6 Biden’s Inaugural, 2021: polarisation; improving relationships; conceptually sound

NOTE:

This is still only a very early draft - just seven pages.

Many of the links are not at present working.

The long aftermath

Inauguration day

Improving relationships

The new president

Biden’s Inaugural Address and social choice theory

Conceptually sound

“the will of the people has been heard and it will be heeded”.

“Without unity there is no nation, only a state of chaos …”

“uniquely American …” … national exceptionalism***

“… restless, bold, optimistic”

Polarisation

Populism

Relative value, v(21)=v(2)-v(1)

Impeachment

*** National exceptionalism: Scotland

The long aftermath

“Winning is easy. Losing is never easy. Not for me, it’s not.”[1]

November 3rd 2020 seems a long time ago. But now the peaceful transfer of power has taken place. All aftermaths are long in the USA but this one has felt much longer and been much more fraught: the waiting for the counting to finish; Trump’s immediate claims of victory, his charges of voting fraud, his many lawsuits and his pressure on officials; the Georgia result; the Electoral College vote; his address to the crowds and their march on the Capitol; the confirmation of the result by Congress; Trump’s impeachment; his departure to Florida, avoiding the Inauguration ceremony; and then at last the swearing in of Joe Biden Junior as the president and Kamala Harris as the vice-president. January 20th 2021.

Inauguration day

It was Trump’s last day: four years ago it had been his inauguration …

[not available]

… his speeches … Obama’s farewell speech … Davos, Xi Jinping, Modi – see pp. 19-23

It was Biden’s first day:

Of his Inaugural Address The Times had this to say[2]:

“His stress on unity rather than division might in other eras have been a mere truism.

Yet amid a historic crisis, these were merits of his address rather than failings.”

Biden highlighted the challenges currently facing the country: “a once-in-a century virus, millions of jobs lost, a cry for racial justice, and a cry from the planet itself.” Addressing these challenges would require unity – but relationships of unity were in fact one of the challenges.

Improving relationships

[this requires further work]

“The better angels of our nature”: Abraham Lincoln … then Steven Pinker … now Joe Biden, “our better angels”.

I have begun to put together a few notes on Biden’s Inaugural Address:

One aspect of Biden’s speech is his contrast between ‘light’ and ‘darkness’, in other words between positives and negatives. Sometimes he lists a set of positives or a set of negatives and sometimes he lists positive-negative pairs.

For example he talks about ‘the foes we face’. Here they are – I have classified them depending on whether they refer to self, social relationship, society or environment:

self hopelessness

social relationship anger, resentment, hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence,

society joblessness

environment disease

Later Biden talks about history: about the struggle between the ideal that all are equal and the harsh ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonisation have torn us apart.

In times of crisis … our better angels have always prevailed. The path from negative to positive might run as follows:

See each other as adversaries

Bitterness and fury; exhausting outrage, a state of chaos

Stop the shouting, lower the temperature

See each other as neighbours

Treat each other with dignity and respect

Unity, peace, nation, progress

A contrast:

Not a raging fire, not destructive

Listen, hear, see, show respect to one another.

Another path from negative to positive:

Turn inward, retreat into competing factions

Distrust difference

Open souls not harden

Tolerance humility

Willing to stand in other person’s shoes

Help and be helped

Decency and dignity

Love and healing

What constitutes the unity of a nation or a people? A set of people with common attributes or values: “A people is a multitude defined by the common objects of their love.” For Americans they are: opportunity, security, liberty, dignity, respect, honour, truth.

[this requires further work]

The new president[3]

Character and value, not issues and ideology

Obama third term?

“We have a president who talks like a centrist but is governing from the far left.” Marco Rubio

Biden’s Inaugural Address and social choice theory

“Society has a distribution of opinions.” [Not available] This is the central fact addressed by Joe Biden in his Inaugural Address. It is the central fact addressed by social choice theory. And that is why it is the sentence introducing The Middle Opinion. USA 2020. [Not available]

President Biden did not say:

“The social choice is me – as a result of using the social choice function/mechanism prescribed by the American constitution.”

Instead he used other phrases – see next section.

Conceptually sound

Political speeches are often analysed in terms of their rhetoric. Instead here I want to consider whether the ideas in a speech are conceptually sound. Listening to President Biden’s speech, I recognised a number of ideas in it that I felt were not conceptually sound.

‘the will of the people’

President Biden used the phrase ‘the will of the people’. This is a central notion in discussions about democracy. However it is not a notion that I would ever want to use. I don’t think the concept is sound. In support of my view I can cite Albert Weale’s book in which he argues that the notion is a myth.

My own challenge to the notion is that it would seem to relate to public opinion. Elsewhere I have characterised ‘the abstract structure of public opinion’. From my point of view the notion of ‘the will of the people’ cannot be sound unless it can be well defined in terms of the abstract structure of public opinion. I accept that this is a very strict (restrictive?) criterion for conceptual soundness.

Biden: “the will of the people has been heard and it will be heeded”.

The Will of the People: a Modern Myth

Albert Weale. Cambridge, Polity Press: 2018.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Will-People-Modern-Myth/dp/1509533265

“Democracies today are in the grip of a myth: the myth of the will of the people. Populist movements use the idea to challenge elected representatives. Politicians, content to invoke the will of the people, fail in their duty to make responsible and accountable decisions. And public contest over political choices is stifled by fears that opposing the will of the people will be perceived as elitist. In this book Albert Weale dissects the idea of the will of the people, showing that it relies on a mythical view of participatory democracy. As soon as a choice between more than two simple alternatives is involved, there is often no clear answer to the question of what a majority favours. Moreover, because governments have to interpret the results of referendums, the will of the people becomes a means for strengthening executive control - the exact opposite of what appealing to the people's will seemed to imply. Weale argues that it's time to dispense with the myth of the will of the people. A flourishing democracy requires an open society in which choices can be challenged, parliaments strengthened and populist leaders called to account.”

“unity”

The notion of unity was perhaps the central idea in the speech, the idea that was highlighted in the media and celebrated in the media. But what does it mean? Does it mean ‘unity in acceptance of the will of the people’? If so it is unsound because ‘the will of the people’ is unsound. Does it relate to public opinion? If so, how is it defined in terms of the abstract structure of public opinion?

Perhaps it is a matter of degree. Unity at level P in relation to an opinion A is defined as percentage P of the people agreeing with A.

“Without unity there is no nation, only a state of chaos …”

The Big Sort. Why the Clustering of Like-Minded Individuals is Tearing us Apart:

https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/the-big-sort/9780547237725

“uniquely American”

The phrase “uniquely American” is an example of a claim of national exceptionalism. It is a claim about a group attribute. Such claims are vulnerable to bias due to the perceptions of self and other. The claims are sometimes made for ‘our values’. The reality can be that groups are more varied internally and less distinctive externally. We can ask, are ‘our values’ unanimous, universal, exceptional, good and safe?

NOT available:

The self and the other: national opinions worldwide … USA and 33 countries

‘Our values’: unanimous? universal? exceptional? good? safe? … UK

‘Our values’? Independence? More varied and less distinctive … Scotland

“restless, bold, optimistic”

We can apply what we have just been saying and ask: are “restless, bold, optimistic” uniquely American? The restless, bold mob marched on the Capitol. A number of USA presidents have praised the American value of optimism:

Not available:

Optimism: the percentages reported in the media and the middle opinion

Polarisation

“Biden faces huge task to unify nation polarised as never before”

(Ben Hoyle, The Times, January 16 2021, p. 45.)

affective polarisation

“For at least two decades, negative feelings about people in “the other party” have been increasing in the United States. Political scientists call this “affective polarization.” To investigate whether, among Republicans, negative views of Democratic Party members predict opinions on election integrity, we subtracted each respondent’s ratings of the Democratic Party from their ratings of the Republican Party. We found that Republicans who score high on this affective polarization scale — that is, they disliked the Democratic Party much more than they liked the Republican Party — were more likely to think their vote was not counted.”

in:

“Which republicans think election was stolen? Those who hate democrats and don’t mind white nationalists.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/19/which-republicans-think-election-was-stolen-those-who-hate-democrats-dont-mind-white-nationalists/

The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States. 2019

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051117-073034

How party polarization affects governance. 2015

https://www.annualreviews.org/abs/doi/10.1146/annurev-polisci-072012-113747?intcmp=trendmd

Media and political polarization. 2013

https://www.annualreviews.org/abs/doi/10.1146/annurev-polisci-100711-135242?intcmp=trendmd

Party polarization in American politics: characteristics, causes and consequences. 2005

https://www.annualreviews.org/abs/doi/10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.070204.105138?intcmp=trendmd

Populism

The myth of global populism

https://politicalsciencenow.com/the-myth-of-global-populism/

Relative value, v(21)=v(2)-v(1)

“Winning is easy. Losing is never easy. Not for me, it’s not.”[4]

“we subtracted each respondent’s ratings of the Democratic Party from their ratings of the Republican Party.”

See previous section.

relative self-other value = value(self)-value(other)

v(21)=v(2)-v(1)

In general, the perceived value of something may depend not just on the intrinsic value of the thing itself but also on its value relative to the value of some other standard object of comparison. This notion appears in a number different settings.

Relative deprivation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_deprivation

Keeping-up-with-the-Joneses utility functions

https://www.boeckler.de/pdf/v_2017_11_11_tavani.pdf

Risk aversion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion#:~:text=In%20economics%20and%20finance%2C%20risk,than%20the%20more%20certain%20outcome.

Loss aversion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion#:~:text=Loss%20aversion%20is%20the%20tendency,or%20was%20expected%20to%20happen.

In regression equations, how does v(21) compare with separate v(1) and (v2) as predictors?

Impeachment

Senate has voted 55 to 45 against a proposal to dismiss the impeachment trial as unconstitutional: 55=50Democrats+5Republicans – Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, and Matt Toomey.

Public: 56%* v 42% approve House decision to impeach.

https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/documents/monmouthpoll_us_012521.pdf/

Underlying distribution approach: *I get a raw weighting percentage 58%; surface mean 53% (=(Rep+Dem)/2); and underlying mean 0.51 in the unit scale [0,1].

*** National exceptionalism: Scotland

“Most Britons think Scotland will be independent within a decade.”

Emerson, Peter. “2014-12: Scots’ referendum + 6-option survey.” August 22, 2014. Accessed 26 September 2015.

http://www.deborda.org/home/2014/8/22/2014-12-scots-referendum-6-option-survey.html . Source of data: http://www.deborda.org/

Peter shared his data with me at the time and I wrote pages 19-21 in

Not available:

Scottish independence referendum 2014