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美國123 – 開欄文
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瀏覽3,570 ｜回應26｜推薦2 |
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我本來想用「美國政情」、「美國報導」、或「美國風情」等做本欄標題；但它們或過於狹隘，或大而無當；難以滿足提綱挈領的功能。現在這個標題雖然不夠理想，至少俏皮一些。
由於當下的熱門話題在「政治」，以下先轉載兩篇這方面的評論。
扎卡瑞阿先生大作討論美國「國力」(本欄第二篇)。我不確定他所引用統計數字和他論點之間的相關性有多大，但一般而言，我同意他的看法。我曾說過，百足之蟲，死而不僵；50 – 100年內美國還是能夠跟中國平起平坐。此之謂：「瘦死的駱駝比馬大」。這也是我一向主張「中、美和則兩利，鬥則俱傷」的原因之一。這篇文章甚長，一時之間我也無法全部消化。有空再寫讀後。
奈教授曾任美國國安和外交官員；他的大作從外交政策討論美國明年大選結果對未來走勢的影響(本欄第三篇)。他對「美國優越論」基礎的分析，我並不苟同。以後有空再做評論。
除了政治評論外，有機會我會選擇一些其它方面的報導與分析。
我在美國住了近26年，在1993回台定居以前，我在美國的時間比我在中國的時間要長。在美期間，除了工作之外，我也花了些時間了解和接觸美國文化、企業、政治、社會、科技、和人群；雖然都只能說是皮毛，但在「認識美國」上還是不無小補。
如上所說，我真正的成長期在美國，根據「社會建構論」，我的行為與思考方式免不了些許美式「作風」。例如，我的「務實模式」與「現實主義」大都源於過去在美國的生活經驗。此外，我的「行文風格」常常不合中國士大夫「溫柔敦厚」的傳統，除了來自盧卡契的「意識型態」理論外，有一部分也受到美國學者間相互批評文字的影響。
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空中大盜到底是誰？-Michael Natale
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跟額爾哈特女士的飛機殘骸在何處一樣，三不五時在網路上就能看到枯培先生到底是誰的報導。但到目前為止，兩者仍然是個謎。
一個案子有六或七位人士「領功」或「吹牛」，可見枯培先生事跡的魅力。它也顯示出美國「文化」的某些面向。
7 People Have Confessed to Being D.B. Cooper. A Twist in the Case Says One Told the Truth.
After 52 years, a credible revelation may finally unmask the mystery man behind history’s greatest unsolved skyjacking.
Michael Natale, 02/29/24
The case of the elusive D.B. Cooper stands as aviation’s most captivating unsolved mystery since Amelia Earhart vanished without a trace. For over half a century, the identity of the infamous skyjacker, who boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305 on November 24, 1971, parachuted into the night, and disappeared with $200,000, has remained an enigma. Despite Cooper’s discarded tie and the countless theories spun from thin air, not a single individual has been definitively unmasked as the man behind the moniker.
But that may soon change, as the U.S. Sun reports a startling new claim: a man says he knows the true identity of D.B. Cooper, because he received a confession from none other than his own mother.
No, Richard “Rick” McCoy III isn’t claiming that his mom was the skyjacker who daringly dove from the plane clutching all that cash. Rather, he firmly believes the mystery man is his father, Richard Floyd McCoy Jr., a Vietnam veteran and seasoned skydiver.
Rick says that it was his mother, Karen McCoy, who stood as his father’s accomplice. In a series of candid disclosures, Karen McCoy allegedly revealed to her children that she assisted in orchestrating not just the most notorious skyjacking in history, but also an additional one, confessing she “helped plan both of his heists.”
Of course, only one heist was ever attributed to D.B. Cooper, who actually called himself “Dan Cooper,” according to Biography. The other crime that Rick McCoy references has unequivocally been credited to his dad, Richard. Unlike Cooper’s unsolved caper, Richard McCoy’s skyjacking on April 7, 1972, led to his quick capture just three days later.
After his arrest, Richard was sentenced to 45 years in prison, “but escaped after two years and was killed in 1974 in a shootout with cops in Virginia,” per the Sun. According to their report, Rick has even provided DNA evidence to the FBI in hopes of finally resolving the long-standing mystery of D.B. Cooper’s identity. Rick had previously refrained from collaborating with the Bureau, choosing to wait until after his mother’s death in December 2020.
So, that should solve it, right? Since law enforcement seemingly has a Cooper confession, that means we can answer the question, “What happened to D.B. Cooper?” with, “We shot him 52 years ago! Case closed!”
Except, not quite. It’s going to take much more than a confession to truly identify D.B. Cooper. This alleged new lead will need to be subject to heavy scrutiny. Why? Because if you’re inclined to take a D.B. Cooper confession at face value, then it would appear as though the fateful Flight 305 had more hijackers on board than passengers, as Rick McCoy is hardly the first person to claim a Cooper confirmation.
The 6 Other D.B. Cooper Confessors
On Thanksgiving Eve 1971, the man we now call D.B. Cooper “used a bomb threat to hijack a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle,” according to Biography. He demanded “$200,000 in $20 bills” as well as four parachutes. After his terms were met, he jumped from the aircraft, never to be seen again.
In 2016, with no announced solution for who was behind the famously misstated alias, “the FBI said it was closing its investigation.” However, the U.S. Sun also reports that the FBI has “quietly reopened” the case, in relation to the new McCoy leads.
Based on eyewitness statements, the FBI described Cooper as a “white male, [6-foot-1], 170-175 pounds, age-mid-forties, olive complexion, brown eyes, black hair, conventional cut, parted on left.” With more than a half-century passing since that middle-aged man pulled off his heist, it’s likely that whoever made away with all that money won’t see a jail cell before they skydive off of this mortal coil.
What isn’t so certain is that the mastermind behind the famous NORJAK heist carried their secret to the grave. So let’s meet six more possible D.B. Coopers, who may or may not have told the truth when they confessed to the legendary crime.
D.B. Cooper Confessor #1 Bryant “Jack” Coffelt
Would you believe that D.B. Cooper has a connection to Abraham Lincoln? Would it stretch credibility to think that the individual who famously parachuted from Flight 305—his only remnants being a “clip-on necktie and eight cigarette butts”—also served as both chauffeur and companion to Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, the great-grandson of the 16th President of the United States? If this tale seems plausible to you, then you just might have been an ideal target for the notorious swindler Bryant “Jack” Coffelt. And you certainly wouldn’t have been alone.
In 1972, Coffelt reached out to his former cellmate, a man named James Brown (not “The Godfather of Soul” James Brown) with a confession that he was behind the D.B. Cooper hijacking. As the book NORJAK: The Investigation of D.B. Cooper lays out, Coffelt claimed he landed near Mount Hood, injuring himself and losing the money in the process. He then burned his parachute with magnesium powder and fled in a Jeep he had stashed nearby.
At Coffelt’s urging, Brown pursued a movie deal for this dubious confession. FBI records show that the Bureau was aware of Coffelt’s claims, as well as Brown’s assertion that they had embarked on a camping expedition to retrieve the missing money, though they returned without a dime. But the particulars provided by Coffelt and Brown about the incident didn’t match up with confidential case details, leading both the FBI and Ralph Himmelsbach, the original head investigator of the case and author of NORJAK, to suspect that Coffelt, a known scam artist, was merely attempting to pull another con.
D.B. Cooper Confessor #2 Duane L. Weber
It’s quite likely that Duane L. Weber harbored some secrets. As a World War II veteran with a post-war record of incarceration spanning over 20 years for crimes like forgery and burglary, it stands to reason that a man with such a checkered past might have some skeletons in his closet.
So when Jo Weber heard her husband’s confession from his Florida hospital bed during his final days, as reported by CBS News, she may not have been entirely surprised.
“He says, ‘Come here. Come closer.’ He wanted me about two feet from his face,” Jo Weber told CBS News. “He says, ‘I have a secret to tell you.’ I said, ‘What?’ He says, ‘I’m Dan Cooper.’”
The bombshell confession meant little to Jo at first. She didn’t know who “Dan Cooper” was. But over time, CBS News reported, she began to put together the pieces:
“Jo recalled the sleep-talking nightmare Duane had about ‘leaving finger prints on a plane,’ an old knee injury he claimed he got from jumping out of a plane, the local library book on D.B. Cooper with Duane Weber’s handwriting in the margins.”
However, the problem with Weber’s confession is that if he claimed to have left fingerprints on the plane during the NORJAK heist, they weren’t his own. The prints and DNA found on the plane didn’t match Weber’s, leading the FBI to rule him out as a suspect based on this evidence.
D.B. Cooper Confessor #3 Barbara Dayton
The description of D.B. Cooper that every FBI agent and amateur sleuth has been relying on for 52 years starts with “white male.” This detail has been one of the few consistent elements accepted in the Cooper case—but maybe that’s why they’ve never caught the culprit.
Geoffrey Gray’s Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper includes the story of Barbara Dayton. The aviation enthusiast, World War II veteran, and U.S. Merchant Marine, who died in 2002, may have been the first person to undergo gender reassignment surgery in the state of Washington, in 1969.
Dayton purportedly made a bold confession to her friend Ron Forman and his wife, claiming that two years after undergoing a gender reassignment surgery, Dayton boarded a plane while presenting as a male, altered her voice, and carried out the greatest unsolved aviation heist ever. Dayton, who had been denied a commercial pilot’s license, allegedly sought revenge on the airline industry with this act and proclaimed to have hidden all the stolen money in a cistern in Woodburn, Oregon.
At least, that’s what Dayton said until she realized that the government was still ready, willing, and able to prosecute whoever committed the hijacking. Then, she swiftly recanted her confession and swore she had made the whole thing up. To date, there has been no actual evidence linking Dayton to the crime.
D.B. Cooper Confessor #4 William Pratt Gossett
What did your father give you for your 21st birthday? A car? A savings bond? Your first legal beer? How about the keys to a safety deposit box at a bank in Vancouver that he claimed was full of money stolen during a plane hijacking?
If you answered “yes” to that final one, then hello to you, Greg Gossett. We have some questions.
According to an ABC News article from 2008, Greg Gossett claimed that on his 21st birthday, his father, William, showed him two keys for a safety deposit box, claiming that within that box was the money from the D.B. Cooper heist, which he himself had committed. “He said that I could never tell anybody until after he died,” Greg said. Greg’s brother, Kirk, also claimed their dad told the story several times: “He had the type of temperament to do something like this.”
But it seems the FBI requires more concrete evidence than someone’s temperament and an old family tale. “There is not one link to the D.B. Cooper case other than the statements (Gossett) made to someone,” FBI Special Agent Larry Carr said in the ABC News piece.
But would William Gossett, a man who “worked as a radio talk-show host in Salt Lake City, where he moderated discussions about the paranormal” really make up a story like that? Surely, there’s an easy way to prove the story. Greg Gossett merely needs to take that key to Vancouver and open the box that’s apparently filled with bills with serial numbers the FBI can verify.
It’s been more than 15 years since that ABC News story, and it doesn’t appear anyone has bothered to check that alleged safety deposit box.
D.B. Cooper Confessor #5 Walter R. Reca
D.B. Cooper enthusiasts are quite familiar with the name Walter Reca. Compared to other alleged confessions to being D.B. Cooper, often told vaguely to friends or relatives, Reca’s case sticks out. In his confession, the former paratrooper specifically described how he pulled off the heist—and anyone can hear it. Reca’s close friend, Carl Laurin, recorded his confession and released it to the public via the Daily Mail.
Laurin, who wrote D.B. Cooper & Me: A Criminal, a Spy, My Best Friend, claimed he had additional evidence beyond the audio recordings. Oregon Live reported that Laurin possessed documents detailing how he allegedly used a large portion of Reca’s $200,000 heist money. As for the “Spy” in the book’s title, Laurin contended that after the heist, Reca served as a high-level covert intelligence operative for various governments, as noted by the Daily Mail.
In Reca’s version of events, after jumping from the plane, he landed in Cle Elum, Washington, where he went to a roadside diner and asked a dump truck driver to give his friend directions to the diner over the phone.
Decades after the alleged encounter, Laurin said he found Jeff Osiadacz, who reportedly recalled a man at a diner requesting that he provide directions to someone else on the phone. This man, similar to Walter Reca, did not match the sketched composite of D.B. Cooper. This discrepancy is offered as a reason why Osiadacz remembered the unusual diner meeting for so long, yet never mentioned it in connection with the D.B. Cooper case.
But many skeptics find Osiadacz’s memory hard to believe, especially since Cle Elum is over 150 miles from D.B. Cooper’s presumed landing area, given the aircraft’s position during his jump. King5.com highlights these and other inconsistencies, casting doubt on the purported confession. Reca may have the most thorough and detailed confession, but within those details is room for reasonable doubt.
D.B. Cooper Confessor #6 Robert Rackstraw
Hijacking a plane and parachuting away with $200,000, hoping to never be caught, is a wildly risky move. And if a disposition for wildly risky moves is key to profiling potential D.B. Cooper suspects, then Robert Rackstraw should be a prime candidate The pilot and Vietnam veteran was on U.S. law enforcement’s radar in 1977, when he was “suspected of kiting checks for $75,000,” the Daily Mail notes. Yet, he managed to elude capture and flee the country.
Now, leaving the U.S. for Iran in the late 1970s to “teach the Shah’s men how to fly helicopters” during the 1978 Qom protests—a precursor to the Iranian Revolution—is an entirely new level of death-defying. Rackstraw was eventually extradited back to the U.S. after authorities discovered 14 rifles and 150 pounds of dynamite in his storage units.
Then, of course, there’s his arrest for the alleged murder of his stepfather, a charge for which he was later acquitted.
That’s when Rackstraw decided the only real course of action left for a man who had generated that much heat from the Feds was to die himself. So Rackstraw faked his own death, by pretending to crash his plane into Monterey Bay.
Rackstraw was never formally linked to the D.B. Cooper case by any law enforcement agency, but author and amateur investigator Tom Colbert went to great effort to prove that Rackstraw was the man behind the heist.
Colbert pressured the FBI to release its D.B. Cooper case files via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and utilized this information to build his case against Rackstraw. He highlighted letters sent to The Seattle Times, The New York Times, The L.A. Times, and The Washington Post, allegedly from Cooper himself. While some wrote these off as hoaxes, Colbert argued that they were, in fact, coded admissions of guilt from Rackstraw.
Indeed, Rackstraw frequently suggested he was D.B. Cooper. He even said it to Colbert’s face. In Colbert’s 2016 HISTORY Channel documentary series, D.B. Cooper: Case Closed?, Rackstraw is captured on camera telling Colbert, “I told everybody I was,” after Colbert proposed to pay him $20,000 for the storytelling rights to his life.
But Rackstraw was simply confirming that he had claimed to be D.B. Cooper, not that he actually was the skyjacker. This is a distinction he doubled down on when the surge of interest from the HISTORY series led to attention Rackstraw found unwelcome. “It’s a lot of [expletive],” he told PEOPLE following the show’s airing, and he later said the notoriety cost him a job. Rackstraw passed away in 2019, having firmly denied any involvement in the D.B. Cooper case until the end.
This story is a collaboration with Biography.com.
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克魯格門教授這篇短小精悍的評論，可以說是「罵人不帶髒字」的典範」(請見本欄上一篇)。他所引用的卡爾森先生是美國頭號「援嘴」(該文附註1)。克魯格門教授把「眼見為憑」這句成語中的兩個字移形換位，做為他這篇短評的標題 -- 「以信為真」；可見其畫龍點睛的功力。
以下摘錄克魯格門教授大作中三句精彩的文字並略做評論。
Perceptions on issues from immigration to crime to the state of the economy are driven by political positions rather than the other way around.
用孫中山先生的定義：「政治是管理眾人的事」；一個使用(工具)理性來處理眾人/公共事務的人；或者說，一個以解決問題為優先考量的人；應該根據對「現實情況」的理解(上文中的Perceptions)，來制定「政策」(上文中的political positions)。但從克魯格門教授的分析來看，目前美國(共和黨)選民的行為卻是：根據「政治立場」來理解「現實情況」；也就是說，戴上一付有色眼鏡來看世界。
… any discussion of economic sentiment that doesn’t take partisanship into account is missing a key part of the story.
這段話強調美國輿論和部份選民對經濟議題的了解，是從「黨派角度」而來，而非「現實情況」。
How are we going to function as a country when large numbers of people just see a different reality from the rest of us?
這句話語重心長，它也顯示了當下美國社會和政治的難局。
克魯格門教授大作的主旨是：根據犯罪和經濟兩個議題的「民調數據」，指出美國(共和黨)選民的「認知偏差」和「認知障礙」。在我看來，他把矛頭指向「美國(共和黨)選民」，未嘗不是「黨派性」在作祟。
我對以上兩個現象很有興趣。在網路上搜尋了一下，找到關於「認知偏差」和「認知障礙」的中文成語有：
1) 「囿於成見」、「固執己見」、「一偏之見」、「世俗之見」、「書生之見」；
2) 「以管窺天」、「以蠡測海」、「坐井觀天」、「夏蟲語冰」、「少見多怪」；
3) 「先入為主」、「視而不見」、「一葉障木」、「見樹不見林」、「聽見風就是雨」；
4) 「見人見智」、「瞎子摸象」；
5) 「門戶之見」、「入主出奴 」；
6) 「亡鈇疑鄰」(《說符--34》)、「齊人攫金」(《說符--36》)、「安於所習，毀所不見」等等。
以上自然沒有涵蓋所有相關成語；它們也只是我望文生義的分類，是否適當有待各位指正。
建議：心理系或中文系的學生，可以用上述方向寫篇碩、博士論文，研究、研究中國典籍裏對這兩個「認知」課題的看法和理論。
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以信為真 -- Paul Krugman
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索引：
amenities：便利設施，生活福利設施
Carlson, Tucker：卡爾森，美國頭號「援嘴」(該文附註1)
euphoria：狂喜，亢奮
jaundiced：狹隘的，刻薄的，此處為：(因嫉妒或從前不愉快的經歷而對世事)有偏見的，(因患黃疸而)面色發黃的。
obsequious：巴結的，諂媚的，卑躬屈膝的，低三下四的
opulent：豐裕的，豐富的，豐饒的，奢侈的，華麗的，豪華的，富麗堂皇的
partisanship：黨派性
Potemkin villages：波坦金村莊，搭建出來的、自欺欺人的政治門面工程
ramshackle：要垮掉的，搖搖欲墜的，東倒西歪的，行將解體的，組織混亂的，組織鬆散的;
spiffy-looking：時髦的，吸引人的，令人愉快的，一塵不染的
Believing Is Seeing
Of Moscow, New York and partisan perception
(從對莫斯科、紐約的觀感看黨派觀點)
Paul Krugman
What was most startling about Tucker Carlson’s recent trip to Russia wasn’t his obsequious interview with Vladimir Putin but his gushing days afterward over how wonderful a place Moscow is. But then again, he was a special guest of the country that invented Potemkin villages (even if the original story is dubious), and making sure he saw only good stuff must have been easy.
Imagine, for example, that you brought people to New York and made sure that all they saw was the Upper East Side near the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They’d come away with the impression that New York is a very clean, spiffy-looking city.
The truth is that while parts of Moscow offer a small elite an opulent lifestyle, Russia as a whole is more than a bit ramshackle. Around a fifth of homes don’t even have indoor toilets. For many Russians, life is poor, nasty, brutish and short: Life expectancy is substantially lower than in the United States, even though America’s life expectancy has fallen and lags that of other advanced countries.
Anyway, while praising Moscow, Carlson trashed American cities, especially New York, where, he said, “you can’t use your subway” because “it’s too dangerous.” No doubt, there are some New Yorkers afraid to take the subway. Somehow, however, there were around 1.7 billion riders each year before the pandemic — yes, I take the subway all the time — and ridership, though still depressed by the rise of working from home, has been recovering rapidly.
It’s possible, of course, that Carlson has never ridden the New York subway, or at least not since the days when New York had about six times as many homicides each year as it does nowadays. In this he might be like Donald Trump, who probably hasn’t flown commercial in decades, declaring the other day that America’s airports — which have annoyingly long lines at security but have far more amenities than they used to — make us look like a “third world nation.”
Oh, and while New York’s subway stations don’t have chandeliers like Moscow’s and sometimes do have rats, the system does its job and, as I’ve written, plays a hugely positive role in the life of the city.
But right-wingers seem immovable in their conviction that New York is an urban hellscape — only 22 percent of Republicans consider it a safe place to live in or visit — despite the fact that it’s one of the safest cities in America.
More generally, there’s a striking disconnect between Americans’ perceptions about crime where they live — relatively few, from either party, consider it a serious problem — and their much more pessimistic assessment of the nation as a whole. This disconnect exists for both parties but is much wider for Republicans:
兩黨人士對地區性和全國性犯罪情況的觀感 (請至原網頁參看統計圖；需訂閱)
This is part of a broader phenomenon. America has become a country in which, for many people, especially but not only on the political right, believing is seeing. Perceptions on issues from immigration to crime to the state of the economy are driven by political positions rather than the other way around.
To take a subject I’ve obviously spent a lot of time on: During the Biden years, most measures of consumer sentiment have been much lower than you might have expected, given standard measures of the economy’s performance. This is still true, even though sentiment has risen substantially over the past few months. There’s practically a whole genre of analysis devoted to arguing that people are actually right to feel bad about the economy because of something or other.
So here’s a pro tip: Ignore anyone who says that Americans are down on the economy without noting that the reality is that Republicans are down on the economy.
I wrote about this last week, but let me make the point again using slightly different data and graphics. The widely cited Michigan survey of consumers provides data on sentiment broken down by partisan affiliation, although it has been a regular monthly feature only since 2017. I prefer to focus on the current economic conditions index, since people might legitimately have different expectations, depending on who’s in charge. So here’s what this index looks like, using three-month moving averages to cancel some of the statistical noise:
兩黨人士對美國經濟情況的觀感 (請至原網頁參看統計圖；需訂閱)
Democrats appear to feel that the economy now is about as good as it was in late 2019, which is what you might expect, given that the unemployment rate is about the same and inflation only slightly higher. Republicans, however, have gone from euphoria about the economy under Donald Trump to a very jaundiced view under President Biden.
What about independents? Never mind: For the most part, they lean toward one party or the other and behave like partisans.
Now, this comparison doesn’t prove that negative perceptions of the economy are all about partisanship — maybe things really are somewhat bad and Democratic partisanship is holding the numbers up — although Democrats don’t seem to experience the kind of mood swings when the White House changes hands that Republicans do. But at the very least, any discussion of economic sentiment that doesn’t take partisanship into account is missing a key part of the story.
As I wrote last week, the believing-is-seeing nature of public opinion may mean that perceptions of the economy, and perhaps crime, won’t matter very much for this year’s election: Americans who believe that things are terrible probably wouldn’t have voted Democratic, no matter what. But to take a longer view: How are we going to function as a country when large numbers of people just see a different reality from the rest of us?
Quick Hits
Dictators lie about their economies.
News reporting on the economy has become more negative.
Who believes in the great-replacement theory?
By a wide margin, Trump voters say that 2023 was OK or better for them personally but bad or terrible for the country.
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美國大使級外交官被控為古巴間諜 – J. Goodman/J. Mustian
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值得思考的三點：
1) 羅夏先生為古巴「服務」的動機。
2) 美國國安機構真的無能到容許被曝光的高級間諜隱藏近20年？
3) 美國國安機構是否利用羅夏先生傳遞假情報？
Key points of AP report into missed red flags surrounding accused US diplomat-turned-Cuban spy
JOSHUA GOODMAN/JIM MUSTIAN, 02/15/24
MIAMI (AP) — Friends and colleagues of Manuel Rocha knew him for an aristocratic, almost regal, bearing that was fitting for an Ivy League-educated career U.S. diplomat who held top posts across Latin America.
So former CIA operative Félix Rodríguez was dubious in 2006 when a defected Cuban Army lieutenant colonel showed up at his Miami home and told him Rocha was actually a Cuban spy.
“No one believed him,” Rodríguez said, adding he passed the tip along to a similarly skeptical CIA. “We all thought it was a smear.”
That exchange took on new relevance after Rocha was arrested in December and charged with serving as a secret agent of Cuba since the 1970s. In the weeks since, FBI and State Department investigators have been working to decipher the case’s biggest missing piece: exactly what the longtime diplomat may have given up to Cuba.
Here are some key findings from an Associated Press investigation into Rocha's alleged betrayal and the missed red flags that could have helped him avoid scrutiny for decades.
WHO IS MANUEL ROCHA?
The Justice Department's case against Rocha dates back to 1973, the year he graduated from Yale. The FBI says he traveled to Chile that year and became a “great friend” of Cuba’s intelligence agency, the General Directorate of Intelligence, or DGI.
Authorities also are scrutinizing the first of Rocha's three marriages that began around that time, according to those who have been questioned by the FBI.
Rocha was born in Colombia and at age 10 moved with his widowed mother and two siblings to New York City. A talented soccer player with a sharp intellect, he won a scholarship for minorities in 1965 to attend The Taft School, an elite boarding school in Connecticut, catapulting him overnight into a refined world of American wealth.
But as one of the few minorities at the school, Rocha says he suffered discrimination, something that friends now suspect may have fueled a grudge that led him to admire Fidel Castro’s revolution.
WHAT DID HE DO FOR CUBA?
Prosecutors have ranked Rocha's betrayal among the most brazen in U.S. foreign service history. But the 15-count indictment offers few details about what he allegedly did for Cuba.
What is known is that an undercover FBI agent secretly recorded Rocha praising Fidel Castro as “El Comandante” and calling his work for Cuba’s communist government “more than a grand slam” against the U.S. “enemy.”
One former colleague, Liliana Ayalde, recalled a 2002 controversy in which Rocha, then serving as ambassador to Bolivia, intervened in that country’s presidential election to help a Castro protégé.
Rocha warned Bolivians that voting for a narcotrafficker — a not-so veiled reference to coca grower-turned- presidential candidate Evo Morales — would lead the U.S. to cut off all foreign assistance.
The comments amounted to Rocha's biggest known favor for Cuba. Ayalde, who later served as U.S. ambassador to Paraguay and Brazil, now wonders whether it was an act of self-sabotage, done at the direction of a foreign power to further damage the U.S.’ standing in Latin America.
“Now that I look back,” she said, “it was all part of a plan.”
Rocha’s attorney did not respond to messages seeking comment.
WHAT RED FLAGS WERE MISSED?
Authorities are conducting a damage assessment that's expected to take years, retracing Rocha's steps and speaking with former colleagues and officials about their interactions with him.
Among those they interviewed is Rodríguez, the former CIA operative who participated in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba and the execution of revolutionary “Che” Guevara.
Rodríguez told the AP that he believed at the time he received the tip from the Cuban defector in 2006 it was an attempt to discredit a fellow anti-communist crusader.
“I want to look him in the eye and ask him why he did it. He had access to everything," an angry Rodríguez said.
It wasn’t just Rodríguez’s tipster — whom he refused to identify to the AP but says was recently interviewed by the FBI. Officials told the AP that as early 1987, the CIA was aware Castro had a “super mole” burrowed deep inside the U.S. government.
Some now suspect it could have been Rocha and that since at least 2010 he may have been on a short list given to the FBI of possible Cuban spies high-up in foreign policy circles.
The FBI and CIA declined to comment, and the State Department didn’t respond to requests.
“This is a monumental screw-up,” said Peter Romero, a former assistant secretary of state for Latin America who worked with Rocha. “All of us are doing a lot of soul searching and nobody can come up with anything. He did an amazing job covering his tracks.”
Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/
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川普因誹謗罪被判賠償8千3百萬美元 -- Benjamin Weiser等
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Jury Orders Trump to Pay Carroll $83.3 Million After Years of Insults
The ex-president was found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, but called her a liar. The award was “a huge defeat for every bully who has tried to keep a woman down,” she said.
Benjamin Weiser, Jonah E. Bromwich, Maria Cramer and Kate Christobek, 01/26/24
Former President Donald J. Trump was ordered by a Manhattan jury on Friday to pay $83.3 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of a decades-old rape, attacks he continued in social media posts, at news conferences and even in the midst of the trial itself.
Ms. Carroll’s lawyers had argued that a large award was necessary to stop Mr. Trump from continuing to attack her. After less than three hours of deliberation, the jury responded by awarding Ms. Carroll $65 million in punitive damages, finding that Mr. Trump had acted with malice. On one recent day, he made more than 40 derisive posts about Ms. Carroll on his Truth Social website.
On Friday, Mr. Trump had already left the courtroom for the day when the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, called in the nine-member jury shortly after 4:30 p.m., warning the lawyers, “We will have no outbursts.” The verdict was delivered nine minutes later to utter silence in the courtroom.
In addition to the $65 million, jurors awarded Ms. Carroll $18.3 million in compensatory damages for her suffering. Mr. Trump’s lawyers slumped in their seats as the dollar figures were read aloud. The jury was dismissed, and Ms. Carroll, 80, embraced her lawyers. Minutes later, she walked out of the courthouse arm in arm with her legal team, beaming for the cameras.
“This is a great victory for every woman who stands up when she’s been knocked down and a huge defeat for every bully who has tried to keep a woman down,” Ms. Carroll said in a statement, thanking her lawyers effusively.
Mr. Trump, who had walked out of the courtroom earlier during the closing argument by Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, said in a Truth Social post that the verdict was “absolutely ridiculous.”
“Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon,” he said, pledging to appeal. “They have taken away all First Amendment Rights.”
Notably, he did not attack Ms. Carroll.
Outside the courthouse, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, combined complaints about how Judge Kaplan had handled the case with sloganeering, echoing Mr. Trump’s claims that he was being ill-treated by a corrupt system. “We did not win today,” she told reporters, “but we will win.”
Mr. Trump’s appeal will likely keep Ms. Carroll from receiving the money she is owed anytime soon.
Ms. Carroll’s lead lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, said the verdict “proves that the law applies to everyone in our country, even the rich, even the famous, even former presidents.”
The verdict vastly eclipsed the $5 million a separate jury awarded Ms. Carroll last spring after finding that Mr. Trump had sexually abused her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and had defamed her in a Truth Social post in October 2022. The verdict came after Mr. Trump attended nearly every day of the latest trial, and testified, briefly, this week.
Judge Kaplan, who presided over both trials, had ruled that the jury’s findings last May would carry over to the current one, limiting the second jury’s focus solely to damages. Mr. Trump, who is running for president again, was not allowed to stray beyond that issue in his testimony. On Thursday, the judge, out of the jury’s presence, asked Ms. Habba for a preview of that testimony. “I want to know everything he is going to say,” the judge said.
In the end, Mr. Trump, by his actions and words, was his own worst enemy. During the trial, he attacked Ms. Carroll online and insulted her last week at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. Inside the courtroom, the judge warned Mr. Trump that he might be excluded after Ms. Carroll’s lawyers complained that he was muttering “con job” and “witch hunt” loudly enough for jurors to hear.
“You saw how he has behaved through this trial,” Ms. Crowley said. “You heard him. You saw him stand up and walk out of this courtroom while Ms. Kaplan was speaking. Rules don’t apply to Donald Trump.”
There could be more financial damage to come for Mr. Trump. He is still awaiting the outcome of a civil fraud trial brought by New York’s attorney general that concluded this month. The attorney general, Letitia James, has asked a judge to levy a penalty of about $370 million on Mr. Trump.
The former president is also contending with four criminal indictments, at least one of which is expected to go to trial before the November election. His civil cases will soon be behind him, but the greater threat — 91 felony charges, in all — still looms.
The verdict on Friday provided a coda to two weeks of political success for Mr. Trump. He completed an Iowa and New Hampshire sweep in the first two presidential nominating states of 2024 and cemented himself as the likely Republican nominee.
He has used his courtroom appearances as a fundamental element of his campaign, painting himself as a political martyr targeted on all sides by Democratic law enforcement officials, as well as by Ms. Carroll. His loss to her will most likely sting for some time.
During the trial, Ms. Carroll testified that Mr. Trump’s repeated taunts and lashing out had mobilized many of his supporters. She said she had faced an onslaught of attacks on social media and in her email inbox that frightened her and “shattered” her reputation as a well-regarded advice columnist for Elle magazine.
Ms. Carroll told the jury she had been attacked on Twitter and Facebook. “I was living in a new universe,” she said.
The trial took about five days over two weeks, and was marked by repeated clashes between Mr. Trump’s lawyers and Judge Kaplan, who is known for his command of the courtroom. The former president’s testimony was highly anticipated for days, but on Thursday, he was on the stand for less than five minutes, and his testimony was notable for how little he ended up saying.
On Friday, Ms. Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, asked the jury in a crisp and methodical summation to award Ms. Carroll enough money to help her repair her reputation and compensate her for the emotional harm Mr. Trump’s attacks had inflicted.
Ms. Kaplan also emphasized that Mr. Trump could afford significant punitive damages, which come into play when a defendant’s conduct is thought to have been particularly malicious. She cited a video deposition excerpt played for the jury in which he estimated that his brand alone was worth “maybe $10 billion” and that the value of various of his real estate properties was $14 billion.
“Donald Trump is worth billions of dollars,” Ms. Kaplan told the jury.
“The law says that you can consider Donald Trump’s wealth as well as his malicious and spiteful continuing conduct in making that assessment,” Ms. Kaplan said, adding, “Now is the time to make him pay for it, and now is the time to make him pay for it dearly.”
Mr. Trump was not present to hear her. After scoffing, muttering and shaking his head throughout the first few minutes of Ms. Kaplan’s closing argument, Mr. Trump rose from the defense table without saying anything, turned and left the 26th-floor courtroom. Ms. Kaplan continued to address the jury as if the stark breach of decorum had not occurred.
“The record will reflect that Mr. Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom,” Judge Kaplan said.
Mr. Trump returned about 75 minutes later, when his lawyer Ms. Habba began her summation.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers cast Ms. Carroll as a fame-hungry writer who was trying to raise a diminishing profile when she first made her accusation against Mr. Trump in a 2019 book excerpt in New York magazine about an encounter she has said traumatized her for decades.
Ms. Habba, her voice loud and heavy, her tone mocking and sarcastic, argued that Ms. Carroll’s reputation, far from being damaged, had improved as a result of the president’s statements. And she said Ms. Carroll’s lawyers had not proved that the deluge of threats and defamatory statements the writer received were a response to Mr. Trump’s statements.
“No causation,” Ms. Habba thundered, adding, “President Trump has no more control over the thoughts and feelings of social media users than he does the weather.”
Ms. Crowley, in an animated and passionate rebuttal to Ms. Habba, rejected her contention that Mr. Trump’s statements did not prompt the threats Ms. Carroll received. “There couldn’t be clearer proof of causation,” Ms. Crowley said.
The jurors remained attentive during the closing arguments. One watched Ms. Kaplan intently during much of her summation; others alternated between looking at the lawyers, staring at the exhibits on the screens and taking notes.
During the summations, Mr. Trump’s account on his Truth Social website made about 16 posts in 15 minutes mostly attacking Judge Kaplan and Ms. Carroll, with his familiar insults — the kinds of insults that have now become very costly.
Ms. Kaplan said in her closing argument that the only thing that could make Mr. Trump stop his attacks would be to make it too expensive for him to continue.
The jury, in its verdict, appears to have agreed.
Olivia Bensimon, Anusha Bayya, Maggie Haberman, Shane Goldmacher and Michael Gold contributed reporting.
Benjamin Weiser is a reporter covering the Manhattan federal courts. He has long covered criminal justice, both as a beat and investigative reporter. Before joining The Times in 1997, he worked at The Washington Post. More about Benjamin Weiser
Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney's office, state criminal courts in Manhattan and New York City's jails. More about Jonah E. Bromwich
Maria Cramer is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and crime in the city and surrounding areas. More about Maria Cramer
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《兩個總統和兩個美國的大選》讀後
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《從科學理論了解美國政治立場派別化》對造成「兩個美國」現象的原因做了理論分析 (本欄2024/01/23)。這篇文章則對此「現象」做了深度報導。兩文合看可以幫助我們「了解美國」。
略做觀察：
1) 集體名詞當專有名詞用的謬誤
這個謬誤源自把事務「簡單化」的傾向，以及不願面對複雜情況的懶惰。
請見原文：”… when Red and Blue Americas are moving farther and farther apart geographically, philosophically, financially, educationally and informationally.”
以及緊接著的：
”Americans do not just disagree with each other, they live in different realities, each with its own self-reinforcing Internet-and-media ecosphere.”
2) 政治是爭奪資源分配權的活動
這個定義也可以用「凡政策必涉利益」這個命題來表達。
請見原文：”And this realignment is largely based on the winners and losers in the new 21st century digital economy, and the best predictor of whether you are a winner or loser is your level of education.”
「輸」、「贏」的判準在上面這段話的脈絡中是「收入」或「薪資」。以及這一段：
Trump has transformed the GOP into the party of the white working class, rooted strongly in rural communities and resentful of globalization, while Biden’s Democrats have increasingly become the party of the more highly educated and economically better off, who have thrived in the information age.
「全球化」在上面這段話的脈絡中不僅僅指一個「社會現象」；它指的是：和這個「現象」相關的「政策」、「制度」、和「措施」等等。後者直接影響個人的「收入」，從而「利益」。
以上引述的兩段原文都提到「教育程度」。「教育程度」是社會階層的「函數」。也就是說，80 - 90%的情況下，一個人的「出身」已經預先設定了她/他的「教育程度」。套句俗話：「龍生龍，鳳生鳳，老鼠生的兒子只能學打洞」。過去美國學者們津津樂道，引以為傲的「社階層流動性會」，目前已經幾乎淪為一攤死水。這是美國社會日趨派別化或二分化的根本原因之一。
一個相關的有趣議題：大概十年前我跟一位朋友談到：為什麼台灣「保守派」和「自由派」的界線不分明；也缺乏有活力的「保守主義」或「自由主義」。我當時的直接反應是：台灣沒有根深蒂固的「既得利益」階層，所以沒有值得一提的「保守派」和「保守主義」；台灣只有「貪汙派」和「(混水)摸魚派」以及相對應的「主義」。
3) 「認同政治」
請見原文：“It is at least partly about ideology, yes, but also fundamentally about race and religion and culture and economics and democracy and retribution and most of all, perhaps, about identity.”
請參看本欄《《從科學理論了解美國政治立場派別化》評介》，第1.2小節、1.3小節、以及2節-2)小段等處的評論。
4) 中、美角力展望
我在美國生活了26年；總的來說，我接觸到的美國人中，95%都很友善、熱誠、和樂於幫助。讀了這篇文章，我真的為大多數美國老百姓感到婉惜和悲哀。另一方面，站在中國人的立場，展望中、美角力，我或多或少免不了幸災樂禍的欣喜。
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兩個總統和兩個美國的大選 -- Peter Baker
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請參看本欄《從科學理論了解美國政治立場派別化》及其《評介》(2024/01/23)。
The Looming Contest Between Two Presidents and Two Americas
The general election matchup that seems likely between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump is about fundamentally disparate visions of the nation.
Peter Baker, 01/25/24
WASHINGTON — Each of them has sat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, signed bills into law, appointed judges, bartered with foreign leaders and ordered the armed forces into combat. They both know what it is like to be the most powerful person on the planet.
Yet the general election matchup that seems likely after this week’s New Hampshire primary represents more than the first-in-a-century contest between two men who have both lived in the White House. It represents the clash of two presidents of profoundly different countries, the president of Blue America versus the president of Red America.
The looming showdown between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, assuming Nikki Haley cannot pull off a Hail Mary surprise, goes beyond the binary liberal-conservative split of two political parties familiar to generations of Americans. It is at least partly about ideology, yes, but also fundamentally about race and religion and culture and economics and democracy and retribution and most of all, perhaps, about identity.
It is about two vastly disparate visions of America led by two presidents who, other than their age and the most recent entry on their résumés, could hardly be more dissimilar. Biden leads an America that, as he sees it, embraces diversity, democratic institutions and traditional norms, that considers government at its best to be a force for good in society. Trump leads an America where, in his view, the system has been corrupted by dark conspiracies and the undeserving are favored over hardworking everyday people.
Deep divisions in the United States are not new; indeed, they can be traced back to the Constitutional Convention and the days of John Adams versus Thomas Jefferson. But according to some scholars, they have rarely reached the levels seen today, when Red and Blue Americas are moving farther and farther apart geographically, philosophically, financially, educationally and informationally.
Americans do not just disagree with each other, they live in different realities, each with its own self-reinforcing Internet-and-media ecosphere. The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was either an outrageous insurrection in service of an unconstitutional power grab by a proto-fascist or a legitimate protest that may have gotten out of hand but has been exploited by the other side and turned patriots into hostages.
The two lands have radically different laws on access to abortion and guns. The partisan breakdown is so cemented in 44 states that they effectively already sit in one America or the other when it comes to the fall election. That means they will barely see one of the candidates, who will focus mainly on six battleground states that will decide the presidency.
In an increasingly tribal society, Americans describe their differences more personally. Since Trump’s election in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center, the share of Democrats who see Republicans as immoral has grown from 35% to 63% while 72% of Republicans say the same about Democrats, up from 47%. In 1960, about 4% of Americans said they would be displeased if their child married someone from the other party. By 2020, that had grown to nearly 4 in 10. Indeed, only about 4% of all marriages today are between a Republican and a Democrat.
“Today, when we think about America, we make the essential error of imagining it as a single nation, a marbled mix of red and blue people,” Michael Podhorzer, a former political director of the AFL-CIO, wrote in an essay last month. “But America has never been one nation. We are a federated republic of two nations: Red Nation and Blue Nation. This is not a metaphor; it is a geographic and historical reality.”
The current divide reflects the most significant political realignment since Republicans captured the South and Democrats the North following the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. Trump has transformed the GOP into the party of the white working class, rooted strongly in rural communities and resentful of globalization, while Biden’s Democrats have increasingly become the party of the more highly educated and economically better off, who have thrived in the information age.
“Trump was not the cause of this realignment, since it has been building since the early 1990s,” said Douglas B. Sosnik, who was a White House counselor to President Bill Clinton and studies political trends. But “his victory in 2016 and his presidency accelerated these trends. And this realignment is largely based on the winners and losers in the new 21st century digital economy, and the best predictor of whether you are a winner or loser is your level of education.”
The leaders of these two Americas each wield power in their own way. As the current occupant of the White House, Biden has all the advantages and disadvantages of incumbency. But Trump has been acting as an incumbent in a fashion too — he never conceded his 2020 defeat and the majority of his supporters, polls show, believe that he, not Biden, is the legitimate president.
Even without a formal office, Trump has set the agenda for Republicans in Washington and the state capitals. He encouraged the internal coup that took down House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year after he made a spending deal with Biden. He is advising the current speaker, Mike Johnson, on how to handle the impasse over border policy and security aid for Ukraine.
Many elected Republicans who once stood against Trump, with notable exceptions, have rushed to endorse him in recent weeks as his claim to the party’s presidential nomination has grown almost complete. As a result, it is hard to imagine any major policy deal coming together in Washington this year without Trump’s approval or at least his acquiescence.
The current situation has no exact analog in American history. Only twice before have two presidents faced off against each other. In 1892, former President Grover Cleveland won a rematch against President Benjamin Harrison. In 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt lost a third-party bid to depose his successor and estranged protégé, President William Howard Taft, but paved the way for victory by the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson.
Neither of those contests reflected the kind of epochal moment that scholars and political professionals see this year. When historians search for parallels, they often point to the period before the Civil War, when an industrializing North and an agrarian South were divided over slavery. While secession today is far-fetched, the fact that it nonetheless comes up in conversation among Democrats in California and Republicans in Texas from time to time indicates how divorced many Americans feel from each other.
“Whenever I mention the 1850s, everyone thinks we are going to have a civil war,” said Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian who was among a group of scholars who met recently with Biden. “I’m not saying that. It’s not predictive. But when institutions are weakened or changed or transformed the way they have, you can get perspective from history. I think people have yet to understand just how abnormal the situation is.”
Biden and Trump are both historically unpopular presidents. Biden opens his reelection year with an approval rating of just 39% in Gallup polling, the lowest of any elected president at this point going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower. The two are essentially equal in favorability, a slightly different question, with 41% expressing positive feelings about Biden compared with 42% about Trump.
But they represent different electorates. Biden is viewed favorably by 82% of Democrats but only 4% of Republicans. Trump is viewed favorably by 79% of Republicans but only 6% of Democrats.
In Sosnik’s latest analysis, Biden starts the general election with 226 likely votes in the Electoral College and Trump with 235. To get to the 270 needed for victory, one of them will have to harvest some of the 77 votes up for grab in half a dozen states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Because Biden and Trump have both served as president, Americans already know what they think about them. That will make it harder for either to define his opponent with the public the way that President George W. Bush defined John Kerry in 2004 and President Barack Obama defined Mitt Romney in 2012.
But the wild cards this year remain unique nonetheless — an 81-year-old incumbent who is already the oldest president in American history against a 77-year-old predecessor who is facing 91 felony counts in four separate criminal indictments. No one can say for sure how those dynamics will play out over the next 285 days, which Biden and Trump are already treating as the general election presidential campaign.
And while voters may already have some sense of how the winner will operate in the White House over the next four years, it is not at all clear how a divided country will respond to victory by one or the other. Rejectionism, disruption, further schism, even violence all seem possible.
As Wilentz said, “Things are not normal here. I think that’s important for people to understand.”
c.2024 The New York Times Company
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《從科學理論了解美國政治立場派別化》評介
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0. 前言
阿肯巴哈先生這篇報導/分析頗有看頭(本欄上一篇貼文)。以下略做譯述和評論。原文並無「前言」這個子標題；下一節「前言」指的是：”The case of the warring Boy Scouts”前的文字。
1. 原文簡要譯述
1.1 前言(原文無此子標題)
阿肯巴哈先生以新罕普夏州民眾為了進入川普擁擠不堪的造勢會場，冒著酷寒天氣苦等幾個小時；以及民眾一個口令一個動作的熱情；呈現他的支持者是鐵板一塊這個現實。然後引出正題：「政治立場派別化」。這一部份文字是美國報導文學的制式筆法。
接著他報導：社會科學學者們在研究這個政治和文化狀態後的主要結論：「政治立場『派別化』是政治判斷『情緒化』」的結果。
然後他提到：心理和演化過程兩個面向，做為以下文章主體鋪陳的提示。他強調：「取得資源」是以上兩個現象背後的驅動力
最後他指出：「人性」不是「政治立場派別化」的唯一原因；美國獨特的政治制度和操作方式也助長了美國「政治立場派別化」的趨勢。
1.2 童子軍相互敵視個案
這一節以心理學研究來說明：人從小時候開始，就有尋找同類和認同小圈圈(或「敵我分明」)的傾向。此處他介紹了「情緒性派別化」這個概念。最常見的表現「敵我分明」方式是怨恨和憤怒；而種族、宗教、文化等差異就順理成章的被當做劃清「敵、我」的界線/標誌。
「認同小圈圈」的一個作用是幫助人建立「自我感」。因為：「人不願意承認自己僅僅是各種『(人格)特質』的集合；很自然的，她/他會以為自己代表著一個廣泛的社會、經濟、和文化『類型』」。(以上雖然用了引號，但整段話為意譯；雙引號是我用來加強語氣。)
這裏阿肯巴哈先生提到：美國不是「議會制」而是「總統制」，導致「政治權力」由個別政黨「獨佔」；以及「選區劃分」機制兩者也使得「政治立場派別化」變本加厲。
1.3 物以類聚和派別化
原作者在這一節中以「媒體定型化」為例，討論人性「物以類聚求」和「同聲相應、同氣相求」等性向。這是大家都熟悉的道理，我就不多著墨了。
他舉了幾個類似「做賊的喊捉賊」例子，顯示人們難以覺察自己是「派別化」受害者的認知偏差。
1.4 川普利用派別化的功力
阿肯巴哈先生在這一節中以川普和他的競選文宣為例，說明政客如何利用群眾的怨恨和憤怒來操縱老百姓的情緒，加深派別化導致的對立，試圖取得政權。
2. 評論
1) 原作者把「政治權力」視為「資源」，以及從「取得資源」來分析政治活動的方法，可說和我的觀點不謀而合。
2) 自20世紀晚期以來，「認同政治」就是社會科學界的熱門話題，以及政治操盤者的拿手好戲。阿肯巴哈先生這篇文章可以幫助我們了解「認同政治」的某些面向。
3) 把這篇文章和《群眾取向路線走紅是對當前政治趨勢必須做的修正》(該欄12/26/23)與《維護自由主義的歧路》(該欄12/25/23)合看，能讓我們看清楚21世紀以來歐、美政治大戲的門道。它們也都能佐證拙作《探討民主政治》第2、3兩節中提出的分析。
本文於 修改第 3 次
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從科學理論了解美國政治立場派別化 -- Joel Achenbach
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索引(並請參看本欄下一篇《評介》)：
affective polarization：情緒性派別化
cluster：此處指：物以類聚
echo chamber：迴聲室效應，此處指：同聲相應、同氣相求
group identity：小圈子認同，小圈子定位
identify：認同，自我定位
tribalism：同族意識，「非我族類，其心必異」意識
visceral：此處指：不理性的，情緒化的，本能的
vitriol：硫酸(鹽)，礬，此處指：尖刻的話，辛辣的批評
Science is revealing why American politics are so intensely polarized
Political psychologists say they see tribalism intensifying, fueled by contempt for the other side
Joel Achenbach, 01/20/24
ATKINSON, N.H. — They stood in line for hours, in steady snow that became steady sleet, to hear the leader of their tribe.
Fresh from a major victory in Iowa, former president Donald Trump was scheduled to speak at 5 p.m. The parking lot at the country club opened at 10 a.m. The doors opened at 2 p.m., and hundreds of people were already in line. When everyone finally got inside, most had to stand tightly packed for hours more until the snowstorm-delayed candidate finally arrived just before 7 p.m.
It’s not always logistically easy being in the Trump tribe, but people stuck it out — and when instructed to turn around and express their sentiments directly to the news media, they dutifully booed and raised middle fingers.
The antagonism that Trump supporters feel toward the media is a small piece of a broader political and cultural phenomenon. This country, though politically fractious since its founding, is more polarized than ever, the rhetoric more inflammatory, the rage more likely to curdle into hate. It’s ugly out there.
As the 2024 primary season revs up, and with the political stakes this year extraordinarily high, voters are both polarized and hardly budging. Pundits expect another close election that’s a repeat of 2020. There’s not a lot of wobble on either left or right.
Social scientists have taken note of these hardening political divisions, pumping out academic articles and books that add data to what appears to be a steady rise in tribalism.
One theme emerges in much of the research: Our politics tend be more emotional now. Policy preferences are increasingly likely to be entangled with a visceral dislike of the opposition. The newly embraced academic term for this is “affective polarization.”
“It’s feelings based,” said Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University and author of “Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity.” “It’s polarization that’s based on our feelings for each other, not based on extremely divergent policy preferences.”
The tendency to form tightly knit groups has roots in evolution, according to experts in political psychology. Humans evolved in a challenging world of limited resources in which survival required cooperation — and identifying the rivals, the competitors for those resources.
“The evolution of cooperation required out-group hatred, which is really sad,” said Nicholas Christakis, a Yale sociologist and author of “Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society.”
This is just as true on today’s political stage. There are two major parties, and their contests are viewed as zero-sum outcomes. Win or lose. The presidency is the ultimate example: There are no consolation prizes for the loser.
No researcher argues that human nature is the sole, or even the primary, cause of today’s polarization. But savvy political operatives can exploit, leverage and encourage it. And those operatives are learning from their triumphs in divide-and-conquer politics.
The case of the warring Boy Scouts
People are instinctively prone to group identification.
“We wouldn’t have civilizations if we didn’t create groups. We are designed to form groups, and the only way to define a group is there has to be someone who’s not in it,” Mason said.
Experiments have revealed that “children as young as two will prefer other children randomly assigned to the same T-shirt color,” Christakis writes.
What’s most striking is that in the process of defining who is in and who is out of a group, enmity and derision can arise independently of any rational reason for it.
Mason and Christakis point to a famous-among-academics experiment from 1954. Social psychologist Muzafer Sherif took 22 Boy Scouts and separated them into two groups camping at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma. Only after a week did they learn that there was another group at the far end of the campground.
What they did next fascinated the research team. Each group developed irrational contempt for the other. The boys in the other group were seen not just as rivals, but as fundamentally flawed human beings. Only when the two groups were asked to work together to solve a common problem did they warm up to one another.
The warring Boy Scouts “have a lot more in common with today’s Democrats and Republicans than we would like to believe,” Mason writes in her book.
“In this political environment, a candidate who picks up the banner of ‘us versus them’ and ‘winning versus losing’ is almost guaranteed to tap into a current of resentment and anger across racial, religious, and cultural lines, which have recently divided neatly by party.”
Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford political psychologist who coined the term “affective polarization,” explained in a 2018 paper why people typically identify with a group.
“Homo sapiens is a social species; group affiliation is essential to our sense of self. Individuals instinctively think of themselves as representing broad socioeconomic and cultural categories rather than as distinctive packages of traits,” he wrote.
Here’s where psychology gives way to political science. The American political system may cultivate “out-group” hatred, as academics put it. One of the scarce resources in this country is political power at the highest levels of government. The country has no parliamentary system in which multiple parties form governing coalitions.
Add to this fact the redistricting that ensures there are fewer truly competitive congressional races. The two parties have inexorably moved further apart ideologically, and leaders are more likely to be punished — “primaried” — if they reach across the aisle. And because many more districts are now deeply red or blue, rather than a mix of constituencies, House members have fewer reasons to adopt moderate positions.
How sorting feeds polarization
Human nature hasn’t changed, but technology has. The fragmentation of the media has made it easier to gather information in an echo chamber, Iyengar said. He calls this “sorting.” Not only do people cluster around specific beliefs or ideas, they physically cluster, moving to neighborhoods where residents are likely to look like them and think like them.
Partisan clustering has increased even within households. In 1965, Iyengar said, only about 60 percent of married couples had the same party registration. Today, the figure is greater than 85 percent, he said.
Research shows that affective polarization is intensifying across the political spectrum. Recent survey data revealed that more than half of Republicans and Democrats view the other party as “a threat,” and nearly as many agree with the description of the other party as “evil,” Mason said.
Asked in the summer of 2022 if they agree or disagree that members of the other party “lack the traits to be considered fully human — they behave like animals,” about 30 percent in both parties agreed, Mason’s research shows.
Now, even the partisans fret about polarization.
“We’re on the verge of a civil war, without a doubt,” said Brad Rowe, 40, a Republican who attended the talk of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in Hampton, N.H., on Wednesday and is leaning toward supporting independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Some voters find the polarization confusing, because they don’t see how anyone could possibly support a candidate on the other side. That’s the sentiment of Susan and Peter Delano, both 60, who also came to see DeSantis.
“If you are voting Democrat today, you are supporting Biden. I don’t understand it,” she said.
“We see the polls. We ask: Why are they still voting Democrat?” he said.
David Fox, 60, a limo driver who waited in the frigid line to cheer for Trump in Atkinson, said he thinks President Biden is a liar who stole the 2020 election. Fox is not fond of Democrats generally.
“I think they’re very angry people. I think they don’t hold doors open for people, they don’t wave to people, they don’t say hi to people,” Fox said.
Meanwhile, there are voters who can’t believe their choice this fall may come down to Trump or Biden.
“Trump is terrifying, and Biden I don’t think is cognitively there,” Karl Schumacher, 53, said Wednesday as he waited to hear Nikki Haley in Rochester, N.Y.
Trump’s polarization powers
Though partisan vitriol is intensifying across the spectrum, Trump looms large among researchers on polarization and group identity. He has cultivated an extraordinarily devoted base of supporters who see his long list of felony indictments not as evidence of potential wrongdoing, but as proof that the elites are out to get him.
Meanwhile, his opponents, including Biden, have described him as an aspiring dictator who poses an existential threat to democracy.
Rep. Dean Phillips, a long-shot Democratic candidate on the ballot here in New Hampshire, suggested Thursday that a reelected Trump might defy the constitutional limit on presidential terms and try to remain in power: “There may not be a 2028 [election] if we allow Donald Trump to return to the White House,” Phillips said Thursday during a pitch to New Hampshire voters in Manchester.
In an interview, he explained that he thinks Trump has taken cues from dictators abroad and may try to block the transfer of power: “He’s already tried it once and now he’s on a revenge mission.”
A recent paper published in the journal Science argued that the three core ingredients of political sectarianism are “othering, aversion, and moralization.” Trump has mastered that recipe. He activates emotional responses in his followers by telling them that they are threatened.
“I would give it to Trump: He figured out he could cash in on polarization,” Iyengar said.
Trump, he said, began running for president in 2015 when the country was already divided and he leveraged those divisions. He used inflammatory and racist language that violated political norms, called the media the “enemy of the people,” and promoted a vision of America besieged.
A New Hampshire campaign flier touting Trump shows him pumping his fist and looking combative, and quotes him: “They’re not after me, they’re after you. … And I’m just standing in the way!”
At the Trump rally Tuesday, former Republican presidential rival Vivek Ramaswamy told the crowd, “We are in the middle of a war in this country … between the permanent state and the everyday citizen.”
Trump “is not just saying be afraid. He’s saying, ‘Be angry,’” said Dannagal Young, a professor of communication and political science at the University of Delaware. “Anger is a mobilization emotion because it makes people do things. When you’re angry, you’re angry at someone.”
The media do their part to keep things inflamed. Conflict grabs attention.
“We’re evolutionarily predisposed to pay attention to conflict, because we might be in danger. We don’t turn our head really quickly to look at a beautiful flower. We turn our heads quickly to look at something that may be dangerous,” Mason said.
That’s a part of human nature anyone can exploit.
“There are politicians who are good at this,” Mason said. “Trump is the best.”
Joel Achenbach covers science and politics for the National desk. He has been a staff writer for The Post since 1990.
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