Do you remember Saadiq Long? He’s the 10-year US Air Force veteran who lives in Qatar with his wife and daughter. In late 2012, his mother was very ill, but when he tried to fly home, he found he was on the no-fly list. Eventually, the government gave him a waver, and he made it to the US. But two weeks later, when he tried to return, he couldn’t, because he was still on the no-fly list. Eventually, he had to take a bus to Mexico and somehow get home from there. He was something of a cause célèbre on the left because this was a clear example of the ridiculousness of the no-fly list.

So you can imagine the glee among the Islamaphobes when conservative PJ Media “broke” the story, MSNBC’s “No-Fly List Is Islamophobia” Poster Boy Arrested in Turkey as Part of ISIS Cell. There was just one problem: it isn’t true. As Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain noted, “The story is entirely false: a fabrication.” This is just another segment of the ongoing “Saadiq Long is on the no-fly list” saga. He and his wife and daughter (both of whom are also on the no-fly list) were visiting Turkey, because they are looking at relocating there. But now, apparently because they are on the no-fly list, they are being deported from Turkey. There is no terrorism charge, much less a link to ISIS.

None of this stopped the usual suspects of crowing about the false report. Based upon nothing but the PJ Media report, Fox News published, Poster Boy for “No-Fly” Unfairness Held in Turkish Prison, Accused of Helping ISIS. The group of crowers also included everyone’s favorite atheist who just follows the facts, Sam Harris. He decided to take a victory lap based only on that one article:

Maybe this was a case where @ggreenwald's tweets didn't equal an endorsement… https://t.co/7SNANpi9lb https://t.co/wZGbyahXd9

— Sam Harris (@SamHarrisOrg) November 24, 2015

I think Ben Norton had the right reaction to this, “[Sam Harris] claims to advocate the scientific method, but throws it all out of the window when right-wing propaganda confirms his bigotry.” And that the thing. It isn’t that I think that Harris is on par with Pam Geller. It is that Harris is the one who holds himself up as this icon of serious thinking. I like much of his work, but he’s a great example of how minds work: from the deep reptilian center outward; first comes the tribalism, then comes the justification.

But none of the details actually matter. What does matter is that this is just another case of people using individuals to represent groups. The smarter Islamophobes always claim that they are just talking about the jihadists — that most Muslims are fine people just trying to get by. So what did they get from this case? It would be exactly the same thing. We know there are Muslim terrorists, so why crow about this. Well, Greenwald and Hussain have an interesting idea:

I think that’s about right. Again, with Sam Harris (who is one of the most reasonable people in the Islamophobic community), it’s important that he keep at least a patina of legitimacy. His fans don’t see him as standing up for racism; they see him standing for the truth, even when it is unpleasant. So when liberals have arguments against the no-fly list and other forms of official discrimination against Muslims, they feel the need to push back. Because the no-fly list seems like a pretty clear violation of due process, so at every point it is, “See! See! He’s actually a terrorist! These clear attacks on civil liberties only affect terrorists!”

To sum up:

It would seem that the terrorists have won a major victory against us. They’ve managed to make the vast majority of the nation okay with a lack of due process for everyone in the name of going after Muslims.

This Just In

The linked story appears to be false. I've corrected the record (12/10).

— Sam Harris (@SamHarrisOrg) December 10, 2015

Paul Krugman wrote a brief but insightful article this week, VSPs and the FN. That’s FN as in Front National, or as we say here in America, the National Front. You know: the French fascist party that won the first round of the French regional elections, and is set to pick up two regions in the final vote this weekend. What Krugman has been trying to work out is why it is that people turn to right wing extremism after financial crises, generally, and our current economic situation specifically. His answer is basically, “It’s the Very Serious People, stupid!”

Krugman wrote, “If things keep going badly, this authority based on the presumption of expertise erodes, and politicians who offer more visceral answers gain support.” That’s especially true in Europe, for two reasons. One is that in Europe, there is a greater focus on the technocratic aspects of governing. The other is that, generally speaking, these technocrats have performed even worse than ours here in the US have. For example, the European Central Bank raised interest rates during the very trough of this recession. So on the political front, if mild mannered François Hollande goes along and does all the things the technocrats say, and things don’t get better, why not give the fire breathing Marine Le Pen a shot?

Let’s bring this back to the US. The Federal Reserve is going to meet next week. And they will almost certainly raise interest rates. But as I’ve been writing, there is no reason to do so. Let’s start with the easy part: unemployment (U3) is 5.0%, but we got down to 3.9% in 2000, and there was not much of any inflation. The employment to population ration for prime age (25-54) workers is still a couple of percentage points below its level before the crisis. And there is a lot more data. In fact, there is really nothing that indicates the Fed should raise rates — just data to justify it.

Dean Baker provided even more data in this regard, It Doesn’t Seem Hard to Get Good Help: the JOLTS Data. JOLTS stands for “Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.” It tells us how many job openings there are, and the number has been more or less flat since the first half of this year. Another thing is the “quits rate.” This is the percentage of people who voluntarily quit their jobs. It is an indication of how weak the job market is. So if a lot of people are quitting their jobs, it indicates that they have confidence that they can find another job. Right now, it is less than 2%. This is roughly what it was during the trough of the first George W Bush recession. As Baker concluded, “The current reading looks much more like a recession than a strong labor market.”

But this is what we expect, right? The power elite continue on, doing things that don’t help the country. As I’ve noted many times, they do just so happen to help their own class. So maybe they aren’t incompetent; maybe they are just evil. Regardless, they look incompetent. The power elite have managed, with one two-year exception, to keep wages of the working class stagnant for almost 40 years. Combine that with media hysteria over terrorism, and you have a recipe for major fascist inroads into our political system.

But will the power elite change? Of course not. They don’t have anything to fear from a Ted Cruz administration. He might make life harder on the elderly. He might starve huge numbers of children. But if anything, he’ll cut the taxes of the power elite. It’s almost like they’re in it together.

Glenn Greenwald wrote an important reminder for all of us, Donald Trump’s “Ban Muslims” Proposal Is Wildly Dangerous but Not Far Outside the US Mainstream. This should not come as a shock to anyone. Everywhere in Republican presidential field you see this kind of thing. I was shocked when Jeb Bush suggested that we only allow Christian refugees into the country. And that is part of a widely held view among Republicans that America is a Christian nation — an idea that is so far removed from reality to be offensive.

I understand that people are freaked out. But I don’t exactly “get” it. A couple of Muslims killed a bunch of people and now much of the nation is on tilt. Suddenly, “Something must be done!” If 2 December 2015 was like most days, there were about 30 other gun murders in the nation. Bad things happen. People murder. When a Latino murders someone, do we start talking limiting immigration? No. But when it comes to Muslims, hatred and fear is quite socially acceptable. And so talking nonsense about making major changes to the country to combat what is a minor issue at this point makes no sense.

Clearly, mass shootings generally are an important issue. I would like to see something done to stop them. But I don’t know of any mainstream politician who is talking about anything that would actually do much. However, there is nothing even approaching the kind of carnage that the UK saw during The Troubles. Of course, we know that the Republicans are crazy. The problem is that it isn’t just them.

I wanted to offer up a very disturbing contrast that Greenwald presented. (He got it from Trevor Timm.) Back on Monday, Trump was talking to a group of his blackshirts. And he had this to say:

Yes, these are foolish people. They are so in the tradition of the founding of this country onward. Very foolish! I understand that the murder of 14 people is tragic. But it is hardly the clash of civilizations. It does not suggest that we change our way of life and start shutting down parts of the internet. This is what the Chinese government and other autocracies do. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The truth is, it isn’t even about what they deserve; they won’t get the safety that is supposed to come with the loss of liberty.

But last week, Hillary Clinton talked about the same thing. And here’s what she said:

So other than the fact that she has some clue the issue might be “complicated” because, you know, the Constitution and all, how is that different from what Trump said?

In the “war on terror,” the US seems very much like a meth addict complaining that she isn’t getting any sleep. Implied in both Trump and Clinton’s comments is this idea, “We keep killing Muslims, and yet more just keep coming.” Maybe our strategy is wrong. Maybe rather than adding the destruction of the First Amendment to our weapons, we could do something that might work. Then again, what do I know? Maybe that meth addict just needs a strong cup of coffee in order to get a good night’s sleep.

Martin Longman asked a great question, How Did Cruz Become the Sane Alternative? A lot of people think the most likely scenario for the Republican nominating contest is that Trump will drop out and it will become a head to head match-up between Cruz and Marco Rubio. This narrative is presented as though it is a great relief. But how is that? Before Trump stopped being a joke, Ted Cruz was the crazy one that Republican elites were afraid of. Now we are supposed to think that he’s a statesman who can be trusted? That’s a reach.

The truth of the matter is that I fear Cruz more than Trump. There’s no question that Trump is not only a demagogue, but a damned fine one. Still, I think he’s at base a practical guy. He’ll say anything to get elected, but he isn’t going to destroy the world economy. If things go wrong, I think he will reverse course. On the other hand, Ted Cruz is a typical bitter ender. He is ideologically rigid. He always argues that if we just follow his One True Way™ then all will be fine. If a two week government shutdown doesn’t work, then a two month one will; and if not that, a two year one.

But what we are seeing in the Republican presidential campaign is what we’ve seen for decades with the Republican Party. Just look at the Bushes. First we had George HW Bush, and we thought he was pretty bad with his racist campaign. And then we got his eldest son who was equally as evil but spectacularly incompetent. And now we have Jeb Bush. A lot of conservatives have convinced themselves that Obama made the nation miss George W Bush. That didn’t happen. But Jeb has managed to make his older brother seem both less evil and incompetent.

Longman pointed out that, “Cruz is unapologetically at war with the mainstream of the party…” And he’s right to note that Rubio is no great shakes. Jonathan Chait pointed out some of his absurdity on Monday, Guns Don’t Kill People, Planes Kill People. This is in reference to Rubio’s ridiculous claim over the weekend that we can’t withhold guns from people on the no-fly list, because it is filled with errors. But of course, Rubio has no interest in getting rid of the no-fly list — or even fixing it. I’m sure if this lack of consistency were pointed out to Rubio, he would respond, “I’m not a logician, man.”

The larger issue was discussed in another Chait article, Donald Trump May Not Get the Nomination, but He Has Already Won. He showed Rubio’s disingenuousness — saying that Obama’s call for calm on Sunday was “cynical,” while only saying of Trump’s call for panic on Monday, “His habit of making offensive and outlandish statements will not bring Americans together.” As Chait noted:

Whatever Marco Rubio truly believes, it is clear that he is determined to win the same votes by the same basic demagoguery as Trump. He just doesn’t do the whole comic-in-chief act of Benito Mussolini. Rubio, Cruz, Trump? They are all pretty much the same. The elites can pat themselves on the back about getting rid of Trump (if they do). But this is just a process that has repeated itself again and again in the GOP. It’s the reason why the party is so much worse than it was 40 years ago.

Yesterday, Paul Krugman wrote about the Federal Reserve’s almost certain coming interest rate hike. I’ve been very gloomy about this and you all may be very bored with my obsession. But it is really important. And Krugman added an extra bit of gloom. He said that the Fed could very well be wrong about the economy — causing it to stagnate. “And this would be much more serious than a modest uptick in inflation, because it’s not at all clear what the Fed could do to fix its mistake.” That sentence sent a chill down my spine.

The issue isn’t really interest rates; it is rather the expectations of the business community. It doesn’t take much for the economy to go on tilt. A few businesses start laying off workers and it starts a cascade. And the Fed does what? Lower interest rates?! The interest rates wouldn’t be high enough for that to have much effect. The vast majority of businesses are just reacting to the businesses that reacted badly to the first Fed rise. Sure: it will all sort itself out. Eventually. But I’m old enough to take Keynes’ maxim very seriously, “In the long run we are all dead.”

Krugman has written a lot over the last several years about how inexplicable it is that policymakers continue to listen the advice of people who have been “wrong every step of the way.” But I don’t really understand his confusion. Isn’t it clear enough that it is the policymakers themselves who want to do what has been shown to be “wrong every step of the way”? I am not inclined to give the Fed much credit here. It is an institution of, by, and for the bankers. It isn’t raising interest rates because it thinks this is what the economy needs right now; it is raising them because it wants to and now it can get away with it.

But let’s suppose that Janet Yellen and Partners, LLC does get it wrong. Let’s suppose they raise interest rates and the economy stagnates or goes into recession. That will mean millions of people who should have had jobs won’t. But I can tell you some people who won’t be out of a job: Fed Chair Janet Yellen; Fed Vice-Chair Stanley Fischer; Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo; and so on. None of them will be held to account. People like that are never held to account.

Krugman wrote, “But those critics have been wrong every step of the way. Why start taking them seriously now?” A better question might be, “Why do they even have jobs?” The truth is a professional fire fighter who was terrible at his job would not be a professional fire fighter. That goes for pretty much every job that regular people have.

I was recently on the periphery of the firing of a writer at my day job. I feel bad about it because I was at least party to blame: I complained about him a lot. The truth is that he was turning in crap work. Yet the work was passable. He never did anything that seriously damaged the company. But if the Fed seriously damages our economy, no one will be fired.

For some reason, I found myself reading Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. It’s an odd book to read at this time, because it is primarily an effort to explain the Vietnam War. But even more, I found myself wondering why she was making such a big deal out of the folly of humans. I mean, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Humans are awful, even though individual humans are mostly all right. It is the way we work as a system — which has been critical to our success or macro-organism — that allows us to be far more stupid and less humane together than apart.

She starts by asking, “Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests?” Unfortunately, she really does not discuss the Trojan War. Instead, she provides a short chapter about why the Trojans brought the wooden horse inside the city. If anything were fanciful in Homer, it is that. The real question is why the Greeks started that war. So Menelaus could get his wife Helen back? The women he plans to kill once the Trojans are defeated? Not that I’m suggesting that this is any more true than the wooden horse. But Homer presents the Trojan War as a tragedy for Greeks as well as the Trojans.

I was watching Bettany Hughes’ documentary, The Minotaur’s Island, which is about the Minoans. At one archaeological dig, a human sacrifice seems to have been caught in action. An earthquake destroyed the temple, killing the priest and entombing him with his two victims. It makes me wonder if the temple’s collapse wasn’t the result of an aftershock, and that the human sacrifice wasn’t a reaction to the original earthquake. I’ll admit, I love the irony of that. But regardless, priests didn’t do sacrifices of any kind just to be mean. They did them for a purpose — whether that was to assure a good harvest or calm the earthquakes.

But here is where I think folly is well on display. I’m sure that in various places for short periods of times, priests actually thought that human sacrifices were a really great way to get the gods to give you what you wanted. But I can’t imagine that they didn’t quickly notice that, actually, the human sacrifices were irrelevant. But a priest who realizes this is in a bind for a couple of reasons. First, it would seriously damage his reputation. But second, and I think more important, is the social expectation of the sacrifices.

Imagine the priest goes to the people and says, “You know, these sacrifices are not what the gods want.” And then there is a bad harvest or an earthquake. If the priest had done the sacrifice? Well, at least he tried. We all know the gods are fickle. But he didn’t even try! He just made up this story about human sacrifices being unnecessary, and now look at us? We’re starving! That priest is almost certainly going to die very painfully, very soon.

I think most forms of individual human power are illusory. I’ve noted this a lot about the speakership of John Boehner. He had power, but only if he didn’t use it. In the end, he swapped his appearance of power (he lost his speakership) for exercising the tiny bit of the real power he actually had. And that is human social interaction in a broader sense. We are involved in a kind of huge negotiation. A leader is every bit as much a “poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage” as is some guy sleeping in the drunk tank in the local jail.

And I know that some will saw, “Yeah, but the leader does get some measure of power.” But I don’t think that’s true. Leaders become so at the pleasure of the masses. Just like Peter Jennings would never have been allowed to anchor World News Tonight if he didn’t instinctively know what would get him fired, leaders instinctively know what will make the masses literally tear them apart limb by limb. We, as a macro-organism, get the leaders we want. And when they do supremely stupid things, it’s because we are at very least, okay with it — and more likely cheering it on. Because “we” are far more stupid and inhumane than you and I ever will be.