Forrest's Ramblings about Stuff

I couldn't belive my ears last Friday afternoon when I heard this commentator on NPR: the wording was so intentionally deceptive I felt compelled to make a transcript of the streaming audio (which you'll find on the page the title links to ... you'll have to listen for the full effect of his little condecending chuckles).

I'd like to write some analysis of this "analysis", but alas I have barely enough time to blog at all. Maybe I'll say something at the end but I'm sure it will be the tip of the iceburg. Hopefully someone else in the blogosphere will find this transcript handy:

From "All Things Considered" on Friday, June 2nd

Announcer's introduction:

Today there was a lot of tough talk from Iran about its right to continue its nuclear program. The U.S. has said that it would join talks with Iran if Tehran suspended uranium enrichment. Yesterday in Vienna the U.S. and key allies agreed on a package of incentives and penalties for the Iranians to stop their nuclear work; earlier this week Iran's foreign minister says his government will not give up what he calls his nation's "natural right" to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. This makes commentator Joe Laconte wonder: is there really an inalienable right to enrich uranium?

Joe Laconte:

When Americans think of natural or unalienable rights, several immediately come to mind: right to life, liberty and persuit of happiness. We'd also include the freedom of association, freedom of religion, and free speech. But if we're going to take the rhetoric of the Iranian government seriously, we may have to add another right to the list: the right to develop a nuclear arsenal.

It's not just Iran's foreign minister who's talking this way: the Iranian president claims that his country has an "inalienable right" to acquire nuclear energy. And one of Iran's most influential ayatollahs vows that his nation would never forbear its "natural right" to achieve nuclear technology.

Where is Thomas Jefferson when you need him?

The debate over Iran's nuclear ambitions has been muddied by the corruption of language-- and the western democracies are partly responsible. Just have a look at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, article four: "Nothing in this treaty" it reads in part, "shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the parties to the treaty to the production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes." Iran is a signatory to this treaty, and it's obvious that they've read the fine print. The word "inalienable" literally means "incapable of being surrendered." So how did this idea end up in a treaty on nuclear non-proliferation? Well-meaning diplomats probably viewed such language as a small concession to persuade countries to swear off the development of nuclear weapons.

The problem is that words matter: they shape the discourse which shapes the narrative of our political debates. The traditional American argument for fundamental rights has a universal appeal because we ground these rights in human nature: in a belief in the God-given dignity of human life. Natural rights are sacred rights: even the sceptic Thomas Jefferson felt compelled to describe inalienable or natural rights as the gift of a Creator.

But look what happens when this language of rights, with its moral and theological freight, enters a debate over nuclear technology. We now face an Islamic theocracy, a regime that promises to wipe Israel off the map, moralizing about its "natural right" to come within an inch of producing highly enriched uranium. Hard to imagine, this is what nature or nature's God had in mind. It all reminds me of George Orwell's essay on politics: "the present political chaos" Orwell wrote, "is connected with the decay of language."

I don't know if a package of incentives will dissuade the Iranians, but a little more straight talk wouldn't hurt.

Announcer's postscript:

Joseph Laconte is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Orwell indeed. Laconte very strongly implies at the beginning of his rant that Iran's foreign minister has asserted Iran's right to produce nuclear weapons. It's practially impossible not to conclude that's what he said; but he said it in a way that gives him the ability to deny that's what he meant.

Weaselly little manipulator. Then he gets on his high horse about God-given flag-waving red white and blue American "rights" to try to imply that we should just ignore international treaties when we don't like them. Of course, he won't just come out and say we should ignore the treaty. Little weasel.

I'm not a member of NPR yet; I've always been meaning to join one day, but I damn sure don't want to pay for this kind of intentional deception.

I have no objection to right-wing commentators, if they can find one who is capable of straight talk.

In the run-up to the 2004 election, researchers at Emory University used brain scans to analyze the responses of highly partisan Democrats and Republicans to negative information about their favored candidate.

The results provided a physiological confirmation of what might be expected:

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," says Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory who led the study. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts." [ ... ]

Once partisans had come to completely biased conclusions -- essentially finding ways to ignore information that could not be rationally discounted -- not only did circuits that mediate negative emotions like sadness and disgust turn off, but subjects got a blast of activation in circuits involved in reward -- similar to what addicts receive when they get their fix, Westen explains.

"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," says Westen. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."

Ha-ha, those stupid partisans, right? But wait ... how did the researchers know that the "facts" they presented were actually true? Did they pick them up on TV? News magazines, perhaps? I'm pretty sure they couldn't have witnessed all the alleged events they used in their study themselves. The media isn't always that trustworthy these days. (I just spent like a zillion hours looking for links to back that up, but I just want to get this blog post done now.)

While I suspect the subjects of this study may have been more extreme in the rigidity of their beliefs than they should have been, there comes a point where a visceral "bullshit detector" becomes absolutely necessary.

Of course the problem is, while my "bullshit detector" is well-adjusted and my distrust aimed pretty squarely at the White House and the greedy soullless multinational corporations they work for, there are fools our there whose distrust runs to the "liberal intellegentsia" or something.

This research clearly shows that while I've got my head on straight (of course), it's going to be pretty much impossible to get those unthinking idiots to see the light.

(orignally seen on Slashdot, although the article linked to there is an ad-laden summary of the one I linked above.)