Using reason in a post-Truth era

(The systematic erosion of public confidence in reliable news sources is said to be a well-known fascist strategy.  Locate a reliable news source, and keep consuming it; just throwing up your hands and playing solitaire is a losing idea!  Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming.)

Don't get mad, get even.  I am generally opposed to violence of any kind, even verbal violence, because it does not work for progressives.  All this hysterical anti-fascist diatribes we get on social media (read: Facebook, YouTube and Twitter), have negative effects.  The chief negative effect is that they repel conservatives who have had enough.  There are many of those.  I see increasingly more evidence that reasonable people who are conservatives find that they can no longer stand to be associated with the nonsense that the undescribable losers who appear to support the GOP and/or the President keep constantly spouting.  (Why do I say appear to support?  You figure it out.  A significant majority of members of Congress are cynics.)

In November, after the new, reformed Putin makes a visit to the warmly welcoming White House, (or who knows; maybe Trump has planned a stupid trick that he hopes will destroy Putin, like stealing his underwear so he can't leave, but will probably result in all sorts of horrible things--US intervention usually backfires,) we want disillusioned conservatives voting with Democrats.  The last thing we need is more anti-conservative rhetoric, such as "We don't need no steenking conservatives to help defeat Trump!  Why don't you crawl back under the rocks from under which you crawlded out of?"  We all know the idiots who used to say this sort of thing in funny movies.  Don't be that guy.

I have been watching conservative videos on YouTube.  Why?  Well, I told Google that I no longer wanted to have my feed adjusted to what Google thinks I would enjoy seeing.  It turns out that (until I insisted that they do not use my mouse clicks to select what I see) Google made sure that even my suggested YouTube videos were selected to be only progressive-friendly ones.  So Google's advertising technique actually put me in a progressive bubble.  I can honestly say that my Google-managed bubble was a far more comfortable place in the Internet than this free-for-all digital world which I now inhabit.  Be careful what you wish for.

For more than a year I have wondered what the conservative sector could possibly say that would persuade people that progressives and liberals don't have a leg to stand on.  Well.  I saw smart-mouthed alt-right congressmen shutting down polite black congresswomen and senators.  What do they mean by shutting down?  Insulting into silence.  Countering arguments with insults seems one of the few things that alt-right congressmen have learned to do.

Tomi Lahren, a conservative talk-show host who is much admired, says that she likes hearing the popular candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speak.  I couldn't bear to actually watch the video, because it would consist of Lahren's poorly-argued rebuttals of Ocasio-Cortez's goals.  Her goals are: (1) a living wage for everyone, (2) Health care for all, and (3) education for all.  Let's look at these objectives dispassionately.

(1) A living wage for all.  The conservative rebuttal of this is: Who will pay for it?  Taxes, obviously, so this is yet another instance of this Puerto-Rican woman wanting to transfer the hard-earned money of the long-suffering Koch Brothers, as well as thousands of struggling small businessmen and the middle-class into the hands of her fellow Puerto-Ricans.  On top of that, it will encourage more immigration from Mexico, more lazy minority bums from trying to find work, and will encourage these people who will get on the welfare rolls to go out and get more drugs.

(2) Health care for all.  This is a philosophical difference between the conservatives (who are either affluent executive-level people, or poor folks who stubbornly refuse health care, and most kinds of preventive medicine) who either don't need or don't want subsidized health care, and progressives, who think health care should be a given, especially for children.  Ocasio-Cortez is not going to persuade conservatives to think positively about universal health care, and the Health Care Industry will encourage keeping it private, which means more profits for them.

(3) Education for all.  Again: Who will pay for it?  The conservative rebuttal of this will have to be more subtle, and filled with dog-whistle terminology, and will add up to: we do not want the poor, and blacks and minorities and immigrants getting illusions of grandeur, so that our darling white boys will get crowded out of the good jobs, and nobody will be available to patch up the potholes.

The fact is that Ocasio-Cortez does not strike me as someone who wants a living wage, and education just for her fellow ethnic minorities; she wants it for everyone. What Bernie Sanders and the far Left wants to do is to include health, education and a living wage into the basic stuff that is available free to everyone; and then the rich can go out and get better health, better education, and more money for themselves and their children, the way it has always been done.

[Added later: I did force myself to watch a few minutes of the Tomi Lahren-related video on Fox TV, and was surprised to see that it was --at least in the segment I watched-- not a vicious attack on Ocasio-Cortez, but simply a patronizing dismissal of her as a force to be reckoned with.  She had been interviewed about her position on Israel and the Palestinian settlements, and she had conceded that she was not ready to answer questions on why she opposed the settlements.

Most Millennials will be in the same position, because the conflicts in Israel and the Palestinian settlements are so freighted with historical baggage that younger people simply cannot get their heads around the convoluted arguments the Israeli government gives for breaking agreements with the Palestinians.  The very presence of the Israelis in Israel after WW2 was based on various international agreements, mostly negotiated by the British.  But Israel has kept its borders open to Jews from anywhere in the World, which means that they must constantly acquire more farmland for new settlers.  They keep track of every Palestinian infraction of any sort, and use them to justify more Israeli settlements on the West Bank, contrary to agreements, and of course, Palestinians make attacks in retaliation, and so on.  If we wait for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to study up on the issue and make a statement, that would probably be suitable as a response to any questions on it that may come up.]

Health.  Why is universal health care so hard to achieve?  Because the Health Industry has driven up the cost of health care artificially high--which can be done in a supply-and-demand economy using scarcity techniques--so that if health care was readily available, it would cut into the profit margin of the health care vendors.  Only de-escalating health-care costs can make this happen.

Education.  This is a huge problem that is tied to the economics of labor in a free society.  Some education should be free, and of course some of it is.  Making college education free sounds like a great plan for vast majority of us, and in theory it simply means that every one can postpone actually paying attention to their teachers until they go to college, where they can start trying to learn the skills that their parents and grandparents learned in school.  Rich kids are already doing this.  (Not very well, because if they major in Business, they can essentially not learn anything.  (Okay, so I have it in for business majors, but forget that.  Just don't elect one for President.)

A living wage.  This is actually tied to other things.  If basic shelter (housing) is available for free, basic food is available for free, basic education is available for free, then 'A living wage' begins to look entirely different.  I'm not opposed to a living wage for anyone, but it seems to conflict with the determinedly anti-socialist attitude that has been common in the US for so long.  If the Socialist attitudes of those on the far Left spreads, then eventually there will be bloody revolution, and a more egalitarian society will emerge out of the ashes.*  The only way this can be prevented is if the US can force China and Mexico to be the workers, (the actual makers), which will allow the US to be the takers, as we have been for many decades!  This is, of course, what the GOP is trying to do, but it suits their purposes to designate the poor and the immigrants as Takers, while they call the 1% the Makers, because they provide factories in which the poor can make things for their bosses).  The GOP classes the poor, minorities, immigrants, and in some cases women, with Chinese and Mexicans, in other words, people who should not be enjoying Stuff.

Well, anyway, decent conservatives are becoming demoralized.  If they help 'unseat' the GOP majorities in the house and the senate, we are morally obliged to establish a rational, welcoming set of principles to which they can subscribe, on which to base some sort of coalition that can hold together for the polls, and for at least enough time after the elections to reestablish moderately progressive, reasonable policies and laws.  I don't think an F150 in every pot is going to work.

Most importantly, it will be very difficult to base any coalition of moderates and liberals on their common hate of minorities, as Trump had done.  It is a miracle that it worked at all, because it seems that those whose guiding principle is hate of minorities and immigrants, are found in clusters in the central parts of the country.  Urban and bi-coastal areas are far less down on minorities, despite the fact that it is in these places that minorities live.  Minorities themselves probably do tend to dilute the hostility, but it seems reasonable to think that those who are familiar with minorities are less hostile to them, but I could be wrong.

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Popular Science looks at the Downsides of using Artificial Sweeteners

Bad news about artificial sweeteners has been making the rounds for decades.  One never knows whether this sort of negative publicity is being supported by the Sugar Industry, or by some similar outfit with a vested interest.  Always beware.  This most recent article in Popular Science magazine (which has been known to sensationalize some stories, resulting in confusing readers without a strong science background, but has also been known to bring great news stories to public attention) says that it is possible that heavy use of artificial sweeteners can lead to increased fat deposits.

Let's look at some of the basic axioms.
* Sugar contains calories, and drinking lots of soda with real sugar does lead to obesity, unless the calories are used up with exercise.
* Unused calories are stored in the body as fat.  Ounce for ounce, fat contains far more calories than sugar and carbs, so fat cells are like zip drives for large calorie files.  To burn off fat, you must first unzip the fat files (essentially by about 28 minutes of exercise using sugars, at which point the stored fat begins to get used for the exercise.  This is why they always suggest that you should exercise for at least half an hour).
* When Insulin in the bloodstream finds more sugar than the body can immediately use, it triggers the conversion into fat.  This is new information to me; I did not realize that Insulin had anything to do with conversion of sugar to fat.  I could have misunderstood whatever I read, so take this message with a little caution.  It is an important point that needs to be clarified, so don't put off for the indefinite future doing your own research about it.  Do as I say, not as I do.
* Artificial sweeteners contain very few calories, so, yes, they don't supply the body with unnecessary calories.
* When any normal person eats a little sugar, there are brain centers that issue a 'satisfaction' or 'reward' signal, which normally leads the person to slow down eating.  Artificial sweeteners don't do that (or at least not as effectively), so, apparently there's no negative feedback to the eating loop; your system could get stuck in the 'eat more' position.  (More about negative feedback at the end.)
* Eating anything sweet--both sugar and artificial sweeteners--stimulates the body into producing Insulin.  Insulin is, as Popular Science, and similar articles in WebMD and the New York Times explain, a sort of key that unlocks muscle cells into opening up, and allowing sugar to enter and fuel muscle activity.  (For Type II diabetics, this key doesn't work very well.)

Wait a minute.  This means that if you use Artificial Sweetener, the Insulin production is triggered, but finding no sugar, the Insulin encourages storage of sugar as fat.  But there isn't any sugar!

Actually, there is.  People oversimplify these things for the benefit of us laymen; it is never the case that there isn't any sugar in the bloodstream; there's always a little.  I was recently in the emergency room being looked at by the doctors.  I was hoping that they would admit me, because I was in pain!  At first they said: this is simple; we can send you home soon, and you can check in with your general practitioner in the morning.  This is not an emergency.  But for various reasons my diabetic medication was reducing my blood sugar levels too aggressively, which sent the ER doctors into a panic.  Why?  There always has to be some sugar in circulation, otherwise the brain and the heart won't have the sugar they need to work.  Yes, the brain runs on sugar, which means, my young padawans, don't try to take a test on an empty stomach; your memory and your reasoning centers need a little sugar to work, and one expects that a test would involve brainwork.

So, drinking a lot of artificially sweetened soda can generate a brief glut of Insulin, which tries to package the little sugar there happens to be lying around into fat cells.  Once the sugar level falls to critically low levels, you lose consciousness, and if the Insulin burst is extremely large, the body will shut down to painfully low levels.  Finally, the liver has emergency stocks of sugar that it releases, to prevent additional damage, but I don't understand enough of those matters to give you an accurate description of them.

The "Artificial Sweeteners → Fat Cells" effect appears not to have been established experimentally, or at least I don't understand the degree to which it is just a conjecture.  But I believe that there is some evidence that heavy drinkers of artificially sweetened soft drinks do gain weight over time; I'm just not certain whether what I described is the actual mechanism.

There is yet another effect that some people will find more persuasive than others.  If we eat a normal healthy diet, our intestines will contain certain beneficial bacteria that humans have evolved with, over the millennia.  These bacteria help digestion, and are even considered to help people with maintaining emotional balance.  It sounds like something out of a Woo Woo publication, but I have never read any scientific article that denies this statement.  Unfortunately, large levels of artificial sweeteners are said to, at the very least, interfere with this balance of so-called intestinal flora (because bacteria are considered to be plants, not animals), and at the worst, kill them off, and introduce harmful bacteria instead.  This is clearly a broad generalization because there are scores of varieties of both kinds of intestinal flora (good and bad).  Many of your friends probably consume yogurt, and Kim Chee, and Kombucha, all foods that are considered to encourage good bacteria in your intestines.  Since you can control this balance only indirectly, some people consider that the whole thing is not worth bothering about.  I'm not going to weigh in on it, because each person addresses the matter in a different way, and the suggestions I give may not work.  However, note that acute diarrhea, and strong antibiotics, both deplete your intestinal flora, and you need to work hard to restore them, if you care.  By the way, from all I have read, it appears that you need to eat yogurt pretty aggressively (at least two containers per day of yogurt advertised as containing live bacterial cultures) to make a difference in your good bacteria levels.

For the lazy executive: food with just a little sugar and no artificial sweeteners is much better for anyone than anything with artificial sweeteners.  If you want to compromise, cut down severely on food--and especially beverages--with artificial sweeteners.  We've known that artificial sweeteners have bad effects, but it looks as though they have worse side effects than we initially suspected.

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Is the US Embarrassed?

Several things happened over the last few days.

1. Donald Trump visited Britain, amid hostile demonstrations, which included a balloon in the shape of, as I understand it, a baby Trump.

2. Trump was received graciously by Queen Elizabeth, but then proceeded to get in front of her, and generally impede her progress while reviewing the troops.  He either does not know how to conduct himself on state occasions in Britain, or intentionally behaved boorishly.

3. He went golfing in Scotland, to the annoyance of hundreds of Scots, who showed up to jeer at him.

4. He met with Vladimir Putin in Finland.  Putin was significantly late, but we're told that that is not unusual.  Once they sat down together, Trump asked Putin whether Russian intelligence had interfered with the American Elections of 2016.  Putin said no, but expressed a willingness to participate in the investigation.

5. At a subsequent press conference, Trump declared that he believed Putin, and was satisfied that Putin's heart was in the right place.  Putin had confessed that he preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton, since Clinton had been tough on the Russians in relation to the invasion of the Crimea, and Ukraine, as well as assassination of certain secret agents.

The International Media seems to say that Trump had made an ass of himself.  But, as we know, and according to the belief that Trump clings to, the media does not reflect the opinion of anything but itself.  (This is not exactly true, but Trump might have someone read this Blog post out to him, so I have to be careful.)

But the point remains: about whose opinion are we anxious?  The opinion of Fox News?  The New York Times?  The Washington Post?  The Russian Press?  The North Korean Invisible News?  The people of the world?  Worrying about the public opinion of the world at large is a senseless idea, because there are at least 20 different opinions that anyone could have at this moment, soon to be boiled down to about 10 broad attitudes.  All of these would be different opinions about Trump, and quite different opinions about the American Public.

By now everyone knows that our electoral system is seriously flawed, since it depends on the good intentions of people in certain offices, but which we cannot depend on in the future.  Or perhaps we should brace ourselves to see a long parade of egotistical fatheads vying to be President.  The GOP is probably convinced by now that politicians are no longer a good farm club for the major leagues, and that only 'reality show' people could win the crucial vote of the chauvinistic Trump electorate.

The Democrats seem to be reeling into philosophical instability.  At their worst, I used to think, they were just a little dazed and confused, but quite able to run the government.  But Trump and his party have depleted the Government Coffers to such an extent that it is virtually impossible to recommence the welfare services that the GOP shut down.  The options are: go on an austerity diet, (something which alienated the working class in Britain, remember?) while slowly paying off the debt created by the GOP.  After four years of that, they're sure to lose the next election, because the dynamics of the situation will be poorly understood by the public (or will be ignored by the public), who will believe the lies of the GOP once again ("Remember, Trump almost got rid of those pesky Mexicans for us, but the Dems and Hillary got in his way!"  Never mind that Hillary Clinton did not hold office while the White House was down with this severe case of Trump-itis), enabling the GOP to distribute the savings among the 1%.

Destroying what the US had achieved, under the leadership of several Democrat presidents, and many Democrat congressmen, congresswomen, senators and senatoresses did not take long; hardly a year and a bit.  Putting Humpty Dumpty together again will take a long time.

One thing is certain: we have to keep an eye on access to the voting booth.  Bring your guns.  (Jk.)

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