Links - 10th January 2019

Democrats Hate Gerrymandering—Except When They Get to Do It - "I live in Alexandria, Virginia, a city that Democrats dominate. In May of 2009, however, one Republican managed to get elected to the six-member City Council. This was apparently too much for Democrats to stomach. One month after his election, the City Council voted to move municipal elections from May to November—an attempt to squash the chances that Republicans could compensate for their numerical disadvantages by organizing to win low-turnout elections. It worked."

Donald Trump as a Cultural Revolt Against Perceived Communication Restriction: Priming Political Correctness Norms Causes More Trump Support - "on a sample of largely politically moderate Americans taken during the General Election in the Fall of 2016, we show that temporarily priming PC norms significantly increased support for Donald Trump (but not Hillary Clinton). We further show that chronic emotional reactance towards restrictive communication norms positively predicted support for Trump (but not Clinton), and that this effect remains significant even when controlling for political ideology. In total, this work provides evidence that norms that are designed to increase the overall amount of positive communication can actually backfire by increasing support for a politician who uses extremely negative language that explicitly violates the norm... As restrictive norms become ever more salient and heavy-handed, the more they will work in the short-term. But in the long-term, this salient heavy-handedness increases the likelihood that they will ultimately backfire. And this backfiring doesn't just occur for norms that are genuinely repressive to political freedom—it also occurs for norms that have a clearly good and noble aim."

Study: Voters Worried About Political Correctness Flocked to Candidate Trump - "These findings complement work done by the mathematician Spencer Greenberg, which showed that believing "there is too much political correctness in this country" was the second most reliable predictor of whether a person would vote for Trump (second only to being a Republican)... "Voters can simultaneously 1) dislike Trump's bigotry 2) dislike Dems' harping on it 3) perceive that Dems used to care about white working class, now only care about minorities 4) mistrust Republicans on class, but perceive Trump as different," Grossmann explained on Twitter. "In fact, [this] pattern seems dominant.""

Study: Obama voters switched to Trump because of race
The paper, Vote Switching in the 2016 Election: How Racial and Immigration Attitudes, Not Economics, Explain Shifts in White Voting, shows that how they measured "xenophobia" and "racial hostility" are dishonest - 2 out of 3 of the questions on immigration are about *illegal* immigration, and in the 4 questions on race, you're marked as racially resentful if you think blacks haven't been shortchanged, that blacks should be like the Irish, Italians, Jews and many others who overcame prejudice and succeeded without special favours and you think blacks should just try harder and if you don't think slavery and discrimination have made it hard for blacks to succeed. So it's just as bankrupt as the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory with its definition of "Hostile Sexism"

Racial Attitudes and Political Correctness in the 2016 Presidential Election - "White and black Americans, moreover, understand the racial resentment scale differently, and many minorities score high on it. Only overt racism predicts whether whites discriminate and whether they have racially biased evaluations of others. Racial resentment does not predict either. The liberal side of the scales may also represent biased thinking. Liberals perceive more racism and sexism than racial minorities and women say they experience. Experiments show that liberals perceive tests where men or whites perform better as less credible than equivalent tests showing women or minorities doing better, even though conservatives rate them equally credible. Liberals are thus predisposed to believe discrimination is the cause of disadvantaged group disparities. Seeing these attitudes as more than simple bias may help understand Trump support across genders and races... minority vote choice was also partially driven by attitudes toward diversity and value change. Racial and gender attitudes are related to broader cultural views (such as agreement that “the American way of life is threatened”) that are widely subscribed to by Americans across social groups... Asking about statements that might be offensive to particular groups increased support for Trump. His supporters were more fearful about restrictive communication norms. Beliefs that political norms around offensive speech silence important discussions and prevent people from sharing their views are widespread, particularly among conservatives. Many conservatives say they cannot discuss topics like gay rights, race, gender, or foreign policy for fear of being called racist or sexist. Opposition to political correctness thus incorporates aversion to norms toward discrimination claims. When voters begin to question society’s norms, they can see candidates (even those who lie regularly) as more authentic truth tellers when they subvert those norms... There has been no increase in “racial resentment” for 30 years. It is instead increasingly associated with most other political attitudes, increasing among Republicans and decreasing among Democrats. Politically-aware partisans are most likely to sort into their majority party viewpoint on racial attitudes... there have now been more changes in racial attitudes among Democrats than Republicans, suggesting that reactions to Democratic elite messages and the campaign context were also driving views... Clinton talked a lot less about policy issues and a lot less positively overall. Clinton raised the salience of norms about off-limits race and gender discourse, believing it would help her win votes (but may have also activated views of political correctness). Clinton talked far less about class, discounting “the rich vs. the middle class” message that has been a Democratic staple for generations. As a result, class attitudes had no effect in 2016, even though they had been dominant in 2012."
Besides expectations of discrimination being a self-fulfilling prophecy, you also find what you're looking for - when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail

Democrats Are Changing Their Minds About Race - "One candidate in Texas has openly referred to mass deportation as “like ethnic cleansing.” Another candidate in Indiana’s ninth district, which Trump won by 27 points, referred to ending Temporary Protected Status for Salvadoran immigrants as “an act of incredible cruelty done for no other reason than to appease the lowest common denominator: Trump’s white nationalist base.” Needless to say, this is a far cry from the way Democrat politicians talked about immigration just a few years ago. Data from Pew suggests Democratic members of the public have moved dramatically to the left on issues of race"
In other words, as the moral arc of the universe continues to accelerate and twist, there're more and more "deplorables"

-Meme - "-Steve Scalise Nearly Assassinated
-Rand Paul Physically Attacked
-MN GOP Candidates Attacked
-Kevin McCarthy's Office Bricked
-NY GOP Chapter Vandalized
-Ricin Packages Mailed to Trump
-All the Antifa Riots and Assaults
-Hillary "Don't Be Civil "
-Holder "Kick Them"
*sleep*
- Hoax Packages Sent to Prominent Democrat Leaders
*eyes wide open*"

Chinese officials try to 'barge' into minister's office as APEC summit tensions boil over - "The police were called when Chinese officials attempted to "barge" into the office of Papua New Guinea's foreign minister, it emerged on Sunday (Nov 18), as APEC summit tensions boiled over. The Chinese delegates "tried to barge into" Rimbink Pato's Port Moresby office Saturday, in an eleventh-hour bid to influence a summit draft communique, but were denied entry... At the Pacific Islands Forum in September, Nauru's president demanded China apologise after its delegation walked out of a meeting when the host refused to let an envoy speak until island leaders had finished. "They're not our friends. They just need us for their own purposes," President Baron Waqa said at the time."
China's peaceful rise

FGM cutters 'being flown into UK to mutilate girls to order', survivor warns - "So-called cutters are being flown into the UK to perform female genital mutilation (FGM) on young girls, a campaigner has warned"

Singapore's favourite ah lian speaks to Stomp about sudden fame: 'I want to tell my parents...' - "Lerine Yeo, 30, became talk of the town after two videos of her modelling clothes for her online apparel store went viral online... Instead of lace from the original design, Lerine creatively shares how one can make use of the little 'holes' in the $9 top to hook various items -- be it your umbrella, wanton mee, cane, EZ-Link card or whatnot... Rather than claiming that one size fits all like many sellers tend to do, she is honest and advises taller girls to reconsider getting it because "the chances of getting people to see your 'ka cheng' [butt] is very high, 80% high". She adds: "You walk cannot open the big big already... If not your luncheon meat, your seaweed all come out give people see." Naturally, Lerine's animated demeanour, coupled with her use of Singlish and Hokkien, has won her thousands of fans -- as well as some haters... Lerine, who started Misshopper Boutique in March and now runs it full-time, opened up to Stomp in an interview on Monday (Sep 24) about her newfound fame"

Was cold-war hysteria as large in the USSR as it was in the USA? Did the Russians have fallout shelters, "duck and cover", etc? : AskHistorians - "In the United States, for example, we had McCarthyism, ideological propaganda, etc. Basically all of these things were also present in the Soviet Union. In both cases they were equally important or prominent features throughout the length of the Cold War, that stretched some forty-or-so years."

Why do many rulers have 'common' names with just a number to distinguish them? (e.g: Henry 1 to 8, Louis 1 to 18). When/where and why did this start and does it happen outside Europe? : AskHistorians - "They often have common names to legitimize their right to rule. If Louis I was a good king, then all successive Louis have that memory they can invoke that memory more directly. Monarchs derive their power from the idea that they are the best to rule. The fact that they had an illustrious pedigree was as good an indicator of their right to rule as any. One good example is how the Romans did it. At one point during the empire, an era called the tetrarchy, there were four different "heads of state." The senior heads of state were called Augustus (after the first roman emperor), while junior ones were called Caesar (after Julius Caesar.) Most Roman Emperors, in all eras added Caesar and/or Augustus to their given names once they reached the throne. (TITVS FLAVIVS CAESAR VESPASIANVS AVGVSTVS) for example. These were the most illustrious men in roman history. Anything that the current emperor could do to link himself with the those glorified (and deified) memories, he would do it."
"This also works the other way round. Because of the reputation of King Charles I and the pretender-king Charles III (as well, to a lesser extent, the party-boy Charles II), Prince Charles doesn't want to be crowned as King Charles III, but rather George VII to avoid bad press."
"It's not just temporal rulers. The Catholic Popes do a similar thing: upon their accession to the papacy, they choose a papal name for themselves, which usually honours or invokes a previous holder of that name. This emphasises the continuity of the papacy, and also announces what sort of papacy the incumbent intends. For example, the current pope has taken the name Benedict XVI, to reflect a monk Benedict, and the previous Pope Benedict XV. This tradition has become so entrenched that only one Pope in the last 1,000 years has taken an original name: John Paul I. And, even then, he was merely combining two previous papal names"