True Skill versus Hacking

Many of us have realized that the Republican Party has begun to fragment over the last few years.  (So have the Democrats, but the Dems, at least, are more in tune with the conventional workings of government, whereas the Republicans are not.)

Let us first assume that the mechanics of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the White House, and the ways they work together to govern the country has worked, and will continue to work in the near future.  Whether it does or doesn't is a discussion for smarter minds than mine.  Then it behooves those who are sent to Washington to learn how to do this to the best of their ability.  However, in many areas of life, we see that the newer waves of people apprenticed to work in any area are simply content to learn certain tricks that work, and simply employ them repeatedly.

Mitch McConnell, for example, has learned to drag things out as long as possible, when a Congressional Democratic majority is in power, to (1) not address any legislation that has been sent up from the House, and (2) not consider any supreme court justices that a Democrat President nominates.

This pattern has been extended as follows.  If any Democrat President tries to do anything in a bipartisan way, the Republicans pretend to try to accommodate him or her.  After months of negotiating have delayed the proceedings, they then stop negotiating and vote against the (successfully weakened) legislation.

The Democrats, however, are usually accomplished lawyers, who usually argue their cases in good faith, and do not try to subvert the dominant paradigm, as the saying goes.  The Republicans know this, therefore they try very hard to break the rules.  Whenever they discover a 'charismatic' leader in their midst (though it's hard to think of Donald Trump in terms of charisma; he's more of a showman, a sort of Liberace who can't play the piano), and who does not stand for the usual procedures of Washington, they make the best of it, and encourage him to wreak havoc in Washington, to the extent of subverting the Justice Department, the Immigration Service, and many other institutions that are not intended to be interfered with by political people.

So, as fewer and fewer strong, knowledgeable and skillful Republicans are elected to national office, and the party is left in the hands of hacks, their strategies will drift ever increasingly towards obstructionism, and such things as voter suppression, and playing with the Supreme Court, and wild litigation.

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Power Politics, and Getting Things Done

Why people consider politics as something dirty is because there are two aspects to it.

The first is to get into City Council, or the State House of Representatives, or Congress, or the Senate, and somehow get some legislation you really want passed; hopefully some law that will make things better for everybody.

The second is to get yourself elected.

Members of both parties are concerned with both aspects of politics; you can't do either without the other; sometimes someone who aspires to public office has to compromise on his or her objectives in order to persuade voters to elect them.  Some people go as far as lying about what they want to do once elected, in order to get votes.  Others are brutally honest about their agenda, and endure not being elected for years and years, hoping that the electorate will finally see that their agenda is the best for the electorate.

Now, looking around us, we can't help noticing that there are two terrible forces that are advancing on us: (1) The relentless advance of climate change.  Just like the GOP has finally recognized that it is insane to urge their people to refuse to get vaccinated, so we must hope that those who insisted that climate change was temporary, and not a result of society's disregard of environmental effects, will see reason.  Many fools who screamed at the science that was trying to persuade people that it was going to get too hot and too wet to continue to live the way we like to live, are belatedly coming round to say: we have to do something.  (2) The fact that it is the poorest among us, African Americans and all sorts of minorities, immigrants, women, single parents, disabled, and uneducated, who suffer most from the excesses of the society we live in; in particular, and increasingly, the ravages of climate.

I have, most of my life, dreamed about going into space.  If society was equitable, if poverty was not something that was going through the roof, if there were no more suffering in the world, not to mention the USA, I would have dearly loved an opportunity to go into space, and so would have many others.  But given the horrible future that awaits us if we keep going in the direction we have been, there's something a little crass about billionaires riding out on their own private spaceships, to satisfy their craving to get into space.

There's no doubt that we have to pull out the big guns now---figuratively speaking.  We don't need to choose between dealing with (1) above, or (2); they have to be dealt with together, and with a steady eye on the long term effects of what we do, and what they do to oppose us.

It's sort of a no-brainer that controlling sales of firearms will reduce gun violence across the USA.  But conservatives of all sorts are stockpiling their own personal armories because they expect that the poor will come looking for them, for all the wonderful things they're hiding in their basements, such as a second freezer, and the computers on which they play computer games.  The vaccination fiasco has shown us that conservatives are not the smartest people in the country.  And their leaders are not even as smart as they are.  In a recent article in the New York Times, a writer exclaims why he's sure that Trump will run for President again in 2024.  Not to make things better for the country.  Not to make money out of his hotels.  Rather, to take revenge on everyone who didn't support his electoral bid the last time!  The country is burning on one side, and flooding on the other; his followers are dying of COVID, his fellow-Trumpers are perjuring themselves and ruining their reputations to remain in his favor, and does he care?  No; his first objective---according to this writer, and the idea makes sense to anyone who has been paying attention to the sorts of things that Trump has done while president---is to take revenge on his political opponents.

It is no time for pettiness.  Every act of pettiness detracts from our resources, our time, our energy, all that it takes to move society, and the law, towards dealing with the climate that is grinding towards an intolerable condition.  Many Democrats, in particular, those considered to be among the so called Left Extreme, but who are quite moderate in actual fact, have tried to portray Clean Energy as something that could Profit the big Energy Companies.  Some of the energy companies have bought into this, and have tried to take over some parts of the clean energy industries, and proceeded to build wind farms, and solar farms, with the usual heavy-handed, environment-destroying, jack-booted style with which they were accustomed to developing their energy assets.  They've plunked down solar panels right in the middle of virgin forests.  Wind farms in residential areas.  What are they trying to do?  Make citizens hate wind and solar, to that they will get the OK to drill for more oil?  This is interesting.  The conservatives are now motivated more by hate than by greed.  This is not the time for Democrats, and progressives and liberals generally, to fall into the same trap.  It is almost impossible to avoid feeling hate, because of the destruction that the conservatives are causing.  But it is a mistake to act on hate.  It is not just that liberals and progressives are superior---which they probably are---but that we have our eye on the ball, and we can't get where we want to go by retaliation.

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Humor, News, and Things Going Very Wrong

Well.

How is everyone?  I don't expect you to answer that, but I thought I'll start out on a less egocentric note than seems natural to me.  (You have to expect that bloggers, by their very nature, tend to be egocentric, because they're usually blogging about what happened to them.) 

My wife and my stepson---or at least, my wife---like to keep the house temperature cool, like 69° or 70° F, which is a little too cold for me.  So I obtained a Hoodie, and wear it until I start perspiring, at which point I take it off.  (I get hot flashes, and sweats, possibly because my Urologist shot me up with Estrogen, while he was fixing my middle, as the limerick says.  Don't ask me for the rest of the limerick.)  Now ... what was I saying?

I have a huge problem with short-term memory, though heretofore a lot less trouble with long term memory.  It's a little like ... What did you say your name was?

Ah, temperature.  Because it is kept so cold around here, I suddenly realized that the most comfortable place in which to sit and blog, for me, is---the bathroom!  It is a tiny space, which has its own baseboard heater, and I can set it exactly at the temperature that I like!  Except, of course, that it would tie up an essential facility ...

I hope you found that funny, because that is the Humor segment of today's post.

About News: since I started reading the New York Times, I regret to say, I find it harder to maintain my customary relentlessly optimistic outlook.  Many things get me depressed.  The  arguments over whether the 2020 elections were stolen; the break-in of the Capitol (and the subsequent misbehaviour); the Democrats' slim majority in Congress; frequent news stories of accumulating piles of plastic waste; the problems with schools reopening, and my own doubts about whether I could have functioned in a remote classroom; and the race of Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson to send themselves into space.

But almost the worst story of all is the utter dysfunctionality of Haiti, as a nation.  All the news stories that outline the history of the country seem to indict the USA as---if not the principal culprit, at least one of the culprits who have kept Haiti in its state of dysfunctionality.  Only a Haitian can take the reins of any improvement of that country's condition.  One expects that it has to be an educated Haitian, because modern government requires a certain degree of awareness.  But it looks as though all educated Haitians are cynical in the worst way.  There seems to be no way out of the mess.  As far as the international community is concerned, it looks to be a money pit, and throwing good money into it after the bad will not get anyone anywhere.

One of the most frightening facts that have emerged in the last year is that there is a vast number of Americans who do not believe anything except what their favorite truth peddler tells them.  They don't believe that Trump lost the 2020 elections, they don't believe that Trump has cheated on his taxes, they don't believe in Climate Change, they don't believe in the seriousness of COVID, they don't believe in vaccinations.

Put it all together, and what do you get?

I have a feeling that the GOP is going to get elected back into both Congress and the White House sooner or later, and repeal every good action that the Democrats will take in the next year or two, whether good or bad or indifferent.  If they (Good Actions of the Democrats) improve our lives in the long term, these Unbelievers will doubt that it was the Democrats who made it so.  (Compare, for instance, how Obama lowered the unemployment rate, but Trump took the credit.)  Even if some action of Biden's makes lives immediately better for every American, we know who will get the credit: Trump.

It hardly seems worth Biden's while to try very hard.

On top of all this are the twin divides of Racism/Xenophobia, and Classism/Education-phobia.  I can only conclude that Haiti is merely a foreshadowing of what will happen to us.  The difference is that we have a lot more resources, more oil, more learning, none of which will be permitted to make a difference.  Already the youth are heading towards cynicism.

If one of our Axioms is going to be that we cannot combat Global Warming, saddled with the broader political picture that sits like a stationary cold front over our society, what should be our guiding principle?

Some people choose to be optimistic, even if that choice is not supported by the facts.  I suspect that some denominations are going to style themselves Church of Hope in the Face of Despair.  Churches are so good at believing in irrational things!  They call it faith.

Should we continue to recycle, given that we know no US government is going to attack the problem of pollution head on?  The American political system is designed to move incrementally.  We have incrementally painted ourselves into a corner, and now we need quick action, but the system is not designed for it.  We thought we were the poster boys of everyone working together, or at least, everyone who mattered.  But vast stretches of the US is populated by those who did not get the Memo, and don't believe that the Earth is round, to begin with.  As for me and my house, to quote the prophet Joshua, we will continue to act as though our actions make a difference.  Burn less gas, eat less meat, elect more environmentalists, practice less hate, and so on.  It isn't easy, but it gives us something to do.

Meanwhile, the plastics industry is making plastic cheaper and more convenient to use, the gas industry is making gas more readily available.  (Can't they make gas out of plastic?  Apparently not; plastic is very low-energy stuff, into which you need to pump a lot of energy to make anything out of it other than more plastic.)

It's a rainy day over here, but that's clearly better than temperatures in the triple digits, as they have in some places in California.  I don't understand why Californians continue to stay there with the prospect of murderous summers in the foreseeable future.  (According to their laws, the Big Farms have control over their water, so that most citizens can't get the water they need.  But the state government dares not change the laws, because Trump will label them as the destroyers of Californian agriculture.)

Keep up your optimism, or at least, act as if you're an optimist!

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