the Environmental Working Group and USDA data, Americans have spent $6.4 billion between 1995 and 2020 in subsidizing the dairy industry. Included in these subsidies are marketing fees that promote the consumption of milk and several “[d]airy-related programs administered by [the] USDA,” which are designed to “benefit dairy farmers and dairy product consumers.” The dairy industry, it turns out, is milking the paychecks of Americans and turning their hard-earned money into cartons of liquid white murkiness.

Even with these steep financial gains afforded to the U.S. dairy industry, Representatives Peter Welch (D-VT), Mike Simpson (R-ID), and Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Jim Risch (R-ID)—all representing dairy-rich states—introduced a piece of legislation in April 2021 (ironically on Earth Day), known as the Dairy Pride Act. The bill, if passed, requires the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prevent plant-based product producers from using terms like milk, yogurt or cheese as part of their labeling.

This pushback comes while consumer demand for plant-based milk—squeezed from oats, soybeans, almonds and even pistachios—is skyrocketing. Fortunately for consumers who value free choice, and markets that value fair trade, this legislation has little ground to stand on beyond the competitive fear on which it was built.

In May 2021, similar legislation—Amendment 171 in the European Union—was withdrawn by the European Parliament. Like the Dairy Pride Act, it sought to ban terms traditionally used to describe dairy products, such as “buttery” and “creamy,” for plant-based products.

Also in 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in favor of Miyoko’s Kitchen, a brand that specializes in dairy-free products, after the California Department of Food and Agriculture instructed the company to stop using “terms like ‘butter’ and ‘dairy’ on product marketing and labeling”—even when paired with “vegan” and “plant-based” vernacular. The court agreed with the plant-based brand, which had argued that censoring product labeling that was an accurate description within the context of “common parlance among consumers” today violated the First Amendment’s freedom of expression.

Attempts from Big Dairy to defend their turf come just when an authentic version of the American dream is taking root. James Truslow Adams defined it as a “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” And consumers have never before had so many opportunities to choose how to enrich their lives with healthy alternatives to dairy, whether they define a “richer and fuller” life as one without harming animals, contributing to the climate crisis, or causing gastrointestinal distress. And from the perspective of the plant-based milk companies, it’s a dream that is currently worth $2.5 billion in the U.S. alone. From 2019 to 2020, the plant-based milk sector grew by 20 percent, accounting for 15 percent of all retail milk dollar sales—all without USDA dollars spent on their marketing. And in May 2021, the plant-based milk market reached a new milestone when oat-milk maker Oatly Group began trading on Wall Street with a valuation of close to $10 billion and billed as an ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) stock to buy, thanks to its climate-curbing benefits.

Oat milk (like other plant-based milks) has a far lighter environmental footprint than milk from cows—with 70 percent less greenhouse gas emissions, while using 93 percent less water from seed to shelf.

Meanwhile, Debra Roberts, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II, in a report published in August 2019, noted, “Some dietary choices require more land and water, and cause more emissions of heat-trapping gases than others. Balanced diets featuring plant-based foods… produced sustainably in low greenhouse gas emission systems, present major opportunities for adaptation to and limiting climate change.” If the U.S. is to fulfill its original Paris agreement pledge, it will need “to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 25 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2025, a goal that the country is not on track to meet,” according to an NPR article. Backing industrial agriculture like Big Dairy furthermore runs counter to serious climate change commitments.

If the American dream is to be realized, then its citizens deserve choice—real choice, which allows them to vote with their dollars and knowingly choose what they want to eat and drink. Freedom is not something Americans are afforded when they are brought up to believe that milk is what their bodies and the country need to be strong, simply to pad the pockets of one industry over another. Freedom is having the ability to make the best choice for oneself, and the planet.

Jennifer Barckley is the vice president of communications at The Humane League.

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Republicans are assaulting democracy even more now than when Trump was in office: constitutional scholar

Mitch McConnell/Shutterstock
Alex Henderson January 03, 2022

This Thursday, January 6, will mark the one-year anniversary of the assault on the U.S. Capitol Building, which violently underscored the MAGA movement’s authoritarian nature and its total contempt for liberal democracy. Laurence Tribe, the Harvard University legal scholar who co-founded the American Constitutional Society, discusses that contempt in an op-ed published by The Guardian this week — and warns that the GOP assault on democracy is even worse now than it was when Trump was in the White House.

“Only free and fair elections in which the loser abides by the result stand between each of us and life at the mercy of a despotic regime — one we had no voice in choosing and one that can freely violate all our rights,” Tribe explains. “So, everything is at stake in the peaceful transfer of power from a government that has lost its people’s confidence to its victorious successor. It was that peaceful transfer that Trump and his minions sought to obstruct and almost succeeded in overthrowing when Joe Biden was elected president.”

Tribe continues, “A year has passed since Trump’s attempted coup and his supporters’ violent storming of the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021, in a nearly successful effort to prevent Congress from certifying Trump’s decisive loss of the election to Biden. Watching the images that day of the seat of U.S. democracy overtaken and defiled, it was impossible not to viscerally feel the grave danger that confronted the republic.”

That “grave danger,” according to Tribe, has only intensified since the 2020 presidential election and the late 2020/early 2021 lame duck period.

“For those of us who have continued to investigate the sources and facets of the assault on constitutional democracy,” the 80-year-old Tribe writes, “a sobering realization has become unavoidable: our country, and the legal and political institutions that prevent it from descending into despotism, are in even greater peril today than they were at the time of last November’s election…. Most terrifyingly, we have learned over the past year that the Republican Party plans to do it again.”

Tribe adds, “Some retired generals are warning that, without decisive action to hold all the wrongdoers to account, we will witness a march to another coup attempt, and one more likely to succeed, if Trump or another demagogue runs and loses. Trump’s Republican Party has all but erased or openly embraced the violence of 6 January. And the party faithful have already set out to use state-level elections and legislative processes to better set the table to steal the 2024 election should that be necessary to their return to power.”

Tribe emphasizes that the modern GOP is laying the groundwork for an authoritarian coup regardless of whether or not Trump runs for president in 2024.

“Even if something should derail another Trump run at the presidency,” Tribe explains, “the means for another coup exist, and the temptation to seize power — this time cementing it more permanently — will surely tantalize a political party that seems openly hostile to the very premises of democracy. Of particular concern to students of fascism — a governing form that almost always comes wrapped in violence — was the violence woven through the rise of Trumpism to the siege of the Capitol, which was, of course, brutally violent.”


Tribe wraps up his op-ed by stressing that Americans who don’t want to live in an authoritarian state will have their work cut out for them in the months ahead.

“When democracy loses its grip as a guiding ideal, despotism fills the void and liberty is lost,” Tribe writes. “This is a battle we must not, cannot, will not lose.”

Not all polarization is bad — but the US could be in real trouble

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash
people standing and holding flags during daytime
The Conversation January 04, 2022


by Robert B. Talisse, Vanderbilt University

For the first time, the United States has been classified as a “backsliding democracy” in a global assessment of democratic societies by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an intergovernmental research group.

One key reason the report cites is the continuing popularity among Republicans of false allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

But according to the organization’s secretary general, perhaps the “most concerning” aspect of American democracy is “runaway polarization.” One year after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Americans’ perceptions about even the well-documented events of that day are divided along partisan lines.

Polarization looms large in many diagnoses of America’s current political struggles. Some researchers warn of an approaching “tipping point” of irreversible polarization. Suggested remedies are available from across the partisan spectrum.

There are two types of polarization, as I discuss in my book “Sustaining Democracy.” One isn’t inherently dangerous; the other can be. And together, they can be extremely destructive of democratic societies.

Two kinds

Political polarization is the ideological distance between opposed parties. If the differences are large, it can produce logjams, standoffs and inflexibility in Congress and state and local governments. Though it can be frustrating, political polarization is not necessarily dysfunctional. It even can be beneficial, offering true choices for voters and policymakers alike. Deep-seated disagreement can be healthy for democracy, after all. The clash of opinions can help us find the truth. The clamor of ideological differences among political parties provides citizens with shortcuts for making political choices.

Belief polarization, also called group polarization, is different. Interaction with like-minded others transforms people into more extreme versions of themselves. These more extreme selves are also overly confident and therefore more prepared to engage in risky behavior.

Belief polarization also leads people to embrace more intensely negative feelings toward people with different views. As they shift toward extremism, they come to define themselves and others primarily in terms of partisanship. Eventually, politics expands beyond policy ideas and into entire lifestyles.

But that’s not all. As I explain in my book, as society sorts into “liberal” and “conservative” lifestyles, people grow more invested in policing the borders between “us” and “them.” And as people’s alliances focus on hostility toward those who disagree, they become more conformist and intolerant of differences among allies.

People grow less able to navigate disagreement, eventually developing into citizens who believe that democracy is possible only when everyone agrees with them. That is a profoundly antidemocratic stance.
The polarization loop

Belief polarization is toxic for citizens’ relations with one another. But the large-scale political dysfunction lies in how political and belief polarization work together in a mutually reinforcing loop. When the citizenry is divided into two clans that are fixated on animus against the other, politicians have incentives to amplify hostility toward their partisan opponents.

And because the citizenry is divided over lifestyle choices rather than policy ideas, officeholders are released from the usual electoral pressure to advance a legislative platform. They can gain reelection simply based on their antagonism.

As politicians escalate their rifts, citizens are cued to entrench partisan segregation. This produces additional belief polarization, which in turn rewards political intransigence. All the while, constructive political processes get submerged in the merely symbolic and tribal, while people’s capacities for responsible democratic citizenship erode.
Managing polarization

Remedies for polarization tend to focus on how it poisons citizens’ relations. Surely President Joe Biden was correct to stress in his inaugural address that Americans need to “lower the temperature” and to “see each other not as adversaries, but as neighbors.”

Still, democracy presupposes political disagreement. As James Madison observed, the U.S. needs democracy precisely because self-governing citizens inevitably will disagree about politics. The response to polarization cannot involve calls for unanimity or abandoning partisan rivalries. A democracy without political divides is no democracy at all.

The task is to render people’s political differences more civil, to reestablish the ability to respectfully disagree. But this cannot be accomplished simply by conducting political discussions differently. Research indicates that once people are polarized, exposure even to civil expressions of the other side’s viewpoint creates more polarization.

This is a case of the crucial difference between prevention and cure. It’s not enough to pretend polarization hasn’t happened, or to behave as if it’s a minor concern. In the current situation, even sincere attempts to respectfully engage with the other side often backfire.

Yet Americans remain democratic citizens, partners in the shared project of self-government who cannot simply ignore one another.

Polarization is a problem that cannot be solved, but only managed. It does make relations toxic among political opponents, but it also hurts relations among allies. It escalates conformity within coalitions, shrinking people’s concepts of what levels of disagreement are tolerable in like-minded groups.

It may be, then, that managing polarization could involve working to counteract conformity by engaging in respectful disagreements with people we see as allies. By taking steps to remember that politics always involves disputation, even among those who vote for the same candidates and affiliate with the same party, Americans may begin to rediscover the ability to respectfully disagree with opponents.

Robert B. Talisse, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

FLASHBACK

Its roots are deep': Noam Chomsky breaks down just how dangerous Trumpism is after ex-president's 'attempted putsch'

Noam Chomsky
Chomsky and Prashad: 

There are 3 major threats to life on Earth that we must address in 2021
Meaghan Ellis January 25, 2021

President Donald Trump's reign may be over but there are still concerns about how his lingering legacy will impact U. politics. Now, American linguist Noam Chomsky is explaining just how disturbing Trump's incitement of the Capitol riot was as he argued that it hit much closer to the United States' centers of power than Hitler's first coup attempt in Germany.

During an interview with TruthOut, Chomsky discussed the Capitol riot as he offered a comparison of that disturbing event to Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch of 1923.

"An attempted putsch, though the connotations of the term putsch may be too strong," Chomsky said. "The events reminded many, including historians of fascism, of Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, which actually did not so easily penetrate the centers of power as the attempted coup of January 6."

He added, "The reasons for the security failures are being debated. I have no special insight. Black members of the Capitol police, who showed great courage along with many of their white colleagues, have charged for years that the force has been infiltrated with white supremacists. There may have been some collusion, and possibly serious corruption higher up the chain of command."

Chomsky's remarks come just weeks after Trump's mob of supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol following his "Save America" rally on Jan. 6.

At the time, the president and his supporters encouraged rally-goers to head to the Capitol and express their demands to lawmakers in hopes of having the election overturned. Trump and his allies made these remarks even after it was clear that the Electoral College certification would not be invalidated. The president's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani even encouraged rally-goers to pursue "trial by combat."

Although the Trump presidency is over, Chomsky admitted that he believes the disgraced outgoing president is "far from" done.

"Whether Trump will survive the error of judgment that turned major power centers against him is unclear," Chomsky said. "He may well do so. The voting base of the Party seems to remain loyal, maybe with even greater fervor after this attack on their hero by the 'deep state.' Local officials too. He was cheered on his visit to the Republican National Committee the day after the Capitol riot. He has other resources.


Chomsky added, "Whatever the fate of the individual, Trumpism will not be so easily contained. Its roots are deep."

Robert Reich has the perfect answer to Trumpism

Robert Reich
January 01, 2022

www.alternet.org

As I’ve considered the real lesson of January 6, I’ve been prompted to rewatch a movie that provides a hint of an answer — Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which was released 75 years ago this month.

When I first saw the movie in the late 1960s, I thought it pure hokum. America was coming apart over Vietnam and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and I remember thinking the movie could have been produced by some propaganda bureau of the government that had been told to create a white-washed (and white) version of the United States.

But in more recent years I’ve come around. As America has moved closer to being an oligarchy — with staggering inequalities of income, wealth, and power not seen in over a century — and closer to Trumpian neofascism (the two moves are connected), “It’s a Wonderful Life” speaks to what’s gone wrong and what must be done to make it right.

As you probably know (and if you don’t, this weekend would be a good time to watch it), the movie’s central conflict is between Mr. Potter (played by Lionel Barrymore) and George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart). Potter is a greedy and cruel banker. George is the generous and honorable head of Bedford Fall’s building-and-loan — the one entity standing in the way of Potter’s total domination of the town. When George accidentally loses some deposits that fall into the hands of Potter, Potter sees an opportunity to ruin George. This brings George to the bridge where he contemplates suicide, thinking his life has been worthless — before a guardian angel’s counsel turns him homeward.

It’s two radically opposed versions of America. In Potter’s social-Darwinist view, people compete with one another for resources. Those who succeed deserve to win because they’ve outrun everyone else in that competitive race. After the death of George’s father, who founded the building-and-loan, Potter moves to dissolve it — claiming George’s father “was not a businessman. He was a man of high ideals, so-called, but ideals without common sense can ruin a town.” For Potter, common sense is not coddling the “discontented rabble.”

In George’s view, Bedford Falls is a community whose members help each other. He tells Potter that the so-called “rabble … do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.” His father helped them build homes on credit so they could afford a decent life. “People were human beings to him,” George tells Potter, “but to you, they’re cattle.”

When George contemplates ending it all, his guardian angel shows him how bleak Bedford Falls would be had George never lived — poor, fearful, and dependent on Potter. The movie ends when everyone George has helped (virtually the entire town) pitch in to bail out George and his building-and-loan.

It’s a cartoon, of course — but a cartoon that’s fast becoming a reality in America. Do we join together or let the Potters of America own and run everything?

Soon after “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released, the FBI considered it evidence of Communist Party infiltration of the film industry. The FBI’s Los Angeles field office — using a report by an ad-hoc group that included Fountainhead writer and future Trump pin-up girl Ayn Rand — warned that the movie represented “rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture.” The movie “deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters. This … is a common trick used by Communists.”

The FBI report compared “It’s a Wonderful Life” to a Soviet film, and alleged that Frank Capra was “associated with left-wing groups” and that screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett were “very close to known Communists.”

This was all rubbish, of course — and a prelude to the Red Scare led by Republican Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, who launched a series of highly publicized probes into alleged Communist penetration of Hollywood, the State Department, and even the US Army.

The movie was also prelude to modern Republican ideology. Since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have used Potter-like social Darwinism to justify everything tax cuts for the wealthy, union-busting, and cutbacks in social safety nets. Rand herself became a hero to many in the Trump administration.

Above all, Reagan Republicans, CEOs, and Trumpers have used the strategy of “divide-and-conquer” to generate division among Americans (a kind of political social-Darwinism). That way, Americans stay angry and suspicious of one another, and don’t look upward to see where all the money and power have gone. And won’t join together to claim it back.

What would Republicans say about “It’s a Wonderful Life” if it were released today? They’d probably call it socialist rather than communist, but it would make them squirm all the same — especially given the eery similarity between Lionel Barrymore’s Mr. Potter and you know who.

How an anti-vaxxer was radicalized into a 'Proud Boys friend' and then a Trump insurrectionist

Sarah K. Burris
January 03, 2022


Speaking to MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Monday, reporter Brandy Zadrozny described her team's efforts in following white supremacists, militia groups and other extremists for the year after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

One of the things that she noticed is that people angry about Jan. 6 went from obsessing over Trump's "Big Lie" to working on culture war issues like, "critical race theory."

Zadrozny mentioned Denise Aguilar, a vocal California vaccine conspiracy theorist and founder of a survivalist group who ultimately became radicalized by Donald Trump to attack the U.S. Capitol.

READ MORE: 'You don't really believe that': CNN reporter stunned by Trump supporters' Jan. 6th conspiracy theories

"I have been reporting on the anti-vaccination movement for about a decade, so I've known Denise Aguilar, who is an activist out of California, for years now," said Zadrozny. "She's always been an anti-vaxxer for the last -- when California was putting in place laws to get rid of school exemptions, she was very vocal, and you could see her progression through 2020. A person who was an anti-vaxxer became a sort of Proud Boy's friend. She was detained at the California state capitol, and then she ended up going to the Capitol on Jan. 6. She spoke at a Health Freedom stage and then, according to her own selfie, she was at the Capitol, and she stormed -- she said, 'we stormed the Capitol.' She said she was sprayed with bear mace. She came home, and she started an all-women's militia."

Aguilar is now posting photos of herself with what appears to be her co-militia mates holding very large weapons. Her Telegram channel has become "just a spiral down into extremism, and so we watched this happen in real-time," said Zadrozny.

She told Zadrozny that their efforts are all about local politics now and they're not focusing on national politics.

Watch the full report below:

The ‘sore loser effect’: Rejecting election results can destabilize democracy and drive terrorism

The Conversation
January 03, 2022

Photo: AFP 

 1776 WAS THE AGE OF SLAVERY

An attendee at an October 2021 political rally hosted by right-wing activist Charlie Kirk asked: “How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?”

The attendee was referring to the baseless allegation that Joe Biden stole the 2020 U.S. presidential election and that he unfairly denied Donald Trump reelection.

Kirk, CEO of Turning Point USA, condemned the question. But one year after the Capitol insurrection that was fueled by Trump’s claims of a rigged election, Kirk, other commentators and politicians – and, of course, Trump himself – continue to fuel false beliefs of widespread election fraud. Embrace of the “Big Lie” that Trump really won the election has become an article of faith for many Republican politicians. It is also widely believed by conservative Americans; in an October, 2021 poll, 60% of Republicans said the 2020 presidential election results should definitely or probably be overturned.

This creates a potentially dangerous situation for the United States. Acceptance of electoral defeat, something political scientists call “loser’s consent,” is essential for stability and order in democracies.

‘Sore losers’ can drive terrorism


Democracy is based on a compact: Election losers agree to accept the results and encourage their supporters to do the same.

In exchange, losing politicians get a chance to run, and win, in a future election.

However, loser’s consent is fragile. And when it is broken the risk of political violence increases. In a recent study I published, I conclude that when election losers in democracies reject election results, becoming “sore losers,” trust in political institutions is eroded, political polarization and tribalism grows and mistrust thrives.

This produces a situation where political violence is no longer seen as taboo, particularly among supporters of the losing political party. My research shows that when losing politicians in democracies refuse to accept election results, citizens begin to see terrorism as more acceptable and domestic terrorism increases.

Here in the U.S., outrage over the Big Lie helped fuel the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It has also driven domestic terrorism plots.

For example, federal authorities announced charges in July against two men who planned to bomb the California Democratic Party headquarters. The two men were radicalized by the Big Lie and expressed hope on social media that the attack would “start a movement that could keep former President Donald J. Trump in office.”

Understanding the data

In my study I examined domestic terrorist attack data in over 100 democracies from 1970 to 2018. I also looked at public opinion on whether people view the use of terrorism as justifiable in 30 democratic countries from 2017 to 2020. I based my definition of domestic terrorism on the one used by the Global Terrorism Database. Finally, I used data to measure whether politicians who lost recent national elections in democracies refused to accept the results. I limited my analysis to democracies that were free from electoral irregularities.

I also accounted for other factors that might make domestic terrorism more common or acceptable in my analyses. These include the country’s economic state, ethnic diversity and political violence history, as well as the government’s strength and stability.

For public opinion on terrorism, I weighed the effects of factors such as the age, gender, income, education level, political ideology and religious and ethnic identity of the survey respondent and the amount of terrorism in the country over the previous three years.
When contested results lead to violence

Here is what I found.

First, when losing political parties in democracies reject election results, domestic terrorism increases and gets more intense. By how much depends on how many, and what types of, political parties were sore losers.

Countries where all political parties, including the losers, accepted the election results experienced only one domestic attack about every two years. However, countries where one of the main political parties lost the election but refused to accept the official results – the situation most like what the U.S. currently faces – subsequently experienced around five domestic terrorist attacks per year. Finally, countries where all losing political parties rejected the election results subsequently experienced more than 10 domestic terrorist attacks per year.

Second, the sore-loser effect also boosts acceptance of terrorism. Only around 9% of citizens of democracies where all losing parties accepted election results regard terrorism as justifiable behavior. This percentage increased to around 27% in democracies where the main, losing opposition party or parties rejected the election – the category most approximating the United States after the 2020 election. Finally, around a third of citizens in democracies where all losing parties rejected election results also tolerated terrorism as a tactic.

These results show that when politicians refuse to accept a free and fair democratic election’s outcome, and instead choose to promote a popular narrative of a stolen or dirty election, they place their people in physical danger. Popular tolerance for terrorism grows, and so does terrorist activity itself.

[The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories. Sign up for Politics Weekly.]

James Piazza, Liberal Arts Professor of Political Science, Penn State