I really have to keep my eye on the time when I'm online. I mentioned in prior posts back around 2003-2004 I spent more time I should have in certain yahoo low carb groups. Now, as a former professor, I'm used to the give and take of academic kerfuffles and have developed a thick skin; don't get me wrong--nobody likes being criticized, and we appreciate others validating our efforts.
Personally, when I was a journal reviewer, I avoided taking potshots at other academics; however, I can't say that was true in reverse. I once tried to publish a research note about the misuse of behavioral measures in MIS research and got highly defensive, ad hominem attacks; I suspect the reviewers had a vested interest against my critique. They didn't argue about any of my substantive points, none of which had been previously published in the discipline; it was stuff like what are my credentials in applied psychometrics, or instead of bitching about other people's measures, why not devise my own rigorous measures. (Measure development and validation is a worthy endeavor; for junior (untenured) professors, it's easier said than done. You typically need to publish in a 6-year window for tenure.) My article was designed in effect to be, the emperor is wearing no clothes. Other researchers were using dubious measures in their own research; I wasn't looking to attack the Old Guard; I simply wanted to educate other researchers on how better to assess the measures they were using.
When I participated in those low-carb groups, I extensively reviewed the nutrition literature. I was up against Atkins diet "fundamentalists". There were lots of things I disagreed on with these folks, including nutritional choices based on carb grams, 8 glasses of water a day, carb quotas across lifestyles, etc. (Dr Atkins himself was probably more flexible than his disciples citing chapter and verse.) I would go often in detail in specifying my views, e.g., citing research findings. (You'll notice even in my tweets, I cite other sources on a frequent basis.) I would find myself attacked on my credentials (no, I don't have a degree in the field, but I do understand resign design and statistics), and I found myself spending an undue sinkhole of time fending off the personal attacks of these jerks. I'm sure other readers were uncomfortable getting caught in the middle of these obscure kerfuffles, and few of these contributed to any progress. I found myself up against a wave of wolf gang attacks and spent an inordinate amount of effort defending myself. In the end, I left the groups because it wasn't worth my time and effort; I had closet supporters who personally pleaded for me to return after I left, who didn't want the wolf pack to rejoice over the success of their efforts.
But it wasn't just Yahoo groups. I also found myself sucked into the internal politics of Facebook groups as well, too many to recount here, but to give an example I had for a period of time followed a Christian Libertarian group and found myself confronted with absurd truther conspiracy theories and the like. Just as in the case with the Atkins groupies, there was no reasoning with these people; they weren't interested in an exchange of views. You found yourself under constant attack, and it was a waste of your time.
There was a time when I spent a lot of time on Facebook; maybe as much, if not more than I spend on Twitter. And I would write these long, articulate, beautiful comments that few, if any, read. I ended up clipping many of them to my blog, so it wasn't a total waste of time. But it's gotten to the point I rarely comment now in Facebook groups (there's a current exception below). There was a certain progressive troll spamming Illinois Policy Institute, and I took him out several times. But I last lived in Illinois 16 years ago. And every time Cato Institute publishes a pro-immigration post, you see an onslaught of right-wing xenophobes spamming the thread. At first, I fought the good fight, but it was annoying and boring finding myself respond to the same talking points time and again.
So instead I've found myself most of the time dealing with Internet hoaxes my own Mom was forwarding to the family or memes reposted by relatives. I found myself trying to teach Mom how to search Snopes, but that was a lost cause; now she doesn't forward as many, in part because I've stopped responding to them.
Now only my Mom and my third (of 4) sisters have their own Facebook accounts (I have 6 siblings). I think the other sisters share their husbands' accounts. I think my two sisters-in-law have accounts but we've had interpersonal issues and I've not been friended to either for about 10 years. A minority of nieces and nephews are friended.
I'm mostly going to focus on one sibling family in discussing this topic. Make no mistake: this is not a comprehensive discussion of populism or related Internet memes. It's not really a discussion of Trump or Sanders' differing flavors of political populism; I'm not discussing topics like "made in America" or "immigrants lower domestic wages". I have in mind here a more nuanced set of certain popular themes, like "our public school teachers are underpaid", "college should be free" or "college loans should be forgiven", "elected officials should be treated like the rest of us", etc.
Let me give an example of the latter theme from recent Twitter trends. Mitt Romney, like Rand Paul, recently announced a positive diagnosis of COVID-19 and have gone into isolation. There has been an ugly backlash against both politicians (never mind Trump's own test after being in meetings with people since reporting infections) The populist gripe is the purported double standard: politicians can get COVID-19 tested, but not your average Joe on the street. Whereas I understand the frustration, neither Romney nor Paul are responsible for policies restricting the private sector from addressing the test kit shortage. And nothing constructive is achieved by their unknowingly infecting the rest of Congress. (Note: neither Romney nor Paul manifest known symptoms.) Clearly, the government should have to address the policies leading to the current shortage of tests, but a shutdown of Congress during the crisis isn't a constructive solution. I have also criticized Congress for not adapting more flexible remote voting/participation rules during the crisis, so, e.g., Cruz, Paul and Romney can be productive during their isolation.
I have a sister, second-born, 14 months younger. She's an RN who recently retired from the Civil Service. She and her husband, a retired USAF NCO and also Civil Service veteran, have 3 adult daughters. The first and third daughters are teachers, and the second, one of my goddaughters, is an RN like my sister. They all graduated from a private college in South Dakota. My sister and her husband are not well-to-do, and my nieces all had to take on significant college loans they are still paying off. I don't know the specifics. I think the oldest and youngest niece were attracted by the music program; I think my goddaughter had issues finding an available slot for nursing programs in their then home state of Colorado but was accepted by her sister's relevant college program. The oldest niece has struggled since being laid off in Colorado during the Great Recession. She did spend a few years teaching at a Kansas public school like her baby sister but for personal reasons had to leave Kansas and hasn't gotten a public school offer since then in 3 states. There is an issue with reciprocity recognition of teaching credentials among states.
Now one aspect to my personality is that I don't modify my political views to accommodate the vested interests of relatives. To give a telling example, I've been a harsh critic of the USPS and the postal union, even though my own late Dad eventually settled in a second career (after the military) with the and my youngest goddaughter/niece is a letter carrier (my Dad didn't deliver mail; he was more involved with package handling). It wasn't personal; I just oppose government-sponsored monopolies in general, and in fact libertarian forefather Lysander Spooner had started a competitive mail delivery service that was basically ended by Congress in 1851.
In a similar way, I've been a consistent harsh critic of the public school monopoly and teacher unions. I may have posted this incident a while back; my older teaching niece had posted some teacher union meme, arguing teachers were grossly underpaid, often working nights or weekends out of the public eye. I asked her why she posted that; she lamely responded that most people thought teachers work 6 hours a day. Oh, come on! I pointed out many people worked unpaid extra hours; for me as an IT professional, it's been more the rule than the exception. And most of us don't have tenure or a pension system. (Not that my niece has had those; I don't know about the Kansas job.) Another relative from her dad's side of the family pointed out it's what you do in off hours that earns your next promotion. My niece had a meltdown over the criticisms, and her husband blamed me for her crying herself to sleep over them.
More recently, my sister was pissed when I shared a critical public school meme from a libertarian Facebook group: "How dare you? Two of your nieces are teachers..." Well, not just them, but also nephews from two other siblings. EVERY politician kisses asses of public school teachers and pays lip service to the notion that teacher are grossly "underpaid". Now there are some worthy public school teachers out there, but I'm not happy with the anti-competitive policies, the concept of tenure in general, the fact we've quadrupled spending on public education with few incremental performance improvements to show for it. Unions oppose, e.g., paying math or science teachers more despite relative scarcity, allowing merit pay increases, tying compensation to objective student performance, competition in the form of charter or private schools.
Two more recent kerfuffles include:
- a college loan cancellation process for nurses working during the coronavirus crisis.
- a meme suggesting that politician pay be reduced or eliminated during the crisis.
I think the first was posted by my sister and the second by my brother-in-law (not in that sequence). They share the same account but don't sign their posts. I know when a post is about soccer or something about veterans or the USAF, it's coming from my BIL.
On the first post, obviously aimed at my goddaughter, I've opposed morally corrupt/hazardous college loan forgiveness or "free college" on the basis of free market principles, never mind the fact that I paid my 4 college degrees on my own. My sister was pissed at my criticism of the shared post: "Don't you realize that your goddaughter is still paying off her loans?" I was mildly surprised, because my folks couldn't afford to help her attend college, either; she did it on her own. By the way, my niece is more involved in surgery assistance, not deployed in coronavirus support to date (maybe that'll change if the pandemic expands from here. I love my niece, but I'm not going to be hypocritical in expressing my political beliefs.
On the second post, I generally don't like who I've often called "political whores". This topic often develops in several ways, e.g., whether Obama had hired more males, at higher salaries, whether lawmakers should have to buy their own healthcare through ObamaCare, etc. But in this crisis, it's more like, a lot of us can't work because of government policies. That doesn't stop the bill collectors. The politicians should be made to suffer along with the rest of us.
In fact, most politicians, at least on the federal level, aren't like the rest of us; most of them, last time I checked, are millionaires. Bloomberg spent hundreds of millions trying to run for POTUS, a job which pays pocket change relative to what he spent. Trump, the last time I heard, isn't even cashing his paycheck. So they can workaround these issues with their own resources. You certainly don't want a policy where only the wealthy can run for office. Not to mention imposing a policy they may not have supported in Congress.
Let me close this essay with an extract from a related thread discussion in the Illinois Policy Institute group on Facebook:
Ken Wilson
Here is a thought suspend pay to legislatures since they barely work anyway. Was not meant to be a full time job with benefits
· Reply · 9h
Charles Ivers
Yeah. How is it that Texas can have a part-time legislature?
· Reply · 7h
Jim Kubin
No union lobbyists funding the legislators?
· Reply · 6h
Jackie Wilson Sullivan
Ken Wilson you mean it hasn’t???
· Reply · 4h
Ronald A Guillemette
Ken Wilson this is predictable populist nonsense I would rather pay them to do nothing than the wrong thing
· Reply · 3h
Ken Wilson
Ronald A Guillemette So you would be blackmailed by them not to do anything. Seems counterintuitive
· Reply · 2h
Ronald A Guillemette
Ken Wilson you do not understand the opportunity costs in doing the wrong thing
· Reply · 2h
David Perez
Ronald A Guillemette we are paying them to do nothing!
· Reply · 1h
Ronald A Guillemette
David Perez I'm no longer an Illinois resident, but I suspect a Dem legislature and governor have passed a lot of bad laws.
· Reply · 1h
Michael Clements
Ken Wilson so only ridiculously wealthy people can afford to be in the legislative body?
· Reply · 11m
Michael Clements
Ronald A Guillemette this isn’t populism it’s just extreme far Rightwing idiocy.
· Reply · 9m
Ronald A Guillemette
Michael Clements there's a similar argument about the federal government, and I'm fairly sure the median federal legislator is a millionaire. I point out Mike Bloomberg spent hundreds of millions for a job that pays pocket change. These guys aren't living paycheck to paycheck. So the idea of having politicians eat their own dog food doesn't work .
