Wayne Swan’s [remark last month](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-21/swan-attacks-republican-cranks-and-crazies/4273300) that the US Republican Party had been taken over by “cranks and crazies” is notable in two respects.
First, it is true.
Second, it marks a further move towards a globalised politics, in which political arguments routinely transcend national boundaries.
The truth of Swan’s claim is so obvious that few, even in Australia, have bothered to dispute it. The following are just a sample of the lunatic beliefs held by much of the Republican Party base, propounded on its news outlets such as Fox News, and put forward by leading Republican politicians:
* That President Obama is a [foreign-born Muslim](http://www.mediaite.com/online/new-poll-shows-conservative-republicans-increasingly-believe-obama-is-muslim/), a rabid [socialist](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/04/obama-socialist-claim-history_n_1568470.html) and more [sympathetic to jihadists](http://news.yahoo.com/michele-bachmanns-mccarthy-esque-hunt-islamist-infiltrators-guide-182000777.html) than to the United States.
* That scientific evidence on climate change is the product of a global conspiracy aimed at imposing a UN-dominated [world government](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575565,00.html).
* That opinion polls showing Republican candidate Mitt Romney trailing President Obama [have been rigged](http://theweek.com/article/index/234067/the-polls-are-not-rigged–theyre-just-nuanced) in the hope of depressing the turnout of Republican voters.
While not all Republicans believe all of these things, few, if any, have been willing to repudiate these conspiracy theories and their advocates. Mitt Romney, for example, has [equivocated on climate change](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20127273-503544/mitt-romneys-shifting-views-on-climate-change/), [embraced “birthers”](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/30/us-usa-campaign-idUSBRE84S19O20120530) such as Donald Trump and, through his campaign organisation, promoted [opinion poll denialism](http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/can_the_polls_be_believed.html).
The view that the Republican Party has been captured by cranks and crazies is not confined to Democrats or even centrists. Leading conservatives such as [David Frum](http://nymag.com/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/), speechwriter for George W. Bush and [Bruce Bartlett,](http://workingreporter.com/wordpress/?p=1053) domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan have said the same thing, in equally blunt terms.
Even the remaining conservative intellectuals who deny the “crazy” claim do so in a half-hearted fashion. New York Times columnist [Ross Douthat argues](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-responsible-republicans.html) that Romney’s success in claiming the Republican Presidential nomination, after half a dozen manifestly crazy candidates had held the lead at one time or another, proves that the Republican base is not entirely crazy. Others, such as [Stephen Bainbridge](http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2011/11/this-country-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket.html), engage in _tu quoque_, picking isolated instance of Democratic silliness to suggest that both sides are crazy. Both approaches have proved unconvincing.
Accurate as Swan’s remarks are, it would have been surprising, until relatively recently to see an Australian leader make such comments about US politics. The etiquette that “politics stops at the water’s edge” precluded both comments on domestic politics while travelling overseas, and on the domestic politics of other countries.
Such niceties have ceased to be relevant in a world of massive and instantaneous communication. For practical purposes, any comment, wherever it is made, is addressed to the world as a whole. More significantly, political debate has been globalised. In particular, the “cranks and crazies” who dominate the US Republican Party, along with the right wing of the Tory party in the UK, inform the thinking of much of the Australian right-wing commentariat.
The Republican conspiracy theory about opinion polls was only days old when it appeared on Australian right-wing blog sites. Writing in Quadrant, once the voice of high-toned intellectual conservatism, Steve Kates [called President Obama](http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2012/09/america-s-last-hurrah) “a socialist of the most radical leftist kind”. This is an absurd description of a centrist Democrat who wasted much of his first term seeking a “grand bargain” with the Republican party to reduce social welfare expenditures while modestly increasing taxes. And of course, climate conspiracy theories, recycling material derived from the US, are run of the mill material for the Australian right.
Some on the Australian right are more circumspect, in a manner that might be described as “cafeteria crazy”. That is, they accept a full-blown conspiracy theory regarding climate change, in which Obama, and most other world leaders, scientific organisations and so on, are embroiled in a plot to enslave the free peoples of the world. On the other hand, they indignantly reject birtherism, and get uncomfortable when the list of climate change plotters is extended to include the Rothschilds, the Royal Family and so on.
It’s fair to observe that the globalised Republican brand of craziness is not the only one in the market. Most obviously, there is the mirror-image brand of militant Islamism, circulating on websites and mailing lists out of the view of most Australians. At a much lower level, there are silly ideas propagated in some leftwing circles, from 9/11 “trutherism” to the wilder fringes of the environmental movement. But, unlike the case with the Republicans, neither of these brands of crazy has a significant presence in mainstream politics, either here or in the US.
A globalised world produces globalised politics. At one time, criticism from “overseas” (the very term recalls an long-vanished world of sea voyages), would have been largely counterproductive, producing a united reaction against outside interference.
But the US reaction to Swan’s remarks has been on predictably partisan lines. Democratic-leaning bloggers such as Paula Gordon on [The Huffington Post](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paula-gordon/feint-praise_b_1908595.html) have endorsed Swan. The fact that Australian politicians rarely make such remarks has been cited, not as a criticism of Swan, but as evidence that Republican extremism has gone beyond any normal bounds.
Conversely, right-wing US sites have attacked Swan in much the same terms as they do their domestic opponents. Exactly the same responses, with sides reversed, greeted Israeli PM Netanyahu’s attack on Obama, and, going back a few years, George Bush’s criticism of Mark Latham.
In practical terms, the re-election of the Obama Administration, which now seems highly likely, would constitute a substantial win for the Australian Labor Party. And a surprise victory for the Republicans would be a win for Tony Abbott and his Republican-style politics of culture war.
In a globalised world, there is no meaningful “water’s edge” and politics no longer respects national boundaries.
John Quiggin 
In the Australian Public Service there is much secrecy, and at least on paper, a public servant can be thrown in jail for the most trivial disclosure. And they have been. Members of the APS have been thrown in jail for example for letting a victim know that someone else in the APS was abusing their powers to victimise them for personal reasons. That is the type of secret secrecy laws are really there for. To stop public scrutiny and to protect the evil-doer.
@Freelander
Your defence of Assange is essentially correct and valid. You went a bit off course with the rest of your rant though, mate. We’ve all done it on a blog once or twice (lost the plot and had a rant) but try to exercise a bit of restraint and avoid another.
I understand you are venting your frustration at the venality and hypocrisy of the ruling elites and their lower class, anti-intellectual supporters who suffer from sycophancy and false consciousness. I also understand your frustrration with the supineness of the classes who allow themselves to be ruled and fooled. However, you make no converts by abusing everyone.
Maybe, maybe not. We all need a good kick up the rear end from time to time to wake us up. For some, of course, that kick just induces brain damage.
Freelander,
A person can be thrown into jail for opening and reading your mail at your letter box. The rules are there for privacy no matter how mundane the content may be.
Do you not value your privacy?
The choice of what is private and what is not is entirely yours to make, not some snoopy cyber crook like Asange.
If governments have excessive secrecy then that is handled at the ballot box and through the courts.
Beliefs don’t have to be true to be useful. It is usually helpful if they aren’t false but even some false beliefs can have utility in some contexts. I’m troubled by the prevalence of some beliefs such as young earth creationism and I tend to scoff at it but belief systems usually survive for a reason. The Jews believe they are the chosen people. The Christians believe you should be kind to strangers. I believe that people can be trusted. All of these beliefs can be challenged with reason but it isn’t necessarily reasonable to demolish such belief systems. Just laugh at them.
@TerjeP
The whole area of beliefs is very interesting. It is easy to demonstrate that the majority of persons hold false beliefs in most non-trivial matters. Take the example of religion. Let us assume that all people hold one of 6 positions on religious matters ranging from the atheistic through to five separate religions. Let us assume the numbers adhering to each belief are equal. Let us further assume that each belief position is distinct enough that if it is true then the other 5 positions must be false. At most 1/6 of people are correct and 5/6 hold false beliefs.
The same demonstration holds true for distinct positions on political or economic matters. It usually possible to express core beliefs or core positions in such a way that the positions are mutually exclusive so far as substantive truth content goes. It is possible for all positions to be wrong or it is possible for one position to be right and the others wrong. For all questions where three or more “truth-exclusive” positions are possible and no position represents a majority, then it will always be the case that the majority are wrong. Most non-trivial questions fall in this zone. Therefore most people are wrong most of the time on most non-trivial matters.
That explains why I have to spend so much time on the Internet correcting people. 😉
On a more serious note. Like most educated people I tend to question whether belief X or Y is true. But I also try to look beyond truth to utility. Especially in social contexts such as the corporate world and politics where false beliefs are widespread. Understanding which beliefs are true and which are false is interesting but I also like to know which beliefs are useful and which are useless. Usually true beliefs are more useful than false beliefs but not all the time. For some people in some contexts false beliefs may have utility. Or they may have perceived utility. Decypering all of this can be fun.
But like Terje says, in some cases it doesn’t matter if the false belief is true. Like with Jewish people; believing one is part of a chosen race may not be true – who knows? – but this belief works to create form them into a very confident, high achieving group of people.
They stereotype themselves as better than everyone else and this provides an effect that is the opposite of the ‘stereotype effect’ as Malcolm Gladwell describes it. As Gladwell explains, black Americans get the idea that they are less intelligent and capable than white people, and their performance in all areas where they compete with whites is depressed.
@BilB
Government have no right to privacy in the way individuals do, and certainly no right to privacy, that is a private domain to be protected from citizen’s inquiries.
For contingent reasons government ought to be allowed some secrets, but far fewer than the like to have, and only where there is strong justification for those secrets. All government secrets ought to be time limited.
The secrets the American government had violated by whoever gave them to wikileaks (another Google verboten word) were already shared with 3 million of its closet friends. Those were secrets, only to keep them from their citizens. They and we had a right to know.
Our right to know, as well as our interest, the contents of your letterbox are much more limited.
@TerjeP
And laugh at those beliefs I do.
But in some cases, putting ankle bracelets on them and subjecting them to heavier taxation would amount to a win, win. As I explained earlier.
@Julie Thomas
I doubt it was the belief. It is the Jews who were subject to the worst persecution in Europe, or at least their descendants, who became the high achievers.
@TerjeP
As a quick note on that. I think we can say in most cases that knowing and operating on objective truth is a positive sum game for all or most involved. There will be case exceptions though.
On the other hand, operating on a falsehood (which can be known or unknown to various parties) is usually a negative sum game (all lose) or a zero sum game (trickster gains and the tricked loses).
Known falsehoods (lies and tricks) are different from optimistic assumptions which may blater e proven false or true. In the absence of perfect knowledge, some level of optimism assists towards optimisation of personal capability, general exploration and the discovery of useful possibilities.
Operating on excess levels of unproven optimism is illusion. Operating on and still believing any optimistic assumption already proven false is delusion.
An interesting thing about governments, secrets, and individual privacy. Simple observation would suggest that the more governments like to keep secrets, often because they are up to no good, the more they like to violate individuals’ privacy. The government that doesn’t want you to know is exactly the same one you will find going through your letterbox.
Of course, some prefer the bliss of not knowing what their government is up to, as they enjoy their bliss of not knowing many things.
Now I’ve learned all about game theory. Bliss, embrace me.
Thanks for speaking so eloquently for me, Freelander.
All this came out during the progressing of yesterday’s forum, including trolls, even down to an uncomfortable sense of reluctance in some moderating the discussions to deal with them.
Bilby, you are being mischievous, or go hang your head in utter shame, knowing what you know…
Optimism may operate at a species level. Individuals are expendible experiments. While some departing early due to optimism is the individual downside, those optimists who don’t, may thrive. Therefore evolution might select for optimism regardless of whether that optimism is individually rational.
As an aside, that is why game theory models for biology based on individual rationality can easily be bogus.
Back to US bashing. I haven’t read every comment but I’ve just read National Geographic online about US ‘gas’ prices. I thought they were talking about natural gas turns out they were talking about gasoline (our petrol) hitting $4 per gallon. That’s not an Imperial gallon of 4.546 litres but a US gallon of 3.785 litres. How quaint.
Why don’t they at least say gasoline so we can translate that as petrol? Why don’t they adopt the simpler metric system and use litres (like the Canadians) or liters and we’ll adjust for the exchange rate? The US makes it harder for other countries to be their friend. When the dominant English speakers come from the Asia Pacific then we will no longer make the effort to interpret a statement like ‘gas is $4’. If they want us to listen they will have to translate first.
@paul walter
Wouldn’t it be nice if more public figures, including those of a social democratic persuasion, were willing to speak up in support of Assange. Or at the very least speak out strongly against his treatment.
Their silence, simply deafening.
Instead if they ever do talk on the topic, all we are subjected to is some mealy mouthed nonsense.
Freelander you says “I doubt it was the belief. It is the Jews who were subject to the worst persecution in Europe, or at least their descendants, who became the high achievers.”
Forgive me but huh? I don’t know what you could mean. You might be right to doubt that my belief is the full story but you are so wrong to doubt that this is a significant factor. But I don’t want to argue with you; you are too bossy for me today.
There is a whole book on the optimism bias by Tali Sharot. I haven’t read it and this review isn’t all that encouraging although it is interesting in that it applies the bias to scientists. http://cellularscale.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/the-optimism-bias-in-science.html
Sharot even suggests that the optimism bias is so prevalent in our species and culture that people who realistically evaluate their situation are not the norm, and may even be ‘clinically depressed’. I’m pretty sure now I’m over my ‘depression’ that I’m quite delusional and was more realistic prior to ‘treatment’.
But have you seen this article on the Prisoner’s Dilemma game?
http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2012/06/24/prisoners-dilemma-and-the-evolution-of-inequality-does-unfairness-triumph-after-all/
@Hermit
In the 19th century Webster went to the great trouble of creating American English, quainter still. Talk about an inferiority complex!
Now as people recognise their ability to wield the big stick is finishing, we in the far flung reaches of their once mighty empire can laugh at their increasing stupidity, louder and louder.
That empire has no clothes!
Freelander, Hermit. And laughing at the irony of the last couple. Just watching an SBS doco on the accident prone oil giant BP; what drove these errors.
When BP try to quality reform itself, the City of London put its foot down: no there is ONLY cost cutting…
Three weeks before Deepwater Horizon, there is President Obama, faithfully following his riding instructions, to urge a new program of risky drilling…
So we go back to big capital, but who does it get its orders from?
Is it ONLY a runaway train?
What will it take to get at the carbuncle, lance it, and then keep the operations of the system transparent, rational and legal?
Freelander, you can guess that folk like Roxon and the PM weren’t on the end of too many bouquets yesterday.
Personally I wonder how soc dem “leaders” live with themselves, sometimes.
@paul walter
And Obama heaped all the scorn on “British” Petroleum, not even their name, ignoring the American companies involved, including Cheney’s company. But more importantly, that the situation had been created by massive and successful lobbying by American oil companies to weaken regulation (reduce costs and increase profits, or at least bonuses). “Foreign” companies are not allowed to lobby so in that important component of what lead to what happened BP were not involved at all. But no word by Obama on that aspect. Oil has a lot of money to donate to political campaigns. Let’s blame it all on the “red coats”!
@Hermit
Grandpa Simpson: Metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogs-head and that’s the way I likes it!
Even if invented by cheese-loving surrender-monkeys, I still find the metric system tres convenient.
I think Americans realise the metric system is simpler but they want to hang on to the relics of Empire. Some of their units are archaic like acre-feet for irrigation water, bushels for grain or BTUs for heat. I recall a US sitcom where the line was ‘put on your jacket it’s thirty five degrees outside’. They don’t get it when non-US audiences laugh. It points to a growing detachment from the rest of the world.
They could be right saying they saved us in World War II. That was then this is now. My hunch is that they would jail Assange if they could. He would then be returned to Australia to finish his sentence for ‘crimes’ not against Australia but the US. Surely the ultimate act of obsequiousness by our government yet a real possibility.
A lot of US manufacturers would like to sell product in metric units but the federal Fair Packaging and Labeling Act requires them to also display customary units. The states are more forward looking than the Feds and nearly all of them have amended their state laws to permit metric only labelling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States#FPLA_issues
@TerjeP
Sucre Bleu!
Tres magnifique, n’est pas?
The Americans are so original that their “red, white and blue” is nothing more than a rendering of the Union Jack. Now they’re holding onto the remnants of British Empire. Albeit modified remnants, like their short change American gallons.
I don’t speak French but using online resources I think what you said is loosley translated to something like “Good God! Isn’t that very magnificient”. Now I just need to figure out if it should be taken as sarcasm.
By the way our flag is also red white and blue. And so is the French flag.
Some people don’t think much of “online resources’.
@TerjeP
If you look at the history of the American flag it was quite clearly based on the Union Jack. It even started off with a union Jack in the upper left corner. As there is no evidence that the American revolutionaries were in possession of a time machine it’s unlikely that they were influenced by the flag of the French Republic. Mind you, Dr Who may have paid the revolutionaries a visit. So you never know!
Maybe their all, some unwittingly, based on the Union Jack!
Now that’s hegemony for you!
Back to Assange. Watching the telemovie tonight was as big a revelation in its ownb way as the forum I’ve mentioned yesterday.
Truly amazing life.
Now, as to conspiracy theories, we all know that US conspiracy theories are as numerous as rabbits on the good side of the dingo proof strength. Even incredibly sobre and well educated statesiders remain deeply sceptical and prone to speculation about whether the truth has been told about 9/11, laundering of drug lords money etc.
The problem is partly to do with the media water-muddying; I mean what is Fox but a gigantic psy-ops? And the internet overflows about stuff pertaining to secret divisions in the Rockies and Disguised Lizard Illuminati, to name a couple.
I must admit the Rothschilds worry me a bit.
This is because they were underneath my radar for so long and it seems hard to hunt down reliable information on them- the wiki on them is so timid as to defy consideration.
If you believe some of the sites, they have a finger in the pie of just about everything going that turns a buck and monarchies and major institutions left right and centre are said to be deeply in thrall to them. Their combined wealth could seemingly range into the multiples of $trillions, many seem ultra rich off their own bats.
Yet they are not mentioned in journals like Forbes.
They seem likely candidates for string pullars behind the scenes, yet who are they?
In the west it is easy to hide the truth. You just have some people in the various looney tunes fraternities have bits of the truth, which they talk about, mixed in with all sorts of garbled obvious nonsense, and then if anyone actually comes out with the complete coherent unvarnished truth, the “clever” folk immediately dismiss them as just another looney tunes. If that doesn’t work, just plant some kiddie porn, arrange for a sexual encounter that morphs into a rape charge, or a convenient heart attack while hiking far from anywhere, or a car crash in a tunnel driven in a car by a person the evidence fabricated suggests was so drunk he could crawl let alone drive a car.
And if that doesn’t work? You then start to get serious.
Sorry couldn’t crawl. You can always make buildings that were designed to withstand being hit by planes fall down, and a third building not hit conveniently fall down in sympathy.
Of course, all of the above is just complete nonsense conspiracy theory because they couldn’t possibly do it. And they are so loving and benevolent they wouldn’t if they could.
Personally, I don’t subscribe to “Rothschild” involvement. That sort of stuff sprinkled into the mix part of the convenient disinformation.
Personally, I don’t subscribe to the idea of some grand conspiracy. There are numerous conspiracies. Most, many, widely known in many circles but those circles keep silent about what they know of others conspiracies because their hands are dirty too. And to talk means loosing everything, not being believed and too often death.
Of course, intelligence agencies are involved in drugs and arms smuggling. They need off-budget sources of income so they can conduct operations without oversight. Those things, crimes, as patriots, they know they ought to do, but even their compliant Presidents and oversight committees might be reluctant to sanction.
At least in the Soviet Empire its unlikely their intelligence agencies were so dangerously out of control.
John ,
You are not being fair to the intellectual Kates.
Way before the absurd calls on falsifying labour market data by conservatives we saw on Saturday morning Mr Kates was saying the only reason for the lack of evidence to back up his absurd claims for classical econmics was because Statistic bureaus were packed by Keynesians!!
@JB Cairns
And, of course, reality has a well known Keynesian bias, which is why the post-GFC Australian stimulus worked so well.
What is an ideologue to do, when even reality has been subverted, and conspires against you?
At least Kates’ model still keeps the faith, if not the rage.
Interesting claim about the Statistics department which for many Years was headed by a certain Chief Statistician, who, upon retiring immediately hopped on the international right-wing climate change denial circuit.
Jeopardy question. Who was Ian Castles?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Castles
he headed up the ABS
Yes. Castles definitely turned the ABS into a den of Keynesians. The Keynesian conspiracy runs deep.
Kates is now saying the Deficit got worse after Obama became President.
It doesn’t take a lot of effort to find out the CBO was expecting a budget deficit of $1.2t in January 2009.
They really do treat everyone as an idiot over there.