The best defense, a good offense, and the psychology of perpetual loser-dom

 How about a nice game of chess?  No, I'm not changing my name to Joshua, although if you have not met me in person, you cannot be certain that I am not an AI.  Have I passed the Turing test?  I digress.  Regardless, I will regularly implore you to consider the implications of chess.  So, consider.  Suppose we are playing chess, and you realize that you have the option to put me in check.  Do you?  If your answer is an unquestioning yes, then that answer identifies you.  A douche?  Well, really just a chess novice.  Chess, after all, is a zero-sum interaction.  Your victory is my loss, and vice versa, so to call a move a "dick move" may actually be to call it a good move.  Yet, a reflexive impulse to check is more dick move than good move.  After all, unless we add a clock, chess ends three ways: checkmate, draw/stalemate, or resignation.  There is no judge's scoreboard, wherein you acquire points for each "check," and even those "points" assigned to each piece (1 per pawn, 3 for bishops and knights, etc.) have no actual meaning.  Checkmate, stalemate, or resignation.  That's it.  So, if you just take every opportunity for a check, you might be making a mistake.  My response to a check could be the very move I intended to make anyway.  Consider, then, "perpetual check."  That means exactly what you think it means.  It means that you can keep checking me, but you can't checkmate me.  Perpetual check does not mean that you win.  It's a draw, according to the official rules of chess.

You know what happens if we're down to a king on each side, but you also have a bishop?  Draw.  You can't checkmate me with just a bishop.  Yes, you have "3 points" on me, but points are worth exactly nothing.  Checkmate or nothing.  That's a draw, baby.

If you understand the rules of chess, you understand that merely being checked doesn't mean you lose, or "are losing."  It means you must use your move to respond.  It constrains you, it may be a step along the way to checkmate, it may force you to sacrifice a piece to save the game, but a check could just be a check from a novice who saw an opportunity to check, but doesn't have a plan.  [Insert Cylon-plan joke here.]  It could be a dick move rather than a good move, outside the Venn diagram overlap.  Understanding the difference is important.

I'm not going to type the full cliche, word for word.  There is no need.  You can read the title of the post, you know the one I mean, and I hate spouting cliches.  Subverting them, inverting them, twisting them around?  Sure, that's fun, but I can't think of a fun joke here, so fuck it.  Sorry, I suck this morning.  Blah, blah, offense'n'defense, jokey-jokey, ha-ha.  Is the aphorism always true?  If you are looking for an aphorism that holds true in all circumstances, may I suggest you have yourself a good, long walk with my buddy, Diogenes?  Instead, let's consider the impulse to check, and the mentality of the aphorism.  If you are on the attack, then generally speaking, the other side is on the defensive.  You risk less, the other side risks more, so go ahead and send your army into Russia like Napoleon or Hitler.  What could possibly go wrong?

 

I've spent the last few years of my life building an immunity to sarcasm.  OK, my entire life.  Anyway, moving on.  Here's the thing about check.  The act of checking may accomplish something, but it may not, yet to the novice, it will feel like an obvious move, intuitively, because it feels aggressive, and being checked can feel scary because it puts you on the defensive.  You can feel like you're...

... losing.

Even though you may not be.

Winning and losing.  In game theory-- a field separate from the study of games in popular culture-- we do not generally refer to "winning" or "losing."  Many years ago, I had a very strange discussion with a fellow political scientist who asked me why economists/game theorists don't talk about "winners" and "losers."  I'm kind of an economist, or an economist-by-proxy, or something.  Anyway, I explained to him that the answer is very simple.  In order to reduce an interaction to winners and losers in a meaningful way, the interaction must be zero-sum.  The gain for one player, or set of players, must come at the cost of another.  Some interactions are zero-sum, but many-- indeed, most of the interesting interactions-- are not.  Adam Smith's great contribution to intellectual understanding was the observation that economics were not zero-sum.  Voluntary exchange is positive-sum, which is why capitalism works, and mercantilism is/was fucking stupid.  Also, communism is the dumbest thing ever, which is why I'm surrounded by crypto-Marxists with fancy letters after their names [facepalm].  In the very limited set of circumstances that are zero-sum, we could label people as winners and losers, but since these labels only apply to limited cases, the labels are not broadly useful.  That is why economists, and game theorists outside of economics (hi!) don't use the terms, most of the time.

However, since the political scientist in question was a lefty who wanted to whine about somethingorother, and the rhetoric of winners and losers would have been helpful for the left at the time, he shrugged, rejected my math, and said that it was all a right-wing plot.

Even though economics as a discipline was split about 50/50, and I explained the mathematical reasoning to him.

Dumbass.  No, I'm not naming him.  No, I don't respect him.

Anyway, the point is that most of the time, we don't talk about winners and losers, because most of the time, we aren't dealing with zero-sum interactions.  Chess is zero-sum.  There's a winner, and a loser.  Or, it's a draw.  That's it.  Aggressive-seeming tactics, then, can make you feel like you are on the losing side of a game which truly is zero-sum.  Assessing whether or not that is the case requires more sophistication, but that's the underlying issue.

Yet, remember my answer to my dumbass fellow political scientist who thinks that economics is all a right-wing plot.  Most of the world is not zero-sum.  Most of the world is far more complicated.  We can collectively gain.  We can collectively lose.  In a pluralistic democracy, one "side" can gain along one dimension, while the other "side" gains along a separate dimension.

The simplistic drive to reduce everything to who's winning?/who's losing? undercuts any rigorous analysis, while simultaneously playing to every cognitive bias.

Check... check... check...

The road to checkmate?  Perpetual check?  A bunch of novice douchebags, checking each other because they don't know what else to do?  So many possibilities.  Yet declaring one "side" the winner, and the other "side" the loser?  Really?

There are 330,000,000 people in the US.  Can we have a little bit of complexity and sophistication in our analysis?  Please?

So here's the problem.  In a pluralistic democracy, everybody is getting checked all the time, on something, and in a strategically simplistic mindset, that means everyone will feel like they are losing.  Along certain dimensions, everyone will lose!  Yet my observation for the morning is that when one "side" uses aggressive tactics, that will be sufficient to make the other "side" feel like it is losing.

Check, check, check...

In American politics and (un)civil society at the moment, red and blue America each think that they are "losing."  Briefly stated, here is why.  Red America sees the following, without getting into the conspiracy theories.  Yeah, I'll... skip over the conspiracy theories for now.  That is going to look (somewhat legitimately) like an attempt to put a high shine on some fecal matter (see? rhetorically manipulated cliche), but I'm going somewhere here.  Moreover, the generalized belief that "red America is losing" predates Trump's 2020 "Big Lie."  Anyway, red America sees blue America in charge of cultural institutions, including K-12 and the higher education system, with political agendas being pursued through control of these institutions.  They see speakers shouted down, books banned or blocked from retailers if they don't go along with a culture moving hard left, and in many ways, social culture is moving left.  I could go on, but this is a useful encapsulation, at least in part because you start to see why I am writing this today.  (Hint:  last Saturday's post.)

Blue America sees itself as losing by watching an entirely separate realm.  Different dimensions.  Dimensions range from expectations about Republican attempts to rig the 2022/4 elections in advance to their already successful efforts to stack the Supreme Court.  Consider, for example, their latest abortion ruling.

Now let's step back, and look at the state of American politics.  I'm blaring my klaxons as loud as I can about the 2022 and 2024 elections.  I'm on the record as not giving a fuck, flying or otherwise, about drop boxes or extended voting hours.  This is not, I repeat, not "Jim Crow," and anyone using that analogy needs to go study what Jim Crow policies actually were.  For some of us, the historical thing was the Holocaust, and rather than going around saying, "this is just like the Holocaust!," we tell you, don't you ever fucking compare anything to the Holocaust, asshole.  In-person voting is not Jim Crow.  On the other hand, if partisan elected officials throw out election results and just declare Trump the winner 'cuz, that's not technically Jim Crow.  It's way worse.  It's pure autocracy.  That's the end of any semblance of American democracy.  And projecting out from here, we're heading in that direction.

But that's a projection.  Where are we now?  Why does everyone feel like a loser now?

Consider.  I used the term, "pluralistic democracy," leaning heavily on the concept of pluralism, as we generally understand it from Robert Dahl.  See, in particular, his best book, A Preface to Democratic Theory.  Despite the d-word (strangely, not douchebag!) in the title, Dahl did not actually use the word, "democracy," in his analysis.  He preferred the word, pluralism.  There are many variations of pluralism, but what they have in common is that no one actor or set of actors is always in charge of everything.

Consider my analysis of what has driven the left nuts, frequently stated on this pretentious, little blog, and hence unknown to anyone because nobody reads this damned thing.  Their problem was... they won!  Great Society liberalism got a shitload in the 1960s and 1970s, but had one last big piece:  healthcare.  Obama passed that.  Between that and broad cultural acceptance of minorities (yeah, the left really is "winning" in terms of getting mass culture to accept racial and ethnic minorities, gay people, trans people...), old-style liberalism got most of what they wanted.  But, rather than acknowledge that, they struggled to redefine themselves, hence the turmoil on the left and a lot of the craziness.

Yet the completion of the Great Society does not preclude the right's victory reshaping the courts.  The culmination of that?  SCOTUS has not yet formally struck down Roe v. Wade, but anyone with a brain, meaning everyone except that worthless dipshit, Susan Collins-- whom I have called the dumbest person in the Senate-- knows that they will overturn it.  Roe is a goner.  I take no formal position on this.  I can make an argument for abortion rights, or against abortion.  Abortion is an unenumerated right, and how we determine unenumerated rights has never been clear.  Precedent?  Um, I'm sorry, but I don't think that anyone truly believes in "precedent."  That's always a dodge.  Regardless, the right is about to claim a big victory.

Behold, pluralism.  The expansion of the welfare state can happen as the courts are recomposed in such a way as to accommodate evangelical opposition to abortion.

Yet part of that is that it also allows each side to perceive itself as "losing," and that is magnified by aggressive tactics, successful or otherwise.

So I return to my recitation of perceptions.  Recall my description of why the right perceives itself to be losing at the moment.  In the hypothetical case that anyone read this damned blog on a regular basis, that may cue such a person to think about what I wrote last week.  Last week, I had myself a good, long, data-driven rant about this.  James Lindsay, who is very smart and well-informed about critical theory and wokeness, and all that, went off the deep end, and one of his weirdo lectures wound up in my auto-play youtube feed.  It was about K-12 education and some batshit conspiracy theories.  I... couldn't deal.  So, I started looking at the data.

Here's the deal.  Are K-12 schools being used to try to push a far-left agenda?  Yeah.  Yes, they are.  Are they succeeding?  I didn't see evidence.  I spent some time going through public opinion data, looking for generational differences to assess "wokeness," and it just ain't there, so I wrote it up in last Saturday's post, while grumbling about Lindsay losing it.  Yes, teachers are frequently SJW crypto-Marxist wackos, trying to push ideas ranging from historically and intellectually flawed to damaging.  But, are they actually succeeding in moving public opinion, creating the revolutionary vanguard of which the right should be so scared?

I didn't see the evidence.

Yet the use of the aggressive tactic is making the right scared.  It's making them feel like they are losing, even without any concrete evidence of it.  And Lindsay's rant was... wacko, even though his critiques of critical theory are normally just on-point.  Lindsay went nuts.  Yes, critical theory is very stupid and very bad.  It just isn't driving the kids to become the revolutionary vanguard.

Now, let's turn to the left's self-perception of loser-dom.

Yeah, y'all are losing on abortion.  Why?  I could mention, once again that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was stupid, and narcissistic, and she fucked you.  Well, hey.  I guess I mentioned it again.  Oopsies!  Seriously, fuck her.  We can talk about that insufferable twit, Susan Collins, but she wasn't actually pivotal on the drunken rapist's confirmation vote.  Yeah, McConnell.  A lot falls on McConnell.  I seriously fucking hate that guy, and I will repeat my line:

When the epitaph for American democracy is written, it will read, "Murdered in cold blood by Mitch McConnell."

You are free to reference the line, as long as I get the credit.

But at the end of the day, there was a long project, involving social conservative activists, the Federalist Society, candidate recruitment drives... all aimed at SCOTUS and abortion.  Part of pluralism is the ability of a committed minority to defeat a less committed majority.  That's happening.

Yet in many ways, the left is responding to tactics rather than actual losses.  This is my point about curtailing extended voting hours and drop boxes.

Dude, these so don't fucking matter.  Right now, y'all have the White House and the House of Representatives.  (You don't really have the Senate, and part of the problem is that you don't seem to understand that.)  The New Deal/Great Society won, y'all have won on most cultural issues, y'all run most cultural institutions, and the defeatist attitude here is... I'm gonna say "misdirected."

Yes, you should absolutely be shitting bricks about GOP partisan elected officials overruling the voters in 2024.  Yup.  January 6 failed, but it won't be the end.  If Biden/Harris beat Trump again in 2024, here's what's going to happen.  Trump is going to repeat the Big Lie.  He's going to tell Republican officials around the country not to certify the results.  He's going to tell them to appoint Republican electors.

And they're going to fucking do it this time.

That's a real issue.

You know what isn't?  Drop boxes.  That is not a real issue.  That's a fucking bullshit issue.

But it is perceived as an aggressive tactic.  When it happens, the GOP is making an aggressive move.  It puts the Democrats on defense.  That makes the Democrats feel like they are losing.  Are they?

Was there any evidence that voter ID requirements had any of the effects that caused a similar level of brick-shitting?  No.  The brick production industry did not face sudden competition from the all of the bricks shat out by the Democrats in the face of voter ID requirements, because the bricks, which were made merely of shit, were just that.  Shit.

But it felt like an attack.

If you're attacking, I must be losing, right?

Nope.  That doesn't follow.

Yes, the left is using aggressive tactics in schools.  K-12 education, and higher education are being used to push far-left agendas.  The aggressiveness of the tactic creates a perception among the right that they are losing.  Are they?  I see no evidence.  Yet the perception is there, created more by the aggressiveness of the tactic than any tangible effect.

Yes, the right is using aggressive tactics on elections.  And let's distinguish here.  We need to distinguish between the petty bullshit, like removing drop boxes or curtailing extended voting hours, and the real stuff, like setting up processes by which partisan officials can overrule election results.  The petty stuff makes the Dems freak the fuck out.  Why?  Because it is an aggressive tactic.  It makes them feel like they are losing, merely because they are being attacked.

Everyone is being attacked, in different arenas.  That means everyone gets to feel like a loser!  Yay, you!  You get to feel like a loser!  But being a loser isn't a feeling.  It's a state of losing.  Remember how that fucking dumbass, Ibram X. Kendi, couldn't define racism?  Yeah, fuck the MacArthur people.  "Losing" means the following.  You possess X, and then you no longer possess X.  In order to be a loser in any meaningful way, X must have substantive value.  Hence, curtailing extended voting hours is of lesser importance if it doesn't actually influence election results.  Left-wing indoctrination in schools is of lesser importance if it doesn't actually influence kids.  If you are responding to the aggressiveness of the tactic rather than a tangible loss, you are falling prey to manipulation rather than objective, rational strategic assessment.

Play some chess!

That said, I have noted one area of real, overriding concern:  the possibility of the Republican Party simply throwing out the 2024 election and declaring themselves the winners, regardless of the vote.  Yes, this is a real possibility.

So let's play some fucking chess.  You know this is coming.  What are you going to do?  Don't tell me that Joe Biden should "put pressure" on Joe Manchin.  He has no tools to do that.  Don't talk to me about a "carve-out" for the filibuster.  There is no such thing as a "just the tip" nuclear option.  There will be no federal legislation to stop the GOP.

Step 1.  Understand that the 2024 presidential election is being held next year.  2022.  Is that the ideal way to run things?  Fuck no, and I'll be writing about this more soon.  But it's reality.  Reality, to restate one of my favorite aphorisms, is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away.  The 2024 election is coming early this cycle.  2022.  Treat it that way, or the people who win next year will install Trump as dictator in 2024, regardless of how anyone votes in 2024.  Think I'm joking?  I'm not.  You get how close we came on January 6, right?

Step 2.  Understand that nobody is listening to me.  Hell, I'm writing to nobody, because nobody reads this damned blog.  Regardless, nobody on the left will be smart enough to understand that the 2024 election is coming early this cycle, which means that the GOP will win big, which means that autocratic sycophants, in thrall to Donald Trump will be exactly where they need to be to throw out the 2024 election and install him as dictator three years from now.

Knowing that, fucking organize now.  What do you do when democracy ends?  What do you do as you watch it happen?

I've seen some stupid, bullshit protests in my time.  I went to fuckin' Berkeley for grad school.  I taught at Oberlin!  In know bullshit protests!  What's the plan when there's something real?  Existential for democracy?  The institutions of government were in the hands of the Democratic Party, and some Republicans with enough integrity for the law to rule.  That won't be true in 2024.  The Democrats are going to get their dumb-asses handed to them this coming November, because that's the hard rule of mathematics and politics, and those who will be put in power are going to be those who will put Donald Trump not just back in power, but in more power than anyone in American history has ever had.  There will be no institutional/governmental tools or checks.

What're you gonna do?

You wanna see losing?

You're worried about fucking Roe?  You're worried drop boxes?

Play chess.  Being checked isn't "losing."  Look several moves ahead.  Look for checkmate.  Plan for it.  If you don't, if you are instead focused only on how scary a single check is, you're gonna get checkmated.

Right now, everyone feels like they're losing.  Why?  Because as of today, December 11, 2021, America is still basically a pluralist nation, which means that the left can win along one dimension, while the right wins along another, and everyone gets to be a loser somehow.  More importantly, you have a cognitive bias by which you interpret "winning" or "losing" in terms of the who is on offense and who is on defense rather than in terms of actual outcomes.  It's the threat, the check, rather than the reality of the world.  Hence, we're all just a bunch 'o losers.

Do you want to lose?  For real?  For good?  Look a few moves down the road.  Focus on checkmate.  That's the game.  The real game.  Everything else is bullshit.

Danny Gatton & Joey DeFrancesco, "The Chess Players," from Relentless.  Gatton was one of those "best guitarists you've never heard" guys.  Honestly, really, strong claim to best-ever.  He was given the nickname, "The Humbler," as in, other guitarists listened to him, and it was impossible for them to maintain any egotism.