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theliberaltony · 6 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to Secret Identity, our regular column on identity and its role in politics and policy.

In the last edition of this column we looked at “electability” as a concept, and some of its more problematic undertones. This week, let’s explore the nuts and bolts of electability — what factors make someone more (or less) likely to win an election. I know everyone is thinking about this question in terms of who the Democrats should nominate to take on President Trump in 2020, but I want to explore both presidential races and down-ballot contests, since we have much more data on the latter.

First, two really important caveats. One, there have been only 58 presidential elections in U.S. history. That’s a fairly limited data set — and one of the main reasons why you should be skeptical when someone confidently suggests one potential presidential aspirant is more or less electable than another. Second, the way we think and talk about politics often overemphasizes candidates and campaign strategies and underplays what political scientists refer to as the fundamentals — factors like the state of the economy and which party controls the White House at the time of the election. One view of the 2008 election, for example, is that Barack Obama ran a brilliant campaign that overcame America’s racial divides. Another view is that once Obama won the Democratic nomination he was virtually a lock — the GOP was trying to win a third straight presidential term, which is generally hard to do, and there was a stock market crash a few weeks before the election.

With those caveats in mind, I’m going to start with a Gallup poll from 2015, because I think it’s telling in some important ways. Gallup asked people if they would vote for a presidential candidate from their own party if the person were “well-qualified” and were, say, Muslim, or Jewish or a socialist. (Gallup had 11 categories in all.) More than 90 percent of Americans said they would vote for a woman, a black candidate, a Jewish candidate or a Latino candidate, while fewer than 10 percent said they would not. By this measure, women and nonwhite candidates are pretty electable. (People could be lying to pollsters, but let’s take people at their word for now. And even so, 7 or 8 percent of the electorate isn’t nothing.)

Who would Americans NOT vote for?

Percentage of people in 2015 survey who would not vote for a “generally well-qualified” person nominated from their own party if they had each of the following characteristics

Democrat Republican Overall Socialist 38% 73% 50% Atheist 35 55 40 Muslim 27 54 38 Evangelical Christian 33 14 25 Gay or lesbian 14 38 24 Mormon 21 16 18 Hispanic 6 9 8 Woman 3 9 8 Black 4 9 7 Jewish 6 5 7 Catholic 5 7 6

Source: GALLUP

In contrast, 50 percent of Americans said they would not back a socialist candidate. More than a third were opposed to an atheist or Muslim candidate.1 Similarly, in a Pew Research Center 2016 survey, more than 40 percent of Americans said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is Muslim and more than half said they would be wary of someone who did not believe in God.2

So, if you want to have a conversation about whether an atheist or Muslim candidate for national office is “electable,” you at least have some data to support asking the question. (The better way to phrase that question, of course, is probably, “Are Americans too Islamophobic to elect _______.”) In addition, these are categories, not people. How does Americans’ resistance to a “socialist,” for example, relate to the once-and-maybe-future presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist? We are not totally sure, but it’s worth remembering that many of his views are shared by other leading Democrats — and voters might consider him more of a Democrat than a socialist if he is the party’s 2020 nominee.

Electability concerns are still raised about plenty of candidates who don’t fall into those categories, particularly women, minority candidates and people with views more out of the ideological mainstream of U.S. politics. And just because Americans say they wouldn’t rule out voting for these candidates, that doesn’t mean those identities have no effect on how elections play out. So, let’s look at some of those other factors now, where the electability effects perhaps aren’t as explicit.

Women

This is a tricky question to answer. The best data we have on how gender affects elections is in down-ballot races. An extensive study of U.S. House races from 1982 to 2012 by the University of Georgia’s Jason Anastasopoulos found no “gender penalty” for women candidates. That was true in terms of raising money and in garnering general election votes.3

“Based on a systematic analysis of the 2010 and 2014 midterm House elections, we found not only that women win at equal rates, but also that the content of women’s and men’s campaigns looks the same, the volume and substance of the media coverage they receive is indistinguishable, and voters assess male and female candidates on a variety of issue competencies as equals,” said Jennifer Lawless, a professor at the University of Virginia, referring to research she did with Danny Hayes of George Washington University for the 2016 book “Women on the Run.”

“In short, it all comes down to party,” she added. “Whether there is a D or an R in front of a candidate’s name is far more important — to voters, donors, journalists, and their opponents — than the presence or absence of a Y chromosome in a candidate’s DNA.”

That’s Congress, though. Many observers have asked whether gender plays out differently in the context of a presidential election. Two scholars at the University of Texas at Dallas concluded that attitudes about gender were a much bigger factor in determining how Americans voted in 2016 compared to 2012 (when there were two male candidates), but on balance that helped Clinton because the number of voters with sexist views were outnumbered by those with less sexist views. Clinton did not do as well as Obama electorally, but that probably had more to do with the fundamentals of the race (the fact that she was running for the third term of her party was a disadvantage for example). Other scholarship also shows that attitudes about gender did correlate more closely with how people voted in 2016 than in previous elections — but so did racial attitudes. (So it’s likely that Trump brought gender and race to the forefront in 2016 as much as Clinton.)

But we should be cautious here. Clinton was the first woman to win a major party presidential nomination. If we don’t have a big sample of presidential elections in general, we have far less than even that for women running for president. So I don’t think we can dismiss the idea that Clinton’s gender played some role in the campaign. There were facets of the campaign that are difficult to explain without gender — such as the somewhat odd view of American voters throughout 2016 that Clinton and Trump were basically equally untrustworthy. From a scholarly perspective, however, Clinton followed the pattern — there is not a big penalty in terms of vote share for being a woman in U.S. elections.

“In terms of most of the academic and advocacy research we have, there is no voting or fundraising penalty in the raw data we have about who votes for women as nominees,” said Shauna Shames, a political scientist at Rutgers University and expert on the role of gender in politics.

“But that does not mean there is no gender penalty,” she added. “It just means, to my mind, that only the stronger female candidates run, and those can raise as much money and votes as the mediocre men. We should actually therefore see a penalty against men, in favor of the women who make it through the (tougher for women) gauntlet of becoming candidates, and we should see these women raising more money than men. But we do not. That the levels are equal, therefore, does not prove to my mind that there is no penalty for women — it suggests in fact that there is one, just one we don’t see.”

Race and ethnicity

African-Americans — Generally, there is evidence that black candidates increase turnout among black voters but do worse with white voters, perhaps because black candidates are perceived to be more liberal than white candidates with similar ideological stances.

Obama’s presidential campaigns seem to have conformed to this pattern. University of Massachusetts Amherst professor Brian Schaffner, for example, argued that Obama’s candidacy caused more voters to see the 2008 campaign through a racialized prism and that cost Obama support from people with more racist views. Schaffner estimated that Obama lost about 3 percentage points of the white vote, which comprised about 75 percent of the electorate in 2008. So that’s about 2 points overall. Economist and data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz estimated that Obama lost about 4 percentage points in the national popular vote in 2008 and 2012 because of his race. Other experts, such as Nate Cohn, who’s now with The New York Times, have argued that that overestimates the racial backlash.

The flip side for Obama is that the black turnout rate was more than 65 percent in both of his runs, compared to about 60 percent in 2004 and 2016, when Democrats ran white presidential candidates, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. That matters. Clinton likely would have won Michigan and Wisconsin with 2012-level turnout among blacks.

Latinos — I found less research on Latino candidates. But there is some evidence they too face a penalty. A paper written last year by Neil Visalvanich of Durham University in the United Kingdom estimated that Latino Democratic candidates performed 6 percentage points worse with white voters than white Democratic candidates of similar ideology. The study, based on 2010 and 2012 congressional election results, found the penalty for Latino Democrats to be higher than that of black Democratic candidates (3 percentage points, according to Visalvanich).

There is evidence, based on mayoral and U.S. Senate elections, that Latinos are more likely to vote for Latino candidates. But direct appeals to Latinos, according to scholars, are likely to cause a backlash among some white voters. And Latino Democratic candidates, like black ones, are likely to be perceived as more liberal than white ones with similar ideologies.

Asians — We don’t have as much data here, But in his study, Visalvanich estimated that Asian Democratic candidates did better with white voters than even white candidates.

Ideology

Would it help the Democrats in 2020 if they had a “centrist” at the top of the ticket? All else being equal, it’s probably safe to conclude that candidates more removed from the mainstream of American political thought will do worse at the ballot box. There is some evidence, for example, that Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater (1964) and Democratic nominee George McGovern (1972) lost by larger margins than other factors would have predicted in their elections because of the ideological extremism of their voting records.

But ideology is somewhat complicated to measure, particularly for people who haven’t served in legislative bodies (like Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a potential Democratic candidate in 2020) or in any political office at all (like Trump.) Trump’s Muslim plan was perhaps the most radical idea proposed by any recent presidential candidate, but voters had trouble pinning the candidate down on a left-right spectrum before the election. Trump, according to the Pew Research Center, won the plurality of 2016 voters who described their views as “mixed” and basically was even with Clinton among self-described independents.

Still, unlike race and gender, there is some solid grounding to claim that extreme candidates are less “electable.” Who gets labeled “extreme,” on the other hand, tends to be a less empirical exercise.

There are, of course, other characteristics that could make someone more or less electable. Would it help Democrats win the Midwest if they nominated someone from that region? What about the South? We didn’t get into age in this analysis, but in a 2014 Pew poll, 36 percent of people said they were less likely to vote for a candidate in his or her 70s. (Trump was 70 when he was elected in 2016.)

And that fact about Trump and age speaks to the point I started with: We don’t really know who is electable until the election. In terms of 2020, it’s hard to know how much it matters who Democrats nominate.

Maybe it will matter a lot –– because some of the fundamentals favor Trump (he is an incumbent and the economy is strong), so the Democrats may need a savvy candidate to win a race where Trump will be formidable. Or maybe the Democratic candidate won’t matter much at all — that the biggest fundamental of the election will be Trump’s very high disapproval rating, and Americans will vote for just about anyone to replace him.

If you have ideas for future Secret Identity columns, please reach out to me via email ([email protected]) or Twitter (@perrybaconjr.)

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Perry Bacon Jr.

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absolute-barbarism · 6 years

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The Downfalls of Trust (OCs Marcus and Scarlett for whumpadoodle)

(aaaAAAH I’M DONE! All the requests have been fulfilled! And now I’m going to take a nap forever peace out babes night night- @whumpadoodle thank you so much for letting me drabble about Marcus and Scarlett, they were such an intriguing pair! I’m so so sorry it took me forever to get to you, but I made sure to write this one eeextra long, so please do enjoy!)

Kind gestures did not always reap kind karma in return.

Marcus learned this on a night so peaceful it had to be sacred. It might have been karma from the future that things were going so well; food supplies were good, Scarlett was in a light mood, even the hours spent bumping heads over a strategy map had been powdered with keen jests and an overall sense of unstoppable confidence. The woods they found themselves camped in were serene like no other, untouched by colonization or overbearing wildlife to make their resting spot hazardous. To presume the best of strangers and their intentions in a state like this couldn’t be blamed. It could only be learned from.

It happened when they were already asleep. After bidding Scarlett a joyful goodnight and watching her head off into her tent, Marcus had been resting for a while in his own when a voice was heard from around the ashes of their previous campfire. Imagining it couldn’t be anything more than a couple of lost hunters, he lifted the tent flap to find Scarlett unsurprisingly brandishing her sword against a half a dozen grisly looking men and one woman. She was eyeing Scarlett without fear, something that did indeed surprise Marcus just a little.

“Might I ask your business with us?” He stood firm, ready to let only a fair answer ease him up a bit. The woman who appeared in charge turned from Scarlett as if to blatantly ignore her, which she took with a pinch of indignation.

“I can’t apologize enough for waking you,” the woman said, “It’s so late at night and all. You see, the six of us are merchants with quite the assortment of textiles to transport. We would be well on our way to the city, if it hadn’t been for the wheel on our poor wagon breaking. None of us are exactly the finest mechanics.” Her smile was the kind that made you smile back, even against your own will. Marcus nodded at their dilemma and waited for her to go on. “We’ve walked a long way to find anyone who could lend us a hand. Would you be up to the task at this late hour? Or maybe your lady friend? With such a manly sword, I’d imagine she could be rather skilled in areas of labor.”

“For a merchant, you speak like a snooty aristocrat,” Scarlett muttered. “I don’t buy your story for one second.”

“Our story? What other reason could we have to approach you? If we were up to no good, you certainly would have scared us off.”

There was only so much Marcus knew she could take before he would have to step in, lest a poor merchant be challenged to more of an execution than a fight. He held his hand out between them, giving his most diffusing smile despite taking slight offense on Scarlett’s side. “We’ll help you. It shouldn’t take too long, right?”

“What a relief!” the woman beamed. “My name is Ester, pleasure to meet you. You are?”

“Irritated,” Scarlett muttered.

“I’m sorry, dear, I was referring to this lovely man.”

“Marcus.” As much as he wanted to dispel the steadily building tension, his smile was faltering with each insult thrown his partner’s way. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to help anymore, or at the very least, he didn’t want to keep her awake for someone so unpleasant. “It’ll only take one pair of hands. I should be back before too long, Scarlett.”

Not at all convinced, she stared Ester down with the true intent to vaporize her via eyes alone, but it didn’t work. It never worked. “Return hastily, my lord,” she gave in, “There is an abundance of snakes in these woods.”

Ester’s right cheek dimpled with amusement. Marcus scratched the back of his neck and looked between them one last time, afraid he might not get a very happy welcome back once he returned. “Right, then.” Reluctantly, he held out his hand. “Shall we go?”

“I’d be delighted.”

Waking up the second time was painful.

Marcus lifted his face from the ground with dirt caked in his mouth, a momentary distraction from his wrists being roughly tied behind his back in old ropes. It didn’t take a stretch of imagination as to how he got here. All he needed to assume was that his own stupidity got him into this situation, and that a firm lecture would be awaiting him once he escaped or got rescued, just like he suspected when he left. But maybe it was still stupid to assume either of those things would be so easy. Ester was grinning down at him from what felt like so far above, too far for him to believe she was a simple merchant anymore.

She had been as delighted as she said when they left. She was delighted all the way into the deep woods, an uncomfortable contrast to the bumbling men in silence behind her, and to Marcus’ increasing quiet suspicions about how far they would have to walk. He had wondered if he was extra paranoid due to being without a bodyguard, or because Ester, as he began to realize, was actually a little creepy. And now, he knew that he really should have gone with that gut feeling.

What tipped him off was their proximity to the border of the woods, and the slow realization that unless all six of them were dumb as rocks or looking for squirrels to help with repairs, they would have gone in the other direction to look for help. Among the infinite very avoidable reasons for his kidnap was that he realized this at the exact wrong time, just as Ester gave a two fingered signal to the brawny man walking too close behind him and then- black. It explained the ache in the back of his neck at least. Now he needed an explanation for the abduction in the first place.

“What do you want with me?” he demanded. The ropes were really starting to dig into his wrists. With wavering belief in himself, he hoped that if he could keep a conversation going long enough, he could find a way to convince her to cut them.

Ester only rolled her eyes, twiddling a dagger between her thumb and forefinger. “They always say things like that,” she mused, receiving a knowing grin from the lackey by her side. “We don’t want you. We want gold from the people who want you, that’s all there is to it. Are you really so self-important?”

Gold. Marcus knew of one person willing and able to pay that price for him. He tsked, utterly refusing to lower his head in any way. “Well, it seems I am rather important. I wouldn’t pay a single copper for you if it was fake.”

“Shut him up.”

Ester’s words were cool, unlike the brutal force of the kick to his face. He almost couldn’t fathom the pain for a second; it apparently wasn’t important for them to keep him looking good on his way to whoever wanted him. That much also added up pretty well. He grimaced, spitting blood from his busted upper lip. In truth, he did think it best to shut up. But he hadn’t been listening to his own best advice up until this point, so why start now?

“Are you that insulted? A woman who restrains and assaults a man who offered his hand to her in a time of need, and all without a price...You must not like the truth.”

“You must not like your face. Hit him again.”

Ester’s satisfaction was no longer present when Marcus was struck again with the pointed toe of a boot, purposefully aimed in the same spot. Shuddering, he sucked in a deep breath through his teeth, both glad and surprised that they were all still there. His spin was tingling with the desire to curl up or turn away, to at least bow his head in the slightest as primitive self defense, but still he refused.

She saw quickly that he would not cry out. Not very easily. For a moment there, Marcus was foolish- and pain dizzied- enough to believe she would respect that and stand down. That was impossible to expect from a person already so dishonorable. She gave another signal, and suddenly a slow groan broke from Marcus as his hair was yanked back, forcing him to chafe his own wrists to bleed by struggling against the ties. He could make himself stay strong, but he couldn’t make his body resist instinct. And there it was again, that sickening satisfaction. If only she knew what was coming.

He just had to bide his time.

“That...gold you speak of,” Marcus got out through grit teeth, “You weren’t paid upfront?”

Ester narrowed her eyes, watchful green irises flickering. She hadn’t yet commanded his release, but was clearly listening. “You’re so keen on telling me what an untrustworthy wench I am. Do you think anyone would trust me to do my job?”

Marcus tried to respond, cut off by the poorly stifled grunts of distress. She held out her hand and his head was shoved forward, then let go of. Ropes be damned, he wanted to at least wipe the dripping maroon from his lip. “You didn’t abduct me out of malice, just greed,” he panted, “The man who promised to pay you...knows how naive greed can make a person. He knows you have to resort to this to get by, and that’s why he’s taking advantage of you.”

“I see. Lashing out at me didn’t work, so now I’m the poor, misunderstood girl. Who’s trying to take advantage of me again?” Ester’s eyes were aflame now. He hit a sore spot, and now the risks were dire. To say the wrong thing might get him killed out of rage. Saying the right thing might get him cut loose under the condition of never speaking of this again. If he wasn’t so dizzy, he might say the odds were in his favor.

“A man with gold to spend on just one person, and one this easy to capture? What makes you think he’ll even keep his promise?” The more Marcus went on, the less he could tell what Ester was thinking. She walked circles around him and still could not seem to come to a conclusion, struggling to piece it all together in her head. Her men watched her in silence with heads slightly bowed. “He’s manipulating you. With all that money, he would have spent it on someone who doesn’t need to rely on promises. Someone who wouldn’t have to go about nasty tricks just to catch their bounty.”

He said the wrong thing after all, somewhere along the lines. She’d had enough. He saw the look in her eyes, and he realized for the first time since they met hours ago, he was suddenly terrified of her.

The first slap to his cheek was nothing- only compared to what followed. It made it a panic inducing struggle to regain breath when she sent him backwards from a kick to the chest, an obvious attempt to be taken seriously. Which he did. He took the deadly burning in her eyes very seriously, certain she would have killed him when gripping her dagger and looking at him with a thirst for precisely his blood. If she’d only been hasty about it, and not taken her sweet time eliciting agonized hollering out of him by dipping the point between his ribs, piercing him with a sensation he was sure to never forget. It got worse by the second, warm at first with the leak of blood until it was absolutely scalding him, as if she were branding him on the inside.

She was going to kill him. That was what she wanted, but Marcus was right to trust how much time he had. Though he would have liked to avoid the new incision that opened his side, he saw from the corner of his eye’s fading vision a face who would not let him die. A face who was very tired because she had not slept at all, but rather had been waiting all this time for his promised return. And now must have traversed an entire forest alone to find him here.

It didn’t matter how tired she was; finally finding Marcus and seeing this woman on top of him, Scarlett was snapped awake, cutting down any man who got in her way with attention to speed over fatality and meeting the surprised turn of Ester’s head with the full brunt of her sword. Marcus would have been amazed if she survived even that, but he muttered a tremoring “Stop-” anyways for her sake, freezing Scarlett in her deadly motion.

“My lord-”

“Leave her,” Marcus choked, struggling again at the ties in the urge to put his hand over his side. Once she severed them, he didn’t know whether to bother rubbing his sore wrists or try to stop whichever part of his body from bleeding. He settled on one palm over his ribs, one nervously feeling over his lip. It wasn’t too bad, nor as excruciating to touch as the cut, but it stung far worse.

“My lord, she was going to kill you.” Scarlett was in utter disbelief. What could this woman have said to him to warrant a defense? His good heart was what got him into this situation. She deserved the fate she had coming to her.

Marcus shook his head as though watching exactly what she was thinking, something she didn’t doubt he could do but horrified her all the more that he still disagreed. Everything simply hurt too much to talk. At least enough to explain himself at length.

“Not death,” he muttered, “Just...leave her.”

Scarlett opened her mouth to object, but the argument was petty when she observed every aching inch of Marcus’ body. He needed help more than this woman needed to die. Knelt by his side, she ripped the sleeve from her shirt and dabbed it over his lip before pushing it over his ribs and shrinking back at the whimper that escaped him, much to his embarrassment. There wasn’t much she would be able to do here. If they were a little closer to camp…

“Don’t worry-” Marcus tried, effectively coughing all over Scarlett instead of intelligible words. She was too focused on stopping his bleeding to care. “They’ve got to have their own camp somewhere nearby.” He really could read her mind. She watched him carefully, letting her eyes eventually wander past the trees that surrounded them here.

“You don’t want me to kill this woman, but you do want to steal their supplies?”

“She doesn’t deserve death,” Marcus repeated, shuddering with each breath he took. “But I deserve some of her bandages.” She hadn’t pierced any sort of organ, but the cut was deep enough to stretch every time he inhaled. As soon as Scarlett saw this, she put a hand over his mouth.

“You’ll make it worse if you keep on talking.”

She felt him grinning underneath her fingers, a slight reassurance that he would be okay but frustrating nonetheless. If they took him all the way here, it was probably because they were indeed camped nearby. And as people of this ilk, they were bound to expect violence on their own end. How could he think so far ahead and still get himself into this much trouble?

“Scarlett,” Marcus whispered. Her attention was snapped back to him, hand poised delicately over his wound. “Don’t kill her.”

“I’m not going to,” Scarlett said, hushed in return. She could see all to clear that his eyes were becoming hazy, half-lidded and barely focused. The scars weren’t overbearing, but the panic must have been. A second later, he really would have been dead. She’d almost forgotten how long it had been since he even slept in the first place. “We’ll find the camp...They’ve got to have plenty that can help you.”

Marcus gave a little nod, letting his head turn to the side into the nature’s comfortable pillow, dirt. She brought the cloth away from his wound and sat rigid all of a sudden, finally having noticed all the red that had already stained the ground despite her attempts at controlling it. Whatever the dagger pierced, it was deeper than they thought. It was still gushing, no matter what pressure she held over it.

Marcus smiled back at her unknowingly, sparking a horrible sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Can we sleep first…?”

#whump #illness/injury #hurt/comfort #torture #i mean kinda #blood #all of these requests were injury holy shit #fanfic #writing #requests #thanks again #and thanks everyone who requested!

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stilljumpingback · 7 years

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(via Black Sails Episode 304 - XXII)

WELL-FORMED THOUGHTS

Let’s talk about Flint and his relationship to vulnerability.

In this episode, Silver makes two gestures of vulnerability to Flint. First, he allows Flint to sit beside him while he cleans his stump with his prosthetic off, even though he has isolated himself from the crew to do so. Second, after falling in the woods, he uses Flint’s shoulder as a crutch during the hike. This is not necessarily surprising, since in the last episode Silver established a precedent of vulnerability with Flint in a bid for his partnership (by both admitting his role in stealing the Urca gold and in admitting his dependency upon the Walrus crew for purpose).

What is especially interesting to me is how Flint reacts to this. Instead of using Silver’s vulnerability against him, Flint responds with vulnerability of his own. In the dark of their cage, Flint tells Silver his past: about Miranda and “her husband,” Peter Ashe, and their goal of obtaining a universal pardon to introduce to Nassau in order to establish colonial rule. This is something he’s told no one else (I don’t think Gates even knew this). I do think this is partly because he thinks they will all die on that island, but even so, he wouldn’t have shared that with anyone but a Silver who had previously opened up to him.

What I’m saying is, Flint is desperate to love and be loved, to know and be known. His role as a pirate captain has necessitated that he close himself off from all emotions save greed and anger. Miranda was his one outlet, but even his relationship with her was guarded and abrupt until very recently. Now there is a person in his pirate captain life who interacts with him as an equal to be trusted and relied upon, and it is no surprise that our secretly tender-hearted Flint blossoms under such attention. He wants a safe place to be vulnerable, and for now, he has found it in Silver.

FRAGMENTED THOUGHTS

When Silver lets Flint in on his revelation about the bigger picture about the pardons, he says it is “the opening move in [the] attack.” As things get murky and even Flint finds himself wondering why they’re fighting against what seems to be his original goal, it’s important to notice Silver’s choice of words. The pardons they are being offered are an “attack” while the pardons Thomas envisioned were forgiveness. TBD as the series continues.

“For whatever reason, when you and I speak with one voice, we seem to be able to compel them to any end.”

Why is Flint/Silver as the unstoppable dream team SO SEXY? Full confession: I did not ship Flint and Silver the first time I watched through the series. I didn’t even think of it as an option until I finished and saw that fandom was all about them. I remain a diehard James/Thomas fangirl, but I SEE IT, OKAY. I see it.

Woodes Rogers has a very accurate summation of Eleanor: “Because you’re smart without needing anyone to explain to you how to be. And because you’re not afraid of being thought to be wrong when you know that you’re right.” Later, when she admits the worst of herself to him via the opinions of those in Nassau (“That I’m untrustworthy, that I would turn on anyone at any time, no matter how close they were to me. No matter who it hurt or how severely.”), he takes it in and then continues to use her as his senior counselor. I’m not emotionally attached to this relationship, but I can totally see why Eleanor would feel seen and valued.

Jack the badass! The way he opened the fort’s door, shot a guy in the head, and shut the door again?? UM.

Anne is very smart in this episode. I think everyone in the show overlooks her, but she’s the one questioning why Vane is singled out as unforgiveable, and later she’s the one telling Jack that they’ve won. They have an enormous treasure, and they can go learn French and live in Brussels. Anne, honey, you deserve to be listened to.

I LOVE our introduction to Maroon Island. The men and women who have escaped slavery are initially presented to fit into our historical narrative as “savages” covered in paint. But they are immediately shown to be smart and prepared (littering their forest with traps) and civilized (in the good sense). They have built a stunning city considering they started from nothing about fifteen years ago, and they have a system of government fun by the ineffably elegant QUEEN. “She is everything here: priestess, governess, warlord.”

I love that the Black Sails writers thought, you know what we need? Another strong female leader! No wait, TWO.

MADI AND HER MOTHER.

I love them.

When the Queen asks who their captain is, Flint immediately assumes responsibility. When she asks for the quartermaster, Silver pauses before doing the same. Since this season is all about Silver learning how to be a leader, this is very indicative of his progress.

Treasure Island alert! Ben Gunn joins the Walrus crew.

The only thing this show could do to make me like Hornigold for even a second is to have him warmly greet Mr. Scott and show him special attention. Augh, fine! You get ten seconds of my goodwill!

Mr. Scott, however, is being very problematic by offering to find the escaped slaves and return them. Of course, we later learn that he actually found them and is helping them escape to Maroon Island!

Speaking of escaped slaves, we learn that Jack left their prison unlocked when the fort exploded, which…okay, that’s nice. I’m glad he didn’t leave them there. But this is framed as something practical more than moral, since by letting them escape, he prevents the English from using slave labor to rebuild the fort quickly. This whole plot line (now ended?) has been very frustrating for me, but I suppose I appreciate that the show refused to make our heroes anachronistically heroic.

Hallucination alert!! It’s a short one but a good one!

Miranda: You’re curious again. Ready to follow me through a door that is somehow less frightening knowing I await you on the other side. Flint: I miss you. Miranda: I miss you, too. Flint: When we arrive out there, I am to leave you behind? Miranda: Yes. Flint: What if I were to stay?

Flint’s death wish is now fueled by sadness rather than rage. He’s moving through the stages of grief quite nicely.

Silver goes on a field trip to meet Madi! This is when the show steps up a notch. So far it has been a story of oppression of white people by white people. But instead of letting that be an analogy for people of color to see themselves in, Black Sails says, no. We’re bring African men and women who were enslaved to the table and letting them speak about their oppression for themselves. IT IS SO GREAT.

“There are one thousand men and women here. Among them there is no shortage of anger or hate or fear. Perhaps you have noticed. They have suffered cruelties you cannot possibly imagine. Sisters separated from brothers. Husbands from their wives. Mothers from their sons. No one has greater cause to swear England an enemy and desire vengeance against her as we do.”

Mrs. Hudson is being nosy, and we don’t know why.

FIRE SHIP! This is definitely one of the coolest naval strategies they’ve done so far. The pirate fleet escapes, and England is down one ship.

Silver is confused as to why Flint is not plotting. His knowledge of Flint’s psyche is revealed by this telling question: “Where are you?” Flint is in 1705, which he tells Silver about in a stunning display of vulnerability (discussed in more depth in the Best Flint Moment above).

“Peter Ashe, Miranda, her husband, and I, we worked to obtain a universal pardon and introduce it to Nassau to eliminate piracy and restore colonial rule there. I moved away from those things. Inch by inch, I forgot it all. And now, in this cage, in the belly of this thing that has swallowed us whole, I wonder if the civilization of Nassau isn’t exactly what I tried to achieve all those years ago. If resisting it doesn’t set me in opposition to everything I once understood to be good and right. To forgive. To make order of chaos. I wonder if the pardons are the victory, and that the most enlightened thing that I can do is sit still. Accept what appears to be inevitable, and let this be the end of Captain Flint.”

I assume anyone watching the show knows that Captain Flint will not just sit still, but technically saying so spoils the next episode. Whatever. This is Flint’s dark night of the soul; he’s tired of fighting, he’s confused, he misses Miranda, and he wants it all to be over. But I’m reminded of what Miranda herself once said about Thomas: “Great men…are made by one thing and one thing only: the relentless pursuit of a better world. The great men don’t give up that pursuit. They don’t know how to. And that is what makes them invincible.”

In the midst of his grief, Flint makes some Very Astute character assessments. Billy’s lie is that he will fight his way out, and Silver’s lie is that he will talk his way past. Flint is usually a combination of both fighting and talking, but now…he says he has no more lies within him.

Which is very FITTING, because when Madi confronts her mother, the Queen says she doesn’t trust “lying pirates.”

Madi is too trusting because she did not experience life as a slave. The Queen is not trusting enough because she did.

Oh, and REVEAL. Mr. Scott is Madi’s father and the Queen’s husband, which makes him a KING. Our man is finally given the role he deserves.

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metrofuturist · 8 years

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2017 isn’t ‘1984’ – it’s stranger than Orwell imagined

by John Broich

A week after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, George Orwell’s “1984” is the best-selling book on Amazon.com.

The hearts of a thousand English teachers must be warmed as people flock to a novel published in 1949 for ways to think about their present moment.

Orwell set his story in Oceania, one of three blocs or mega-states fighting over the globe in 1984. There has been a nuclear exchange, and the blocs seem to have agreed to perpetual conventional war, probably because constant warfare serves their shared interests in domestic control.

Oceania demands total subservience. It is a police state, with helicopters monitoring people’s activities, even watching through their windows. But Orwell emphasizes it is the “ThinkPol,” the Thought Police, who really monitor the “Proles,” the lowest 85 percent of the population outside the party elite. The ThinkPol move invisibly among society seeking out, even encouraging, thoughtcrimes so they can make the perpetrators disappear for reprogramming.

The other main way the party elite, symbolized in the mustached figurehead Big Brother, encourage and police correct thought is through the technology of the Telescreen. These “metal plaques” transmit things like frightening video of enemy armies and of course the wisdom of Big Brother. But the Telescreen can see you, too. During mandatory morning exercise, the Telescreen not only shows a young, wiry trainer leading cardio, it can see if you are keeping up. Telescreens are everywhere: They are in every room of people’s homes. At the office, people use them to do their jobs.

The story revolves around Winston Smith and Julia, who try to resist their government’s overwhelming control over facts. Their act of rebellion? Trying to discover “unofficial” truth about the past, and recording unauthorized information in a diary. Winston works at the colossal Ministry of Truth, on which is emblazoned IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. His job is to erase politically inconvenient data from the public record. A party member falls out of favor? She never existed. Big Brother made a promise he could not fulfill? It never happened.

Because his job calls on him to research old newspapers and other records for the facts he has to “unfact,” Winston is especially adept at “doublethink.” Winston calls it being “conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies… consciously to induce unconsciousness.”

Oceania: The product of Orwell’s experience

Orwell’s setting in “1984” is inspired by the way he foresaw the Cold War – a phrase he coined in 1945 – playing out. He wrote it just a few years after watching Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin carve up the world at the Tehran and Yalta conferences. The book is remarkably prescient about aspects of the Stalinist Soviet Union, East Germany and Maoist China.

Orwell was a socialist. “1984” in part describes his fear that the democratic socialism in which he believed would be hijacked by authoritarian Stalinism. The novel grew out of his sharp observations of his world and the fact that Stalinists tried to kill him.

In 1936, a fascist-supported military coup threatened the democratically elected socialist majority in Spain. Orwell and other committed socialists from around the world, including Ernest Hemingway, volunteered to fight against the rightist rebels. Meanwhile, Hitler lent the rightists his air power while Stalin tried to take over the leftist Republican resistance. When Orwell and other volunteers defied these Stalinists, they moved to crush the opposition. Hunted, Orwell and his wife had to flee for their lives from Spain in 1937.

George Orwell at the BBC.

Back in London during World War II, Orwell saw for himself how a liberal democracy and individuals committed to freedom could find themselves on a path toward Big Brother. He worked for the BBC writing what can only be described as “propaganda” aimed at an Indian audience. What he wrote was not exactly doublethink, but it was news and commentary with a slant to serve a political purpose. Orwell sought to convince Indians that their sons and resources were serving the greater good in the war. Having written things he believed were untrue, he quit the job after two years, disgusted with himself.

Imperialism itself disgusted him. As a young man in the 1920s, Orwell had served as a colonial police officer in Burma. In a distant foreshadowing of Big Brother’s world, Orwell reviled the arbitrary and brutish role he took on in a colonial system. “I hated it bitterly,” he wrote. “In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the gray, cowed faces of the long-term convicts…”

Oceania was a prescient product of a particular biography and particular moment when the Cold War was beginning. Naturally, then, today’s world of “alternative facts” is quite different in ways that Orwell could not have imagined.

Big Brother not required

Orwell described a single-party system in which a tiny core of oligarchs, Oceania’s “inner party,” control all information. This is their chief means of controlling power. In the U.S. today, information is wide open to those who can access the internet, at least 84 percent of Americans. And while the U.S. arguably might be an oligarchy, power exists somewhere in a scrum including the electorate, constitution, the courts, bureaucracies and, inevitably, money. In other words, unlike in Oceania, both information and power are diffuse in 2017 America.

Those who study the decline in standards of evidence and reasoning in the U.S. electorate chiefly blame politicians’ concerted efforts from the 1970s to discredit expertise, degrade trust in Congress and its members, even question the legitimacy of government itself. With those leaders, institutions and expertise delegitimized, the strategy has been to replace them with alternative authorities and realities.

In 2004, a senior White House adviser suggested a reporter belonged to the “reality-based community,” a sort of quaint minority of people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.… That’s not the way the world really works anymore.”

Orwell could not have imagined the internet and its role in distributing alternative facts, nor that people would carry around Telescreens in their pockets in the form of smartphones. There is no Ministry of Truth distributing and policing information, and in a way everyone is Big Brother.

It seems less a situation that people are incapable of seeing through Big Brother’s big lies, than they embrace “alternative facts.” Some researchers have found that when some people begin with a certain worldview – for example, that scientific experts and public officials are untrustworthy – they believe their misperceptions more strongly when given accurate conflicting information. In other words, arguing with facts can backfire. Having already decided what is more essentially true than the facts reported by experts or journalists, they seek confirmation in alternative facts and distribute them themselves via Facebook, no Big Brother required.

In Orwell’s Oceania, there is no freedom to speak facts except those that are official. In 2017 America, at least among many of the powerful minority who selected its president, the more official the fact, the more dubious. For Winston, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.” For this powerful minority, freedom is the freedom to say two plus two make five.

John Broich is Associate Professor at Case Western Reserve University.This article was originally published on The Conversation.

#literature #1984 #dystopia

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keatingeconomics · 7 years

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On Fake News And The Freedom Of The Media

The proliferation of fake news these days is quite disturbing. For the ordinary person, it is hard to discern which news they are reading is genuine and which one is fake because they are all over social media. It’s not common for this news to hit mainstream media but they are a growing pain to social media users especially the millennials who access the web on a daily basis. However, others are making a big issue on a bill that aims to prevent the proliferation of fake news because it might infringe on the right of the freedom of the press, or so they say.

Facebook is the most notorious platform where fake news abounds. It is distressing because of the number of people (several million) visiting this site daily and its impact on people’s behavior over time. It also affects the view of people of what journalism and ethics are all about. People can be misled to believe a certain issue or point of view because they have seen it posted on a popular site like Facebook and more so because it has been liked and shared by thousands of other Facebook users who are as naïve as you. While it is the media’s right to voice out their opinions, it is never right to tell people erroneous information. They should remain objective at all times and tell the news as it is and not makeup stories just to capture the people’s attention.

Fake news and light touch regulation of social media platforms are threats to democracy and press freedom in Ireland, the chair of the Press Council Sean Donlon has warned.

It comes as the Press Ombudsman Peter Feeney cautioned new media organisations that their credibility was being questioned because of the sharing of fake news online.

He said Facebook was aware of such threats to its credibility and warned the public would return to traditional news outlets in search of accurate and trusted information if online content was found to be untrustworthy.

"There are far more checks and balances, where traditional values of good journalism, accuracy, impartiality, depth and context are more likely to be found," said Mr Feeney.

"If the public requires access to accurate information and informed analysis, then there may well be a return to print and broadcasting.

(Via: http://www.independent.ie/business/media/fake-news-a-threat-to-freedom-of-media-35763182.html)

A major challenge these days is to educate the people how to spot fake news on social media. No matter how obvious it may be, many people seem to love the theatrics of fake news and can’t resist sharing it with others. Unfortunately, many update themselves on the latest news from social media – the platform where fakes news are plenty. They end up confused as to what is fact from fiction, making them an easy prey to fake news.

Why did the false tweet get so much more attention? A new study published June 26 in the journal Nature looks into why fake posts like Tucker's can go so viral.

Economists concluded that it comes down to two factors. First, each of us has limited attention. Second, at any given moment, we have access to a lot of information — arguably more than at any previous time in history. Together, that creates a scenario in which facts compete with falsehoods for finite mental space. Often, falsehoods win out.

Diego F. M. Oliveira, the study's lead author and a post-doctoral fellow at Indiana University and Northwestern University, tested this idea by creating a theoretical model for the spread of information. The model was loosely based on epidemiological models that public health researchers use to study the spread of disease. Oliviera's team had bots or "agents" produce messages containing new memes — essentially fake news — on sites like Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook, and re-share messages created or forwarded by their neighboring bots in a network.

"Quality is not a necessary ingredient for explaining popularity patterns in online social networks," Oliveira wrote in his paper, adding, "Paradoxically, our behavioral mechanisms to cope with information overload may ... increas[e] the spread of misinformation and mak[e] us vulnerable to manipulation."

(Via: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-fake-news-spreads-study-2017-6)

People seem to love the overly dramatic posts. It tickles their fancy and they don’t hesitate to fire away on that like and share button making it viral in a few hours’ time. Most people no longer have the time of day to check facts and simply believe the first thing they read on their news feed. It’s a troubling phenomenon because people form opinions based on what they just read and it can even put people in harm’s way when worst comes to worst.

The people should be more vigilant today and choose the social media channels you follow. Avoid the ones that don’t sound legit to avoid exposure to fake news at all. It does not mean that a certain news item is true if it has been shared on social media countless times already enough to make it go viral. Keep that in mind and you’ll do well even if you are a regular social media user. Even media practitioners shouldn’t just pass the blame and take full accountability for their actions and accept the fact that the times are changing. If they don’t want anyone meddling with their business, don’t make up stories that have no substance at all.

On Fake News And The Freedom Of The Media is courtesy of https://www.keatingeconomics.com

from https://www.keatingeconomics.com/on-fake-news-and-the-freedom-of-the-media/

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wittybitchesmag · 8 years

Photo

New Post has been published on https://www.wittybitches.com/2017/01/orwell-1984-bestseller-in-us/

2017 isn't '1984' – it's stranger than Orwell imagined

A week after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, George Orwell’s “1984” is the best-selling book on Amazon.com. The hearts of a thousand English teachers must be warmed as people flock to a novel published in 1949 for ways to think about their present moment.

Oceania: The product of Orwell’s experience

Image: duncan / Flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0

The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the gray, cowed faces of the long-term convicts…”Back in London during World War II, Orwell saw for himself how a liberal democracy and individuals committed to freedom could find themselves on a path toward Big Brother. He worked for the BBC writing what can only be described as “propaganda” aimed at an Indian audience. What he wrote was not exactly doublethink, but it was news and commentary with a slant to serve a political purpose.

Orwell sought to convince Indians that their sons and resources were serving the greater good in the war. Having written things he believed were untrue, he quit the job after two years, disgusted with himself.

Big Brother not required

John Broich, Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Feature image: Flickr / Jason Ilagan / (CC BY-ND 2.0)

#1984 #Donald Trump #dystopian hellscapes #Orwell

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