Zero Thirty Darkness

I've seen Zero Dark Thirty. The first and last 45 minutes were intensely involving for all the wrong reasons. As for the rest, it was actually fairly dull, showing that real police work doesn't necessarily translate into an interesting movie.

I come down squarely on the side of those who believe the film takes the position that torture was effective in gathering the information that led to the assassination of Osama bin Laden. The director, Kathryn Bigelow, and the screenwriter, David Boal, argue that the film does not support or endorse torture. They claim to be merely presenting the facts, and that it is up to viewers to draw their own conclusions. Boal says, “It doesn't surprise me that people bring political agendas to the film but it doesn't actually have a political agenda. It's agenda is to tell these people's stories in the most honest and factual way we know how . . .”

First of all, the film doesn't report everything that happened during those ten years. It is necessarily selective. One of the things it completely leaves out is any debate over either the efficacy or morality of torture. (You could argue that an even more significant omission is it failure to present events that occurred before 9/11, which would reveal bin Laden and al-Qaeda to be “blowback” from previous CIA activities in Afghanistan.)

But let's stick to what is in the film. As filmmakers, Bigelow and Boal should be well aware of the basic elements of the cinematic code. A film is a visual argument. Montage—that part of the film that takes place during editing, the arrangement of successive shots—can suggest relationships between people and events that may or may not exist in reality. As Russian director and teacher Lev Kulashov pointed out, A + B can equal something entirely different. Kulashov showed viewers an identical shot of a man's face and asked them to describe his emotional state. When intercut with shots of a plate of soup, a woman in a coffin and a little girl playing, his emotion was described as hunger, sadness and joy, respectively.

Zero Dark Thirty contains a scene in which a prisoner, Ammar, is having lunch with two CIA agents, Dan and Maya. He gives them valuable information that eventually leads to bin Laden's courier and bin Laden himself. Prior to this, we saw scenes in which Ammar was brutally tortured—waterboarded, hung by ropes, and locked in a small box—by Dan as Maya watched. It is virtually automatic that an experienced media consumer will to draw a causal connection between the two scenes—that Ammar gave them the information because of the torture, and to avoid further torture. In fact, Dan reminds him that he could be tortured again. (Boal claims that a scene of Maya in her research room shows that all the important information was already available from detainees who were not tortured, but I would suggest that this scene is not very salient and its meaning is unclear.)

Another Russian filmmaker, V. I. Pudovkin, said montage is “the method which controls the 'psychological guidance' of the spectator.” It is possible, if you have the necessary information, to counterargue with this natural tendency—to tell yourself that the filmmaker's implication that torture is effective is false. However, it is unrealistic to expect very many viewers to draw this conclusion. The film could impact public opinion, as some would argue the fictional television drama already 24 has. Although the reasons are unclear, the percentage of Americans who say torture is rarely or never justified has shown a small but steady decline, from 53% in 2004 to 42% in 2011.

Filmmaker Michael Moore defends Zero Dark Thirty, arguing that the average viewer “will be repulsed” by the torture scenes: “After watching the brutal behavior of CIA agents for the first 45 minutes of the film, I can't believe anyone of conscience would conclude that this is morally NOT right.” But Moore is ignoring the possibility that we have already been desensitized to torture scenes by years of fictional programming. He is also making the egocentric assumption that other people will have the same reaction to the film as he did. But the torture scenes are embedded in a narrative in which the torturers are the heroes and their goal of killing bin Laden is one of which the audience strongly approves. To make things worse, the heroine, Maya, who the film suggests may have been responsible for the death of one prisoner, is is ignored and patronized by her CIA colleagues, making her ultimate triumph a victory for feminism as well.

Below is a discussion of some of these issues that appeared on the PBS News Hour.  

There has been little comment about last 45 minutes in which the Navy Seals fly by helicopter to bin Laden's compound, break into the buildings, and kill bin Laden and several other people. Here again, the problem is omission. No one raises the question of whether the U.S. government had the right to execute bin Laden and several others suspected of lesser crimes without due process of law. Zero Dark Thirty implies, however, that the alternative of bring him back alive for trial was never seriously considered.

Glenn Greenwald maintains that Zero Dark Thirty is U. S. government propaganda directed at American citizens. Peter Maass refers to it as “a troubling new frontier of government-embedded film-making.” Unlike other branches of government, the CIA is forbidden to distribute propaganda in this country. However, this is nothing new for the Defense Department. As David Robb argues in Operation Hollwood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies, film studios usually require military cooperation in order to produce technically realistic-looking war movies. In exchange, the Pentagon is given script approval—veto power over points it disagrees with and the right to insert its own ideology into the films. The predictable result is films that arguably distort history, i.e., Blackhawk Down, or function as recruiting videos for the services, i.e., Top Gun.

But Zero Dark Thirty takes this process a step further. The opening title claims that the film is “based on first hand accounts of actual events.” That is, they received privileged access to classified information of the type that the CIA usually prosecutes people for revealing. But the CIA's claim that torture was instrumental in the hunt for bin Laden is at odds with conclusions drawn by other branches of government, such as the FBI and Congress, and may conflict with the views of a minority of CIA employees. We are getting not the government's point-of-view, but that of a subgroup within the government. The effect is to empower the most brutal and reactionary ideology within the “defense” establishment—the Cheney-Rumsfeld plan for fighting terrorism. The film propagandizes the American people in an effort to get them to accept war crimes by their own government.

Football's Days Are Numbered

I had to write this post today because I was disgusted to see Chris Hayes, who just a week ago led an insightful discussion of football brain injuries, sign off this morning by telling his audience to “enjoy the game (the Super Bowl).” This was followed by the hopeless Melissa Harris-Perry wearing a football jersey. Yech! I can't put off this topic until next Fall.

Football is America's most popular sport. The National Football League (NFL) makes an estimated $9.5 billion a year. (No one knows the amount spent on gambling.) How can its days be numbered? I have a one-word answer: “Boxing.” I can remember when boxing was the fourth most popular sport in this country. It was on television almost every night, even though we only had a half-dozen channels. Sports fans knew the names of the champions of all the weight divisions. In the '60s, Muhammed Ali was said to be the most well-known celebrity in the world. Can you name a current boxing champion? Who's the last heavyweight champ you remember? (Mike Tyson effectively ended his career when he bit Evander Holyfield's ear in 1997.)

Muhammed Ali had more to do with boxing's decline than anyone else. The entire world has seen his struggle with Parkinson's disease, and we rightly attribute it to the blows to the head he took in the ring. I suspect many Americans decided that, if this is the consequence of being a boxer, not only would they not allow their children to box, they didn't want to be implicated in this self-destructive behavior by supporting the sport with their time and money.

We now know from studies of posthumous brain samples that football injuries can cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), whose symptoms include headaches, memory loss, lack of impulse control, depression and dementia. We don't yet know the percentage of former players who will suffer these symptoms because the samples came from former players who were known or suspected to have CTE. Boston University researcher Chris Nowinski suggests that 20% is a “conservative” estimate of the number of players in today's Super Bowl who are playing with incipient dementia. Ten percent of NFL players are diagnosed with concussions each year. We also don't know whether the risk is primarily due to concussions, or whether CTE is also caused by the cumulative effect of chronic routine hits.

But the situation is changing quickly. Researchers are now able to diagnose CTE in living patients (45 years and older) using PET scans. As these diagnoses gradually move forward in time, we may get answers to these important questions. How will these answers affect willingness to play the game?

 All rights reserved by Harry Funk

The argument is often made that the players know the risks they are taking, and that they are well-compensated for their services; therefore, they are responsible for their own victimization. The over 4000 retired players who have filed damage suits against the NFL point out that they never gave truly informed consent, since they were never advised of the risks of head injuries. At present, what the NFL knew about head injuries and when they knew it is contested. We may eventually find a coverup similar to the tobacco industry, but then again, we may not. Two things can be said about this debate:

• The present generation of players is much more aware of the risks, and it hasn't affected the ability of the NFL to recruit players. I suspect this has something to do with players' ability to rationalize that these negative consequences will not happen to them.
• The monetary argument does not apply at all to the far greater number of college and high school football players, who receive little or no compensation for the risks they are taking. And can football players under 18 legally give their informed consent?

What will happen in the next few years? I expect the NFL to lose some of the lawsuits filed by former players, but the settlements will amount to only chump change for this $9.5 billion institution. They will make a few public relations gestures, like the one announced yesterday. The NFL is spending $50 million to partner with General Electric to develop better brain imaging technology and safer helmets. There will be highly touted but minor rules changes in the name of safety. The NFL will make excessive claims about safety improvements, knowing that they may not be fully testable for decades. In the end, Dave Zirin is probably right when he says, “There is no making football safer.”

When real change comes, it will have to come from the bottom up—which is why it will take a while. I see two promising possibilities.

• President Obama has said, “I have to tell you, if I had a son, I would have to think long and hard before I would let him play football.” Change will come when more parents begin having this conversation with themselves and other parents. Willingness to let their sons play high school football will decline.

• Colleges football is a key step in the system. Some colleges and universities have medical schools. Almost all of them have biology and psychology departments. Their faculties will understand the latest head injury research and transmit it to the rest of the community. I expect them to start putting pressure on college administrations to reduce their involvement in football.

In the end, however, the meat grinder that is football depends on our willingness to watch. To quote Dave Zirin again, “If people are disgusted by the violence visited on these players, they should vote with their feet and stop watching.” If we would not play football ourselves, or let our sons play it, shouldn't we be embarrassed to watch young men from poor families take these risks merely because football offers them a small chance of getting rich?

Eventually, only the most callous and morally obtuse among us will be proud to call ourselves “Steeler fans.” I would rather be ahead of than behind that curve.

Tom Corbett, Privateer

“I'm all about privatization,” says Pennsylvania's Governor Tom Corbett. In case that wasn't clear, his chief of staff Kevin Harley adds, “The governor is a proponent of bold privatization. That has been his consistent position from day one—and it hasn't changed.”

Yesterday, Gov. Corbett announced his plan to sell or auction off the state liquor store system and expand the number of outlets permitted to sell liquor, wine and beer. He optimistically claims this will raise a one-time windfall of over $1 billion as follows:

• $575 million from the sale of liquor licenses.
• $224 million from auctioning off the 1200 state liquor stores.
• $107 million for new wine and beer licenses.
• $112.5 million for licenses allowing beer distributors to sell liquor.

Apparently, the governor is not confident that this proposal will survive on its own merit, so he has tied it to the more popular cause of education. The $1 billion will be used to fund block grants for school districts, to be targeted to four areas: safety, early education, individualized learning, and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs.

Gov. Corbett claims the new system will be “revenue neutral” in the long term, but the numbers don't appear to add up. Currently, since the state owns the liquor stores, they take in revenue from both profits (the difference between wholesale and retail liquor prices) and taxes on liquor sales. If they are going to give up the profits, they are going to have to sell a lot more booze (at higher prices?) to make up for those lost profits with additional tax money. Maybe he is indirectly asking Pennsylvania residents to get drunk more often “for the sake of the children.”

Less than three weeks ago, the governor announced the sale of the Pennsylvania state lottery to Camelot, a British firm that promises to increase gambling revenue, so Pennsylvanians are already being asked to throw more of their money away for the sake of our senior citizens.

 Some rights reserved by The Rick Smith Show

Gov. Corbett also supports expanding our reliance on charter schools, another form of privatization. We should not necessarily assume that all of the $1 billion will go to public schools, since local school districts are required to pay charter school tuition for students in their districts. And what exactly does the governor mean by “individualized instruction?”

Blackmail is usually defined as threatening “to make a gain or cause a loss to another unless a demand is met.” In his first two years in office, the governor has cut back sharply in state funding for public schools. Apparently, to get some of that money back, Pennsylvanians must agree to his liquor privatization plan.

Mike Crossey, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the public school teachers' union, commented, “It's nice that the governor has acknowledged that he created a school funding crisis, but our students shouldn't have to count on liquor being available on every corner in order to have properly funded schools.”

Appeal to an Unlikely Scenario

I mentioned in a previous post that I am currently taking an online course in critical thinking through Coursera. This week, one of our topics is fallacies of relevance. A fallacy of relevance is an argument in which the premises are of questionable relevance to the conclusion. An example is an appeal to an unlikely scenario.

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Senator Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) proposal to reinstate the ban on assault weapons and to ban high capacity magazines (clips holding more than ten rounds). Most of the media attention went to two celebrities who testified, former Representative Gabrielle Giffords and NRA president Wayne LaPierre. All three witnesses who argued against the bill maintained that assault weapons are needed by law-abiding citizens for self-defense in the event of an attack by armed criminals. However, as Senator Sheldon Whitehead (D-RI) pointed out, none of the anecdotes of successful self-defense involved an assault weapon or high-capacity magazine. They all utilized traditional weapons such as pistols or shotguns, access to which is not threatened by the legislation.

However, the pro-gun lobby's imagination is not constrained by reality, so one of the witnesses, Gayle Trotter of the Independent Women's Forum, entertained the Senators with the following hypothetical scenario:

An assault weapon in the hands of a young woman defending her babies in her home becomes a defense weapon. And the peace of mind that a woman has as she's facing three, four, five violent attackers, intruders in her home, with her children screaming in the background, the peace of mind that she has knowing that she has a scary-looking gun gives her more courage when she's fighting hardened, violent criminals. If we ban these weapons, you are putting women at a great disadvantage . . .

Appeals to unlikely scenarios should be evaluated by assessing the positive or negative consequences put forward in the scenario, weighted by their probability of occurrence—which in an unlikely scenario is low. They are compared to the positive or negative consequences of the alternative course of action, in this case, not banning assault weapons, weighted by their probability of occurrence. The conclusion is obvious.

Unfortunately for Ms. Trotter, she agreed to be interviewed on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell last night. He effectively deconstructed her argument and made her look quite silly.

Another example of the mischief done by appeals to unlikely scenarios is the defense of torture which asks us to imagine that we have captured a terrorist who refuses to tell us the location of a bomb which will kill a large number of people. Given limited time, would we not torture him to find the bomb? One of the reason people find these unlikely scenarios to be plausible is that they are often presented in fictional films and television programs, and we later remember these stories as having been true.

Play It Again, Sam

Last week, a letter to the editor in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette attributed the Newtown, CT massacre to the Supreme Court's ban of state-sponsored prayer in public schools. It elicited the following reply, which I think is worth repeating:

Where was God?

Gloria Thibault's Jan. 22 letter “Pray Instead” implies that putting God back in schools would protect children from violence. If this is true, why hasn't God protected children from predators and pedophiles in churches?

Kenneth L. Kaufman

Bethel Park

The Open and Closed Mind

More than three years after Sarah Palin made the false claim that the Affordable Care Act included “death panels” that would decide whether people would receive life-saving medical treatment, 40% of Americans still believe it. A new experiment by Brendan Nyhan, Jason Reifman and Peter Ubel considers the death panel myth in the context of the perseverance effect, a cognitive error in which people's beliefs about reality persist even though the evidence on which they were based has been discredited.

In one perseverance study, participants tried to distinguish between real and fake suicide notes. In fact, regardless of what they said, half the people were told they were right most of the time (the “success” condition), while the others were usually told they were wrong (the “failure” condition). Later, the participants were debriefed. It was explained that the feedback was false and that they had been randomly assigned to success and failure conditions. Even though they understood the debriefing, the “successful” people still believed they were better at the task than those who had “failed” thought they were.

Perseverance affects people's reactions to scientific studies that support or contradict their beliefs. Another experiment involved students with contrasting attitudes, some who believed that capital punishment was a deterrent to murder and others who rejected this claim. People in both groups read summaries of two fictitious studies, one which supported the deterrence hypothesis and one which didn't. You might think reading mixed evidence would lead people to moderate their beliefs. However, both pro- and anti-deterrence participants became more convinced of their original beliefs—a backfire effect. The two groups' beliefs became more polarized.

Perseverance studies seem to suggest that fact-checking politically biased claims is a losing effort. Recent research suggests that more educated and well-informed people show greater perseverance, since having more information allows them to explain away contradictory findings more easily. The Nyhan study is in that tradition. Here is Dr. Ubel explaining the study.

The chart below shows the results. On the left are the low knowledge participants. Without the correction, those who liked Palin believed the death panel myth, but the rebuttal was effective in disabusing them of this belief. However, the high knowledge Palin supporters believed the death panel myth more with the correction than without it. The correction backfired.

Just a word of caution. I was fully prepared to believe this study; however, the more I thought about it, the more I sympathized with the high information Palin supporters. The rebuttal to Palin's claim read (in its entirely) as follows:

However, non-partisan health care experts have concluded that Palin is wrong. The bill in the House of Representatives would require Medicare to pay for voluntary end-of-life counseling sessions, but there is no panel in any of the health care bills in Congress that judges a person's “level of productivity in society” to determine whether they are “worthy” of health care.

Should a well-informed Republican really be satisfied with this rebuttal? If I were in their shoes, I might want to ask some additional questions. Who are these “non-partisan experts?” The correction addresses Palin's claim about end-of-life counseling, but what about the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, which is charged with evaluating the effectiveness of medical treatments, and the Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board, which is supposed to refuse to pay for expensive but ineffective treatments? How much indirect control will they have over the treatment patients actually receive? I personally hope these groups will help to eliminate wasteful procedures, but since they haven't met yet, we don't really know.

I'm not questioning the existence of perseverance, or that it makes researchers' lives a lot more difficult. However, another way to read this study is that well-informed people may require more detailed counterarguments than these authors provided.

Old-Fashioned Racism

A new study published by Michael Tesler in the Journal of Politics suggests that, for the first time in many years, old-fashioned racism is having an effect on party preference and voting behavior in the United States. Specifically, old-fashioned racists are more likely to be Republicans and vote for Republican candidates.

Old-fashioned racism (OFR) refers to the endorsement of statements that are obviously and blatantly racist, such as the belief that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, that blacks and whites should be segregated and maintain social distance from one another. OFR has declined steadily in this country since World War II. The most likely reason is that OFR has always been positively related to age. Old-fashioned racists have not changed their attitudes; they have died. Another contributing factor in the decline of OFR is that it has become less socially acceptable to state obviously prejudiced attitudes in a survey.

Sometimes the mass media present the decline of OFR as evidence that prejudice is no longer a problem in this country. However, OFR has been gradually replaced by modern (or symbolic) racism (also known as racial resentment). Modern racism is prejudice revealed in subtle, indirect ways, such as the claim that blacks do not respect traditional American values, or in opposition to social policies perceived to help black people. It allows people to express beliefs and endorse policies that are harmful to African-Americans, but still deny being prejudiced. Modern racism has been related to voting behavior and party preference ever since the civil rights era. Richard Nixon's “Southern strategy” was designed to help the Republican party to take advantage of racial resentment, and the strategy remains successful today.

Tesler begins his article by noting that OFR has never been related to white Americans' partisan preferences in the post-civil rights era. Although modern racists have tended to vote Republican, old-fashioned racists have been evenly distibuted among the two parties. However, that appears to have changed since Barack Obama became president in 2008. To make this point, Tesler presents three studies.

The first study looked at the effect of OFR on candidate preference in the 2008 election. Tesler reanalyzed data collected by the Pew Research Center in early 2008. In this study, OFR was measured by endorsement of items stating that whites and blacks should not date or intermarry, an undeniably racist belief still held by about half the white population. The study asked participants their preferences in two hypothetical presidential contests, John McCain vs. Hilary Clinton, and John McCain vs. Barack Obama. Results showed that OFR had a significantly greater effect on the McCain-Obama contest than the McCain-Clinton matchup. The difference between those highest and lowest in OFR was 10% on the McCain-Clinton question, but 35% on the McCain-Obama question. This difference was statistically reliable even after controlling for the effects of party preference, political ideology and modern racism.

 All rights reserved by Huffington Post

The remaining two studies looked at the spillover effect, sometimes referred to as the racialization of politics. It refers to the possibility that racial attitudes will affect political behavior in contexts having nothing obviously to do with race. For example, since President Obama is associated with health care reform, the spillover effect predicts that old-fashioned racists will oppose the Affordable Care Act, even after controlling for the influences of party preference, political ideology and modern racism. 

In Study 2, the Pew data were used to examine the relationship between OFR and party preference from 1987 through 2009. From 1987 through 2007, there was no significant relationship between OFR and partisanship. However, in 2009, there was a significant association between OFR and self-identification as a Republican. Further analysis showed that, consistent with the spillover hypothesis, this relationship is mediated by attitudes toward President Obama. That is, when the effect of evaluation of President Obama is statistically removed, the association between OFR and partisanship disappears. (See my earlier post for a more thorough explanation of mediation.)

Finally, Tesler did a survey of his own in which respondents were asked to state their preference for candidates for the House of Representatives in the midterm election of 2010. This study contained a manipulation designed to test the spillover hypothesis. Before stating their voting preference, a randomly selected half of the respondents were reminded that President Obama had been campaigning for Democratic candidates in the midterm election and asked whether this affected their preference. This reminder, called the “Obama prime,” was omitted for the other participants. Without the Obama prime, OFR had no effect on voting intentions in the midterm election. However, with the Obama prime, those highest in OFR were 13% less likely to prefer the Democatic candidate than those lowest in OFR.

It is important to note that Tesler is not saying that OFR has increased in recent years. As far as I know, it is still slowly declining. However, prior to 2008, old-fashioned racists were randomly distributed among the two political parties. Since many of them are what are euphemistically called “low information voters,” some of them self-identified as independents. The effect of the Obama presidency and related changes in the political culture, such as the rise of the Tea Party, has been to drive these folks into the Republican party. Thus, being a Republican is now associated not only with modern racism but with OFR as well. Since party identification tends to persist throughout the life cycle, this realignment may affect our politics long after Obama's presidency. Tesler also predicts an increase in overtly racist rhetoric, since it is now useful in mobilizing the Republican base.