A Case for a Less-Polarizing Candidate

I've posted previously on social identity theory and political polarization ("Us vs. Them," "Uncivil Agreement"). Social identity theory holds that we derive our sense of self-worth through a combination of our personal achievements and the accomplishments of the groups to which we belong. The accomplishments of our groups mean little, however, apart from how they compare to the accomplishments of other groups. Thus, we have a tendency to root for our own "team" at the expense of other "teams." In fact, sometimes "winning" becomes so important that we'll pull for our team to win even if it means that personally we'll be worse off.

The political scientist, Lilliana Mason, draws on social identity theory to help explain the high level of political polarization found in America today (“Uncivil Agreement: Social Identity and Political Polarization”) and argues that identifying as a Republican or Democrat has become something like a team sport, where winning has become more important than the common good. And she is quite clear that both Republicans and Democrats are "guilty" of being more interested in winning than necessarily doing what is best for the country. (Of course, all of us convince ourselves that having our team win IS what's best for the country.) We'll almost certainly see this play itself out in the ongoing impeachment proceedings. I think it's fair to say that both "teams" will be more interested in winning than dispassionately evaluating the evidence. And I get a sense that a similar dynamic is occurring in Britain over Brexit between the "Leave" and "Remain" teams.

Is there anything that can be done? Research suggests that polarization can be transcended when a greater goal or concern comes along. Wars can sometimes bring a country together (but not always), and it can help to have a common enemy such as the former Soviet Union. In fact, Nicholas Christakis has recently wondered ("Blueprint") whether the collapse of the Soviet Block contributed to the current increase in American polarization.

Personally, I think electing a less-polarizing President would be a positive step forward, and frankly I don't care if it's a Republican or a Democrat. However, since it's unlikely that this time around the Republicans will nominate anyone but Donald Trump, one of the most divisive president's in U.S. history, it's up to the Democrats to find the appropriate candidate. And at this time in our history, I think a candidate's "polarization quotient" is more important than his or her policy stances. What we need now is not more divisiveness.

What we need is a reconciling spirit. We need someone like Abraham Lincoln, who closed his 1st inaugural address as such:

We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Of course, Lincoln's plea failed to prevent the Civil War. Let us hope that we are more lucky. 

Mary Ellen (Carolan) Everton, R.I.P.

My mom, Mary Ellen (Carolan) Everton, was born in 1929 in Arizona. Both of her parents came from Ireland. Her dad was something of a wanderer. He didn’t come to the US in a conventional way. Instead, he made his way from Ireland through Europe and then Russia, crossed over to Alaska, worked his way down through Canada, apparently in a hurry because he was on the run from Canadian Mounties—not exactly sure what he did—but he eventually found his way to the American Southwest where he met and married my grandmother. My grandmother had her own adventures. According to family legend, she was supposed to sail to the New World on the Titanic, but she missed it and caught the Lusitania instead. Luckily, she sailed on the Lusitania before German U-boats decided it was a worthy target for a torpedo attack. My grandma came through Ellis Island and worked briefly as a maid in New York, but she quickly concluded that changing other peoples’ linens wasn’t her thing. So, she jumped on a train and headed out West to where one of her brothers had settled. And that’s where she met my grandfather, and eventually my mom was born.

My mom wasn’t their first child. She was the youngest of seven—she had one sister and five brothers, all of whom, including my mom, were quite musical. One, in fact, sang on Broadway, and another played in numerous orchestras, including Lawrence Welk’s (for those of us old enough to remember Lawrence Welk). Once when I was in high school, I went to a movie at the old Pruneyard cinemas, and all of a sudden, there on the screen, was my uncle. The scene was a high school dance, and my uncle was in the orchestra playing in the background.

Because my mom was born in 1929, her family used to kid her that she helped cause the Great Depression. She didn’t take it too personally, but the Depression had a lasting effect on her. She and her family were poor, very poor. She used to compare her family’s wanderings to that of “the Joads” from John Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath. My mom used to tell a story about how one day during the Depression, she found a penny lying on the street, which she took back to her mom. So, her mom told her to go out and find a nickel, which she did. And then my grandma told her to go out and find a dime, which she did. I’m not sure how long this went on, but I know my mom tracked down at least a quarter, and while that wasn’t a fortune, it was nothing to sneeze at in the 1930s. The Depression also profoundly affected how my mom viewed money. She always looked for ways to stash some away for a rainy day. And while not all of her strategies succeeded, most did, and that’s why both Brendan and Tara have her to thank for being able to attend the colleges of their dreams.

My mom’s family eventually moved to and settled in Grants Pass, Oregon, which she always considered home. After graduating from Grants Pass High, she first attended Willamette University in Salem, but then after she and my Dad got married, she transferred to the University of Oregon where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Music. To say that she was proud to be a "Duck" would be an understatement. In fact, at the last Oregon football game she attended a few years ago, when the band started playing the Oregon fight song, “Mighty Oregon,” she pushed herself out of her wheel chair so that she could sing and dance and clap along.

Not too long after graduating from Oregon, she and my Dad moved to the Bay Area, and she eventually attended Stanford where she earned a Master’s degree in Education. And her ties to Oregon and Stanford are why I grew up both an Oregon and Stanford football fan and why my least favorite football game of the year is when Stanford and Oregon play. 

My mom spent the bulk of her adult life as an elementary school teacher. For the most part, she taught in the Campbell Unified School District, teaching kindergarten at Quito School on Quito Road. However, she also worked as an attendant at the El Rancho Drive-in, started and ran a nursery school in Cambrian Park, and after she retired from teaching, she became a travel agent. Doing that, however, I think was more of an excuse so that she could travel the world, which she did with great abandon. She strolled the grounds of the Taj Mahal, climbed the Great Wall of China, and kissed the Blarney Stone in Ireland.

As many people who knew her know, my mom was a bit stubborn—something, she got from her dad. She liked to tell the story of how when her dad was in his 70s, something fell on and crushed his foot. And after the doctor took one look at his foot, he told him that he’d never walk again. At which point, my grandpa swung his legs out of bed, stood up, turned to the doctor and said, “The hell I won’t,” and walked out of the room. My mom was just the same. She never, ever, gave in. She never, ever, believed she wouldn’t succeed. And she never, ever, let others tell her what she couldn’t do.

She didn’t let others beat her down, either. When she was at Willamette, her roommate, who came from upper class stock, considered my mom beneath her. In fact, when my mom would go home for a weekend, her roommate would bundle up all of my mom’s belongings and hide them in a closet so that her friends and family wouldn’t see how poor my mom was. My mom’s roommate also owned a transistor radio. That may not seem like much today, but back then, it was a big deal. And sometimes she would play it when my mom was trying to study or go to sleep. And so one time when my mom asked her to turn it off and she refused, my mom walked across the room, picked up the radio, and threw it out the window. And then there was that time when she took a philosophy class. I can’t remember if it was at Oregon or Stanford. The final consisted of a single question, “What did you learn in this class?” My mom grabbed the test, wrote, “Absolutely nothing,” handed the test back in, and walked out of the room. If you’re wondering, she got an “A” in the class. I never had that kind of guts.

My mom was also proud, so proud, of being Irish. In some ways she reminded me of the dad in the movie, My Big, Fat Greek Wedding. Whenever one of the characters mentioned a word or concept or type of food, he would trace it back to Greece or Greek culture. That’s how my mom felt about Ireland and being Irish. If there was something good or just or honorable or pure, then she believed the Irish probably had something to do with it. My mom genuinely believed that St. Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland and that the Irish really did save civilization. She loved Notre Dame because they were known as the “Fighting Irish” – although it probably helped that Ronald Reagan played the Gipper – and she was convinced that the University of Oregon was really an Irish school because green is one of its primary colors.

My mom was also a huge sports fan. She loved watching her grandkids, Tara and Brendan, play baseball, softball, soccer, and volleyball. And she and my dad never missed a single one of my baseball or football games, at least not until I started spending my summers playing ball in Cape Cod, Alaska, and Canada, but even then, they made quite a few.

And unlike a lot of fans, my mom knew her sports. For the last couple of years, I would usually visit with her on Sunday afternoons, and we’d spend the afternoon watching either the Warriors or Niners or Giants, and even at 90 she could tell the good plays and good calls from the bad plays and bad calls. She didn’t need a Statcast strike zone to know when an umpire missed a call. In fact, back when I played in college, she used to sit right behind home plate and let the umpire know, in no uncertain terms, how well or how poorly he was calling the game. And when I came to the plate for my last at bat in college, and I started digging into the batter’s box, the umpire paused the game and stood up. “Sean,” he said, “I’m going to miss your mom.”

I’m going to miss her too.

Leaving Syria Stupidly

A few years ago, the counter-insurgency expert, David Kilcullen, remarked something to the effect that "just because you invade a war stupidly, doesn't mean you have to leave it stupidly" (see Tom Rick's book, "The Gamble," p. 29). Kilcullen had in mind the 2nd war with Iraq, and we should've heeded his advice. Back in 2014, rather than removing all of our troops, we should've left a small force behind that could have secured the safety of Iraqi citizens. We didn't, and that allowed ISIS to emerge and develop into a deadly force that the world is just now getting control of.

And now it looks like we've done it again. This time we're leaving (or have left) Syria "stupidly," leaving some of our allies in the fight against ISIS, the Kurds, to fend for themselves against a historical foe (Turkey) that would prefer they'd go away. So, now it appears that the Kurds have allied themselves with Syria, and the Russians have swept in to protect them. There's also some evidence that ISIS prisoners have escaped, which could help it reemerge in the future. It makes you wonder if anyone will ever trust us enough to ally themselves with us ever again.

The Best Teams Don't Always Reach the World Series

The best teams don't always reach the World Series, let alone win it. As the theoretical physicist, Leonard Mlodinow, notes in his book, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, even in a 7-game series, there's a good chance that the inferior team will win:

For instance, if one team is good enough to warrant beating another in 55 percent of its games, the weaker team will nevertheless win a 7-game series about 4 times out of 10. And if the superior team could be expected to beat its opponent, on average, 2 out of each 3 times they meet, the inferior team will still win a 7-game series about once every 5 matchups. There is really no way for sports leagues to change this. In the lopsided 2/3-probability case, for example, you’d have to play a series consisting of at minimum the best of 23 games to determine the winner with what is called statistical significance, meaning the weaker team would be crowned champion 5 percent or less of the time (see chapter 5). And in the case of one team’s having only a 55–45 edge, the shortest statistically significant “world series” would be the best of 269 games, a tedious endeavor indeed!

Heading into the playoffs, FiveThirtyEight's ratings of the 10 teams that had qualified for the playoffs looked something like this (along with the % chance of them winning the World series):

1. Astros - 1592 - 25% chance
2. Dodgers - 1590 - 21% chance
3. Yankees - 1584 - 21% chance
4. Athletics - 1560 - 4% chance
5. Nationals - 1557 - 6% chance
6. Cardinals - 1548 - 6% chance
7. Rays - 1547 - 3% chance
8. Braves - 1547 - 8% chance
9. Twins - 1543 - 5% chance
10. Brewers - 1532 - 2% chance

In short, the best three teams heading into the playoffs were the Astros, Dodgers, and Yankees, and the probability that one of them would win was 67%. But, that still meant that there was a 33% chance that another team would. A 33% chance may not sound like a lot, but I suspect that if there was a revolver lying around, loaded it with two (out of six) bullets, very few people would put it to their head and pull the trigger even though there's only a 33% chance that it would fire a bullet.

Last night, the Nationals upended the apple cart by upsetting the Dodgers 7-3. A lot of blame is being thrown around, especially at Dave Roberts, Clayton Kershaw, and Joe Kelly, but even if Roberts had managed the game differently, there was still 80% chance the Dodgers wouldn't have won the World Series this year, which are pretty low odds for a team that won 106 games during the regular season.

Is there anything major league baseball (MLB) can do to insure that the best teams reach the World Series? Not much, given what Mlodinow has demonstrated. It can, however, increase the odds that it will happen, by turning the Wild Card games into a best of 3 series and the Division Series to a best of 7. To do so, however, MLB would probably need to shorten the regular season, say from 162 games to 154, and that might be a bridge too far for most owners. Not for the Dodgers' owners, though, I bet. I'm pretty sure they wish there were two more games to play against the Nationals.

Kenny Stabler's Still the Greatest Raiders' Quarterback of All-Time

Today, Derek Carr passed Kenny Stabler as the Raiders' all-time passing leader. In the second quarter of today's game against the Chiefs, he completed a pass for a 16-yard gain, which gave him 19,079 career passing yards, putting him past Raiders' legend Kenny Stabler. That's great for Carr, but does anyone seriously believe that he's accomplished more than Kenny Stabler? I hope not. Stabler played for the Raiders from 1971-1979, winning a Super Bowl along the way (1976/77). Carr hasn't come close (not yet, at least). Carr, in fact, has only played 5 full seasons for the Raiders, but somehow he's already surpassed Stabler in total passing yards. What's up?

What's up is how much the game has changed over the years. Rule changes in recent years have helped open up the passing game. For example, in 1978 the NFL freed up receivers by restricting contact beyond 5 yards downfield. At the same time, it permitted offensive linemen to extend their arms and open their hands on pass plays. To give a sense of the impact of the changes, consider that in 1977 the average number of passing yards per game equaled approximately 284 yards per game. By 1980, it climbed to 392! And more changes were implemented in 1994 that helped the passing game (Hail Mary: How 1994’s pass-friendly rule changes saved a moribund league and created the modern NFL).

All of this simply highlights why, in my opinion, it's hard, if not impossible, to compare players across eras. Derek Carr's been good. I'm a fan. But he's not as great as Kenny Stabler (at least not yet).

President Trump: A Christian Phenomenon or a Southern Christian Phenomenon?

Much has been made of the support among Christians for President Trump, in spite of considerable evidence that Trump is anything but devout. However, much of Trump's Christian support comes from white evangelical Protestants, who certainly have not cornered the market on what it means to be a Christian (in spite of what they may claim). Consider, for example, the following graph which plots data collected as part of the 2016 American National Election Study. It indicates that slightly more than half of American Christians (51.54%) voted for Donald Trump, not exactly an overwhelming majority.

In fact, once you sort Christians into those who live in the South and those who don't, the story gets a bit more interesting (and more nuanced). Although more Christians living outside of the South voted for Trump than they did for Clinton, a higher percentage voted for someone other than Trump (51.24%) than for him.

Now, consider what happens when we sort Christians into broad categories or religious traditions, in particular, Mainline Protestants, white Evangelical Protestants, Black Protestants, and Roman Catholics. We can see that while a majority of Evangelical Protestants voted for Trump, a majority of Black Protestants and Roman Catholics did not.

Perhaps, the most surprising result is that more Mainline Protestant Christians voted for Trump than for Clinton. However, when we break the results down between those who don't live in the South and those who do, we can begin to make sense of the results.

As the graph above indicates, in the South, Mainline Protestants are virtually indistinguishable from white Evangelical Protestants. Outside of the South, however, they differ considerably. In fact, while more than half (55.57%) of Mainline Protestants voted for someone other than Donald Trump, more than half (54.41%) of white Evangelical Protestants voted for him. Perhaps even more striking is the fact that outside of the South, a higher percentage of all major Christian groups, except white Evangelical Protestants, voted for someone other than Donald Trump.

Of course, other factors almost certainly come into play in accounting for who voted for whom, but they don't change the fact that outside of the South, Trump's support among Christians is marginal at best. In fact, it's probably better to argue that Trump is more of a Southern Christian phenomenon than he is a Christian one. That, at least, is my story, and for now I'm sticking to it. 😇

Some People Don't Like Being Passed

A lot of folks don't like being passed. I happen to be one. It's no secret that I'm a bit hyper-competitive, which can lead me to "detect" competitive situations when none really exist. Like when I'm being passed. It does have its advantages, though. My competitiveness is a major reason why I played professional baseball, earned a blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do, and obtained a PhD from Stanford.

Hyper-competitiveness can also lead to rather humorous situations. I've noticed this when biking to and from one of my offices away from the office (i.e., various coffee shops in the area). When doing so, I usually take the Los Gatos Creek Trail, and I apparently bike fairly close to the "flow of traffic." That is, I do not pass or am passed by too many other bike riders. The exception to this are bikers on road bikes. Their bikes are much lighter, have thinner tires, and typically use higher quality derailleurs. Thus, they are far more likely to pass me than I am to pass them.

Interestingly, on those few occasions when I do pass a biker on a road bike, many of them seem to take offense, and as soon as they realize what has happened, they speed up and pass by me. Once they do so, however, it's not unusual for them to slow down, which means I eventually pass them again, leading them speed up once again so they can pass me. Recently, I caught and passed a gentlemen on a road bike, and predictably he soon sped up and caught up with me. He, however, didn't try to pass. Instead, he slid in close behind me (known as drafting) and stayed their for several miles. No doubt he rationalized his behavior as smart biking, but I'm pretty sure he just doesn't like getting passed.