Important: A poor white woman explains why poor whites support Trump

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Jonna Ivin, in a recent blogpost in the online STIR magazine, explains some of the social history that makes poor whites actually side with the very people who keep them poor.  The title of the post is "I know why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump."

It is tempting to try and paraphrase the article, so that you would not have to read it.  It is a long article, but its length is not superfluous.  It is an accumulation of small facts and events that add up over its length.  Prejudice, ignorance, fear, manipulation, and corruption all play their part.

I'm beginning to recognize that I'm only good at talking about facts, analysis, and my own insights, which might be speculative.  When I get angry, I think I'm less effective; I don't do emotion very well.  This article describes how emotions have been manipulated systematically, and even if you disagree with some of the observations of Ms Ivin, the cumulative effect of the history she relates is convincing.

Anyone who has watched a Trump public appearance has noticed the clever misdirection he employs, and how he systematically puts up verbal effigies of those he wants his audience to hate.  We know that hate is an important tool in his armory.  But for what is he using this hate?

George Carlin has a segment in which he describes a technique used by the Ruling Class.  It has been used from time immemorial, but systematically employed only since the American Republic, when the Colonies needed labor.  Read for yourself.

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Excellence: We used to celebrate it!

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I was just reading that Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, was explaining to a reporter what Quantum Computing was.

Do any of us remember a time just 10 years ago?  Forget about the Fifties; we're talking just a few years ago.  People were interested in all sorts of things: cold fusion, quantum computing, wormholes in space!  At least, my friends were.

But now it appears that while the sector of the population in which I lay celebrated this excellence, while this sector was searching on YouTube for interesting, intriguing, unusual things, another sizeable minority was fuming in resentment against those who knew and understood and appreciated novel and interesting things.  And some switch has been thrown somewhere, and the throwbacks have begun to assert themselves.

An author called Charles Murray (who might be familiar to others, but about whom I only heard a couple of days ago) says that increasingly we're getting to the point where nobody listens to anyone who disagrees with them: we're beginning to seek ideological bubbles in which to live, insulated from the opinions of those whose values are different.  So while I and most of my friends---even those who are political conservatives---celebrate those who have exceptional talents, who are interested in unusual things, who are creative, who like intellectual challenges, there are those out there who simply hate intellectualism, who would mug Justin Trudeau if they caught him alone at night in a parking lot.

This is not news to me; there have always been people like this.  I find them among my students.

Teaching mathematics brings you into contact with all sorts of strange animals.  There are those who had been fairly good at math in high school, but who need to get through a remedial course.  Some jump into it, and do as well as they can.  Some are bored with it, and struggle to pay attention.  Some resent it utterly, and feel that having to learn math in college is an imposition, and an abridgement of their freedoms.

There is an interesting person called Vi Hart, a musician by training, whose avocation is creating videos on mathematical subjects.  She has numerous interesting videos on YouTube, all made by simply recording her doodlings on video with a fixed camera, while she babbles on about what she's doing.  She's the type of person who could be interested in Quantum Computing.  So I occasionally play a video by Vi Hart to my classes.  Some of the kids just love it.  Some are annoyed by her, because Vi Hart can occasionally sound a little patronizing.  Some just cover their heads and hate it with a passion!

So, apparently while---at least a few years ago---some kids were involved in gymnastics and swimming and tennis and ballet and Odyssey of the Mind, and MathCounts, and Spelling Bee, there were others who resented these kids with a passion.  The slimy underbelly of America has been exposed; the worm has turned, the rats have their backs against the wall, and are asserting themselves.  They're striking a blow for mediocrity.

This is not as simple as it appears.

Too long we have pushed toward a society where everyone goes to college.  This means that the minority that never has this privilege becomes a resentful underclass.  It does not help that all you really need to go to college is money.  Not intellectual ability, not hard work.  Just money.  It is inevitable that if a sufficiently large number of mediocre students flood the campuses, colleges must respond with dumbing-down.  I have a colleague who specializes in dumbing down.  He does not see it as specializing in dumbing-down; he sees it as teaching his kids what they should have learned in Fifth Grade, but teaching it really, really well.  I'm not sure he's succeeding.

There is only one tiny little bit of hope, and that is that the other people have not disappeared; they've just gone into hiding, they're staying under the radar, they're playing it cool.

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Stay Tuned: The Whole Cholesterol / Saturated Fat Business Needs to be ReThunk

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The path of true knowledge seldom runs smooth.

Ever since people began turning the eye of suspicion on cholesterol,the general public has been subjected to contradictory recommendations about what to eat.  A recent blog post in the New York Times draws attention to a study from some 40 years ago that seems to suggest that eating less meat and saturated fats did not necessarily increase your expected length of life.  Read the article carefully for yourself; often the studies and their aims are not what you expect from the titles of the articles.

I myself recently almost had a heart attack, and I’m obviously interested in what an ideal diet should be, both from the point of view of eating stuff that tastes good to me, and from the point of view of increasing my chances of avoiding a painful, and potentially harmful heart “event” as much as possible.  A full-blown heart-attack can end up restricting your activities, especially in your work, and in your fun, as well.  And it is no joke going through an almost attack; I can hardly imagine a complete heart attack.

[Any restriction in blood flow into the heart muscle—in contrast to reduction of blood through the heart, which is also troublesome; when the heart doesn’t do its job, you need to have those little nylon Oxygen tubes going into your nose—causes pain, because the heart needs a constant supply of Oxygen to do its work.  A minor reduction is slightly painful, but doesn’t injure the heart.  A complete blockage of one of the blood supply vessels (arteries) results is terrible pain, and actual injury to the heart.]

Anyone who has lived through the last three decades has got the general impression that

• Cholesterol is bad generally, and the LDL Cholesterol is the worst.
• A lot of heart artery blockage actually consists of Cholesterol.
• There is something called Plaque in the artery walls that also blocks them.
• Saturated fats are bad.
• Fats in red meats are the worst.  Fats in eggs and dairy are also pretty bad.
• Unsaturated fats and monosaturated fats are good for you.
• Omega fatty acids are ... what?  Maybe good for you.  These are found in eggs, and Avocadoes, and some sorts of fish, e.g. Salmon and Trout.

The first break in my cognitive structures that had to do with these matters came when I read that saturated oils were actually good for certain sorts of cooking, e.g. frying under high heat.

Now, you’re not supposed to fry under high heat if you can avoid it.  High temperatures are bad for most foods, because it changes the chemistry of the foods in a bad way.  (It’s supposedly worst when you fry cured meats, e.g. bacon and ham.  I’m not completely sure that I’ve got that right.)  But I seemed to read that the high temperatures made unsaturated oils themselves dangerous, whereas saturated oils didn’t change very much when heated.  This is called the stability of the oil; saturated oils are more stable, precisely because they’re saturated.  So Coconut Oil was considered a good oil for frying, stir-frying in a wok, etc.  To date I have not seen anything to contradict that belief.

Some of the reasons why Congress doesn't Work

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What have some people been doing for the last 20 years or so?

Making it easier for Congressmen to make extra pocket money.

• They can get money from Lobbyists.
• They have arranged for businesses to make more money, so that they can hire more Lobbyists.
• They have allowed Lobbyists to weaken laws, and write new legislation that gives businesses and corporations more freedom to act, who, in turn, can hire more Lobbyists.
• They have reduced taxes for business corporations (in return for favorable treatment by Lobbyists), so that Lobbyists can earn more, and treat Congressmen even better, and take the load off the legal aides of Congressmen, so that Lobbyists can write superior laws.

With all these Lobbyists helping Congressmen, why don’t they do a better job of legislation?  We ought to restrict how much playtime Congressmen have with Lobbyists.  I’m sure is just a few bad apples, but those apples are terrible.  It is just depressing to see a few diehard Congressmen addressing a number of empty seats.  They should rename C-Span as C-EmptySeats.

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