Book Review: "The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt

Before I get into the review, I'd like to point out that it has been exactly 10 years since I published my first post on this blog. I've significantly matured since then, and my general interests and specific goals for this blog have shifted, but writing here is still something that I enjoy doing. No matter how many people read this blog, if it's a positive number, I'll be grateful for each and every one of you.

I've recently read the book "The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt: this was a book I saw on the SMBC reading list a while ago. This book is about the human psychology of morals at individual and group levels, and is divided into three parts. The first part is about how people's rational minds are actually driven by their emotions and intuitive views of the world, as opposed to the other way around, so any discussion of morals with people of different worldviews must start at the level of values, emotions, or intuition, not calculated reasoning. The second part introduces the framework of "fundamental flavors of morality" in a historical context and describes how this can be used to explain the ongoing tensions particularly in politics in Western countries. The third part, in contrast to the first and second parts focusing on individual behaviors and thought processes, focuses on how people can be so driven to partake in group activities, why this means religion could have a useful place even in contemporary society, and how this leads to more tribal & polarized politics too.

The book is fairly well-written and is a rather engaging narrative; I especially liked the overall division into three coherent parts as well as the summaries at the end of each chapter. Additionally, I found it interesting to see just how many beliefs and symbols even supposedly rational, atheistic, or otherwise "modern" liberals hold with a similar intensity to conservatives. There is one overall major issue, along with some minor quibbles, that I will state here. The major issue is that while the author does a good job of presenting a variety of studies in different situations to support his points, it isn't clear how robust those studies really are to changing conditions: I would have liked to see a clearer acknowledgment of the crisis of replication in experimental psychology (and in fairness, I should also apply this critical view even to things like the stereotype threat effect which may align with my political views, as was expounded in the book Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele which I reviewed here, as well as to popular psychology books I read in the future). This is related to the minor quibble that especially in the first part, but also at various points throughout the book, the narrative seems to fit together a little too neatly without necessarily considering alternative explanations as carefully; this may be fine given that the book is meant to convey a particular message to a general audience, and to his credit, the author does acknowledge the likely incompleteness of this book in this regard, but even though I agree with the author's praise of Hume's idea of rationality serving emotion rather than the other way around, it would have been nicer to not feel like I was in an epistemic bubble. Another quibble is that in many parts, the author seems to be comfortable using casual superlative language; again, this may be fine given that the book is meant for a general audience, but in some places it struck me as a somewhat less than evenhanded treatment of the historical context. Finally (and this is a very minor quibble), the author claims originality in the metaphor of reason as a rider sitting atop the elephant of intuition: even the author makes reference to Plato's metaphor of the rider of reason steering the horses of emotion, and the Bhagavadgita (which the author does not reference) uses the same metaphor, but even here I must credit the author for novelty in the use of an elephant rather than horses to show how this much bigger animal will more likely steer the rider than the other way around.

The first part went over ideas that I've seen before in other contexts, touching upon epistemic closure, values-based conversations to bridge political divides, post-hoc rationalization, and so on. I didn't feel like I necessarily learned much from that part, but it was still nice to see those ideas again. One issue I had was about the discussion of how upon hearing a story that may generally invoke moral revulsion even in the absence of victims in the story, people from more liberal or educated backgrounds would admit to revulsion but still tolerate it, while people outside of such backgrounds would invent victims to justify their intolerance of such behavior as a post-hoc justification for their revulsion. Yet the same discussion seemed to also suggest that the differences between those two groups grew larger after controlling for the possibility of "invented victims". The section may have just been poorly written, but even if that is the case, it seemed to give the wrong idea. Another issue I had was with the author's accusation that Marxist psychological theorists from a few decades ago were essentially exhibiting post-hoc rationalization of their own beliefs when criticizing evolutionary psychologists, yet he demonstrated no self-awareness in his own lavish praise for evolutionary psychology (unless his willful blindness was a deliberately ironic example of such post-hoc rationalization, in which case this book is a work of genius).

The second part felt a lot more novel to me in its introduction of "fundamental flavors of morality", discussion of how broad labels like "utilitarianism" or "deontology" focus almost exclusively on one of those "flavors" to the detriment of others, and how in Western countries, liberal politics tends to focus exclusively on one or two specific "flavors" while conservative politics tends to appeal to all of them, explaining why conservative politics may tend to be more deeply rooted in the broader population. This was an eye-opening introduction to how modern Western liberal/progressive politics may need to work with rather than denigrate alternative flavors of morality if it is to succeed more broadly, though it is also hard for me to see how that would work if progressive politics aims to tear down oppressive power structures that conservative voters appreciate for inspiring loyalty and obedience to authority that they see as keeping their communities functioning smoothly. Perhaps the solution is to listen with an open mind to people who may have been oppressed by those in power abusing the moral "flavors" of loyalty, authority, or sanctity, and recognize their own oppression while still valuing those "flavors" more broadly; this may allow liberals to more concretely mesh well with those "flavors" instead of dealing with oppression by proverbially throwing out the baby with the bathwater. My only quibble in this regard is that the author consistently describes Western society as a monolith which prizes autonomy above larger group virtues while simultaneously showing how poorer communities in developed Western countries have more in common with more community-oriented mindsets outside of the West.

The third part described links social behavior in humans to eusociality in bees in order to show why humans may be so prone to prizing group interactions far above what they can do individually, and how this can explain a lot of the observed behaviors and potential benefits of tribalism in religion and politics, but I felt that the way the author tied these ideas to evolution as well as political history made this the weakest part of the book. In particular, in the discussion about group-level selection versus individual selection, I felt the analogies to bee eusociality were undercut by the lack of clarity regarding the extent to which bees in one hive are actually related to each other (so a lot of the behavior could be explained through kin selection — presumably the point of eusociality is to transcend this, but it would have been nice to see a clearer explanation bolstering the analogy), how comparable human division of labor & tribal identity really are to the rigid caste division & hive mind of bees, and why the author didn't consider the perspective of taking individual human behaviors as the results of kin selection among constituent cells. There's probably a lot of basic evolutionary biology that I'm missing here, but I would have expected to see such explanations if these analogies are so important to the main argument. Additionally, the author argued that it is a logical fallacy to say that fascism and other ugly political outcomes could possibly be an endpoint of hive-like group instincts among people, but I completely disagree with this, given the long history of large nationalistic or smaller corporate "hives" with leaders who create the illusion of equality & moral rectitude to lead constituents to do horrible things in the name of an abstract ideal while covertly ensuring that they (the leaders) ultimately unfairly benefit. Finally, the author seemed to use a lot of motivated strawman reasoning in defense of the benefits of religion. One example would be the use of college football to then claim that "rational liberals" argue against sports in general and are therefore blinding themselves to the potential benefits of tribal belonging, when from what I've seen, the arguments are more against American football (for the injuries) and the current collegiate athletics setup in particular. Another example would be his retort to the claim that the Catholic Church is exclusionary by pointing to how many colleges are more exclusive in their acceptance rate; this obtuse remark completely ignores how many organized religions have cultivated group cultures which, one way or another (whether between "nonbelievers are sinners who will be damned to hell" all the way to "the righteous believers must kill the infidels"), systematically sees out-groups as lesser than the in-group, whereas college admissions committees don't cultivate these sorts of attitudes in admitted student bodies.

As a final comment, given my own liberal predisposition, I noticed that the author spoke of his growing reverence for traditionally conservative moral "flavors" being sparked by his long-term stay in India conducting moral psychology experiments and surveys. It's hard to say whether people in lower positions in such cultures (like maids or street sweepers) truly like being in such positions as opposed to feeling like they have no choice but to accept their lot in life, and it is easy to project Western ideas of individual liberation onto people in such circumstances, but even so, I was struck by how little he directly reflected on the circumstances of such people in the context of respect for societal hierarchy and how easily he came to accept the existing power structure there, because he was in a position where that would have no negative consequence for him. (This critique of his seeming conservative disposition leaves aside some of the other US policy-specific arguments he made, such as about health care, where it seems clear enough to me that the inherent properties of human health and its treatment are fundamentally incompatible with the characteristics needed to sustain a truly free competitive market.) At the same time, being of Indian descent, I know that when I visit my relatives there, I feel the need to suppress any discomfort with how household help and other people in lower stations in life are treated mainly to avoid friction with relatives (especially given that I didn't grow up there, so there's a good chance that any contrary words I say will be met with references to that fact).

Overall, this is an interesting book of great relevance to the current political climate. Given this, I'd recommend this to anyone who wants to learn more about why we think the way we do.

Book Review: "The Marketplace of Ideas" by Louis Menand

The book that I have been able to read most recently is The Marketplace of Ideas by Louis Menand. The author generally discusses the current state of the liberal arts and humanities in higher education in a historical context, focusing on the tensions that have pervaded it for many decades, including the distinctions between the useful/practical versus learning for its own sake, disciplinarity versus interdisciplinarity, generally teaching the liberal arts to all students via a distribution versus core curriculum model, et cetera. The author further discusses how political issues have shaped academic discourse in the liberal arts, as well as how certain features of academia that are perceived to be new are actually logical extensions of features that were in place long ago, and vice versa. Overall, the author argues that much of academic work in the liberal arts, as it is conducted today, is structurally bound by how things were more than a century ago, even as the objects of study have themselves evolved quite a bit over that time.

Having completed my undergraduate education at a technical institution, I expected to see a bit more about the simultaneous evolution of science, engineering, and humanities curricula, given that the author does discuss the shifts in emphasis from teaching to research at major universities, and given the rather broad title and description of the book. Instead, the author admits fairly early on that because he is a history professor by training, his focus is almost exclusively on the liberal arts and humanities. That focus is understandable, yet I feel like by essentially ignoring simultaneous developments in science and engineering in academia, the discussion of the developments in the liberal arts and humanities in academia seems strangely divorced from the historical events surrounding those developments. Moreover, I feel that the author is somewhat siloed in his own view of disciplinarity versus interdisciplinarity in academia by focusing only on the liberal arts and humanities and ignoring how interdisciplinary research has evolved among the various branches of natural science and engineering, which is ironic considering his arguments that interdisciplinarity in the liberal arts and humanities has actually reinforced disciplinary rigidity in those fields; perhaps the author would have been better served by more extensively consulting (or coauthoring) with someone who is familiar with STEM fields in academia, but if he felt that such interactions would only reinforce rigid disciplinary boundaries and would not help mutual understanding across fields, then that may be more reflective of his own siloed experiences and resulting biases than of anything else. Additionally, the author has an occasional tendency to slip into technical philosophical and literary jargon; while the context makes the meaning of such jargon clear enough, it would have been nicer for the author to use more broadly accessible terminology, given that the book seems to be marketed toward a general audience (in line with some of the ideas discussed in the book itself). With all that said, I do appreciate seeing this aspect of academia that I otherwise would not have really seen, given my undergraduate education in physics at a technical education followed by my current status as a graduate student in electrical engineering. While it is short on prescriptions, it is long on context, which is its aim in any case. Finally, the book itself is generally clear and concise, and it is a short, quick read.

Book Reviews: "Modern Liberty" by Charles Fried & "Development as Freedom" by Amartya Sen

I recently finished reading the books Modern Liberty by Charles Fried, and Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen. The first was part of the "Issues of Our Time" series, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr., of which Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele (which I recently reviewed) is also a part; the second was one I chose as a comparison book mentioned in a review for the first on Amazon. Both deal with liberty and freedom, but in rather different ways. Below are my brief, decidedly nonspecialist thoughts on these books (content and style). After the jump will be some musings about issues related to these books. I am not a philosopher, nor am I an economist or sociologist, so many of the things that I say will probably be wrong or inconsistent; please feel free to point out issues in the comments below.

The book by Fried is a detailed defense of what appears (to my untrained eye) to be a centrist libertarian conception of liberty. The author essentially posits that human actions, and therefore the liberty to do so, are essentially individual in origin, so individual liberty should be held paramount, and can be taken to exist even in the absence of the state. He acknowledges the legitimacy of the state to tax and spend (even when the taxation is progressive), but argues that people should keep in mind that the state can simultaneously be the best friend and worst enemy of liberty. Additionally, he argues for equal application of the law as much as possible, and for the state to not interfere with people's choices when such interference would reduce choices that they would otherwise have no problem making, especially when those choices do not directly harm others in a criminal manner, focusing on three examples in particular throughout the book. With this in mind, he argues that the state should discourage certain behaviors through taxation rather than through heavy-handed direct intervention, and that stability in the laws and tax systems enforced is the least bad thing that the state can do with respect to liberty. Though I've focused specifically in pointing out things related to the state, he focuses on more abstract philosophical notions of liberty while simultaneously bringing the reader's attention to more mundane matters such as work, market transactions, and even sexual intercourse to better illustrate these points.

The book itself is fairly short, and moves along reasonably quickly (though I admit that I did get lost in some of the finer philosophical points). When introducing each justification for its conception of liberty, it also introduces each common criticism of that justification, and tackles almost every criticism head-on, without fear. There are quite a few things that I don't agree with about the ideas in the book. The overarching difference that I have is that this conception of liberty focuses on its origin within individuals, whereas I see the manifestation of liberty as being more dependent on societal contexts. An example of this would be in his contention that things like language, music, and culture originate within individuals; I would posit that these things would be meaningless for a single human in vacuum without any human contact, and it is only contact (and the history of such contact) with other humans that gives these things meaning. This is what I see as further leading to the author's general neglect of the consequences of liberty, choosing only to talk about the origins and processes of liberty; while I can see that this is philosophically consistent with the axiomatic treatment of the individual origin of liberty (and this also seems to be consistent with the desire for a static, predictable state due to its focus only on the unchanging processes of liberty, though I wouldn't agree with that either), the biggest issue that I have is that the author brings up the problem of the homeless person who has liberty but cannot make use of it if all property in that person's area is privately owned (and would therefore lead to the homeless person being kicked off of that property), but dances around this issue without really addressing it in a satisfactory way. With all of that said, I did enjoy reading this book overall, as it got me to think about the fundamental origins and processes of liberty in a new way, because before that, I was really only thinking about its manifestations/consequences.

The book by Sen is a longer exposition into how economic and political freedoms have to go hand-in-hand if they are to both be meaningful, and how human development is part and parcel of both. The author goes into how while utilitarian consequential formulations and libertarian process formulations of liberty are both important, both must be taken together instead of taking one or the other for liberty to be meaningful in the context of economics or politics. He further discusses how measures of economic development based solely on income or GDP/GNP per capita are quite flawed, so more nuanced, granular metrics are required, based on how different people's "functions" and "capabilities" operate, are fulfilled, and can be altered. Ultimately, he demonstrates that free markets and economic liberty, in conjunction with institutional corrections for certain glaring inequalities in capabilities, would allow the greatest human development leading to the greatest freedom.

Reading this book made me realize that I had intuitions for many ideas that the author clearly put into words (so I guess for now my lay economic views have a lot in common with those of Amartya Sen); in particular, I was already thinking about how Fried's neglect of the consequences of liberty made his treatment somewhat incomplete, and how humans being social animals means that the circumstances of one's political and economic existence cannot be ignored when considering the meaning of liberty, even before picking up Sen's book. However, there are a couple of issues that I have with this book. One is that there are several times where he repeats a point overly much. I don't mean that he just just repeats few words over the course of the book: I mean that he sometimes repeats entire multi-paragraph passages for no good reason, so the book could be a lot more terse and concise than it is. The other is that he argues that loss of income can affect a person mentally and physiologically in more lasting ways than simply by loss of purchasing power, especially if that person is ill, disabled, or so on, so he argues that specific institutional safety nets (presumably like social security, food stamps, and so on) and not simply lump-sum transfers of money (or increases in income) are necessary for countering poverty and promoting human development. I'd argue instead that if he can say that loss of income (and not just low income) is enough to push people into that downward spiral, then it would stand to reason that providing a strong enough guaranteed safety net through a simple money transfer (essentially, a minimum income, which I will discuss farther below) should be sufficient to prevent that, while simultaneously giving people the choice as independent agents to spend it as they like. Finally, at vary points, he promises to discuss how lessons from development in underdeveloped countries can be applied to the development of marginalized groups in more developed countries, yet as far as I could tell, that promise was never satisfactorily fulfilled. (Also, as a minor quibble: he makes reference to Madhavacharya having catalogued various schools of "Hindu" thought, including Buddhism, Jainism, and various atheist schools of thought, while calling him a Vaishnavite. A simple Wikipedia search shows that this Madhavacharya was a follower of Advaita philosophy, and was a separate person who was born only in the last few years of the life of the Dvaita founder Madhvacharya. It seems odd that Sen, who seems familiar with the "atheistic schools of Hinduism" catalogued by the later Madhavacharya, would make this error, so perhaps this was an oversight by the editor, or maybe the distinction between the two only became clear with scholarship after the publication of this book.)

In the Amazon review that I read, it seemed like these two books would oppose each other, but I would instead posit that they complement each other nicely. That brings me to the end of the review. Follow the jump to see some further thoughts on minimum income and related things that have been bouncing around in my head of late.

Can Politicians Outsmart the Internet?

I was watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart at home last night, and Jon Stewart's guest for that show was Dan Rather, the former CBS Evening News anchor who had come to promote his new book. They talked about Rather's childhood, the perception of a liberal bias in the media, and how politicians have outsmarted TV.

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I would like to take a brief moment to discuss what Rather had to say about liberal bias in the media. He said that in his time as a TV journalist, he found that among his colleagues, there was an even split between those who identified as being politically conservative and those who identified as being politically liberal; he further explained away the idea of liberal bias in the news media as being the creation of the conservative journalists who were really just admitting that not all journalists were conservative like them. Yet I can't help but ask, why is it only conservative journalists who raise the issue of a liberal bias? If there was an essentially equal distribution of political viewpoints in Rather's time, shouldn't there have been an equal stink raised by liberal journalists about a conservative bias? Or were conservative journalists more likely to feel victimized for their political beliefs even before FOX News came on the scene?

I do agree with Rather that today's journalists have no guts, and that is because politicians have bent TV journalism to suit their wills. And I think that if there does exist a liberal bias in TV news, then it has evolved to reflect this as well. For instance, it has recently become known that Walter Cronkite was way more unabashedly liberal than anyone could have imagined. He used his liberal bias to actually ask tough questions of politicians with whom he disagreed. Now, many journalists like the majority of those on CNN use their liberal bias to ask stupid, uninformative "gotcha" questions just to make conservative politicians look bad to boost ratings; for a concrete example, see Wolf Blitzer trying to trap Mitt Romney a few months ago by asking him really silly questions about the movie The Hunger Games.

But the bigger question is, can politicians bend the Internet similarly to TV and print media? I think not. The Internet really is fundamentally different from TV and print media because it is a two-way medium, whereas TV and print are one-way media. Hence, TV and print can be used as mouthpieces for politicians or journalists with an agenda, and no one can really do anything about that except for perhaps writing letters to the editor. The Internet has a far more diverse set of viewpoints than TV and print could ever have just because it is open to anyone and everyone to publish anything and everything, rather than being restricted to a particular set of journalists. I mean, the fact that I can write this up on my own blog and have other people see it, leave their own comments, and possibly write their own blog posts in response rather than me simply disagreeing in my own head after watching that interview on TV shows how truly different the Internet is. Sure, politicians could manipulate the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other mainstream news publications that have online sites, but they can't possibly begin to manipulate every single online news source out there, because so many of them are from alternative, nontraditional sources of news.

I think the best example of how politicians will continue to be powerless against the Internet until they have a deep working understanding of how it works comes in the SOPA debate that happened many months ago. There, politicians seemed to take pride in their ignorance of how the Internet works, and for once, that totally backfired on their efforts to massively censor it. The traditional news sources by and large simply parroted the words coming out of politicians' mouths about SOPA, but people knew better that time because the tech companies (of all sizes) behind the websites people use frequently showed exactly why SOPA would be so harmful. Furthermore, alternative news sources, especially technology-related news sites that were not beholden to any politicians or political parties, had excellent news pieces about why SOPA would severely curtail the goings-on of the Internet. Through these efforts, thousands upon thousands of people petitioned Congress and the President to stop SOPA, and only after politicians realized the magnitude of the backlash did SOPA and PIPA stall and die.

Another way that politicians will never be able to outsmart the Internet lies in the Streisand effect. Most Internet users route around restrictions by any means possible on the Internet. Before the Internet, if a politician said or did something controversial or embarrassing, that politician could hope to survive politically by manipulating the TV and print news media to downplay its significance or, more directly, expunge mentions of the incident from the media. Now, however, if a politician tries that and attempts to remove controversial or embarrassing material from the Internet, users will simply copy and reupload said material elsewhere. The name for the term comes from the time when Barbra Streisand's house was accidentally shown in some news piece. When Streisand tried to have it removed from the Internet, users simply copied and uploaded that picture to even more news sites, so the effort to have it removed was completely counterproductive in that it had the exact opposite effect of what was intended. Thus, as long as politicians believe that they can manipulate the Internet in the same way that they have manipulated TV and print news media, the Internet will always outsmart politicians.

Really, Madame Palin?

The latest news from Sarah Palin's mouth is that Section 1233 of bill HR 3200 (please correct me on the numbers and/or terminology if they are wrong) calls for "death panels" in which ill or disabled people must stand before a set of government experts (among whom may be President Obama himself) to determine whether or not they will be able to continue living (by having or not having access to life-saving medications, machines, or other treatments).
Now, I am no expert on health care. I know SQUAT about it. You definitely know more about it than me. That's why I'm keeping this rant short.
That said, I did read the section in question, and the part that Ms. Palin characterized as mandating "death squads" actually says that if patients at or above age 65 choose to consult with a physician every 5 years or so about end-of-life medical services, then it must be covered under Medicare. There's no mandate involved unless the patient so chooses. It isn't really a mandate at all.
Here's the thing: Sarah Palin (as far as I could understand, because it was (no sarcasm here) truly tough to parse her resignation speech) decided to quit because she felt it would further Alaska, and by extension, America. The best I could make is that she felt that she could be more constructive and helpful outside of a government position. This seems to be true insofar as she can make more speeches and be more outspoken about her views now that she is technically a private citizen. However, she and other Republicans have not been constructive at all in this debate. Democrats are trying to put together an honest effort at fixing the system, and while it's far from perfect, it's also much better than the status quo. Even conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats genuinely want to fix the system, but their main concern is keeping costs down, which is totally understandable. Republicans, on the other hand, have no interest whatsoever in anything except loyally opposing any Democratic proposal, and this includes Ms. Palin. They know their position is not substantiated in any way, so all they can do is hurl insults and other epithets at the opponents. My question to those Republicans who claim to want reform is, aside from blindly opposing Obama, what would you do? Their answers probably wouldn't please me, but what would displease me more is them dodging the question.
If anyone remembers their mid-19th century US history, they would remember the history of the formation of the Republican Party, which at the time of its formation was the ideological equivalent of today's liberal Democratic Party (Blue Dogs notwithstanding). The Whigs were fading into obscurity and the Democrats were becoming more conservative; this meant that there had to be (under the Constitution and the system it has created which has essentially mandated only 2 major parties) a major relevant liberal party to compete with the conservative Democrats. Most Whigs became Republicans as the Whig party itself faded from existence, and liberal Democrats quickly became Republicans. I figure a somewhat similar thing will happen to the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has become so conservative that it is no longer ideologically or practically relevant, while the Democratic Party has expanded to include many ideologies ranging from very liberal to moderate/slightly conservative (as opposed to the Republican Party which consists simply of extreme conservatives). The moderate/conservative wing of the Democratic Party has had a lot of splits with the more mainstream liberal Democrats, probably necessitating in the future a permanent split. Thus, the Republican Party can once again include the moderates that it has badly needed.
Here's the other big problem: Sarah Palin continually rails against the very media she uses to communicate her rants. Yes, she has every right to say what she does, and I will not vote for a law that prohibits speech of her kind even if I am completely repulsed by it. However, others also have a right to not listen; they are not obligated to listen to her, and that is true of the media as well. So long as the media keep featuring her as front page news articles or top-of-the-program TV segments, she will retain relevance. Only when they start to ignore her will she lose the relevance she never deserved in the first place. This may be a bit extreme, but is it any wonder that the media do not cover KKK meetings/rallies unless they turn violent? Sarah Palin is not a hate group, but her ideas are getting awfully close to it.
On a side note, regarding all of the supposed discontent and shout-downs at rallies held by members of Congress, can any of the supporters explain to me why the demographics of the opponents look suspiciously more white on the whole than the communities in general where such events (the shout-downs, not the rallies) are occurring? Basically, it's not actual discontent/unease (because if it was, the multiple polls on approval for the health care plan would be much lower) but simply a series of (admittedly well-)orchestrated attempts to make Obama look bad. I have a feeling that the manufactured anger is going to backfire and make Republicans look bad, even though there are myriad issues with the current reform proposal.
Oops, that was a bit longer than I thought it would be. My bad!