News and Opinion; Mostly Opinion!

Dear Friends,

I'm beginning to realize that the vast majority of US citizens do not like to get any unsolicited advice, or even solicited advice.  As my stepson says, half in fun, Don't tell me what to do!  (Of course, I jolly well tell him what to do, because he's using my equipment, and however ignorant I may be, it is my equipment, dammit ...)

Over the last two weeks, I haven't posted anything, and that's because what I do is react to what's happening, and though our fearless Sort-Of-Leader, President Trump, does various things from time to time, none of it is unexpected or different, and I would find myself thinking the same old thoughts about him, and by now you guys could almost predict what I was going to say, and that would dilute the effect of what I would say the next time I really had something important to say.

Many writers in the newspapers seem to think that Trump is just interested in

• helping Business, and rich folk;
• building up an enormous PAC, which he could use for anything he wants, and
• staying in the public eye, just like TV personalities who are particularly fragile.

Where have they been?  We knew all this in 2017, and even earlier.  Even Dr. Mary Trump revealed very little we didn't already know.  (She was mostly interested in deflecting criticism from the entire Trump family, and focusing it on Trump himself, which, though it elicits a snicker from me, is a reasonable goal.  I don't think Trump's foolishness and viciousness has its roots in his genes.) 

But now, Democrats are getting nervous about the runoff elections in Georgia, where two Democrat candidates for Senator are running against two Republican candidates; a race that might mean that the Senate has no definite majority, or that the Senate has a Democrat majority.  (I'm a little vague on this; please check this out yourselves.)

Now listen.  I am unhappy with the idea of telling people how to vote.  It is too much of a responsibility; if whoever I advised becomes dissatisfied, over the next few years, as to how the election turned out, or how the candidate for whom I advocated performed in office, then they're unlikely to accept my advice in the future, and will certainly be confused about their political beliefs.  Each person should vote according to his or her own beliefs, and adjust those beliefs according to their experience, and their own calculations.

I am quite comfortable telling people to go to the polls, however.  I sincerely hope that those who went to the polls this November (after not having voted before, or not having voted even for a long time), are satisfied with the results.  So, Georgians (in the State of Georgia; not those sad souls in the Republic of Georgia), by all means vote.  (Georgians in the Republic of Georgia, I did not mean to discourage you from voting in your own elections!  Good luck!)

The progress of the COVID epidemic has really show us a couple of things.  Firstly, how important an understanding of basic hygiene, especially the mechanism of disease contagion---how it spreads, and the physics and the biology of dispersion of what we call "germs"---is, for everybody's safety.  How germs multiply: that is biology; basic cell biology.  Some people have understood the facts from their interest, or from grade school, or from quick explanations in the news.  Others haven't a clue, but get a rough idea from their friends.  How the germs go from one person to another: that's physics.  If the germs are carried in moisture droplets, we need to know how moisture droplets travel in the air.  All this needs a moderate knowledge of physics.

People do not understand anything they are uninterested in.  Having been a teacher for 40 years, and a student for 25, I know this for a fact.  If a significant proportion of the population rejects the need for learning physics, for example, then I suppose their subconscious belief is that somebody---society, or their elected leaders, or their friends, or god, or some agent---will protect them from the consequences of their ignorance.  After all, this is a Free Country, and everybody (supposedly) has the freedom to be (selectively) ignorant.

Secondly, a lot of our fellow-citizens, those who are fierce proponents of (what they perceive as) American Freedom, are more concerned with their own freedom to do something, and everyone else's duty to allow those freedoms, than the other way around.  Everyone knows that freedom of one individual requires restraint from another individual.

There's the story of a man who was swinging his umbrella, and knocked off the hat of another person walking past.

The person who had been wearing the hat complained.

"It's a free country," said the umbrella-swinger.  "I have the right to swing my umbrella if I wish."

"Your freedom ends," said the one whose hat had been knocked off, "where my hat begins."

The story is illustrated at right, with one protagonist's nose substituted for the hat.

An important change in how the very American concept of personal freedom is taught has to be that, in order that more than one single person should have freedom, the freedom of all individuals must have limits.  In the very practical case of distancing, or limiting travel, or wearing masks, all of which are vehemently opposed by people with normally quite reasonable dispositions, the right to not toe the line suggested by the authorities has to be balanced against the safety of the community.

December 14th: Electoral College Day

I keep worrying about whether I am showing a face that is too obnoxiously cheerful, because so many of our fellow-citizens (and, very likely, so many of your actual neighbors) are probably dealing with grave and painful sickness, and even death.  At the moment, we're leading quite drab and boring lives, but nobody we know personally has died---yet.  This must be the case for a large proportion of our fellow-citizens, judging from the scorn they direct towards the entire subject of the Pandemic.

The other day, our son went out and got a string of lights, because we want to keep up with the Joneses, and the Joneses had the entire front of their home simply drenched with Christmas lights.  Pretty soon, our home looked pretty respectably lit up, but still somewhat short of over the top.

We have four pets, and I want to place on record that, if not for them, we would be a lot less sane than we are.

The dogs have fairly straightforward messages for us.

• I want some food.
• I want more food.
• I want your food.
• I want you to take me for a walk!  I'm excited!
• I want to go out, and obey a call of nature.
• I want to go out, and check on a noise I just heard.
• I want to go out and bark at the neighbors.

The cats have even simpler requests.

• I want water.
• I want food.
• I want to go out.
• <Bang, bang on the door> I want to come back in.
• I want something; you have to guess.
• I want to climb on your lap.  In fact, I'm doing it now.

 I'm diabetic, as some of you know, and am not supposed to eat anything that has ordinary refined sugar.  (For example, eating a banana is sort of OK, as long as I don't do it every day.  But eating regular ice cream is a complete no-no.)

So, when today I got the munchies late in the morning, the only way to deal with it was to go upstairs.  Downstairs, 30 feet from where I was sitting, was the refrigeratador, as we fondly call it, and inside Mr. R. was---guess what?---a container of <gasp> Eggnog.  I love eggnog, but they never make low sugar eggnog; oh no; each swallow of the stuff contains close to three tablespoons of sugar.  (There might be sugar-free eggnog somewhere, but it probably tastes sweeter than ordinary eggnog.)

Well, my daughter called me, as she often does, and I whined at her about the eggnog problem.  And she said: she mixes the eggnog with plain white 2% milk!  Reduces the sugar, reduces the sweetness, and doubles the quantity!!!  How come I had not stumbled on this solution before?  I only drink a tiny bit at a time, in a 2-oz glass.  (Or maybe a 3-oz glass.)  And only half-filled.  I just need to have a mouthful of the stuff, after eating something spicy, for instance.

You're welcome.  That must be an idea that other eggnog addicts (who don't like all that sugar) can use.

Well, come tomorrow, I suppose there will be plenty to talk about, but at the moment, we still don't know what mayhem went down at the Electoral College shindig.  So until tomorrow,

Arch

 

Joys of the Holidays!

I'm planning to write about Hansel und Gretel by Humperdick in our companion Blog. 

Arch

Being Critical vs. Being Harsh

First of all, here's wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving!  I'm going to keep doing this, because I'll probably forget that I have done it already.

There are many things that Trump has done, which we do not like, but which look to him (and to a lot of Republicans) as, "Well, this is how he (Trump) wants to do it, and, they are really just choices, aren't they?"  Some of these things are really outlandish, such as Giuliani wanting Pennsylvania to not certify the election; I really hope it will not work.  Every Pennsylvania election is liable to have challenges to them, if the losing side keeps looking at them the way Trump and Giuliani do.  What are we to do: wire the brains of each voter to Trump's personal computer?

I must go on the record that, on principle, I do not approve of humiliating public figures, or even humiliating anybody, really; at least generally.  Half the country really wants Trump to take strong leadership in dealing with the COVID epidemic.  In the end, Trump has judged whether, and how, to do this from the point of personal public relations, and not really whether he can be effective.  He figures: if I get serious, and ask for sacrifices, I might be remembered as "COVID Trump" at election time.  It's too much of a risk.  He wants his face to be always remembered as "So much Winning!" Trump.

Well, this is a reasonable fear.  It is quite possible that Biden might be remembered as COVID Biden.  Not as the man who shivered in fear of COVID, but a man who took it seriously.  Biden might end up fighting COVID for three years, leaving him almost no time to do even the simplest things on the Green New Deal, of which everyone is so pathetically frightened.  (We must look at it again another time.)

Anyway, a very dear family friend drew one of her very first cartoons, digging at Trump's continued insistence that we have the COVID epidemic almost licked.

Conservatives might well take exception to the tone of this cartoon, but I'll bet it is a lot gentler than almost any political cartoon in any newspaper this year!

Talking about being gentle.  Go look at Jimmy Kimmel's interview of Barack Obama.  There were lots of opportunity for Obama to humiliate Trump as Trump is dismissive of Obama.  But Obama never goes there.  He is critical, for certain.  But is not humiliating.  Trump does not know how to do that; it was the way he was brought up.  Reading what his sister (a retired judge, evidently) and his niece (a psychologist) say, the family culture was not as depraved as Trump's personal culture has been.

Arch

Our Friends: We Must Restore Our Relationships

I know that something must be written about this, but I don’t know exactly what.

At the time I write this, Mr. Trump appears to have backed away from believing that he had won the election—though he still claims publicly that it was a stolen election.  Republicans are beginning to wonder whether it makes sense to believe Mr. Trump, or to believe the election commissions in each of the states that are in question.  These commissions are often bi-partisan in make-up, and their leadership is very professional.  (I know a little bit about them, because my wife was co-opted into helping the election effort for the county in which she works—in another capacity.)  At the moment, this election is being considered one of the most successfully run election in the past couple of decades, despite being conducted during an epidemic.

Now, for several years, I—and many of you—have gotten into the habit of labeling anything that some people say as lies.  In actuality, we should not have been doing this, but, hey, these past few years have been so difficult to get through that we had to take logical short cuts, and we could not waste time trying to think why some of our friends were saying things that were untrue.  But we cannot simply go on labeling them effectively as habitual liars; the time has come to look behind the lies, and behind the apparent lies.

A statement can be a lie for many, many reasons, and I’m going to try and list some of them.  I can do this more or less automatically (to begin with) because I taught basic logic for several years, and there are some mechanical reasons why a statement is false.  (A statement someone makes may be false unintentionally.  This is the hard thing to deal with.  I’m not going to address that problem directly.)

The most common reason we would disbelieve someone’s statement is the most difficult one to address: all our statements are based on a whole set of background statements that we sort of think of as being included with our statements.  For instance: The World is Round; The Sky is Blue; People Mostly Tell the Truth; COVID is not like most other Viruses; and so on.  We consider these axiomatic; we accept these without question, and we don’t expect to have to prove them, or justify them.  They’re “obvious”; this means that when someone makes a statement, those background statements are supposed to be understood.  Some people don't know which set of background statements to understand, so they assume they're the ones they use themselves.  Now, if individual A says something to individual B, and A's set of axioms is different from B's set of axioms, B is not going to interpret the statement the way that A intended.  So, as far as A knew, he or she was telling the truth; but it could seem to B that A is lying.

For example, suppose A thinks the world is round.  Most people who do (believe the world is round) use the word “Straight Line” to mean a tiny bit of a circle, when they’re talking about the surface of the Earth.  (Not just any old circle; an enormous Great Circle, whose center is at the center of the Earth.  Tiny bits of such a huge circle looks very much like a line segment, and most of us think of them as such.)  Suppose B, in contrast, believes that the Earth is flat.  Suppose A, quite innocently, tells B that, if you set out in any direction, and you go far enough, you come right back to where you started.  B, of course, thinks: wow, what a thumping great whopper that is; what has he been smoking?

The second most common reason for a sentence to be labeled False by its intended audience is just as subtle: the meanings we attach to pivotal words are not always universally agreed upon.  It may be, for instance, some people might say The Media, and mean the local evening TV news.  Some others might include the newspapers, Facebook, YouTube, and Fox News.  Others may only mean The New York Times.  So any statement about The Media may or may not be true, depending on what The Media is to you.  Now, that’s a fairly obvious example.  But if you think hard, you can list literally hundreds of words that are being used differently by different people, and if you include phrases, there are thousands more.  For instance, Black Lives Matter is understood to mean some very varied things, depending on the person.  So do the words Terrorist, Socialist, Racist, The Law, and so on.  Even such loaded things as Pro-Choice can mean horrible things to some people, while others think it is perfectly reasonable.

A case in point is: ‘The Election Was Stolen!’  Democrats consider that this means that there was ballot-stuffing, and dead people voting, and all the usual stuff that Republicans talk about, but probably do not do.  (Of course there are some marginal people who would do anything, but luckily for everyone, it can’t be easily done on a scale that makes a difference to the election.)  Some Republicans probably mean that the Democrats convinced certain Republicans to vote for Biden.  Is that stealing?  That would be twisting words to have unintended meanings.  Trump clearly meant by “stealing” that, because of the large volume of mail-in ballots—which he was not expecting—that many states changed from Red to Blue while he was busy celebrating.  Some people would call that situation theft, simply because it was unexpected.  Maybe I’m thinking up excuses for Trump simply because it is repugnant to think that we had a president for four years who was an out-and-out liar, and no better than the presidents of certain South American marginal democracies.  Furthermore, I firmly believe that some Trumpian jokes have been taken seriously, and labeled lies.  Come on, people; learn to take a joke. 

Finally:That was then, this is now.  This principle is used by people who make careless statements that they don’t really plan to stand behind, at least, not for very long.  The meaning of the phrase is that, "Well the conditions under which I said that made it true; but times and conditions have changed."  Unfortunately, the ideas in the head of the speaker might also have changed, so that a more accurate description of the problem would be "I have changed my mind about that," or "Now my friends have the White House, not your friends!"  It’s a variation on that principle that made Lindsay Graham support the nomination of a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsberg, just a few weeks before the election.  And that’s perversely reasonable, because when the Senate and the White House are from the same Party, the whole process moves more expeditiously, and in fact was completed in mere weeks, whereas Obama’s nominee would have had quite a fight getting endorsed by the Senate of that time. 

That’s all for now; I can’t think of any other distinct mechanisms that would lead to misunderstanding, except to extend these three principles above to more general situations.

But now I’m going to get personal.  Trump keeps saying he wants to Make America Great Again.  I don’t really think he invented that phrase, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.  What does it mean?  (1) America Used to be Great; (2) America Is Not Great Anymore.

One way in which, for me, America has been a lot greater than it seems to be now, is: when I was young, if someone said something, I would believe that he or she meant it.  Most of the people I know are still that way: they don’t say something they don’t mean.  But doubt has been creeping in; we’ve gotten used to assuming that some people just lie all the time, particularly when they’re on certain subjects.

This is going to have to change, starting right now.  As a first step, we should stop attacking those who seem to be lying.  (Many liberals and Democrats just hold their heads and walk away, which is better than being belligerent.)  Most of all, we ought to model reasonable behavior for the kids, because kids are very quick to imitate their adults.  An America where all the kids of conservatives disbelieve and attack all the kids of liberals will not be great.  Just as not great for conservatives as it will be not great for liberals.

Arch, wanting America to be Truly Great Again!

Anxiety

One problem that early voters have had, I'm just guessing, is that they have already cast their ballots, and do not have the opportunity to discharge some of their tension by voting on Election Day itself.  All they can do is watch the news with great frustration, or just go about their work, because it is a working day.  (It shouldn't be.)

I have downgraded my status from Atheist to Agnostic.  (My beliefs have not changed, but I thought it sounded a little less arrogant.)

You know, the Anglicans have a tiny sliver in their liturgy that is called the collect.  It is a very short prayer, tailored to the occasion, intended to collect everyone's thoughts, just for a few moments.  I was never an Anglican, but I used to follow many young ladies to church, with impure thoughts in my head!

I decided that I would compose a collect for today, appropriate to my status.

I haven't really beat anybody up in a long time, but it certainly gets across a more lighthearted tone!  So here goes nothing,

Arch

We Vote (DAY AFTER-) Tomorrow!

All these last several weeks, some folks—whose main occupation seems to be thinking about the political situation—have been driving themselves distracted, worrying about what the outcome of the election will be; will Trump win a second term; will the Democrats win a majority in the Senate; will they maintain a majority in the House, what will the State Houses look like after the election, and so on.

All we can do is go out and vote, and then worry about what to do next.

There are a number of things that we ought to worry about—after the elections:

* How to eliminate, or strongly reduce, the role of money in politics.

* How to deal with this problem of Gerrymandering, which is particularly bad in Pennsylvania.

* How to get people back to work, given that there is a highly contagious virus in our environment.

* How to get—and keep—school-age and college-age youth's minds sharp, given that conventional classes are really not an option—even though some Democrats seem to support a return to school.

* How to stem the tide of the GOP's little presents to the 1%, and to the business community generally.

* How to deal with the incoming tide of immigrants from the South, without being cruel or harsh.

And—

* How to deal with the Corona Virus, and COVID-19.

But first we have to vote, and verify that there is indeed a strong leaning towards the Democrats in this election; so much so that the entire Republican Party is bearing the brunt of people's dissatisfaction with how political business has been conducted in the last several years.

As one writer wrote (quoting Senator Ben Sasse [R Nevada]), Trump seems to have viewed the Presidency as a business opportunity.  There is no legal means for us to combat such an attitude, except to vote him out.  There have been numerous instances where Trump has shown a lack of understanding about what is expected in a President.  As far as we can tell, he seems to be thinking: what's in it for me?

Even without the problems with Trump's deafness to voices of conventional rectitude, the GOP has had his back for four years.  They defended him against the impeachment, and they watched while Trump subverted the Justice Department and the State Department, and made them instruments of the Trump so-called Empire.  It will take a long time to repair the damage done to the administrative agencies of government, and even longer to repair the damage, and build back the public's trust in those agencies.  The Democrats are considering a number of constitutional amendments that will block some of the moves that a president might take, inspired by the example of Donald Trump.  Another analyst says that what is most worrisome is that another nominee will arise, whose objective would be to do more of what Trump did, but do it more ruthlessly, and more competently.  This is a frightening thought.

In some ways, things are beginning to look like a pendulum.  Sometimes pendulums are such that if there is a swing in one direction, there is a bigger swing in the opposite direction.  (Little kids know this, by riding on swings, and pumping their legs.)  Perhaps Trump was made possible by Obama's great success.  If Trump makes possible a huge landslide towards the Democrats, they must be careful about not overplaying their hand.  An even bigger swing towards the Republicans next time around, will be very unpleasant for everyone, especially minorities and women.

We must be careful to moderate the propensity of some among us to take retaliation against the conservatives.  There is the possibility that some anti-social elements might respond to the results of the election by destroying the property of the winning side, especially if they're marked with Biden-Harris stickers, and so on.  If Biden-Harris win, the best we can do to the frustrated Alt-Right is—for a few days—pretend that they do not exist.

Arch

Learning How Foolish Our Neighbors Are

The major spreading events, over the year, have all to do with: Celebrations.  Business celebrations, birthdays, Sweet Sixteen parties, etc.

Some people just have to celebrate.  We always knew some of our friends were spoiled.  They would whine about something that they were being denied, such as having a big party to celebrate some stoopid thing, until whoever was preventing this from happening said, OK, go ahead.  Don't blame me if you get sick.

We obviously don't know about all such instances; we only know about the events that ended up being spreader events, such as the President held.  Covid follows the Pres like a gleeful herd of Minions!  I think it was cheap of the Pres to blame it on Gold Star Families (like he did); he accused them of coming up to him and kissing him.  Some Gold Star families are probably not the brightest; they aren't as clever as the Pres, who said he had a bone spur, or something.

The number of infections in any locality is a measure of the stupidity of that area, except for those who are forced to go into work in unsafe areas, because otherwise their bosses would fire them.  (Think nurses, ambulance drivers, etc.)

Thank goodness I'm retired; I don't know how I would have dealt with being forced to work in this environment.  My heart goes out to everyone who has to brave unsafe conditions in order to put food on the table of their families.  I have very little sympathy for those who go around without masks on their own time.

Arch

Money For Nothing!

The American Dream is different for different people.  For people like Trump, it looks very much like: you stumble on a money pit, and then you sit back while the shekels roll in, and spend all your time bolstering up your public image.

This works---and had worked---for many of us; the easiest way was to get money from the land.  Farming was too painful.  But hiring a lot of poor people to dig coal out of the ground was a good idea.  (Those who worked the mines took all the risk.)  Cutting down trees was another good one, especially if there was a boom in housing construction.  Once they started mass-producing cars, they needed steel.  There were iron mines, which made some people rich.  Then there was oil.  And gas.

Then there was the Stock Market!  Then there was Real Estate!

Then there was the Great Depression.  Then there were the Wars.  (Some people got rich from the wars.)

Then, there was a change.  Young people began to travel outside the US, and began to get strange new ideas about equality.  They seemed to think that not just White Americans, but everyone, even the women, deserved a share of the power and the wealth.

They also seemed to think that it was important to keep the air, the water, and the land clean.  They got into Congress, and then into the Senate.  They studied science, and what sorts of things polluted the environment.  Soon, the Money Specialists, who had focused on how to get the most rent out of poor tenants, and how to get the most suckers into the casinos, looked up, and all they could see was these people--who looked like low-budget communists to them---making rules that got in the way of duping customers.  It wasn't enough to sell people soda; people wanted to know how much sugar there was in the damn soda.

These people were aghast at all the roadblocks that the Democrats were throwing up in the way of easy profits, and wanted to make America safe for unscrupulous businessmen again.

Let's talk about America and The World.  There was a certain time in which American Idealism was a refreshing contrast to the cynicism of the Old World.  Anyone who had a good idea would be sneered at everywhere except in the US.  There was a time when an inventor would be given a fair chance in the USA.  There was a time when someone with a grievance would get a fair hearing in the USA.  Side-by-side with the capitalists with tunnel vision, were friendly folk who were not suspicious of people, as long as they were confident you were not one of those horrible communists.  This was the time that the Alt-Right looks back at with longing; the US would frown on the shenanigans of some countries, and was eager to take leadership in any new project.  We were No. 1.

Soon those awful Democrats turned around to look at what was going on in the US itself, and began passing legislation faster than ever; Social Security, and Medicare, and Equal Rights, and Handicap Accessibility, and Unisex Toilets, and Gay Marriage, and the decriminalization of abortion, and lots of people wanted things back the way they used to be.

But the things that really made America great are probably not the things that the Alt-Right think made America great.  The things that Trump urges those at his rallies to do are not the things that ennobled the USA in the eyes of the world.

Trump knows this perfectly well.  All he wants is for his ardent followers to imagine that the things Trump wants do make America great.  It is a hoax.  A lot of what Trump engineers are little hoaxes, and they're hoaxes on his own people.  This is probably why when some of his assistants get tired of what goes on in the White House, leave the fold, and make such an about-face.

How much do Trump's nominees to the Supreme Court see through Trump's hypocrisy?  How much are they committed to altruistic ideals?

Does American need to be No. 1 in everything to regain the respect of the world, and a position of leadership---to some degree---among the nations of the world?  I think that depends on whether they can trust the US to be impartial, and to keep our word.

Arch

Hate as a Business Model

For those of you who have found it too wearying to work out the ins and outs of US politics, here is a good opportunity to straighten out those kinks in your reasoning.

Bear in mind, though, that whenever anyone tells you that they're trying to help you straighten out your thinking, by all means give them a listen.  But also be very careful that they're not slanting their reporting to the benefit of some particular view, and that's the case here, too.  And it is also the case when I go on one of my rants, or even when I explain something that seems to be in a reasonable 'voice'.

Particularly in politics, the lines of motivations are very tangled.  There is nothing that this speaker says that I have not realized, without any external prompting, a year or two, or even a decade or two ago.  But Matt Taibbi really seems to me to gather up all the threads that sometimes elude us, and explain things in such a way that we can be a little less frustrated about the day-to-day news, wondering whether we're missing something.

I stumbled on this video by Matt Taibbi just last night.  It is very clear and lucid, and is intended for a very general audience.  It is basic information, information that will be invaluable for several kinds of people:

* People who just do not like the wholesale prejudiced atmosphere we have now, where we almost have to avoid people with one sort of opinion, and only talk with those who have our point of view.  We know this is unhealthy, and you'll begin to see that this state of affairs was actually--possibly unintentionally--manufactured by Business Interests.

* People who do not like to have to think for themselves, and need their prejudices figured out for themselves by experts.  (This was intended to be funny, but honestly, it is very tiring to have to unravel the twisted motives of people we see in the news, particularly when these motives change daily!)

* People who used to have friends of all types: white, black, conservative, libertarian, liberal, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, Russian, European, British, Irish, Mexican, etc, and deplore how things stand today, where it seems almost a felony to want to talk to these people again.

The basic problem has been that, back in the Sixties (as Matt T. explains,) both Radio and TV news services were at pains to capture the largest possible audience.  This meant presenting the news with as little emotion as possible, not appearing to support any particular side.  Doing this even-voiced reporting ensured that you did not alienate any sector of the audience.

Once the sources of news proliferated, and in particular, once the Internet became a source of 'news', but more accurately, a source of opinion mingled with news, it became more profitable for each news service to select a particular demographic, and focus on getting a solid grip on them.  The most successful of these news services (Fox News) learned that the best strategy was to make their target audience mad about the news, and keep them mad, and only show them news that kept them mad.  That should be enough for you to figure out the rest without Matt Taibbi's help, but for the more feeble among us, Matt goes above and beyond the call of duty, dotting every i and crossing every t.  MSNBC is the same as Fox, except that they focus on keeping Democrats permanently angry.  Today, he explains, every news source has identified its target audience, and relentlessly pursues the objective of permanently keeping their tempers simmering, by selecting the news stories that support that anger and hate.  So, unless you switch your news sources around, you're never going to hear about good things happening around the world, or even around the continent (North America, to be exact) that may take you off the simmer, and miss a juicy advertisement.  As someone once said, the responsibility of every business is to maximize its profits, and not worry about the well-being of its workers, or the good of society.  Good businesses have to be bastards.  (As if I didn't have it in for business already, here is one more nail in the coffin of my good feelings for business.)

The people who don't waste energy on getting angry are: Business Interests.  As long as they can sell their advertising, as far as they're concerned, hate is good.  Small businesses are not party to this cruel strategy; and in any case, it is the news services that really keep the news anchors' toes in line with this strategy for maximizing their advertising profits.  As Matt explains, once the news anchors arrive at a winning formula, the advertisers hate when the news anchors depart from it, because the profits begin to plummet immediately.  A happy audience is not an audience glued to the TV, and biting its nails.

Arch

Time's Up: I vote no more debates

 Most of those who forced themselves to watch the debate were nursing headaches.  I had decided to skip it, and my sanity was preserved as a result.

Many analysts (how can they keep analyzing this nonsense after the circus that politics has become?  It was not a circus, but the Trump gang has decided that it suits them to make it so.  One of Trump's "coaches", Chris Christie, has been heard to say that Trump was "Too hot."  I wonder what "hot" means, in the parlance of para-Trumpism) say that Trump did poorly.  Only about half of his staunch supporters have been polled as saying that Trump improved his chances of winning the election.

Let's face it:  Trump was dealt some big punches to the waistline these last few years.  But he's president.  He should be able to take it.  But his response to every setback is to come out vaguely blaming some other party, and refusing to take responsibility for making it right, and then, unbelievably, claiming that it has been solved, whatever the problem was.

A lot of people out there do not like how things are going.  They don't like too many foreigners coming into the US, and behaving like they belong here.  (Never mind that they are competent, and do a better job than anyone else, for the price.)  They don't like that Gays are allowed to marry.  (They never saw that when they were kids!)  They don't like it that all the cheap stuff they like to buy is now made in China.  (That's the only way to get it for the little that they're willing to pay for it.)

Think about this.  It is only Chinese manufacturing that enables us poor Americans to strut about sporting iPhones.

Trump tried to play games with China in trade deals.  But he doesn't know enough to play those games properly, and he cannot win.  The fact is that labor is less expensive in China, and we have nothing to counter that ace that they can play anytime.

Americans can make anything that the Chinese can make.  But we're used to being paid more for doing it.  So if we want to have nice things, we must either go to the Chinese, and ask nicely, or save up for longer!  Don't get mad at me; almost everything I own was made in China, and I am suitably embarrassed.

So, if you are confident that these debates are not going to change your mind about voting--or not voting--for Trump, then don't watch them.  The Pence Harris debate might be interesting; at least those individuals are able to obey reasonable rules.  (But Pence has been learning from Trump; perhaps he will convince himself that sometimes it works better to ditch the rules!)  Then Harris will shrug, and ask whether she can be excused, and go home.

Arch

Do We Need to Watch This Debate?

This debate should be watched only by those who are willing to change their minds.

Let's see.  It is possible that Trump will do just a fantastic job.  It is likely that Biden will simply fall apart.  But there is not likely to be anything that changes my mind; it is only likely to make me feel sadder about this election, or make me feel slightly better, and certainly, make me feel angrier, which is not a good thing.

If any of my readers are still on the fence, these words are not for you.  I have no advice for people who still feel that they might vote for Trump.  We have arrived at a moment where all that we have seen have made us aghast at what sort of person Trump is, what sorts of things he tends to do, and likes to do; and what sorts of thinking goes on within the Republican Party--either temporarily, while their unexpected Messiah, Trump, holds the party in his hand; or permanently, in order to defeat a lot of the policies that Democrats have, with difficulty, put in place.

After this election, we will have to re-evaluate not just the policies of the Democrat Party, but also the policies of the Republicans; or rather, they will have to rethink what they stand for.  I think (and I certainly hope), that there will be a landslide in favor of the Democrats, but I have been wrong before, and maybe Trump will win another chance to do what he thinks is best for the country and for him.  If that happens, we as a nation will truly deserve it.  And we will have to wonder what sort of country we live in.

Arch

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the Elections

Young Ruth Bader Ginsburg

While I was living my life, Ruth Bader Ginsburg quietly died.

As anticipated, Trump* and McConnel** have combined to set in motion filling the vacancy in the Supreme Court with a woman from the Appeals Court whose politics are considered to be conservative.  While much of the public frustration over the pick has been heatedly negative, I have the distinct suspicion that this lady--Amy Barrett--might be a more reasonable member of the Supreme Court than Kavanaugh, for instance.  So, while the injustice of the inconsistency of the Senate is still raw, there is little we can do about it, except to exercise our right to vote.

It all underscores the problem that many of the things that we depend upon to have government run smoothly are traditions, and precedent, and people's convictions about what sorts of decisions are decent.

On one hand, it might have struck a superficial person like Trump, that a lot of the ways in which things are done hamstring big business, and even medium-sized businessmen like Trump.  (Such as how he conducts his business while he sits in the White House, for instance.  There are plenty of people who could have run his business perfectly well, but no one who would have cut corners like Trump has.)  A lot of these conventions have benefited Democrats in the past, and perhaps Republicans feel that it was time to loosen up those fetters, and get ahead while the Democrats were down.  But when Trump got rolling with all these abuses of power, a few Republicans began to get uncomfortable.

We don't really know what a typical Trump supporter thinks.  The most rabid of them--such as those who turn up for his rallies--probably do not worry about such things very much; they have trust in Trump, and are confident that he will steer them through the quagmire of Government procedures, which they never understood anyway.

A lot of other Republicans are just watching what happens.  They're frustrated with, and sick and tired of, the roll that the Democrats have been on: giving unbelievable rights to women; treating minorities as though they were human beings; being polite to foreigners; making a fuss about the huge profits that the oil companies and the big retailers were making, etc, etc, and are ready to try new ways of pushing the conservative agenda; curtailing the rights of gays, putting the environment on hold, and preventing the Democrats from raising the taxes on the rich to pre-Reagan levels.  If and when they think matters are going beyond their ability to control it, and they want to go back to the old, civilized way of doing things, they can throw out Trump, and tell the world that it was all Trump's fault, and that they were only going along with it to see how far he would go.

Trump knows this, and is suspicious of the Republican Party.  But now he's more confident that the Republican leadership is sufficiently scared of him.  He thinks that the threat of his Tweets will keep them in line.  But the thinking of the multitude of former Republicans is by no means uniform, and very difficult to depend upon.

Fooling around with voting rights, and the election process is something that Trump is perfectly willing to do.  But then, in future elections, what is going to happen?  Not all the conservatives are foolish enough to think that if they win this election, future elections will take care of themselves.

Many of these Republicans have been in politics a long time, and know the pitfalls of breaking the rules, even if the rules are not actually rules, but agreements, and even if these Republicans are getting old, and have bouts of Dementia.

I will find it hard to forgive the Republicans for these several months of uncertainly and confusion they have inflicted upon us.  Many think Trump has been a coward for not facing up to the virus Pandemic the way a Democrat would have.  Well, yes; it is cowardice, but political cowardice, and uncertainty about how to deal with the crisis.  Trump's way has always been to point the finger of blame at some other agency--ideally Obama--and say that it was his fault, or her fault.  But in this case, he is not confident that doing that will work, therefore he has allowed the States to make the unpopular decisions.

During a pandemic, that does not work.  Because Americans have generally felt free to zip around the country, playing golf, attending meetings, meeting their mistresses, or whatever, and so containing the infection in a state is impossible.  Lowering transmission rates has to be handled nationally, which means that the President has to lead the way, and pacify the businesses and employers that the Federal Government will have their backs; and at the same time convince workers and employees that the Federal Government will have their backs.  Unfortunately, US Businesses have set things up so that workers are essentially on their own.  Social Security is a tiny bit of support for workers, which doesn't give them much, and certainly not enough for during a major national disaster***.  The social programs that states have put together are not competent to support citizens during an economic collapse.

If the population at large were sophisticated enough to look at the facts, and make reasonable decisions, Trump could never win this election.  But that's not what we have; for instance the people of Kentucky have been electing Mitch McConnell to the Senate for several decades, though he does not have their welfare at heart.  He does not have anyone's welfare at heart!  (Unfortunately, this is true for certain Democrats as well.)

But we can't make calculations based on what foolish and inconsistent people are likely to do.  (Political Science is a discipline that tries to do this, and by now my readers know that I am deeply annoyed at it.)  So we have to think of ourselves, decide on who we will vote for, refuse to be stampeded, make it clear (if we choose to) to our neighbors how our thinking goes, put up lawn signs, etc, when it is safe to do so, and vote as usual.  Vote anyway, if you don't usually vote!  Don't panic and change your plan, because there is a large number of people--some of whom are deliberately trying to confuse people about the voting procedures; some of whom are trying to foil the plans of those who are trying to confuse us--sending us information in the mail.  This should be outlawed.

So, to summarize: keep calm, and vote.

Arch

*The current President

**The current majority leader in the U.S. Senate.

***This is why the Dems want to make the Safety-Net for workers a much more reliable thing.  This is not Socialism; lots of not-at-all-Socialist countries have powerful safety-nets for when there is massive unemployment, etc.

Getting Some Sleep in this Election Season

Ever since I wrote that post on Socialism, I have been worried, thinking that anti-socialism folks would see their worst fears confirmed.  Though I am certainly in favor of Health Care Reform, even if it isn’t Medicare For All—which has to be improved in numerous ways, if it is to be friendly to everyone, take into account any grifters who have hung onto the medical system like leaches, and the numerous administrative folks who tend to tap into the enormous amounts of cash that flow through the medical system.  Some of these will end up working for the Health Service, but a lot of them will have to find some other whale to stick to, e.g. golf courses, or electric charge stations...—rich conservatives, who see the livelihoods of their friends going away, and their investments in Health Insurance disappearing, will begin screaming about Socialized Medicine, assuming that just those words will scare everybody.  Socialized Medicine is pretty much exactly what I want, if I had my druthers, and let me tell you: unless you’re a lot wealthier than I am, you will get better health care for less money than you’ve ever got so far.  It remains to find out whether doctors in Socialized Medicine countries are paid as well as doctors in the US (which would tell us something whichever way that goes).

 

No matter what goes on between now and Election Day, the more Democrats go to the polls and vote, the more likely that a Democrat will win.  And what’s more, the more likely that all those Democrats who are running for Senate Seats will win.  And for Congress.  It’s that simple.

Of course, Trump and his pals are creating a whole virtual world of fake news; declaring the election over as soon as the votes on November 3 are in, at midnight, etc.  There are all sorts of scenarios about how votes in Blue States are counted, etc. etc.  Well, there is nothing we can do between now and then; that sort of attack has to be taken care of after it happens.  Now, Trump and his friends are depending strongly on the Supreme Court ruling in their favor about their election shenanigans.  But telling the Supremes what to do is like herding cats.  Just saying.  Even Kavanaugh cannot be depended upon to salute, and vote Trump’s way.  He’s a Supreme for life, quite a different position than Trump’s.

Of course, in another four years, we will have to vote against another Reality TV star that the GOP will put up.  (Not the GOP Politburo, but the GOP rank and file, led by the Alt-Right, who are, it seems to me, an aggregation of yahoos, who realized that the inner core of the GOP could be smothered by a colorful character like Trump.

We can cross that bridge when we come to it.  It’s going to be a slow 4 years with Biden at the helm (but who knows?  We may not get socialized medicine, but if Biden decides to efficiently repair the highways and bridges, the many government buildings, schools and airports, putting a huge number of people to work, that would satisfy me.  Above all, Andrew Yang’s idea of a Universal Basic Income looks really good, even if it is restricted to people of low income).

My advice is: ignore the news and the TV.  Ignore your junk mail.  Stay focused on voting.  Get a good mask to wear, comfortable clothes, and a folding chair.  And on Election Day, keep your eyes peeled for Trumpy officials trying to turn voters away from the polls.  I think the GOP wants violence, so that they can turn Election Day into a brawl, call out the troops, and declare the election invalid, and impose military rule, or something like that.  Unfortunately, the military, too, isn’t too happy about Trump and his friends.  Heel spurs.  Right.

Arch

Socialism, the New Bogeyman

 The US is full of former Socialists.  Actually, they're Socialists, but not rabidly socialist; the main reason they have (or had) given up on socialism, is because there was such a deep-seated opinion on the part of certain people, that the poor, which meant minorities, and the handicapped, and single mothers, and Native Americans, and addicts—in short, all the people that everyone has had a great time despising and vilifying—do not deserve to be bailed out of their marginal existence.

If you ever asked these people (if you could find out who they are,) why they do not want the most poor and indigent among us to be supported by the government, they would not have been able to give you a good answer.  Some of them—the more reasonable ones—probably think that it would be a load on the government, and would put the country even more in the red (raise the deficit is the common way of describing it) than it already is.  More vindictive ones would say: well, we had to work hard for our own savings; why should these people get handouts, just for staying at home?  The poor, of course, have been accustomed to being downtrodden, and take this abuse without much complaint.

That was the case, until COVID struck.  Now, millions are out of work, struggling to pay their rents, which means their landlords (some of whom lived like kings) are unable to pay their bills, and so on, so unexpectedly, a lot of people are thrown into poverty who were never this poor before.  These people are not accustomed to taking the sort of abuse that people have been accustomed to throwing at them, so that there is now (as never before) a political base for anyone who wants to change the conditions of the very poor.

Talking about "socialists", the people who have been socialists for a long time are used to waiting.  We tell ourselves: we are in no hurry.  Once the One Percent goes too far, the vast majority of the population will put its collective foot down, and the country will head towards a sort of Socialism where the government will control everything, and will probably not do it well.  

Young people who have only recently seen the point of socialism tend to want all of the aspects of socialism right away.  In practice, it makes a lot more sense to do a little at a time, until the public becomes comfortable with the idea, before they proceed further.

America has done fairly well with almost complete private ownership of all resources, (and of course, now businesses are screaming to control public lands and forests) but unfortunately these businesses, over the years, have come up with all sorts of tricks in order not to give value for money for the things they sell to ordinary people.  They buy up the competition (e.g. the phone companies), they do price-fixing; they do bait-and-switch; they fight against minimum wage, and so on.  If the government begins to own some companies, the private businesses cannot indulge in price fixing anymore.  (Small businesses see themselves on the side of Big Business, which is slightly funny, but they have a point.  If there is, for example, a government beer distributor in a town, the private beer distributors can't raise their prices higher than the government distributor.  But you can easily see how a private distributor can offer things the Government distributor would not bother offering, so... you see how that goes.

It makes perfect sense to speculate how this thing will go down, to prevent the GOP and the rabid Alt-Right crowd trying to scare everyone.  The most urgent, and easily enacted legislation will probably be undertaken first, followed by the more disruptive pieces, for which it is more difficult to get consensus.

One of the most annoying and frightening things we see in a Pandemic, or whenever there is a crazy wave of illness sweeping through the continent, is loss of health care.  When you lose your job, you lose your health care.  Many Democrats want to fix this problem once and for all.  (Taking this particular benefit out of the control of employers makes an enormous improvement in the dynamics between workers and employers.)  What if the Federal Government pays all the medical workers some reasonable rate, and requires that all hospitals take anyone who is sick for free?  That would be the best case scenario, but most Americans will hate that.  American citizens do not feel comfortable getting something for nothing.  (Will these workers be paid as well as they're paid now?  Will they all be paid the same, or will workers in New York be paid better than those in Podunk, Pi? Etc, etc.)  Or the government could take over the Insurance Companies, Blue Cross, Aetna, Prudential, etc., workers, managers and all.  Eventually, like all mergers, they will lay off unnecessary workers, which of course these workers will hate.

Another annoying thing is the fluctuating price of gasoline.  The government could take over the gasoline companies, and smooth out the distribution of gasoline.  Everybody expects that, if that is done, that the price of gasoline will go up.  I'm not sure why that is seen as inevitable.

One of the biggest actions that could be taken, as Andrew Yang has been advocating, is to give every person a small stipend, something as small as $500 a week.  In New York City, that will not go as far as it would in Podunk, Pi, but somehow, a way to make it work has to be found.  If this plan, called a Universal Basic Income is put into practice, it will be clear that people who want to continue to live in NYC will only do so if there is something that makes it convenient to live there.  So there will be a gentle pressure for people to move out of NYC, unless there is some advantage in living there, such as being close to some workplace.  Or being close enough to Trump Tower that you could go stand in front of it, and absorb its awesomeness.

Many big cities—and some quite small cities—allow anyone to ride a bus, for almost no money, and sometimes for free.  The more people ride the bus, the fewer of them will be driving to work.  A car carrying a single person to work is an enormous load on the environment.  Outlawing single occupant cars, alone, will improve Global Warming by an incredibly large amount.  Of course, we Americans value our polluting cars highly; almost more than anything else.

Finally, there is an initiative to either forgive outright, or heavily subsidize, college loans.  I am not certain that is fair; some young people take on part-time jobs while in college, which helps pay their fees, and for the rest, take out only very small loans.  Others do not work at all, and take out enormous loans.  If all these loans are paid off, it would appear that those who took out large loans get a larger advantage than those who have already worked their way through college.  However, if the government takes over those loans, they could reduce the rate of interest considerably, which would help all college graduates struggling to pay off their loans.  Banks have passed on revenue from college loans to their stockholders for far too long.

So, as you can see, it is possible for Joe Biden to do as little as he thinks the public can stand to do, and as little as Congress can stand to put into law.  I have never paid more than 25% income tax, and I doubt that any new tax law that Biden and the new Congress will put together will raise my taxes higher.  Many of my readers, those of you who are in the 35% tax bracket and higher, may see their taxes to up, but I'm sure they will pay the extra assessment with rejoicing and song, because who does not want the poor and the indigent to get a break, after all these horrible months?

Arch

Some Principles for the Post George Floyd Age

[First published 2020/9/10]

 As I reported recently, some people are not satisfied with non-violent protests.  (They say that Whites take no notice of them.)

Looting, destroying property.

We were brought up to believe that destroying property was wrong, no matter whose property it was.  But now, the Looting and Pillaging front proposes the principle that some looting is OK.  What are we to think?

I think--and I do not know the answer to every question, though I pretend I do on the Internet--that we've got to consider the property as a resource.  If you destroy a restaurant, you do hurt the proprietor, even if he is a policeman who is as likely to shoot you on sight as to bring you your check.  But more, you hurt the dozens of people working there: cooks, waiters, etc.  Your call.

Wearing a Mask.

People have been studying this issue, and there is absolutely no doubt: (1) places where people wear masks have lower infection rates than places where people do not wear masks.  (2) Places where some people wear masks do better than places where no people wear masks.

Of course, a mask is no protection if a huge number of people are crowded in a room together.  It's worse if the crowding continues for a long time.  In situations like that, it almost doesn't matter whether you wear a mask or not, but I'm not going to go along with that.  Wear a mask, but get out of that room.

Sending your kid to School.

This is a real tough one.  I think it depends on the school.  Some schools hide behind the privacy issue, and refuse to test, and sometimes refuse to tell you whether there have been infections.  Other schools are completely open.

If (1) it's a small school, and/or (2) they try to hold many of the classes outdoors, and/or (3) half the kids are staying home, and following along remotely, and (4) the sessions are short, and (5) the classrooms are aggressively ventilated,

then there's a good chance that Junior will be safe, especially if people in your area hardly ever leave town.  But there are some jokers who want to attend every game, every gathering, every rally, every anniversary, in short every opportunity to collect a virus or two from buddies they haven't seen for a long time.  If there are such jokers in your environment, I say keep your kids at home.  Stupidity is an aggravating factor for disease control.  Braveness has nothing to do with it.

If the safety precautions are being followed, I have to admit that, even if kids are with their teacher for a quarter of the time they would have, before the virus, they could end up learning a lot.  Many teachers I know have been frustrated at being separated from "their" kids!  It's a funny thing.  Some teachers don't mind teaching over the Internet, especially High School teachers, but it's kind of hard on kids who don't have as much access to technology.  Other teachers hate remote teaching with a passion, including most elementary teachers.

Many parents are looking at this from the point of view of child care.  They can't work, with the kids at home.  This is a slightly separate issue, but the present administration (and the State Governments, who are not encouraged to be creative by Headquarters) are not trying to think of novel ways of solving this problem.  For instance, every family has a couple of other families that they trust, with whom they can make a pact saying that none of them are going to indulge in risky behavior.  If that is done, one of the parents can supervise a sort of camp, say at a playground, or a clubhouse, or a church basement, where the kids are allowed to play quietly.  Of course, there are some little people who will go crazy at the sight of their buddies, but . . . what can you do?  This is America, and we have to recognize that some people are going to make things suck!  This is what Elizabeth Warren has been saying: nobody has taken child care seriously.  It is unfair to dump the child-care task on the schools, because schools have people trained for teaching; child-care is only an incidental skill that they learn in order to get the teaching done.  They're quite professional about it, but . . . there you are.

Vote by Mail vs. Vote in Person.

This is a tough call.  I have decided to vote in person, because we live in a small town, and I doubt whether the lines are going to be very long.  I have other reasons for doing it, but that's my choice.

Many people have already voted, especially in states where they have early voting, such as Arizona and California, and I believe, Colorado.  Those people are beyond being confused by the President's asking people to vote twice, which in Pennsylvania means you go to jail.  (We didn't make it a law forbidding a president from requesting the population to perform a felony, because nobody thought a president would do such a thing.  I mean, we don't have a law forbidding presidents to ride motorbikes without a helmet, either.)

I have run out of ideas.

What I notice a lot is that many of my friends are on the brink of panic about the elections, and the antics of the White House, and other sectors of the administration.

You have to realize that Mr. Trump comes from a Reality TV background (though nominally he's suppose to be a cross between a hotelier and a real-estate guy).  He mainly wants to be on TV all the time, therefore he dreams up some drama every day, like the Kardashians.  Ignore it, but make sure you vote.  Just start a new hobby.  In eight weeks, our agony will be over.

Arch

A Realistic Look at How a Democrat Would Have Handled Matters

[This post is initially being written on 2020/08/28.  That's for reference, in the unlikely event that someone reads it weeks or months later, when some of the background assumptions might be different.]

We are determined to be critical of how Trump dealt with the various issues that have confronted him: Foreign Policy / Corruption, Global Warming, Racism / Immigration / Tribalism, Economy, the Pandemic.  Of course Democrats have hated how Trump dealt with each of these issues, or even caused them, in the first place.  But what we ought to do, to be fair, is to contrast how he dealt with them, versus how a Democrat president—say Obama, or Hillary Clinton—would have dealt with them.  Many unimaginative Democrats think it would have been smooth as silk, but they aren't being realistic.  We must never forget that there are very angry Alt-Right types out there, hating every single thing a Democrat does or says, as well as very opinionated Democrats out there, who never think twice about criticizing even their own woman or man.  As the Democratic Party has grown—and it certainly has, due to the inability of the GOP to handle the challenges that the country faces—it has broadened, and the ideological genes within the party cannot be expected to give a unified prescription for every problem.

We all know what Trump did, faced with the COVID.  At first, it was denial, and then (responding to criticism of not being realistic) a grudging acceptance that he would have to take unpopular steps to stem the rate of infection, which he immediately passed on to the Governors of the states.  Some of them responded well, causing howls among conservatives (and those who needed to party* most of the time!  You know who you are).  Soon, the economy began to suffer, as was inevitable, and Trump's knee-jerk reaction was to open up the economy.  Again, he palmed off the rules of behavior for lifting the distancing advisory to Governors, some of who gave good advice, other did not.

How would a Democrat president have dealt with the problem?

• S/he would have first given a Press Conference about the disease, and most of what non-specialists know about it, and closed with some positive remarks that, working together, we can handle this thing; but make no mistake, it is likely to be quite a struggle.
• S/he would have called up the epidemic specialists—as least, when it became clear that the epidemic was here to stay a while—and got their best advice.
• I absolutely have no doubt that some of their recommendations would have been overruled.  Ideally, we should have sent everyone home, and said that we would shoot anyone seen on the streets on sight.  Obviously that would not have worked, politically, so the instructions would have to be softened.
• Pretty much like Trump did, a Democrat President would have held a press conference, and allowed the experts (Dr. Tony Fauci, presumably) to speak, and said—after the experts had done their report—that instead of a 24-hour curfew, we're going to allow limited visits to grocery stores for supplies, limited visits to Physicians' offices and Emergency rooms; limited visits to Drugstores, and so on.  The experts would have readily agreed.  Wearing masks would have come up, and one hopes that a Democrat president would have tried his/her best to get the supply of PPEs, or at the very least, masks, quickly available in large quantities.  (How this would be done is hard to see; very likely we would have had to depend on foreign manufacturers, because we have gotten so in the habit of offshoring essential manufacturing.) 
• The Economy would have taken a dive, and heaven knows what the stock market would have done.  Being maniacally friendly towards Trump, Wall Street would have, at least initially, taken quite a dive, and then, in self-defense, brokers and managers would have started buying again, and the indexes would have gone up.
• It is difficult to see how differently a Democrat would have tackled schools and colleges.  Each of us believes that if a Dem were in charge, s/he would have done what we think should have been done; but in practice, the steps or missteps would probably have been exactly the same.
• Trump is leaving local authorities to make up all the guidelines.  A Democrat would probably set out Best Practices guidelines right from the White House.  Of course, the Alt-Right would have howled about how unfair / unwise / ineffective the guidelines are.  The (hypothetical) president would have addressed the complaints, said that a lot of hardship cannot be avoided, and followed up with a lot of happy talk about how we, together, can beat this thing.  But Trump is terrible at giving bad news.  This is the sort of thing he has avoided at all costs, and the result is his leaving all major decisions to Governors, and often to Mayors.  (In some instances, Mayors have had to go against their Governors, who gave wimpy responses.  In other instances, Trump supporting Mayors have given instructions contradicting reasonable Governors.  So sad.)

So, Trump's reluctance to face the criticism of the people leads to a weak response, when a strong response is almost imperative.

In many ways—as many writers have pointed out—Trump is still playing the role that he played in his reality TV show, The Apprentice.  There, he was at pains, whatever he did, to make sure that he didn't lose his TV audience.  Here too, he proceeds as though the country is still his TV audience.  In some ways, it is; he keeps an eye on his audience, to make sure they're watching what he does, and steers their thinking via his Twitter account.  So, all along, it has been aimed at reelecting himself for another four years, and only secondarily, taking care of the Republican political agenda.

Archimedes

*Or at least socialize

Morals From Scratch: Violent and Non-Violent Protest

 [This post will be edited for additional information soon.]

If you live long enough, you find yourself bombarded with how inadequate your moral compass has been.  Your ethics were all wrong.  Sooner or later, someone is going to point out all the errors in all the rules of behavior you had internalized.  It's not that you don't know anymore which way is up, but ... that phrase does come close.

With all the protests taking place today, it seems very difficult to know whom to call out.  I would have thought that destroying private property is always wrong.  But in the wake of the shooting of Mr. Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wi, there were numerous cars that were set on fire.  The protestors were angry.  But these days, it seems that anger is called forward to excuse all sorts of destruction of property, since we can all agree that those who are angry are rightly so.

To look at another kind of problem: people are not quite comfortable with accepting that women, throughout the world, are in fact subservient to men.  It is worse in some societies, but even in the USA, a woman makes only three-quarters what a man makes for the same job.  (Of course, some companies are so delighted when a competent woman applies for an upper-level job, that they offer her an enormous salary.  But that woman is a mere token, though she may not thank you for pointing it out.)  A black woman, according to some estimates, makes only 68 cents for every dollar a man makes.  That comparison may not be quite fair, because they compare a black woman to all men, rather than to black men, because I believe that black men make less than white men.

Many of my readers have been brought up to assume that US men and women of all shades are more deserving than foreigners.  We deserve more pay, more leisure time, better health care, better education, lower taxes, than people in any other country.  This explains why items made in other countries are less expensive, even after the cost of transportation has been taken into account.

The majority of US citizens are Christians of one flavor or another.  We have been brought up to believe that the Bible, and the Preacher, are the guides who will point us in the right direction.  The Bible says, wives: be obedient to your husbands; children: obey your parents; keep the sabbath; do not murder; do not covet.

But often Christians are called to fight in wars.  In a war, many of these precepts must be suspended, because often the one in your gunsight could be a father, or a brother.

Every moral rule of thumb that I had ever made for myself, based on the teachings I received from my religion or my school or my parents seems to have been called into question.  But the one rule that seems to keep popping up into my mind is not even a Christian teaching.  It is to take the side of the underdog.  Might is not right.

In the topsy-turvy world that Donald Trump, and his political allies have created, it is very hard to discern who exactly the underdog is.  Normally, I would assume that it is the side of those who live from paycheck to paycheck; those who do not have healthcare; those who have to choose between sending their kids to school in a dangerous environment, or going in to work themselves.  People who are forced to live in sub-standard housing, in crowded neighborhoods, in neighborhoods close to polluting plants and landfills, on streets constantly exploding with gun violence: I would consider these people the underdogs.

As you're probably aware, Trump supporters consider themselves the underdogs, the weak and the oppressed.  They huddle together in the safety of their Megachurches, afraid of what that hell-hound Biden might do; afraid that Kamala Harris might suddenly visit their homes, and snatch away their guns, and assault weapons, and bazookas.  Somehow, many of them are convinced that healthcare for all will eventually destroy America as we know it.  It is just the first step (they think) in a government takeover of everything.  

Wherever I was going with that, it is quite possible that, in a year or two, there might be runaway inflation.  The millions that the so-called One Percent have in their banks could soon be worth very little.  At that time, those of us of more modest means can, without embarrassment, establish a barter economy, just as they did in the 1930's and 1940's.  And Biden and Kamala Harris will have to supervise our response to this economic collapse, which Trump and his followers will be quick to blame on them.  (As is their wont.)  After a year or two of this, it could easily happen that the poor--and even the rich--will beg and plead for more government supervision of distribution of resources.

However things work out, we must be prepared for widespread protests and riots.  The weak and the ignorant are always willing to lose their temper, and sometimes to pretend to lose their temper.  If alcohol is available, people will drink first, and then pretend to have lost their temper.  People on the losing side of an argument, particularly, will lose their temper.

It is going to be a very interesting time indeed.

[More, added later]

Empathy, Morals, and Religion

 Have you noticed how so many conservatives are uncomfortable with atheists, or downright hostile to them, or anything in-between? What is going on with that? Atheists are clearly not vicious brutes, though some conservatives paint them so, and other conservatives seem to have convinced themselves that we are so. (I am an atheist, though I don’t go around broadcasting it. I take it as a private matter, and nobody’s business but mine.)

Why are these people so anxious that we should all join them, and be Christians?  At first, I thought they were following orders: “Go ye, to all the corners of the Earth, and ...”  They were words that the writers of the gospels put into the lips of Jesus himself.

But now, I think there is a different reason.  It is fear.  They feel that if all the world were Christian, there would be safety for each of them.  If there were any atheists around, they would be a source of danger.  Mind you: I do not assert this as my thought. I just think that this is probably a thought that goes through the minds of some Christians.

Many families spend a lot of time, inculcating the quality of empathy in their kids. The ability to identify with someone who is suffering, is a fundamental part of being a member of a good society. We must not teach our children to only come to the aid of friends and relatives. Until we consider everyone as equal recipients of our empathy, we cannot feel that we have a good society.

In the abstract, everyone would subscribe to this principle.

But when we see our children following through on their empathy, some of us are taken aback: because, sometimes we see them empathizing with those who seem, to us, as undeserving to be empathized with.  This is the framework of the parable of the Good Samaritan in the Bible.

“I want to go help that family!”

“Are you crazy?  They’re . . . It’s not going to be like our home, you know.  Their standards of hygiene . . .”

Sometimes, I suspect, some parents would like to set limits on just how empathetic their children are going to be.  They probably feel that their empathy training has succeeded too well.

This is where racism starts.  You can see that some people need help, but maybe not immediate, personal help.  And their problems have been brought upon by themselves.  They have nobody to blame but themselves, and their parents.

So some conservatives would dearly love to encourage some sort of limited empathy in their kids, and they flood to churches where the natural desire of people to help each other is channeled more narrowly; a more focused kind of generosity.  Help the pastor, and the church, and all things will be added unto you.

But even among the more enlightened of our people, there are some who are affronted when we think of helping people outside the USA.  Doctors Without Borders.  Amnesty International.  That habit of focusing generosity more narrowly raises its ugly head, and we think carefully, and hold back our resources.  It is only the most generous among us who think of everyone everywhere as coming within our circle of concern.

I have spoken with Republicans, and I have heard the opinion that they cannot help everyone; they cannot do everything, and it is that that they fight for.  To restrain the tendency for Democrats to ‘hand out money like candy at Halloween.’  But they have no difficulty handing out money to big businesses.

Finding a sort of empathy that is not twisted into racism is the primary challenge for atheist parents, as well as to teach our children how to empathize, and to fight the tendency to have others focus our empathy too narrowly.

Arch

An Unconventional Convention

My wife and I were talking, and she was expressing severe doubts about how interesting it would be to watch the 2020 Democratic Convention on TV, like we usually watch political conventions.  After all, practically every candidate withdrew, leaving only Joe Biden.  The Convention would do little beyond endorsing Joe.

But we were very pleasantly surprised, and the Convention was a true shot in the arm.

Most of the speakers focused on indicting the President on failing to do his job.  Being President, said one of the speakers, is no walk in the park.  President Trump, they concluded, is in over his head.

Michelle Obama brought up a point that I have been struggling to articulate.  All of us, she said, (with a few notable exceptions,) have been brought up to be sensitive to the pain of others.  But President Trump and his team seem to be the exceptions.

More than 150,000 lives have been lost to the Virus.  In a typical winter, more than that many lives are sometimes lost to the conventional Flu virus.  Trump takes this to support his position that he could not have done anything to prevent the Virus from taking its toll.  To this date, he has not show remorse at the tremendous loss of life from this Pandemic.  He has been slow to confront the problem head-on, for fear of antagonizing his supporters among Governors and Mayors.  Many of the cities and states whose leaders have been Trump supporters are now having out of control Virus infection rates.

This concern for the welfare of others is something parents try to inculcate in their children from infancy.  Teachers do the same, and so do the clergy.  Our complex modern life is impossible without cooperation.  And the basis of cooperation is not enlightened self-interest.  It is the instinct of empathy.

"How can we teach our children empathy, when they see what goes on in the White House?"  Children naturally conclude that it is all a lie.  They don't realize that all empathy was beaten out of Trump by his father, according to the book by Mary Trump.

In the future, we are going to have to reckon with four years' worth of children whose lessons in empathy have been confused by these four years of Trump.  We cannot, Michelle Obama says, afford four more years of Trump for that reason alone.

To be a successful slum landlord, Trump's father has emphasized, one has to be inured to the complaints of one's whining tenants.  Trump's older brother had too much empathy, but Donald was praised--and rewarded--for putting the family interests first.  This is very plausible.

Here is a summary of the events of this first night.

Quite a Pickle

Well, as Hardy never said to Laurel, this is quite a pickle we’re in.

The main pickle, in my humble opinion, is what to do with the kids.  They need to be kept out from underfoot while we bang our heads against the walls!  But seriously, while I don’t seriously believe that one semester’s absence from school would hurt any kid at all, multiple semesters really could.  I’m not an expert, but there are issues quite apart from the curriculum: social development, and the stress level of the little guys, which translates into the stress level of the adults.

Let’s briefly talk about online education, and home schooling.

Teachers hate online education, and so do parents.  Parents are coming to hate home schooling, because the stressed-out kids are difficult to handle, and the material isn’t completely ready (I don’t know this for certain, but I strongly suspect) for delivery by parents, who are amateurs.  If parents knew the subject-matter, it would be very different.  But it is the American Way (pardon my French) not to take school information seriously.  School is, for many of us, something we do—did, at one time, anyway—between keeping track of what was happening in baseball.

In some families, the kids would pay attention, if the adults who delivered the material were rotated.  Instead of Mom delivering all the curriculum, what if Uncle Bill did it every other day, while Mom taught Uncle Bill’s kids?  Kids would pay much more attention to a competent relative or friend, instead of their parents the whole time.  (Uncle Bill would have to talk to the kids over Zoom, or some such application; I'm not advocating that Bill should come visiting.)

The schoolwork has to be rationed out in very tiny doses.  Forget several hours at a time.  Half an hour is as much as they could stand.

These sheltering times have the potential for being a period in which some kids learn more than they have ever learned before, if teachers and parents and friends all collaborate on being creative about home schooling.

Home Schooling is not the only thing on our minds, obviously.  Business owners are trying to think how to adjust to the fact that their business has the potential to be a super-spreading center, which would ruin their reputations, and cause the authorities to shut them down.  Meanwhile, they can’t lay off too many people indiscriminately, because it would make it difficult to open back up once the time is right.  (Right now, in many localities, the time is not right.  Where we live, we had COVID cases only in double digits until this week, when we’ve gone into the triple digits.)

Many of us find it difficult to be creative and imaginative in coming up with solutions, because the chief engine of our creativity was the ability to talk with our buddies.  Most of our ideas arrive when we’re shooting the breeze with the guys (or gals).

We need to be creative and imaginative about delivering the curriculum—it has to be a highly modified curriculum, because of our dramatically changed circumstances—to the kids, all the way from Kindergarten to high school, and even college, and, furthermore, it has to be done for, as far as we can see, only a couple of years, at the most.  Nobody is willing to devote the best of their thinking to a temporary solution to a temporary problem.

I don’t mean to be harsh, but many conservatives, especially the poorly educated ones, have the mindset, probably, that education is basically the responsibility of the liberals.  (The exception is when it comes to Creationism, and Political and Economic theory.)  The liberals do not have a problem with this; they’re perfectly willing to devote some thought to the problem of education, in good times.  Right now, they’re worrying about so many things—the pandemic, the state of the economy, the mental health of their friends, the November elections, the foolishness of the White House, the infuriating onslaught from Fox News—that being creative about the kids is the furthest from their minds.  So the normal Brains Trust is too distracted to think about schooling.

And, most tragically, many of us are concerned mostly with getting the kids back to some magically enhanced school situation where they will not be at risk for infection (good luck with that), but which will allow the parents to go to work the second that the various regional administrations give the word to “Open Up,” and provide good rules for opening up safely.  (Good luck with that, too.  I’m not against it; I just sincerely doubt that typical workers have the intelligence to put into operation sane procedures that would keep themselves and their co-workers safe from infection.)

Look, in the Third World, people live in such densely populated areas, such as high-rise tenements, so that if one person gets the infection, pretty soon the entire building gets the infection, just because the virus piggy-backs on water droplets and gets into circulation in the air.  For example, in airplanes, to avoid infections, the air has to be very aggressively purified before re-circulation.  (They also dry the air, because dry air is easier to filter.  That's why many of us find ourselves coughing when we fly.)  In the tenements of poor countries, air filtration systems do not exist, and there are enormous infection spikes.

We, in the USA, are lucky, because our population density is very much thinner, except in the poor neighborhoods where practical nurses, and meat packers live.  The burden of this epidemic (okay, pandemic; it makes no difference) falls more squarely on the poor.  Trump’s administration is steadily loosening environmental regulations, so that the pollution makes it difficult to breathe, on top of the effects of the coronavirus on people with breathing problems.  It is almost as if the affluent elements in the GOP were deliberately trying to exterminate the poor, who usually vote Democrat.  (I’m sure this is not really an objective; but if they see that this is the appearance their policies have, they might reconsider.)

So remember: it is going to take a degree of creativity to solve the short-term problem of the education of kids, both great (college-age) and small; and people need to think logically about what they need to do if, and when, their community decides to open up.  A bad mask is better than no mask.  Distancing is important.  Any businesses that can carry out some of their operations in the open air are likely to be better at preventing infection than those whose operation have to take place indoors.  (My daughter works in a printing press; unfortunately, outdoor printing presses do not exist.  And she lives in Arizona, where you cannot keep the doors open in the 100 degree heat.)  Aggressive ventilation and filtration is important.  That’s a business opportunity for any company that can improve existing air circulation equipment.

Arch

Joe Biden, and his Vice President

Many months ago, Mr. Joe Biden, the Democrat nominee apparent for President, promised to choose a woman for his vice president.  When the dust settles down, I feel confident that he will fulfill his promise: he will select as running-mate a woman, and most probably a black woman, though that cannot be considered as a given.  Most Democrats seem to believe that it would be best, from many points of view, if Joe Biden's running mate were to be a black woman.

Just as when John McCain was running for President around 2008, it seems very calculated that Joe Biden will select a running-mate this way.  The same could be said about John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson; and even with Donald Trump and Micheal Pence, and even Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine.

In this case, it looks even worse; it looks like tokenism.  However, I have a feeling that if Biden were to win the Presidency, he could be one of the best presidents we have had in a long time, provided the Republicans take defeat graciously, which is a huge proviso.  The single biggest thing we haven't seen from the GOP is graciousness, this last four years.  But then, the country has not regarded the GOP with anything like respect, which is probably not surprising.

Unlike other years, if Biden is to be successful in the Presidency, the Vice President is likely to be a large factor in that success.  Unless Biden tries to 'safely' pack the VP off with some nominal portfolio, such as nutrition in schools, the VP can be instrumental in:

• bringing issues before Biden, e.g. environmental issues, and social justice issues that Biden might be inclined to drag his feet on.
• If Biden wants to compromise on some of the objectives that conservative Democrats view as radical, this VP can nudge the compromise closer to the spirit of the original idea.
• Mike Pence has been an absolute failure at supporting the president's initiatives, except among the Alt-Right, which has always been solidly behind the president anyway.  In contrast, I would expect that Biden's VP is likely to be far more effective and eloquent and articulate.

Another fact that makes me very unhappy indeed, is that many of the choices for VP that Biden seems to be considering already have elected office as Senators or Congresswomen, or even Governors.  Stacy Abrams and Susan Rice seem to be the two women who will not leave Democrat seats unfilled in either the House or the Senate, or a Governor's office.  Miss Abrams has been criticized as being too young, and Ms Rice has never held elected office.

Arch