Fighting Like Mad: The American Way

It seems that the American Way, certainly in Primary politics, is to fight like a cornered rat.  I see the ugly sight of Democrat candidates for president criticizing each other's economic policies.  Each other's foreign policies.  Health plans.  Plans to reduce gun violence.  Immigration Reform plans.  Education policies.  Voting Rights reform.

None of the candidates seem at all happy with how their fellow-candidates are approaching any problem.  Listen, kids: there just isn't enough space for each candidate to come up with a unique plan for each of these policy areas that's going to be any good.  I keep saying: yes, they have to have some sort of plan for each policy area, but they really should be open to adopting the best features of the plans put forward by their competitors.

But it appears that for any candidate to concede that one of the others has a good idea, brands him or her as a loser forever.  This is stupid.  Any one of their health plans is probably fairly all right.  They range from practically what we have now, to Medicare For All.  I personally think that Medicare For All would be wonderful--especially since I'm getting old, and need more health care each year than the year before; but some of the other plans are pretty good, too.

They're all unified in their approaches to gun control.  They all have similar approaches to reining in the unsavory practices of the big Wall Street investment banks.  They all have good plans for environmental policy reform, and energy, and for the economy, streets ahead of what the Republicans have offered for decades.

But in order for each of them to appear differentiated from the others, there seems now to be a temptation to adopt recklessly poor choices in their plans.  Rather than say: "I think a policy like Elizabeth Warren's would be what I like," they have to say things like: "Elizabeth Warren's plan is pure garbage; I have a better plan (which I rescued from the dumpster, but let's not talk about that,) which I have polished up."

I sincerely wish these candidates would relax, and give the audience at a debate a glimpse of  a face of someone we can happily vote for!  But the moderators seem determined not to ask them questions that would show them at their best, but rather to have them battling each other as fiercely as possible.  Why not give them knives, or Tridents, and put them in an arena?

Just last week, some commentators reported that some Democrat Supporters (read: big money donors) have been looking around for yet other potential candidates who might be induced to enter the race at the last minute.

Come on, now, people!  As Steve Colbert suggested, this looks very much as though these big Democrat supporters are afraid of Elizabeth Warren's tax plan!  Yes, there are some very wealthy liberals, who are apparently nervous at these sorts of tax plans.  To put a good face on it, they probably dislike the prospect of the government taking their excess wealth and putting it to fairly good use; they want to do their own charity.  Oh sure; if I were a billionaire, I would feel the same way.  Trump probably feels the same way, too.  (Jk.)  But though the Warren tax plan looks frightening to those of moderate means, they do not reduce these mega-billionaires to the level of people of modest wealth by any means.  They would still have enough wealth to buy up Alaska.  Or Greenland.  So they need not panic because of taxes.  But they might be anxiously looking for more millionaire-friendly Presidential candidates anyway.

Rest assured, none of the Democrat candidates are socialists, not by a very long shot.  That will probably not happen for fifty years.  But if, in the decades to come, conditions in the US deteriorate very badly, because of the greed of the wealthy, the depradations of the warming climate, the faltering international trade arrangements, corruption in government, and being overextended in foreign wars, we would be extremely fortunate if we manage to move to a socialist government at that point.  Socialism becomes attractive when conditions are bad.

But things are not that bad.

Arch

Desiderata for the Environment and the Home

The delicate balancing act which we need to learn to do, requires lots of judgement.

Should we recycle everything, knowing that there will surely be a point where the recycling guys at the landfill will be tempted to throw up their hands, and simply toss everything into the trash?  This happened at least once at my place of work, and it could easily happen even in the waste-recycling centers, if supervisors just happen to relax their vigilance.

Should we urge our friends to recycle everything, to the point where they begin to avoid us?  Those who do not recycle as aggressively as we do ourselves, probably continue blissfully along, until someone reminds them that they ought to be recycling.  You can imagine that they probably hate to be reminded.

Should we be doing our laundry so frequently?  (Should I be reminding you that this is a thing, and risk having you not read my blog?)  Every load of laundry means more detergent in the sewer, and more warm (or hot) water going into the water treatment plant.  On the other hand, if we get our clothes too dirty before washing, it might take more detergent to get them clean.  I just don't know.

I recently found that there has been discovered a way of extracting Lithium from frack-water.  You probably know that Lithium is a central resource in using battery-powered equipment; hybrid cars and all sorts of wireless equipment is powered by Lithium, and Lithium-ion cells.  I don't think this technique alone will result in an increase in fracking, but it certainly makes one think.

Notice, though, that despite the value of Lithium, nobody seems to be offering us any incentive for recycling our old battery-packs, from cellphones and laptop computers.  Those puppies are worth a lot, but the Lithium jockeys out there are cannily keeping quiet, because they want these old cells and battery packs for free!  Once they begin to have to pay a dollar for each battery, or whatever, their costs will begin to skyrocket.  One imagines that it will be cheaper than extracting Lithium from frack-water.

It is important to keep a sense of humor with regard to recycling.  Of course, anyone (like us) who regards recycling a deadly serious business is not entirely wrong.  But dealing with our kids, or our spouses, or our friends, and discussing recycling alternatives requires a gentle and delicate hand.

For instance, we know that it is bad to throw waste cooking oil into the sink.  (It ends up clogging the sewers, and is a load on the water-treatment system, as far as I know.)  So in our house, we put it in bottles, and once the bottles are full, put them in the trash.  Now, that's a load on the landfills.  But which is worse?  I know friends of friends who would rather not put anything in the landfill; they would rather recycle everything.  If there is an easy way to recycle household cooking oil, we really owe it to ourselves to do it.  If there is a biodiesel collecting point in our neighborhood, someone should tell me.  We have family in Missouri who are in the biodiesel business, but what are we to do, mail them our waste oil?  (Humor, don't forget!)

The other day I told the check-out clerk at the supermarket: no bags!  No bags, please!  I was buying just a couple of items, and I could easily put them in my pockets.  But I should have done it with a smile, without scaring the heck out of the poor young lady.

Our area is just backward enough that we cannot afford a full-time recycling Czar, who would function as the official reminder to let everyone know where the recycling centers are--for instance, the Friends' Fellowship (the Quaker Meeting) used to help recycle batteries at one time, but now, though such stores as Best Buy ought to do it, they occasionally confess to customers that they just throw certain sorts of batteries right in the trash, so we may as well do it, too.  Who collects used engine oil?  Who collects used tires?  Metal?  Wood?

People thought of burning wood as a service they performed for the environment.  (If anyone cut down a tree for any reason, they would ask for the discarded wood, to use for home heating.)  No more wood rotting all around the property, and they were saving their dirty, coal-burning electric plant from generating the electricity (or the gas company from having to deliver gas, or the oil company from having to deliver heating oil) for their heating system.  But times have changed, and we want to get away from burning anything.  We desperately hope that the electric company is releasing less CO₂ per calorie than anything we can achieve at home.  (If it isn't, we can all focus our attention on the electric company and urge them to improve, which would be the biggest bang for the buck, environment-wise.  The economies of reducing pollution using electric or hybrid cars, public transportation, every sort of improvement pivotally depends on electric generation plants reducing their pollution output.  Unfortunately, these plants are occasionally managed by people less interested in these goals than almost anyone else.)

The point is, because our attitudes towards waste management are evolving so rapidly, as the years go on, our conversations with our friends about what we do, and what they could be doing, are likely to become increasingly awkward, because our practices are going to diverge rather strongly, the more the state- of-the-art keeps changing.  This is where the Desiderata poem comes into play: we need to learn to talk to people in such a way that *they don't get mad, *they aren't embarrassed, *we aren't embarrassed, and *we don't discourage future conversations.

Not least, we have to keep an eye on maintaining our own equilibrium far more aggressively, the more that ignorant other folks out there deliberately try to destroy our peace of mind, simply because the sight of us Libtards, quietly going about recycling stuff--which of course, is to their benefit as well--is so terribly repugnant to them!  It makes me smile.  (Which shows that I'm a terrible person.  Sense of humor.)

A few months ago I wrote about guys in trucks who hated to see hybrid, low-emissions cars on the road.  Some of them would roar by, blowing horrible exhaust smoke at the vehicles they so despised.  Often certain types of conservatives, and certainly Alt-Right folk who really have no ideology at all, behave in highly puerile ways, which they cannot defend with logic, but which they do try to defend in various logic-defying ways, to the embarrassment of anyone who uses logic, and subscribes to the axioms of scientifically knowledgeable people.

For more of my thoughts about Desiderata, read on.

The First Post-Impeachment Debate!

I have to confess, my wife and I did not watch the debate last night (October 15, 2019).  I had to get the executive summary from various sources (which, of course, would have extracted different things from it than I would have).

It appears that Elizabeth Warren has become the candidate to shoot at, since Joe Biden has problems dealing with the smokescreen Trump has thrown up.

The Moderators are harping on Healthcare Reform, once again, and I wish the candidates on stage would have the courage to say what I think they feel, namely that it is difficult to explain the most complicated plan ever addressed in a presidential debate on a public stage.  If any of these folks is elected president, certainly it would be good to have a plan ready, for running through Congress.  But it can wait!  We don't need to know all the details before the election.  We only need to know the broad outlines.  I want Medicare for All!  (No, no, that's terrible!)  Ok, then, Medicare only for those you think ought to have it.  What's the big deal, at this point?

I saw, with approval, Tom Styer agreeing with Bernie Sanders that billionaires should not exist in this day and age.  So far, full marks for Tom Styer's values.  But I have seen that the ultra-rich have very nuanced social values, so we have to wait and see.

Tulsi Gabbard has unexpected support from the Alt-Right, including even David (Somebody), the former Grand Wizard of the KKK.  She has gone on the record as being unhappy about this state of affairs.

She has also met with Assad, the Syrian dictator, and this makes me unhappy.  She also seems to be in support of condemning Israel's policies towards the Palestinians, which makes me actually quite happy.  I do not think Israel should be permitted to expand its territory as it wishes, with or without US support.  The Israeli government has thoroughly discredited itself.

All the candidates, at least in the segments that I was able to see, spoke articulately and moderately, and reasonably.  (I felt that Kamala Harris tended to mumble, which was a problem for me personally.)  Kamala Harris was unhappy with Elizabeth Warren failing to call for Trump to be taken off Twitter.  I don't know about Warren, but I don't think it is appropriate to deny Twitter access to specific individuals, unless they have broken the Twitter rules in some clear way.  (Maybe Trump has; I don't know.)

Joe Biden has got into trouble because his son has got into international business deals that compromise Joe.  At the time that Hunter Biden involved himself in Ukrainian business, we did not know that Joe Biden II was going to run for president.  Even if he had known, I don't see how he could stop an adult son from pursuing any business he wants.  If it gets too politically messy, Joe Biden will have to take the hit, just as Trump must take the hit for his son-in-law fooling around with Israeli politics.

All these candidates are fine by me.  I can see some of them being able to more easily muster a group of advisors and specialists of whom the nation will approve than, others.  But there isn't a single one of them who is likely to be problematic.  Perhaps Joe Biden should step aside, because he would have trouble responding instantly to a pointed question.  But a president seldom has to do that.

I would like it if all these twelve candidates continued in the race (without having to spend any more money), and we could dispense with the debates.  I do not particularly enjoy watching the candidates needle each other.  It would also be good if Michael Bennett managed to get in as a 13th candidate; there was a strong following that was hoping he would make it.  Unfortunately, his poll numbers were not high enough.

There is some news that two of the young Democrat women in Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, and Ilhan Omar, have declared support for Bernie Sanders.

Finally, Tulsi Gabbard had expressed the feeling that the DNC is trying too hard to manipulate the choice of nominee, by influencing the debates and the rules.  She had threatened to boycott the October debate, and that would have been sad.  Though she seems the most conservative of the candidates, certainly as far as foreign policy is concerned, I think that she is an excellent prospect for president, if not in 2020, then in a later year.

Archimedes

Peter Scheckele, A Musicologist For All Of Us

Peter Schickele

Peter Schickele is principally a composer.  For various reasons, he invented an extra, mythical son of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach, named P. D. Q. Bach, which allowed Schickele to vent all his instincts to parody everything from Handel to Gershwin and Cole Porter through the prolific pen of P. D. Q. Bach.  In addition, as the 'discoverer' and tame musicologist whose obsession was this son of J.S.Bach, Schickele had free rein to first create numerous musical works, and then proceed to analyze them into the ground, first, of course, having performed them for everyone's coarse entertainment.

In the nineties, Schickele began a regular feature--principally on public radio--called Schickele Mix, which made musicology accessible to typical music-lovers, especially those whose tastes were on the broader side, because there were fewer opportunities for these folks to explore their instinctive feeling that phenomena that were attractive and interesting to them were to be found in most kinds of western music.  Today, popular musicologists spring up like mushrooms, and YouTube provides a ready forum for them, but Schickele was a pioneer.  The musicological connections between classical music and popular music was not the characteristic tool in Schickele's conceptual arsenal; it was rather just one approach, which was particularly powerful.  I don't remember details, but in a post (forgive me for talking about Schickele Mix as if it were a blog) about The Circle of Fifths--or rather, the sequence of fifths, since the circle was rarely completed--there were a number of references to popular songs that used the sequence.

P.D.Q. Bach

As P.D.Q. Bach, Schickele was revealed to be a parody composer second to none.  The compilation The Wurst of P.D.Q. Bach is a veritable Pandora's Box of Schickele's parody compositions, ranging from opera, to overtures, to suites, duets, and even a deplorably bad parody of a play-by-play of the Allegro of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, in the style of a football commentary.  Though that opus makes me cringe (and keep looking for a remote control which I keep forgetting I do not actually have, since it was a cheap CD player) and skip to the next track, some Schickele fans undoubtedly regard it as a classic.

The level of musical performance on Schickele's records is exceptional, featuring numerous legitimate talents, which cross over beautifully into comedy.

For anyone who has the patience and the energy, perusing the archives of Schickele Mix is going to be extremely rewarding.  If there are bootleg tapes or any sorts of recordings of these episodes--there, I used the correct word; they're not posts, they're episodes--they would make interesting listening for long, cross-country rides.

Schickele's mainstream compositions are less familiar to this writer.  He has written for movies and for the Walt Disney production of Fantasia 2000.  One of these days, I'll get around to listening carefully to some of these works, and make an addendum to this post.

Arch

My Take on the Upcoming Debate

The editor of the New York Times, who will be one of the moderators, has invited suggestions for questions, which got me thinking.  I apologize in advance for the rather discontinuous nature of these comments that follow.

What do people want from these debates?  They do not really show the candidates in any special light that will help us make a decision about which of them is best suited to lead the country.  It is an environment more like a Congressional Committee than the Oval Office; a President does not have to give brilliant On The Floor ripostes--except for press conferences, I suppose.

What people should be looking for is:

Does this candidate share my values?  That is the most important.  Most of the other criteria flow from the answer to that question.

Does this candidate have the temperament to de-escalate conflict, rather than to aggravate conflict?

Is this candidate driven by attitudes towards issues rather than party loyalty?

All of the Democratic candidates so far seem to have displayed these qualities, some more than others.  Some have a gentler approach towards the problem, others have a more combative approach, which might have to be forgiven, given the fact that the Democratic Party has been on the receiving end of so many attacks--even granted that the entertainment industry has often been ruthless in their personal attacks on Donald Trump.

Behind what conservatives see as the push towards wealth re-distribution, we see the most pressing problem that American politics faces: money in politics.  Lobbying, corruption, dark money, campaign finance, all of these things are made possible because of the enormous income and wealth inequity that the fiscal conservatives have shoved down the throats of ordinary low-income people, and there is a lot of sense in taking that approach.  So while the candidates see the issue of wealth and income redistribution as bringing out the Anti Socialist rhetoric, campaign finance reform and directly associated problems can be tackled with greater agreement.  It would be good to know which candidates can see this to be true.

The issue of Health Care Reform, and Medicare For All has been pushed in previous debates.  In my view, it does not matter if a candidate does not have his or her head completely wrapped around the details of a Health Care Plan.  What do we want:  A health care consultant or a president?  Creating a good health care plan, be it a plan with a private insurance component or without, will take a team approach, with many knowledgeable people contributing their expertise.  A public debate is not the place for deciding this.   Which candidate will be sufficiently flexible to be open to the best ideas from the other candidates?

The Gun Lobby is widely seen as an obstacle to reducing gun violence in the US.  Guns are supposed to be used for personal safety.  For hunting.  For defense of the home.  Unfortunately, when guns are in the news, these are not what the guns have been used for.  Also, unfortunately, only a bipartisan reform will be likely to survive multiple administrations.  The only way to push reform forward is to identify representatives of the people who stubbornly oppose sensible legislation, and eliminate them.  It is hard to see how to identify candidates who are in agreement with this statement, but it would make sense to ask a question about gun reform.

Much of the terrible problems with waste control and environmental pollution is because the US is marking time until recycling plastic waste becomes profitable.  If ever there was an opportunity for Federal intervention, this is it.  Which candidates are on board with government support for recycling waste, and processing waste in a non-polluting way?  There may already be such an initiative.  Why haven't I heard of it?

There seems a certain degree of agreement that part of the solution to immigration pressures at the southern border has to be a reasonable aid program for Central American countries, as well as support for Mexican efforts at law enforcement within Mexico.  It is difficult to interfere with the internal affairs of other countries (though that hasn't stopped us in the past), but there is reason to believe that in many cases where heavy US aid has been directed to Central and South America, the aid has succeeded in fueling lawlessness and corruption, instead of improving the lives of the poorest in those countries.  What can be done?  This is a problem best left to specialists, but it cannot be ignored.

We have known for a while that Climate Change has to be addressed quickly and effectively.  Part of the problem is the personal transport habit of American citizens; in short, the love affair with cars that has been going on for more than a century, and spread to other countries as well.  Addressing the environmental effects of automobiles is soon going to be a very unpopular thing which a president will have to spearhead.  How will a candidate approach this problem, given the liabilities of taking an unpopular stand against the automobile as a source of entertainment and an expression of personal power and affluence?  Much of the auto industry has moved abroad, so economically a push against the auto industry should not be as painful as it would have in the past.  But public perception of the automobile as being emblematic of American power will die hard.  It will be difficult to win an election offering only blood, tears and sweat, but it looks very much as though those are going to be the means of bringing back America from the edge of the Great Again Abyss.

Arch

My Years in College

Kids have just got settled into their dorms at college, and freshmen just about ready to think seriously about Life, College and Everything.  Some of them have begun attending small four-year schools, and others have gone right into big state universities, and a few into very prestigious schools indeed, where everyone seems to look at you as if you were their biggest obstacle to a successful college career.

It was much the same in the bad old days when I first found myself on campus.  I had barely scraped through the examinations that decided which schools I was qualified to apply to, but I was thrilled to be actually going to college.

Those were the bad old days of hazing.  I was not bullied very heavily, but I was naive, and I thought I was being seriously victimized, though I wasn't.  Anyway, in retrospect, that is a non-issue.  (If any of my readers has to deal with hazing--I'd be surprised if you are; I expect that you're a mature 60-year-old, at the very least--I would be of absolutely no help whatsoever.  I'm sorry I brought that up.

So, though I was quite a mediocre student: a sort of C level type, I had been among the better students at my high school.  All my friends, among the top 5 or so in our school, were distinguished by how interested we were in our subjects: mathematics, physics, chemistry, principally.

I absolutely loved my first semester.  The professors actually knew their material backwards and forwards (which is not uncommon, obviously), and were eager to lay their stuff on us freshmen.  Most professors are inspired to do their best for freshmen; they're unspoiled, not jaded, and willing to believe that they might not have the whole story, coming in from high school.

Of late, however, I have encountered freshmen who are jaded, and who do believe that they know all there is to know.  This is unfortunate; the student is the loser in that scenario.

As the semester went on, I began to notice that some of the other guys were picking up the material a little faster than I was.  Welcome to the real world.  One thing we all have to do is to learn to handle not being the cat's whiskers any more.  But luckily for me, there was no shortage of people willing to talk about the material we were being given, to analyze the relative strengths of the different instructors--not in a particularly critical way; actually we were quite appreciative of their strong points--and to compare the various topics that we particularly enjoyed, which were obviously very varied.

My first year ended pretty well; I did a lot better than I expected.  Unfortunately, I was not permitted to declare a major in the area I was most interested in; I had to make do with mathematics.  At that time I was more into physics.  Too bad.

Once I discovered what a mathematics major (and a physics minor) entailed, I was amazed.  It turned out that we did an enormous volume of theoretical physics as part of the mathematics major.  You see, physics provides the fodder for a great deal of the machinery that we develop in mathematics, so this situation is unavoidable.  But we were signed up for courses in awesome areas, such as Quantum Mechanics, Analytical Dynamics, Fluid Mechanics, Relativity, Electromagnetic Theory, and so forth, but also Abstract Algebra, Matrix Theory, Differential Geometry . . . now I'm babbling; none of this has anything to do with what I want to say.

As time went on, though I did terrible at exams, we became quite a closely-knit group, and there a few fellows who preferred to study on their own, but many of us found it better to figure things out as a group.

In addition, though I did not take many courses in music or literature or social sciences beyond the absolute minimum, I spent a lot of time reading, and singing in choirs, and playing pianos, etc, which detracted from schoolwork.  I sang with a semi-professional choir about two hours away, where we met on the weekends.  A friend of mine and I took a bus out there, sang, stayed with family, sang again on Saturday night, and headed back to school on Sunday.  We also sang in the choir at college, though that was not a very serious thing.  (In fact, I took charge of the choir for a couple of years.  It was--OK.)

Things only got better, in terms of how interesting the topics were.  But as far as performing on tests, I was terrible.  So I graduated with a regular degree, not the Cum Laude's that so many of my friends managed to turn in.

As luck would have it, once I clawed my way into graduate school, I found that I was in a lot better shape than many of my fellow-students.  I had dreamed that doing research would be the most fun I could ever have.  Unfortunately, I simply hated research.  How interesting research is all depends on the problem you're assigned, and there just is no guarantee that you will stumble on a problem in which you're interested, and in which there is someone on the faculty to advise you.

But I put in an enormous amount of coursework--far more than most graduate students--and also learned a fair degree of computer science and numerical analysis (which probably means less than nothing to my readers!) and presently found myself hired to teach at an excellent school, and, as they say, the rest is history.

If there is one thing I can attest to, the greatest gift of all is the gift of finding something interesting about anything you need to learn.  That is all the Law and the Prophets.  I don't think anyone taught me this skill; I think it came possible from my mother, who was a teacher herself, and who was always interested in what I was trying to explain to her, be it topology, or programming, or whatever.  Either that rubbed off, or she passed on one of her interest genes on to me.

There are always some authorities who urge you to give up everything, and focus on what you're trying to do.  That may work for some people.  But it does not work for anyone who wants to be a teacher.  An ultra-specialized teacher is a bad teacher.  Your primary task is to relate to your students.  A good teacher is Interested in their subject, and Interested in their student.  To be the latter, you simply have to give up being specialized, and learn to be interested in many things.

As a teacher, I was required to teach several subjects in which I had little or no training.  Someone had to teach them, so why not me?  All I brought to the challenge was my insane tendency to be interested in oddball subjects.

School is a place that it is a privilege to be in.  To consider school a sort of penance, a sort of punishment, where you pay your dues, and somehow blossom into a highly-paid executive, is to set yourself up for misery.  Everyone in my immediate family just enjoys what they do to the utmost, and I don't think that it is luck; they all seem to be perfectly suited to be easily engaged with tasks they're given.  Of course, we're a small family; a large family unavoidably has some duds who cannot be inspired by anything.

Part of the trick is to surround yourself with people who have a positive outlook, and it often rubs off.  Similarly, if you surround yourself with lawless types, that rubs off too; surround yourself with pessimists, and you want to shoot yourself.  (I'm sure there's something in the Bible that says exactly this, but it's almost an embarrassment to have to fall back on religious scriptures to make a perfectly valid point.)

As I have said above, without any attempt at deception, I did not sacrifice my various side-interests to focus on my schoolwork.  This means that with my college degree I am quite unable to impress anyone.  For students who are determined to create an undergraduate record that is impressive, you must either give up--at least a part of--your side interests, in order to deliver a brilliant set of grades.  Or, you have to work like ten dogs, and hopefully your side interests will make you feel better about it.  Or, you have to work like ten dogs, and give up your side interests, and your memories of college will be sheer misery.  Just don't be an alcoholic and misbehave towards members of the opposite sex.

Archimedes

Ethics in Government: a Stumbling Block to Many

I was just watching Stephen Colbert interviewing Bernie Sanders on the Late Show (? Is that what they call it?) and it started a line of thinking, which resulted in this post, if it ever gets written.

My uncle Innocent once said that the problem with business people running government is that they're not very ethical!  In other words, business men cheat whenever possible.  This may sound like a terrible smear on businessmen generally, and I suppose very religious businessmen cheat very carefully, but in general, businessmen (and businesses) cheat every chance they get.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have been frustrated for some years, because the taxes they pay--I mean, everybody pays them, but the Republicans have opposed high taxes on behalf of all of us, bless them--are, they feel, too high.  In fact, they've got their taxes lowered for forty years, but they still seem too high; the Republicans would rather not pay taxes at all.

You must realize that there are several different kinds of republicans, though they have been roughly in agreement (very roughly) for a long time.

There are the Fiscal Conservatives.  These are the ones who are hawkish on taxes, and hate government spending.  (There are some exceptions; they don't mind government spending on their pet projects.  Nobody minds the government spending each on his or her own pet projects.)  They also used to be fierce about balancing the budget, but that particular agenda item has been put on hold for the moment, since the overspending is on behalf of the Right People, namely themselves.

There are the Religious Conservatives.  Among other things, these are the ones who oppose abortion, and family planning for women.  And they often want prayer in schools, and do not want Evolution being taught in schools.

There are the Neo-Conservatives.  These want America to be the most powerful nation on earth, and they want to go fix all the international problems with a war.  They are embarrassed by having to back off confrontations.

There are the ones who Oppose Gay Rights.  I can't think of a civil word for this group, which overlaps to a certain degree with the Religious Conservatives, but that is a marriage of convenience.

There are the Racists, and the Tribalists, who view society in terms of the ethnic origins of the people.  These are the ones who want to slow down, or stop, immigration, especially from poor countries.

There are the Libertarians, who don't want any restrictions, ("Its a free country, but not free enough!")

There is the Business Lobby, which fights for loosening government regulations that prevent businesses from exploiting the land and its resources.

Then there is the Gun Hawks, who do not want any restriction of gun ownership, gun sales, or anything to do with guns.  These fellows are often identified with the NRA (the National Rifle Association), but there may be a parting of the ways pretty soon.

The biggest thing that they have in common is that they do not like the Democrats, who oppose them on all of these fronts.  A coalition of all of these groups was created in the seventies and eighties, and they have done their best to oppose the Democrats since then, and often quite successfully.

Many of these folks are businessmen, and they have deplored the way the Democrats run government, and what they perceive as the moral straight-jacket that the Democrats have succeeded in putting on conduct in government.  A businessman, they have reasoned, would be more sensible about how to deal with people and foreign governments.  A deal-maker, like Trump, they must have reasoned, would be able to handle these tricky foreign governments.

Businessmen also have their rules of thumb.

Never pay taxes, unless you have to.

Do business off the record whenever possible.

Make creative deals, especially with weaker opponents, and bullying is allowed.

Go it alone.  Too many crooks spoil the heist.

Play your cards close to the chest.  Surprise is a big weapon.

Change your mind often.  Keep them guessing.  Be capricious.  Don't keep your promises.

Ally yourself with other thugs.

Threats are no use, unless you occasionally follow through on one.  (A small nuke would be ideal.)

A major weapon of businesses is advertising.  It is best if you have an entire Network that does your publicity for you.  Also, if you can get your brand associated with a great game show, you can rake in the shekels like nobody's business!

So now we sort of see where some of this foolishness comes from.  Trump's forthright way of shaking down his opposition is perceived as insulting and rude.  His deals are disgusting: a Wall for Releasing the Budget.  Dirt on Beiden in exchange for the foreign aid that Congress had already passed.  That is no good; the USA cannot be seen to be dabbling in, essentially, blackmail.  Ronald Reagan and Ollie North and gang did some very shady stuff, and so did George W. Bush and Cheney and his Halliburton gangsters.  But Trump's clumsy blundering with international "deals" are truly an embarrassment, even if they were not horribly illegal.

This brings us to this most recent attempt to discredit Joe Biden.  (Don't forget that Trump's constant harping on Hillary Clinton's e-mails seems to have succeeded with at least some Democrats, and certainly did succeed with almost all Republicans.)  Will Democrats stoop to chanting "Lock Him Up!" every time they gather?  I really can't see it, but if impeachment happens in the House of Representatives, something on those lines could be conceivable.

One plan the Republicans might be trying to implement is to break as many rules as possible while Trump can take the blame for it.  (Actually, there are numerous elected Republicans who have been Trump's enablers, and who will go down with him, or go down before Trump does: Mitch McConnell's name comes to mind.)  Of course, we know that they're eager to pack the Supreme Court with as many conservatives as they can.  Unfortunately, except for a few die-hard political judges, such as Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, the justices are difficult to herd one way or another.

On top of being a businessman, and being very self-conscious (a narcissist), Trump also finds it difficult to express himself verbally, which is why he Twitters so much.  In a decade or two, we will expect a president to use Twitter just as much as Trump does, if we can get a Millennial to run for office.  But for the immediate future, it would be lovely if a president stays away from all social media.

Anyway, things are not so bad.  There are annoying things all around us; every prospect annoys, to parody some famous person (Reginald Heber, actually; and he wasn't that famous, IMO), but those of us who are thoughtful will recognize that we can certainly recover some of what the Republicans have destroyed, in their desperation for Making America Great Again.  In future years, we may not be able to make it as great as it was a few years ago, but we can certainly make it halfway decent again.

Kids.  My last exhortation is to be careful how you phrase your pessimism to kids.  With a constant onslaught of environmental ruination, it has been observed that young people across the globe are falling into a sort of hopelessness.  We must be happy that there are Greta Thunbergs in the world; if and when she gives up, it will be a sad day for us indeed.

Part of the problem is that many adults (including me) are a little too weak in their science to understand the details of the kinds of things that catastrophic global warming will bring.  I think it is reasonable to assure young people that, though life is going to be quite unpleasant (e.g. wetter on this side of the Rockies, and drier on the other side; violent weather being common on the East Coast), it is not going to be impossible.  Also, decent people are going to have to work very hard, once life becomes as tough as it is expected to be, to enable the marginal population to survive.  We can't just throw up our hands and give up.

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