Dogma and Cynicism

I can't remember why I began to think ... oh yes, I do.  My wife and I, who're both of us 'non-believers', are both involved in causes that would have been classed as Christian service (my wife a lot more than I) often find ourselves 'praising the Lord' with fellow workers who are sincere Christians.  This happens a lot to my wife, who is heavily involved with service projects that are strongly supported by Christians.  Of course, these conversations are heavily burdened with expressions of how much God directly influenced some outcome.

My wife relates these incidents to me, and deplores that religion has to come into it; what it usually means is that some person was simply persuaded to do the right thing.  (Many people, even if we expect them to be hardened cynics, still have the ability to do something altruistic.)  At times, both of us feel like screaming: no, it isn't God!  It is just common decency!!  But of course we can't; there is a delicate network of beliefs inside the heads of these people, that makes their—sometimes amazing—work possible.  They often see the light of the 'Love of Jesus' shining out of my wife's eyes.  But she has given up on that sort of belief for well nigh 15 years!  That does not, of course, mean that she has turned her back on what was called Christian Service.  It's just service,  since the church has hijacked the word 'Christian'.

Throughout the world, people are abandoning the various mythologies, the different dogmas with which they were saddled as children.  The paths on which they arrive at this de-mythologization are varied, and often unique to each person.  But often—and this is important—it leaves behind a lot of cognitive damage.  We're quite familiar with the phrase 'trust issues' in psychology.  But trust issues are also involved here.  The secularization of individuals causes problems for that individual's functioning in society. 

I write all this not as an expert, but simply as an observer.  Over the last several years, we have observed the cynicism of numerous, numerous Congressmen and even some Senators, supreme court justices, and all sorts of people who were believed to hold the public trust.  When they're revealed to be complete hypocrites, we're essentially secularized from the dogma of civic responsibility.  We become atheists of declaring our assets truthfully to banks.  Much of how a president was expected to behave—let alone supreme court justices—were seen to be only suggestions, that were ultimately myths. 

Much of the practices that seem to have been abandoned by these new, improved conservatives, are just the simple extensions of the process of abandoning religious dogma. 

We cannot shove the genie back in the bottle.  Quite irrelevantly, it is the conservatives, who realize that something is not as it should be, and try to encourage a new religiosity on the population, via very large gospel churches.  Ironically, the ministers of these churches confirm, rather than dispel, the cynicism of a typical person. 

The phenomenon that is the engine of the attraction of mega-churches is nothing more than entertainment, and a desire to influence, or be recognized by, an enormous number of people.

Despite the culture of cynicism that we live in, many of us have altruistic instincts which emerge intermittently!  In the weeks and years ahead, we're going to see a lot of that. 

Arch

Conservative Imagination

Well, everyone who is not a radical Republican is wondering how to bring the temperature of Politics back to levels at which any sort of work can be done. 

Radicals are all about disrupting the status quo, to overturn an oppressive status quo, and focus attention on problems, and replace the traditional hierarchy with a different one, more sympathetic to their aims, and one that will work for them. 

But while this upheaval is going on, a lot of processes will come to a halt, processes on which a lot of people depend.  I have feeling that the MAGA crowd doesn't have the sheer imagination to anticipate the problems.  Issuing food stamps, seeing doctors, going to school, getting groceries, etc.  Even bringing people up before judges, complaining about bad behavior, and such. 

The Republicans don't always care about these sorts of activities (in fact,  they might be delighted at being allowed to misbehave a little, and, you know, grab some pussies, like the big boys.)  But pretty soon they're going to find that a lot of the things they want to do are going to be impossible, or difficult.

There's a price everyone pays for breakdown of order.  All the work that the big shots wanted done efficiently by low-paid workers (about whom supposedly only bleeding hearts like Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris,  and Alexandria O. C. cared) might be disinclined to work as hard as they used to, once they realize that the Red Leadership seems to be neglecting them. 

Operation 2025 will shut down many services that are more important than the MAGA crowd realizes. 

Arch

"What Went Wrong?"

The Democrat Leadership, such as it is, is trying to figure out the answer to this question.

In times gone by, people who had the job of planning a campaign for a Party, could hope for a definitive answer.  They had gone to college, and they had been taught that there was such an answer.  But what has emerged in this election—from polls and interviews, and all sorts of ways, is that the voting population cannot be herded into corrals like that; there are too many slivers of attitude to take account of. 

To add to the confusion, Trump made millions of completely untrue statements, and what is more, got very angry when one moderator called him on it ("We know for a fact that Haitians in Springfield have not been eating pets ...").  Trump said it was very unfair that the pet-eating statement was challenged, but Kamala Harris wasn't challenged on any statement she made. 

So now, Trump supporters have to be split up into groups: (1) those who believed that Haitians ate pets.  (2) Those who did not believe that Haitians ate pets.  (3) Those who did not believe ... but who thought it was unfair to fact-check Trump in real time.  (4) Those who believed that Haitians ... but who thought the fact-checking was fine, and so on, and so forth.

You can easily see that these groups of people are very different sorts of people, and Trump was completely loosey-goosey, talking to them.  A scientific calculation about what to say was inconceivable.  Their only common denominator was that the government and the laws were decided by college-educated lawyers, and they wanted no more of that. 

 There are a lot of people who think the "learned language" that Congressmen and Senators use is difficult to understand.  Obviously, some lawyers intentionally use hifalutin language to confuse uneducated people.   But often, when a speaker is being very careful, he or she uses cautious language that goes over the heads of normal people.  So the suspicions of uneducated folk is easy to understand.  Trump found it easy to persuade these people that he's on their side simply by talking slowly, frequently repeating himself, and exaggerating what he would do (throw people in jail,  etc.)  So,  many of his followers are probably thinking, "He just says stuff like that all the time, for the sake of entertainment.  But knowing Trump, he might throw some people in jail—for the sake of entertainment, of course.

 What's going to go wrong for everybody is that, intentionally or not, Trump has endorsed a culture of cheating.  Cheat on taxes.  Cheat on marriage.  Cheat on elections.  Cheat on declaring your assets.  Trump thinks he can surf the rough seas of anarchy.  But he can't. 

Added later:

To an enormous extent, this election was all about talk.  Trump promised lots of things, lots of things he'd do, lots of things he'd be.  Lots of things to beware of, with a so-called progressive in the White House.  Meanwhile, Kamala Harris warned about all the bad things that will happen if Trump gets another four years in the White House.  It was all about promises and warnings.  Trump was boasting about his achievements.  He stole many of Obama's achievements, and took credit for them.  He boasted about the size of his inaugural crowd back in 2017, but in fact it was a small crowd, as Democrats proved with photographs, but the Maga folks would believe anything that Trump told them, and distrusted anything the Press reported. 

So, there was sadly very little actual achievement that voters could go on.  All of Biden's achievements were painted as 'failures', and amazingly hung on Harris.  Meanwhile, all of Trump's actual failures were painted as glorious achievements.  In the face of a tragically gullible bunch of voters, there was little or nothing the Democrats could do. 

Traditionally 'bad' things were painted as 'very, very bad', especially socialism and communism.  Traditionally good things, such as honesty and order, were painted as suspicious.  And finally, Trump and his friends at Fox declared that it was 'wrong' for a wife to vote differently from her husband.

As we reported earlier, Democrat theorists are doing an analysis, a post-mortem, on the loss of the election. 

But should we trust their reasoning?  The Democrat Leadership was largely shadowy figures in the background, who seldom showed themselves, for this precise reason, I suspect, because they feared being tagged with a probable loss. 

What to do going forward?

Trump is going to create massive chaos.  But his army of gaslighters are going to do two things: (1) Blame Biden / Harris, and (2) Paint the disasters as actual glorious triumphs.  The Maga crowd will eat it up.  In ordinary times, the actual performance of the administration was a counter to the wild claims of its PR machine.  But these days, the 'News' has been coopted into the PR machine itself.  And what's more, everything that the Dems say is painted as PR from the other side.  The frenzied complaints of progressive media sources—late night comedians, etc—are successfully dismissed as mere noise and propaganda. 

The Democrat theoretians will now create a careful analysis of what went wrong, but we will be hard put to believe them.  For us, belief is in short supply!

Arch.

What Are Americans Like?

Some Americans probably think: Oh,  we're all different,  while others think: not at all; we're basically all like, well, me!

I think the first response is more correct, though in some ways there are common thought-patterns that are shared by a huge variety of people. 

A lot of people think that getting through college will help them get a good job.  (Have you noticed how the really, really wealthy don't look for jobs at all?  They go to work for Mom or Dad, or don't work at all!)  This is partly true; if you want a really high-paying job, then you probably want a college degree.  But there are a lot more low-paying jobs for those without a college degree.  I don't really know the statistics; I'd be interested in knowing what proportion of young people choose not to go to college, and what the median income is for every sort of educational experience. 

It's interesting that how the voting preferences of the population is split up is described in terms of college experience, etc, which is a sort of 1970s approach to politics, even now, 50 years later. 

A lot of people don't pay any attention to newspaper analyses of the polling data.  Honestly, it is expressed by the experts in language that immediately puts off anyone without a college education, or even a good high school education.  I think younger voters are suspicious of anyone who writes in that style (I know; I write in that style too.  Some of the ideas are difficult to explain using grade school language), which means a lot of voters are easy for populist like Trump to persuade, because they don't see any of the downsides of Trump's speeches.  And, honestly, Kamala Harris did not do a great job of really arguing against them.  There is a good reason: she and her team assumed that a lot of voters had really bought into Trump's arguments, and strongly opposing them might hurt or insult those voters.  (Voters who aren't used to arguing politics in school or college can be expected to take any sort of argument personally, and feel insulted.)

There's a lot to be said for believing that there is a deep-seated feeling that any non white, non male will find it impossible to govern this country.  There is a strong belief, certainly among older white men, that blacks and minorities really can't handle leadership.  And if they can't 'see' a woman in the white house, well, they're not going to vote for them.

It's Wednesday After the Election

And Trump has won.  I'm very disappointed, and feeling vaguely inclined to retaliation, but I realize that my 'bubble' is strongly liberal.  When I started teaching here in Billtown, I began to realize that there was a stubbornly xenophobic group among the students, with whom I had continual run-ins.  In retrospect, it seems obvious that the general population is similar.  'We want to do things the way we're used to doing it,' was their war cry, and that's the attitude Trump has seemingly adopted. 

But is there room for an old- style robber baron in our government?  The people said: well, sure!  If he's our robber baron!

Is there some way that,  if left alone, the country will see the benefit of—what Democrats would call—a more balanced approach?  Probably not.  Can the Republican spin doctors fix the disastrous results of Trump's wilder schemes?  Easy.  For four entire years?  Easy.  Particularly easy with an audience that doesn't read straight news much. 

Arch

What does Trump Want?

He does not care about the economy.   He does not care about guns.  He does not care about Israel.  He does not care about immigration.   He doesn't care about the Democrats.  He doesn't care about the Supreme Court (though he doesn't want to look silly).  He doesn't care about Health Care

Of course, he doesn't want to go to jail.  What he really wants is to make a lot of money, eat a lot of KFC, attract a lot of attention, and win the election.  At his age,  there's not a lot that makes one excited.  He still does get a little excited when he sees a cute girl,  but it's not for long.

Arch

Washington Post, and Non-Endorsement

The Washington Post (famous newspaper in the D.C. area) chose not to endorse either candidate, at the urging of its owner, Jeff Bezos (a millionaire, and former owner of Amazon).

I had no idea that it was usual for newspapers to endorse one candidate or another in most elections, and (in another forum) I wrote that it would not have been proper to do so.  I soon learned that endorsing a candidate is quite normal around here.

But this means that the entire newspaper endorsed someone, rather than one columnist endorsing him or her!  That seems so weird to me.  When I was a kid, noticing elections for the first time, in a galaxy far far away, many newspapers refrained from endorsing a particular party or person, leaving the columnists free to do so.  That may have been the right way to do it, but things have changed since then. 

It's extremely disconcerting as to how naïve most people are about politics.  Some people think it has to do with education.  Well, not exactly; but quite likely educated people might be just a little more sophisticated about seeing behind the façade of politics-speak.  But everywhere—even in other countries, it seems—people have lost the particular kind of cynicism that enables them to vote for the most useful candidate for an office.  They tend to take candidates at their word, a huge mistake.  I don't even take Kamala Harris at her word, though she's a lot more trustworthy (for a politician).