Patience, and Rhetoric

I had vowed (in a manner of speaking) to be patient with the Alt-Right.  It is so easy to be annoyed with their lack of substance, their disregard for the health of the very old, the very young, and the very poor; their tolerance for the deceit of Trump and his running dogs, and their opposition to Biden's programme.  That last is a given; the GOP wants the Democrats out of office, and Mitch McConnell has long ago shown how utter disregard for the needs of the electorate is rarely punished by the voters.

Giving in to the annoyance that we (or I, anyway) feel is easier on me, because after a while, thinking of the conservatives as a herd of imbecile lemmings streaming over some cliff overlooking the sea is a comforting image.  But anyone who has been paying attention to reporting by the media on individuals, formerly Alt-Righters, coming in from the cold, reveals that a host of them have found it difficult to turn a blind eye to the untruthful rhetoric emanating from Trump Central.  Therefore it is imperative that these refugees from the GOP are met with reason, rather than knee-jerk viciousness.

I'm using "rhetoric" in a slightly illegal sense.  The word really means the tone of a speech, the choice of words of a speaker (or a writer) that is deliberately intended to create a certain effect in the audience.  The common usage of the word implies that rhetorical language is, to various degrees, deceitful.  It need not be, but when the term rhetoric is used increasingly in recent times, because of the rhetorical excesses of the speech on the right, the difference between rhetoric and lies becomes blurred.

But the word rhetoric is still useful, because it conveys that the people who use it today knowingly use it to create a certain impression, while knowing that it stretches the truth, or, increasingly today, consists of out-and-out lies.

For instance, when the Alt-Right leaders suggest that the COVID vaccines are unsafe, it is rhetoric, because the CDC was slow to actually certify them, and vaccines are guilty of being unsafe until proven innocent.  When they say that the vaccines are an aspect of government control, even mind control, they are engaging in slander, that is, lying.

However, some of these "second-rank" GOP leaders are so feeble-minded that they believe their own rhetoric, their own lies, that is, and lose sight of the actual facts that they have to deal with.  For instance, Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is a presidential hopeful, initially cooperated with Trump to minimize the danger of COVID.  Then he, with Trump, chose to cast doubt about the efficacy of the vaccine, just so that Biden would be ineffectual in controlling the spread of infection.  But it so happened that the infection was controlled partially, in such a way that the efficacy of the vaccines, at least temporarily, was established, and the shortfall of the vaccines from total effectivity could be easily seen to be caused by dangerous behavior by people carrying infections.  By easy implication, Ron DeSantis and his cronies could be considered to actually cause the spread of COVID in conservative states.  And now, it is mostly conservative states in which the infection is rampant.  And the very constituents of Ron DeS. and his conservative fellow-governors, are dying, which reveals the utter contempt these people have, the sorry lack of compassion they have, for the weaker ones within their flock--thinking for a moment of these governors as shepherds.  This is not just callous, it is stupid.  Well, they are all ambitious, all eager to join the line of conservatives seeking the White House.  The members of their states may overlook their callousness, and vote for them for president.  But the country as a whole is more likely to remember their ignorance, their callousness, and their stupidity.  In their eagerness to cast shade on Biden, they have thrown their old and feeble, their low-paid hospital workers, the teachers in their schools, under the bus.  It was so preventable.

So we know that the conservative candidates for the presidency in 2024 are going to be callous, and stupid, and ignorant.  Certainly, they are going to be weak in their science background.  They are going to have to be fast talkers.  And they're not going to persuade too many people.  Their chance may come in 2028, after the Democrats have dragged themselves kicking and screaming into moving the country towards a more equitable society, and a less violent climate.  If they don't, conservative rhetoric hardly matters.

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The Roots of Some Failures in Kabul

[When reading what follows, bear in mind that I do not write from first hand knowledge, or even third-hand knowledge.  Read, for instance, https://www.u4.no/publications/corruption-in-afghanistan-and-the-role-of-development-assistance]

I read a very interesting article that arrived in my mailbox, courtesy of one of the newspapers, which I wanted to disseminate to our readers, but I have inadvertently deleted it.  But let's stumble through the main idea anyway.

The article was written by a political correspondent stationed in Afghanistan, who was so stunned by what she was hearing from rural Afghanis, that she quit her job, and moved to rural Afghanistan, to try and help the people there, especially the women.  She was recounting what she discovered when talking to these people.

The main thing is this: an enormous proportion of the money sent to Afghanistan, for the relief of the worst-off members of the population, was essentially stolen.  Of course, we in the US tend to expect this; we throw up our hands, what can we do when the the country is fighting guerilla gangsters?  As the story continues, we learn that the very people the US had installed as the civilian government in Kabul were the worst sort of racketeers.  Much of the food and supplies that were intended for the people, the troops, the hospitals etc, were actually channeled away---sometimes in the dead of night, sometimes in broad daylight---into the distant compounds of the so-called warlords.  A lot of the actual US dollars that were earmarked for the war effort, found their way into the bank accounts of terrorist leaders hunkered down in Pakistan.

As an aside: the groundwork for systematic, built-in corruption in Afghanistan was laid decades ago by the narcotics trade.

In fact, we have now learned that the so-called US ally, Pakistan, is in fact the location of a lot of insurgent hideouts, and many of these fellows came swarming into Afghanistan the second the US began to pull out.  (Recall that Bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan when the Seals got him.)

Let's take a slightly longer view of this problem.
When the US, in the middle of a war, or at any time, wants to support the institutions of a foreign country, it seems to take it as inevitable that the people it deals with are corrupt.  Usually this attitude is justified; the bureaucrats in foreign governments are usually either corrupt, or easily corruptible.  (Trump assumed that the US government was no different, but he was not entirely right about that.)  So the Pentagon budgets (verb)---I suppose---a certain amount of money to spend on corruption.  (This same problem crops up when the US establishes charities to help hardship in foreign lands.  A lot of the money raised in the US for the charities go to, I think, paying out bribes.  I don't know this for certain, and I'd like to be proved wrong.  In any case, a large proportion of the funds go to maintain the American---and even local---administrators and managers of these funds in the style to which they're accustomed.)

To conclude, the conservatives in Congress are often eager to prosecute wars abroad, for various reasons, chiefly to bolster our tendency to put the USA forward as a global policeman.  Even now, the conservatives are furious that the US is in the process of withdrawing from Afghanistan.  (The Democrats are not much better; they have been no less enthusiastic about some of these wars.)  The 'nice' thing about these wars is that they help out the arms industry, which is friendly towards conservative congressmen and senators.  However, as the war winds down, the vast numbers of Afghan citizens whom we had to depend on in Kabul: translators, drivers, orderlies, lawyers, what have you, are petitioning to be taken into the USA as refugees.  (Of course they should; for them to remain would be to get killed at the drop of a hat.)  But the Conservatives see this as just immigration in another guise, and can be expected to resist these initiatives.

Many political wonks are of the opinion that we should have settled on a permanent presence in Kabul (or somewhere in Afghanistan) to keep a lid on "our interests" there, rather than completely cut and run.  This would entail a constant stream of bribes to keep the local Afghanis happy, and would probably end up with a stream of US-origin firearms being trickled out to insurgent groups based in Pakistan, etc.  This would be "foreign aid" of the worst kind.

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A Complete Outsider's View of the War

When it comes to foreign wars, I am a complete outsider.  Of course, I have opinions.  But I know little or nothing of the so-called "calculations" that the generals in the Pentagon make.  At best, these calculations yield probabilities of success.  At worst, they yield highly unreliable, and worse: subjective, estimates of how effectively nation-building will proceed in a theater of war country.  We have been out there, tilling the fields in Korea, in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Iran, in the Philippines, with only partial success in Korea.  We have inched in into Syria, and that's not going to work, either.  (This is partly because at least half the USA wants to do a good job of nation-building; the other half wants to establish business opportunities over there.)

Well, the Taliban have been interested in controlling Afghanistan long before the USA stepped in (in the wake of 911).  In fact, the USA enlisted the help of the Taliban in order to oppose the Soviet ambitions in Afghanistan back in the 60's.  (Either the US wanted to oppose anything the Soviets wanted to do, or the Afghanistanis begged the US to come in and help against the Soviets.)

What are the Taliban, anyway?  I honestly don't know.  All I know about the Taliban is that (1) they're religious extremists—signified by their fury at girls and women being educated; (2) they don't like girls and women being educated, which follows on from (1); (3) they hate the USA (which is no wonder, because we have been fighting them for 20 years, and preventing them from getting any sort of political power.   On the other hand, I don't know much more about the gentlemen who have political office in Kabul—those who are opposed to the Taliban.  All we can guess is that (4) they don't like the Taliban, (5) they do like the US, because after all, we set them up in power.

The Taliban is defeating the Afghan forces, and taking over dozens of government centers around the country.  Pretty soon they're going to roll into Kabul, and the whole country will be in their hands.  Girls and women have to stop going to school, and all the (American-style) cultural progress that has been made in Afghanistan will be rolled back, just like Trump rolled back much of what Obama did to make life better for poor Americans.  The Taliban is the 'Trump' of Afghanistan.  As long as we do cultural advancement in the image of the US in Afghanistan, the Taliban will not rest until they change it back.  Let's face it: nation-building in Afghanistan is not something the USA is equipped to do, no matter what GOP military dreamers think.  We may have led the horse to water, but it isn't drinking.

Wherever there has been a repressive Islamist regime in place in a country, if women have acquired rights, it is by their own efforts.  Foreign travel, and the Western experience merely introduces them to how women live in the West; then it is up to Islamic women themselves to push for a measure of liberty.  Afghani women are not going to permanently win any concessions because the US decrees that it should be so.

What are the Taliban going to do to the women?  Kill them all?  That would be horrible, and it is one of the few things that might spur Biden into carpet-bombing the place.  We know how dismal life is for Indian women in (certain parts of) India, but we have not done anything about it—so far.  But there's no saying what these fellows will do.  For 20 years we haven't succeeded in persuading them to think that the American Way is anything they can subscribe to; what are the odds that we can do it another few months?

HOWEVER, there is nothing to say that if other Islamist nations were to attempt to moderate the enthusiasm of the Taliban, it won't be effective.  It is time that these nations stepped up to do something about the situation.  (There is a problem that the wrong denomination of Islam will not succeed at this task; I believe the Afghans are Shia, which means that the only country qualified to address the nation-building of Afghanistan might be Iran.)  Leaving Afghanistan to the tender mercies of the Taliban seems to me to be a waste of a perfectly good country, despite that we couldn't make a deal with them to supply us with cocaine.  (I'm being sarcastic; you addicts can go back to sleep.)

The GOP is inclined to blame Biden for either abandoning Afghanistan, or not doing it the right way.  Never mind that Trump wanted to do it the same way.  But they have been inclined to make silly accusations of the Democrats, and Biden, anyway.

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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!

Arch

Cut-throat Competition is Not Good For Everybody

Yesterday and today are the days of Homemade Days, an annual festival that takes place in Brandon Park, close to where we live.  On the face of it, it's just a neighborhood festival for our town, but has also the features of an arts festival.  We have other things sort of like it: a First Friday monthly event, and a Saturday morning Farmers' Market.

This year, Homemade Days were poorly attended, but consider that last year, we didn't have Homemade Days at all, due to COVID.  I don't quite know what the psychology of the vendors and the customers is, but I have noticed that there was quite a good attendance at the morning's Farmers' Market, which is a place where folks who grow produce in their small farms or their homes bring them into town, to this space set up in a parking lot, and sell their produce direct to the customers.  Some of us have suspected that some of these vendors don't actually grow this stuff, but get it wholesale from other vendors, and bring them in, so they're effectively shopkeepers, with mobile shops.

These are not the products we would have looked for in the Homemade Days (often spelled Homade Days), but rather the fun things to be found in a fair, e.g. funnel cakes, lemonade, music in the band-shell, ice cream, deep-fried cookies, hot dogs, and . . . handicrafts.  You can buy anything from necklaces, sea-shells, items made of wood, paintings, potted plants, jewellery, and so on.

However, over the years, the quality seems to have declined.  I think the problem is that the vendors are now focused more on trying to identify what sort of things will sell, what sorts of things are easy to make, and not at all on what sort of things they can make really well.  Making things really well takes a lot of work, and understandably, nobody want to spend a lot of time making something well, when people just won't shell out the money for it.  The customers know the value of money, and would rather keep it to spend later on a quarterpounder, rather than some delectable work of sheer handworked beauty.

Handicrafts are not the only things that have become slaves to market research.  The survey kings have taken over everything from TV to movies to politics, to conspiracy theories.  The New York Times, too, wants to know "How are we doing?"  Fair enough; they would like to know whether I think they suck.  "What sorts of articles would you like to read?"  YouTube wants to know "Is the video above a good suggestion for you?"

There's no going back!  Polling, or market research determines what people are going to do.  Even health systems decide on which departments they would invest their money in, based on customer surveys.  (Shall we create a department of Asthma, or a department of Athlete's Foot?  These are the decisions that will make or break them.)  Meanwhile, Geisinger Health Systems play a vicious game.  They look for any location where the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center takes over an existing health facility, and immediately acquire land close to it, and put in a facility of their own, to compete with it.  (I have heard, on the grapevine, that this is sort of an economic war between Aetna on the one hand, and Geisinger Insurance Corp on the other.  I hope it is false.)

The only people who have the luxury of completely ignoring marketing are those, like me, who are retired.  But even we sometimes worry whether the Home Insurance we have is the best according to recent surveys.  And of course, you probably know well---those of you who are also retired---the volume of junk mail that comes to your house.  In addition, because my wife sends money to charities, all sorts of charities hound her continually to send more.  I don't blame the charities themselves; they hire fresh graduates for their direct mail departments, who have earned pestering by mail degrees which are precisely focused on this particular job for accredited non-profits.

Anyway, this is the greatest country in the world, and our junk mail is the best.  Let that thought give you consolation.

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