Saturday, September 12, 2020

Chapter 6: Credibility? How Often the Right Has Been Wrong

I've been posting (for free!) chapters of Polemical Judo, in hope that at least a few of the ideas may percolate through some of you to where they'll do some good.  (Or start fresh with Chapter 1. Or else... actually buy a copy?)

Last time we offered the second half of Chapter 5: End the War on Facts!  Here we'll offer Chapter Six where I start getting fierce. No more reaching out, with things we have in common and could negotiate. (Well, in fact, I start the chapter with just such an olive branch!)

 But it's time to make very clear how very often the American conservative movement has been on the utterly wrong side of facts, justice, truth and history. Even Barry Goldwater admitted as much, near the end of his life.

Use these lists. (And see several inserted updates from September 2020, including one addendum about GOP Perverts, Abusers And Pedophiles.)


"I’ve gotten tons of messages “I’m losing fans” by expressing my dissatisfaction with our corrupt, incompetent President. While I appreciate people encouraging me to choose fame and money over decency, I’m afraid I’ll never be Donald Trump." -- Jim Gaffigan



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Polemical Judo - Chapter 6

 

Credibility?

How Often the Right Has Been Wrong



Here I'll offer two lists concerning American conservatism. One recounts grownup and rational "conservative" stances that have always been welcome at the negotiating table. In fact we're poorer not to have such voices speaking up skeptically, even demanding accountability from… well… liberal zealotry. 

The other list - alas - is much longer, presenting case after case in which conservatives wrecked their credibility by screaming against clear science, genuine progress or honesty itself.
 [1] In example after example, time proved them not just wrong, but calamitously and tendentiously wrong. From tobacco and smog to drug wars and gerrymandering, it's a litany our neighbors try desperately to forget.  

And yes, there were liberal errors. Two of them on a par with any single item on the conservative list. I'll cite those also, down at bottom.

 

 

WHAT DEFENSIBLE – EVEN GOOD – IDEAS

MIGHT CONSERVATIVES BRING TO THE TABLE?


In Chapters 3 & 13 & 19 I call for a Big Tent that welcomes saner versions of conservatism[2] – for example those reminding us that market competition is the great generator of wealth, the very wealth that then enables good things, like spending taxes to help poor kids. Indeed, before the movement was suborned by petro-sheiks, coal barons, casino moguls, mafiosi, inheritance brats, Wall Street shysters, tabloid monsters and rebranded KGB/Kremlin conspirators, there were American conservatives who held up core conservative values (CCV), staking reasonable negotiating positions on:


- generating market alternatives to government solutions...

- reducing the overhead burden of excess paperwork...

- reduction in debt burdens passed to our children…

- individualism that transcends dogma or party lines…

- changing one’s mind in the face of strong evidence…

defending free trade between states and between nations…

- encouraging responsible gun ownership...

- encouraging genuine competition in flat-fair-open-creative markets…

- encouraging fiscal responsibility with our tax dollars…

- encouraging voluntary service...

- encouraging startup entrepreneurship...

- encouraging home ownership and a rising middle class... 

- investment in an educated/healthy workforce...

- investment in infrastructure... 

- investment in federal R&D beyond most corporate ROI horizons...

- environmental stewardship... 

- honest, long range thinking in board rooms...

- Resistance to “picking winners and losers” – going there only for a clear, long range need (e.g. sustainable energy)... 

- defending the right of millions to live demure lives without in-your-face shock confrontation.[3]

 

That list surely has our RASR friends nodding: “Okay, he gets it, somewhat.” Moreover, if you liberals could not have compiled that list, while grudgingly admitting there’s some wisdom there, then you’ve made no effort to understand your neighbors. You’re thereby not just narrow-minded, but ill-equipped for today’s struggles. 

 

If that list were truly the essential manifesto of a sane-grownup American conservatism, there’d be room for negotiation! Indeed, we need for all of those imperatives to be presented cogently on the table. Only now the bad news. 


Alas, out of all the goals listed above, only a bilious version of the last one remains in today's mutant conservatism. The rest have been functionally (if not polemically) dropped by the Republican-Confederate madness. And ironically, every item has been adopted by some or most sectors of a liberalism that already had plenty else on its plate. (And yes, Democrats did all the useful de-regulating, paperwork reduction, fiscal responsibility and defense of individualism; offer me wager stakes on that, please. See Chapters 8 & 10.)

 

Later on I will offer our Residually Adult-Sane Republican (RASR) friends a historical parallel for what they might consider trying, in order to recover those core conservative values and our respect… something the Democrats did to save their party, back in the “Miracle of 1947.” That is, if those “sane conservatives” have guts.[4]

    

“A conservatism defined by ideas can hold its own against progressivism, winning converts to its principles and evolving with each generation. A conservatism defined by identity reduces the complex calculus of politics to a simple arithmetic question—and at some point, the numbers no longer add up.”  

 

- from How America Ends, by Yoni Appelbaum

- The Atlantic, November 2019[5]

 

Yoni Appelbaum’s Atlantic essay – one of the most cogent commentaries on the American dilemma, describes how U.S. conservatism has survived and often thrived not by futilely opposing in horizon-expansion and inclusion, but by participating in our unique process of absorption and inclusion.[6]

 

 

GOOD THINGS PROMISED… AND BETRAYED

 

Remember how I opened this book by citing Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America”? Have you looked again – or ever – at that masterful piece of polemical brilliance? Here are the "good parts" of that Contract the GOP never kept:

 

 - require that laws that apply to the country also apply to Congress; 
 - arrange for regular audits of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse; 
 - limit terms of committee chairs and party leadership posts; 
 - ban the proxy votes in committee and law-writing by lobbyists; 
 - require committee meetings to be open & public; 
 - guarantee honest accounting of our federal budget.

 

Really, who could object to those items? Indeed, what could be a more powerful blow to the GOP than to remind Americans of such broken promises... and then for Democrats to fulfill them at long last? (While mocking the "bad" parts of the Contract that were fulfilled.)

 

Instead of railing at them uniformly, let’s gall old Newt as he now sucks up to Trumpists, by reminding folks that about the quarter of the time he actually tried to get some stuff done, like negotiating some legislation and budget reform with President Bill Clinton. Imagine how that’d irk him.

 

Then bring in how Newt’s the one who upped the savage war on facts, by dismissing the Office of Technology Assessment and other advisory boards that had an inconvenient habit of telling the truth.

 

SO WHAT’S THEIR TRACK RECORD?


Let's be clear. U.S. Conservatives are in no position to lecture us, given what they’ve let happen to their movement. Moreover, while conservative skepticism-toward-excess-bureaucracy is welcome, when it’s sane, we need to recall how often they have been wrong, wrong, wrong, and again wrong... but want us to forget:

 

- Prohibition…

- Break up monopolies? Never! (And curse that class traitor Roosevelt!)
- Aid to farmers? Never! (And curse that other class betraying Roosevelt!)

- Dalliance with fascism, then appeasing Hitler and isolationism…
- Tobacco? No worries... (cough)

- Acid Rain… then ocean acidification…

- Cars don’t cause no smog!

- McCarthyism...

- Burning Rivers...

- Keep the lead in gasoline!

- The insane War on Drugs...

- Who needs seat belts in cars? 

- Vietnam[7]...

- Resisting Civil Rights[8] and hating on MLK[9]... 

- Watergate, defending Nixon long past proof of treason...

- Resisting women’s rights...

- Throw into prison Vets with PTSD who get relief from marijuana…

- Supply Side lies and outright theft of trillions...

- Resisting easy fixes to the ozone layer...

- Resisting mileage efficiency and safety in vehicles…

- Unleashing the surge in gambling, vice, and casino mafiosi...

- Climate change denialism and science hating...
- Claiming moral superiority while Red America scores worse in every category of turpitude, from teen sex/pregnancy/STD/abortions to gambling, domestic violence, divorce, alcoholism etc...

More supply side voodoo so-called “economics”… 

- Divorce was a bad thing, right? Till they realized the rate is far higher for top Republicans., with12 marriages among just Reagan, Hastert, Gingrich, McConnell, Trump… 

- Most traitor spies since 1955 were Republican...

- Most child molester politicians...
- Iraq Wars, based on outright lies...
- Undermining energy independence...
- A proven track record of far worse economic outcomes[10]... 

- Gerrymandering, crooked voting machines, voter suppression and other blatant cheats …

- Moscow-collusion and other blatant treasons...

- Birtherism and other hydrophobic Clinton-Obama jeremiads…
- Open war against all fact-centered professions; science, teaching, journalism, medicine, law and "deep state" public servants...

- Kowtowing to Vladimir Putin, Rupert Murdoch, Saudi princess, Wall Street parasites, inheritance brats & Trumps...

 

You know the list can go on and on. What kills is how blithely they shrug aside this past record, as if it bears no relevance to present credibility. But they know it does. Want proof? In the section on “Name an Exception!” I’ll issue the following challenge. (And it was micro-glimpsed earlier.) But let’s preview it here:


Name one top GOP leader between Eisenhower and Ryan who was even mentioned at the 2016 Republican Convention. Except for Reagan and Newt Gingrich, all were brushed under the rug, including both Presidents Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Dennis (convicted child molester) Hastert, Tom (convicted felon) DeLay, John Boehner and so on. That’s how writhing ashamed Republicans are, of their record at governance. 


(LATE NOTE IN SEPTEMBER 2020: The recent 2020 RNC was even more blatant! Even Newt was left off. There was only a perfuctory mention of the former GOP deity, Ronald Reagan!)

 

Why does no Democrat hammer this point? That if you disavow those past Republican administrations as incompetent, Russia-hating, enterprise-destroying, warmongering liars, then where is your party’s credibility to be trusted with power? 


Credibility? What’s that?

 

 

HOW CAN YOU BE WRONG SO OFTEN?

 

A dozen states have legalized marijuana for recreational use, and a dozen more allow prescription relief from pain, nausea and PTSD. It’s a good time to wonder at the misery and lives lost to the insane “War on Drugs.” Certainly, both parties initially took part in this mania that wracked our cities and sent billions into the pockets of the very worst humans. The issue isn’t ‘do we make mistakes?’ but rather ‘are we willing to let evidence of an obstinate error finally change our minds?’

 

I am reminded of the words of the great futurist, Alvin Toffler: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

 

An example that’s so amusing… and biting. NPR recently reported that “John Boehner Was Once 'Unalterably Opposed' To Marijuana. He Now Wants It To Be Legal.”[11] Ah, an example of Republican flexibility? Alas, read on about Boehner’s close ties to a burgeoning cannabis industry. Moreover, the hypocrisy is even greater among our dear libertarian friends, who have long railed against the Drug War, but refuse to budge in their hate-Democrats-more-than-Republicans reflex, even after blue states have led the way against prohibition. (And are fiscally more responsible and have done more deregulating.)

 

How far back does it go? Climate denialism spews from some of the same ad agencies that promoted "tobacco is harmless,” “cars don't cause smog,” and “no seat belts in autos!” While waging open war on science, this cult sabotages research on whether America and our children and world are in danger from planet-changing pollution. (I’ll discuss this in a soon to be released follow-up to this book.)

 

At age 19, I helped run the famous Clean Air Car Race,[12] which was covered every night on Walter Cronkite’s CBS Evening News. Among many innovations, that transcontinental demo-rally featured the world’s first hybrid car and several that disproved all the lies about unleaded gas then spread by SOBs who declared autos would shatter and capitalism collapse if lead were banned. Was our nationally viewed refutation effective? Within months after the race, a bill banning leaded gas emerged from committee, and twenty years after the U.S. banished that poison, crime rates plummeted, as lead-free children reached maturity with healthier brains.[13] Today bald eagles soar again, because we limited DDT. Folks eat fish caught along sweet riverbanks in downtown Pittsburgh, and every species of whale still exists… all because we acted on warnings… and no communist hell descended. 

 

Dare we repeat that? Not a bit of the predicted communist hell descended, not even black UN helicopters. Though there was a plague of amnesia, as our rightist neighbors forget they were wrong about every one of those things.

 

See: “Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, which is a history of public relations.”[14] as well as “How clean air transformed American cities.”[15]

 

Like Supply Side Voodoo Economics… the 100% disproved assertion that giant tax gifts to the rich will get invested in productive new goods and services, rather than asset bubbles and hoard-slowed money velocity. Or that skyrocketing wealth disparities will somehow help generate a fecund, flat-fair-competitive market economy. And if you tire of my repetition, then you don’t get the main lesson of this book… that repetition is key to polemical victory!

 

Do you recall when GOP masters forecast doom to the entire U.S. auto industry, if new efficiency standards were imposed? What were the actual results of the Obama-Pelosi 2009 CAFÉ rules? Across-the-board improvement in our cars, which now have vastly higher quality in every category while actually dropping in year-adjusted price, compared to other costs of living, while saving consumers tens of billions at the pump. A win-win that the Trumpists are reversing… while liberals stupidly point only at the pollution aspects, instead of the big picture.

 

The U.S. military is made up of people who tend toward a crewcut-conservative personality. Yet, the officer corps is also fact-centered. The armed services were the first American institutions to realize that racism, and later sexism, simply wasted talent that skilled defenders could not afford to forego. Likewise, officers know that climate change is a real threat to the republic, and that foreigners meddling in our elections pose real danger, possibly at the level of war. Alas, do Republicans take the advice of soberly sagacious officers? No. The latest catechism spilling from Fox is that these men and women who serve and protect us – along with the intelligence agencies and FBI - are all conniving “deep state” enemies of Real America. [16]

 

I’ve been dancing around the big one. Climate Change. We’ll get there later. But again we see that the special interests, lobbyists and ad agencies are still very much the same, using similar delaying tactics and incantations as for tobacco.

 

It’s sad that RASR conservatives – many of whom I like – can never tabulate how often their side has been flat-out wrong and learn from this that they need to revise – not their best Core Conservative Values, but their reflexes and methodologies. And especially whom they accept as allies. 

 

ADDENDUM ON PERVERTS, ABUSERS AND PEDOPHILES


Another note from September 2020: Among the countless calumnies that the KGB funnels through the QAnon madhouse is the raving that Democrats are baby-eating pedophiles. No MAGA would bet even a dollar that any of it is true - they know it's not, but adore our looks of bollixed frustration and whining demands for proof!


What's especially galling is that the rate of sexual perversion, pedophilia, child porn, domestic abuse and general nastiness seems especially rampant among Republican politicians. We recall Roy Moore and Larry Craig and I often cite Dennis "friend to boys" Hastert, who was head of the whole GOP and made Speaker of the House for 6 years. Look into Rep. Jim Jordan and this Oklahoma Trump campaign chair convicted of child sex trafficking... and another... and another... and another... and... and... and it goes on and on. But let's just leave it as an offer of a $10,000 wager offer that the list of very serious perversions and crimes is far longer among GOP pols than democratic ones.


And that leaves out 700+ Southern Baptist pastors accused... and 200 or so convicted... of various perversions and abuses.  DOn't throw stones, guys.



THE DESPERATE NEED FOR A SANE-ADULT

CENTER-RIGHT PARTY

 

Before you gloat over the apparent intention of the Republican Party to self-destruct at a gibbet of fanaticism, consider a sobering historical correlation and danger sign. The Fox/Putin systematic destruction of moderate conservatism has dangerous implications, as Yoni Appelbaum points out, in the previously cited Atlantic article How America Ends

 

“In his recent study of the emergence of democracy in Western Europe, the political scientist Daniel Ziblatt zeroes in on a decisive factor distinguishing the states that achieved democratic stability from those that fell prey to authoritarian impulses. 

 

“The key variable was not the strength or character of the political left, or of the forces pushing for greater democratization, so much as the viability of the center-right. A strong center-right party could wall off more extreme right-wing movements, shutting out the radicals who attacked the political system itself….  

 

“If groups that traditionally have enjoyed privileged positions see a future for themselves in a more democratic society, Ziblatt finds, they will accede to it. But if “conservative forces believe that electoral politics will permanently exclude them from government, they are more likely to reject democracy outright.””

 

This is just another reason to be ready with an olive branch to offer any and all ‘RASRs’ who are willing to renounce their movement’s fealty to mafia-oligarchy, and who will help re-establish the primacy of facts. All else is negotiable! But without those two things, we are forced to accept a bitter truth. That sane conservatives have turned a blind eye to their duty, to country, civilization and conservatism. At which point, we’ll just have to save all of those things, ourselves. 

 

 

DEMOCRATS AREN’T ALWAYS RIGHT

 

After all of those examples, should the conservative position always be discredited?

 

Nonsense. Criticism makes us better and countless potential errors in liberal programs were detected in advance by constructively critical conservative colleagues… a help that the Republican Party refused during this century, under the “Hastert Rule.” This led to some errors in Obamacare that had to be corrected later, again without GOP help.

 

An earlier point that I’ll reiterate many times, aimed at every dogmatic purist out there: Are you actually asserting that YOU - the reader - are absolutely 100% right, with no margin of error?


Dig it (and this is good news!) Your enemies are likely no more than 99% wrong! Possibly as little as 50%, if you allow for all those shared instincts and reflexes (Chapter 2) and build common ground.

 

Moreover, have you the character strength to sift through your opponents’ maelstrom of “wrongness” for those slivers where they actually had a point? Sure it sounds noxious, but they may be rewards! Not only will that boost your cred, when arguing with them, or convincing third parties that you’re the reasonable one. 

 

You may even discover one of your own errors to correct!  Because – and hold on now – you are likely no more than 99% right! Possibly as little as 90%. And finding those errors isn’t just a matter of honesty. It can help you (ultimately) to win.

 

Indeed, sometimes a conservative assertion proves correct!  Take the greatest mistake of modern American liberalism, which badly hurt the movement, shattered the Greatest Generation’s Rooseveltian coalition, and helped restart the Confederacy across America – an insanity called desegregation by forced school busing. It was an aggressively coercive lefty “innovation” of pyrotechnic stupidity, in which arrogant “reformers” stubbornly ignored every bit of evidence that their position was pigheaded and wrong. And above all, self-destructive. In the process, they handed the Republican Party thirty million or more formerly Democratic voters, an advantage the oligarchy has exploited, ever since. 

 

Let me further avow (though it will cost me!) what anyone knows, who has spent time on a modern American university campus. There are dogmatic leftist bullies who routinely take over swathes of soft-studies departments, wherefrom they issue grand, post-modernist tracts denouncing the “colonialist” concept of objective reality. Suppressing open debate, they crow over campus-level PC victories[17] that have no pertinence or effects in the real world, but that do give Foxzoids plenty of ammo for hysterical finger-pointing: “See? This is what liberals are like!” Thanks… allies. 

 

Universities should be places that encourage diversity, debate, and courage. For example, this article demands affirmative action for conservatives on college faculty.[18] “Liberal colleges are recruiting conservative professors to 'stir up some trouble.'” 

 

While this book is 99% a tactical guide to defeating monstrous, right-wing confederatism, I am fine with inviting back to campus anyone who might talk again about those CCV values we viewed at the start of this chapter. Kewl! I love good debates. I want there to be fact-loving and cogently collegial conservative voices on campus. Alas, that the sub-species is now rare, verging on extinction. All the more reason to offer habitat and breeding grounds, free of rabid Fox disease.

 

Anyway, anecdotes about campus lefty-flakery have zero bearing on the vast majority of moderate-pragmatic, science and fact loving Democrats. 

 

Sadly, “Ostrich Republicans” have one final incantation. Desperate to keep their heads buried in denial they chant: “I know my side has gone insane… but… but… but Democrats are worse! Yeah, that’s the ticket! Democrats are just as crazy… or worse!” 

 

Um… sorry, but not

 

Ronald Reagan used to chant “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me!” Then he proceeded to begin dismantling every aspect of the Rooseveltian social contract that the Greatest Generation – including activist young Ronald Reagan – helped to build.

 

You RASRs and ostriches out there, can you lift your head and look around? Blink in dismay and realize that the Republican Party long ago left you. It has left America, honesty and sanity.

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    Next time... Oh! The Conspiracies!

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FOOTNOTES

[1] http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-pattern-from-jim-crow-to-smog.html

 

[2] http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2019/05/crushing-crazy.html

 

[3] Referred to in the previous chapter as ‘nagging.’

 

[4] How mature conservatives might save US conservatism: http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/1947.html

 

[6] “The conservative strands of America’s political heritage—a bias in favor of continuity, a love for traditions and institutions, a healthy skepticism of sharp departures—provide the nation with a requisite ballast. America is at once a land of continual change and a nation of strong continuities. Each new wave of immigration to the United States has altered its culture, but the immigrants themselves have embraced and thus conserved many of its core traditions. To the enormous frustration of their clergy, Jews and Catholics and Muslims arriving on these shores became a little bit congregationalist, shifting power from the pulpits to the pews. Peasants and laborers became more entrepreneurial. Many new arrivals became more egalitarian. And all became more American.

    “By accepting these immigrants, and inviting them to subscribe to the country’s founding ideals, American elites avoided displacement. The country’s dominant culture has continually redefined itself, enlarging its boundaries to retain a majority of a changing population. When the United States came into being, most Americans were white, Protestant, and English. But the ineradicable difference between a Welshman and a Scot soon became all but undetectable. Whiteness itself proved elastic, first excluding Jews and Italians and Irish, and then stretching to encompass them. Established Churches gave way to a variety of Protestant sects, and the proliferation of other faiths made “Christian” a coherent category; that broadened, too, into the Judeo-Christian tradition. If America’s white Christian majority is gone, then some new majority is already emerging to take its place—some new, more capacious way of understanding what it is to belong to the American mainstream.”

[7] Vietnam was a bipartisan catastrophe. LBJ came that close to saving us from JFK’s biggest mistake, then decided to stay. But there’s one difference between parties since Vietnam. Democrats may wage war (See Chapter __), but they hate sending in whole armies. Republicans love it. 

 

[8] Stomp flat every attempt to say Democrats are still the party of George Wallace and Republicans still the party of Lincoln. The flip is so blatant.

 

[9] … till suddenly you always loved him, right.

 

[10] Outcomes comparison: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2014/06/so-do-outcomes-matter-more-than-rhetoric.html

 

[11] Boehner and pot. https://www.npr.org/2019/03/16/704086782/john-boehner-was-once-unalterably-opposed-to-marijuana-he-now-wants-it-to-be-leg

 

[12] Only decades later did I put together how seminal and important the Clean Air Car Race was. http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2013/01/getting-lead-out-quirky-tale-of-saving.html

 

[13]   See Neil Tyson's Cosmos episode about this. https://www.space.com/25579-cosmos-recap-earth-age-lead-poisoning.html

 

[14] Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, which is a history of public relations. https://www.prwatch.org/tsigfy.html

 

[15] https://www.salon.com/2019/03/17/how-clean-air-transformed-american-cities/

 

[16] Again, never neglect the insipid complicity of liberals, who aren’t leaping to embrace these desperately needed allies.

 

[17] The entire “neocon” movement, which connived to justify both Iraq wars, had its roots in men like Nitze, Perle, Adelman, Wolfowitz etc., former students of a mad, ingrate-mesmerizing imperialist named Leo Strauss. When they were university professors, their views ranged from conservative to – well – unpleasantly right wing, but at least they faced arguments and reality checks by colleagues and students. But when their offices were trashed by jubilant activists, it proved counterproductive to chase them off-campus. Fleeing to faux academes like Heritage Foundation - echo chambers of servile oligarchic rationalization – these bright fools concocted fairy tales of prodigious insanity. We – and peoples of the Middle East – paid a steep price for those gleefully trashed offices. Congratulations on such ‘victories.’

 

[18] “Liberal colleges are recruiting conservative professors… http://induecourse.ca/affirmative-action-for-conservative-academics/

 

95 comments:

TCB said...

Here's something I saw about a minute ago, too good not to share:

If free public libraries didn't already exist and someone tried to invent them, they would be condemned as a socialist plot.

TCB said...

Thomas Geoghegan says Abolish the Senate.

f we want another New Deal of any kind, Green or not, the young in this country will have to begin by insisting on a true republic, based on one person, one vote. That means, above all, scrapping the United States Senate, which makes a mockery of that principle—the Senate which stopped the first New Deal, and will stop the next, and is the biggest reason our country is not more like Denmark today.

... Thanks to the U.S. Senate, the government still overrepresents the racist and populist parts of the country. It also now overrepresents the rural areas or underpopulated interior regions that are the biggest losers in the global economy—and by no coincidence, it has made easier the rise of Trump.

I can see Geoghegan's point. The Senate protected Trump from impeachment; allowed the installation of a horde of far-right judges, with lifetime tenure, and other appointees to various posts; and it is where many a good idea, such as a real and continuing COVID unemployment stimulus, goes to die. He goes on to say that the Senate makes liars of Democratic politicians.

The GOP nominees can deliver on their promises: the Senate is set up to suit what they need to do. The Democratic presidential nominees, all of them, even the best, have to mislead, if not lie.

...A good example of this deceit is the filibuster: “The Senate voted down S.R. No. xxx,” we say, when in fact the Senate passed it, fifty-five to forty-four, but could not overcome a minority filibuster. We don’t even have the language to resist our oppression. I revere Barack Obama, but when he said in 2008 that he would change the way Washington does business, without any intent even to take on the filibuster, he was deceiving us—and was engaged in a form of self-deception. It may not be outright lying, but the failure of even our best leaders to tell the truth helps to normalize the far more outlandish lying of Trump.

...

The Senate is so skewed a version of the United States that it is hard to imagine how two thirds of that body could ever fulfill its mandate to enact treaties. That means the Senate will prevent us—in this country and the rest of the world—from fending off an environmental Armageddon, making the chamber an existential threat to young people all over the planet.

It is probable that the U.S. Senate will be abolished eventually—because the rest of the world will no longer tolerate it. Aside from the 330 million here, there are billions of people around the world who have a stake in getting rid of it.

...

This time—if the Democrats take the White House and the Senate—Joe Biden has an opportunity to use the First Hundred Days better than Obama used his. He might use it even better than Franklin Roosevelt used his own. In Biden’s First Hundred Days, there is a chance, a brief window, to change our form of government before enough of an opposition forms to stop it.

First, in the case of the Senate, we have to abolish the filibuster and admit Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states. ...

Second, we have to invoke the power of Congress under Article I, Section 4 (the Elections Clause), to displace any state from using voter or election data to create districts for the U.S. House. This, in effect, would be a ban on gerrymandering. ...

Third, the Congress has to get rid of the Electoral College, or any other device that gives the White House to the runner up....

Fourth, it is the moment to pass a bill limiting service on the Supreme Court to no more than fifteen years....

Finally, and the most important way of overcoming the drag of the Senate, the republic is in sore need of universal voting, such as Australia and many other countries have....

Even if there were a Hundred Days—and there may not be—none of the above would be enough. The Senate has to go.

David Brin said...

T Geohagen's proposals are 1/3 absolutely right on, 1/3 impractical and impossible to implement and 1/3 jibbering crazy.

TCB said...

T Geohagen's proposals are 1/3 absolutely right on, 1/3 impractical and impossible to implement and 1/3 jibbering crazy.

Perfectly balanced, as all things should be. :D

Larry Hart said...

T Geohagen's proposals:

The Senate has to go


It doesn't matter how much sense it makes to abolish the two-Senator-per-state rule or the Electoral College. It would take a Constitutional Amendment to change the latter and a revolution to change the former. Neither one can be accomplished by an incoming Democratic administration.

Eliminating the filibuster can be done, though, and must be done before another four years of McConnellist obstructionism. In hindsight, it's too bad we didn't let Bill Frist do away with the filibuster back when Republicans wanted to do so. We would have had a very different Obama administration, and possibly avoided Benidict Donald altogether.

scidata said...

Dr. Brin,
Thanks for the astronomical society visit yesterday. It was much appreciated by all.

john fremont said...

@TCB

I would also say that about ubiquitous yellow school bus:

"Why should I have to pay to give for other people's kids rides to school?"

David Brin said...

Scidata, Rob Sawyer is the best! The real deal. I'm just a talented dilettante.

Larry Hart said...

So I see it's not just me wondering...

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2020/Pres/Maps/Sep12.html#item-2


Q: Can you explain the rationale for what appears to be a publicity-stunt presidential candidacy by Kanye West? In particular, why does the Trump camp seem to be promoting it? I've heard they think he will take votes from Joe Biden among Black voters, yet West has been more with Trump politically. In my experience, Black voters are among the most sophisticated around. The Trump camp doesn't really think they will just vote for someone who shares their skin color, do they? C.J., Lowell, MA

A: That is exactly what the Trump camp thinks, which is more revealing about Team Trump's understanding of race than it is about what is going to happen in the Election of 2020.

David Brin said...

Sorry, that's baloney, LH. Polls show a fraction of angry black males will seek any excuse to stick it to those who "take them for granted."

duncan cairncross said...

Polls show a fraction of angry black males will seek any excuse to stick it to those who "take them for granted."

But if that is how they feel then they would not vote for Biden anyway!

Don Gisselbeck said...

Important conservative questions, "Who's gonna pay for this? Are they paying enough?"

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

Polls show a fraction of angry black males will seek any excuse to stick it to those who "take them for granted."


So, were those angry black males going to vote for Biden in the first place.

The plan doesn't work if those who were planning to sit it out (or to vote for Trump to piss off the libs) vote for Kanye instead. Only if he takes votes from people who would otherwise have cast votes for Biden.

I'm probably more cynical about possible failure modes than anyone. I didn't actually believe Obama would win in 2008 until North Carolina and Pennsylvania were confirmed. But this particular scheme seems to be flawed.

TCB said...

The Kanye gambit is best understood as a blue-sky Republican tactic among a panoply of more tried and true ones. It doesn't matter that much whether it succeeds or whether it crashes and burns. It serves as a decoy while other tested election-theft tactics continue to run in the background.

Did I already do my bread-slice parable here? Goes like this:

Suppose you want to steal a cartload of sliced bread from a large bakery warehouse. The warehouse is lightly guarded but it is inventoried. You can't just walk in and grab loaves. They will be noticed missing and you will get caught. This would be like the GOP using one blatant method to switch ten percent of the votes. They dare not.

Now suppose you could sneak in and pull a slice from many, many loaves. You may get away with several cartloads of bread. But each loaf is only missing one slice. Nobody is counting slices or weighing the loaves a second time. You get away with it.

This is what people need to wake up to with the GOP. They don't do one thing, they do half a dozen. Hacked machines, invalidated ballots, voter caging, maybe even a riot to stop a recount. A fourth of a percent here, a tenth of a percent there, mostly in swing states controlled by friendlies who will erase their tracks. This is after they've used propaganda and dirty tricks to whittle a ten point Dem advantage down to a stealable three or four percent.

Then they use the media to throw cold water on any notion that the result was not legitimate. Properly done exit polls are the gold standard for detecting a fraudulent election, so naturally in the wake of the 2004 election, in which George W. Bush probably stole Ohio, the resulting 'inaccurate' exit polls were abandoned and discredited by US news organizations, and exit polls as a fraud alarm are now all but taboo.

Jon S. said...

Remember who it was that delivered the primaries in the Southeast to Biden. (Note: It wasn't us honkies.)

But the Trump admin does seem to honestly believe that black voters will overwhelmingly back Kanye West because he's black and for no other reason. Thing is, black voters know about Yeye, and the vast majority aren't giving him the keys to the country. (Yeye doesn't understand this because he's quite clearly off his meds again. If his mama were still here, she wouldn't have let things get this far.)

Larry Hart said...

TCB:

This is what people need to wake up to with the GOP. They don't do one thing, they do half a dozen. Hacked machines, invalidated ballots, voter caging, maybe even a riot to stop a recount...


I have to admit I wasn't too up on the effect that the "Brooks Brothers riot" had on the 2000 Florida recount. But it sure seems weird to me that an act of disruption is allowed to prevent an official action from concluding, and therefore that official action is simply considered complete as is. Would such an outcome ever be considered legitimate if the official procedure was interrupted by a BLM protest, or an anti-war rally?

If a recount is interrupted, then it still needs to be done--it doesn't get to be considered "done" up until the point at which hoodlums stop the process. Likewise, if a Constitutionally-mandated "actual enumeration" is halted before it can be completed, it still needs to be completed. In a rational world, they wouldn't get to say, "Whatever we've counted so far is the official tally because you understand we just couldn't count any higher." That they do get away with saying so makes the result illegitimate, which I hope even Alfred will acknowledge and possibly Ilithi Dragon too, though I've given up on Tacitus2 ever doing so.

matthew said...

Trump is now saying that ballots that cannot be counted on election night are invalid. He is signaling that he will declare himself the winner on election night regardless of ballots being counted.

Roger Stone is calling for Trump to use his emergency powers and declare that elections cannot be held. Declare martial law and just take over.

The first moves of the endgame of America are being made.

What will you do when Trump declares himself a winner before the votes are counted? What will you do when he calls out his brownshirts and little green men to squash any protest after he declares martial law?

Every American should be asking themselves these questions, because all these things are *very* high-probability events.

(Or Biden wins in a landslide, and Trump *still* tries the coup method).

We all need to be talking to everyone we know, making a plan for when the GOP tries to end two-party rule by force. It's coming.

Larry Hart said...

This is what matthew is talking about...


“I do not advocate preventive detention, but people who commit crimes and think they can continue to get away with it because we have two-tier justice are just wrong,” he [Roger Stone] told conspiracy theorist Alex Jones during a call to his online Infowars show.


A new definition of chutzpah--a convicted felon pardoned because he's a stooge for the president complaining that people "think" they can get away with crimes because of a two-tiered justice system.

In other news, my guillotine futures rose sharply in late-day trading.

Larry Hart said...

matthew:

We all need to be talking to everyone we know, making a plan for when the GOP tries to end two-party rule by force. It's coming.


Just so you realize that some of those people you're talking to will be spies for Trump and the militias.

matthew said...

I think that a lot of the people that hear my voice will either
a) claim they've always been anti-Trump after Biden wins, or
b) turn me and my family and friends into the brownshirts if Trump wins.

Most people are just trying to get along.
For many people in a fascist state, just getting along will include reporting to the state in order to deflect any accusation leveled at them.
I'm high-enough profile in my liberal stance to my acquaintances that I'm toast if Trump wins.

Of course, all of you reading this are on the same list.

I've often wondered if some of the trolls here were just trying to buy themselves insurance for/if when the pogroms start. A kind of reverse "virtue signaling."

David Brin said...

matthew, not to brag, but I think they'll come for me earlier by a couple days!

BTW look over your posting. There is a LOT of difference between "into" and "in to" and I think you meant the latter! ;-)

Larry Hart said...

matthew:

I'm high-enough profile in my liberal stance to my acquaintances that I'm toast if Trump wins.

Of course, all of you reading this are on the same list.


Yeah, that train has left the station long ago for me. Even if I were to consider passing for a Confederate, my own inability to believe in alternative facts would give me away. So it has to be the other way--sell my life dearly and don't go meekly into the concentration camps. Including some actions which our host would not approve of me endorsing on his blog.

Let's put it this way--if America really does slide into full-fledged fascism, supported by the armed authorities and Congress, I would not want to get by and continue living in such a country, especially if the price of that survival was ratting out other democrats.

Dr Brin recently described his thought process writing The Postman as "What would I do to get by?", and that he realized he would not go so far as to hurt others, but would go so far as to lie. In that regard, my red line is that I will not rat out friends to save my own skin. If that means that the tree of liberty has to be watered by the blood of this patriot, I've made my peace with that.


What will you do when Trump declares himself a winner before the votes are counted? What will you do when he calls out his brownshirts and little green men to squash any protest after he declares martial law?

...

We all need to be talking to everyone we know, making a plan for when the GOP tries to end two-party rule by force. It's coming.


"If we burn...you burn with us!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j972c-yynY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y1EmA2CU04

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76HRpwJkAX4

Larry Hart said...

I did just this afternoon Zoom with my daughter at the University of Illinois, where she is still on campus (though mostly taking classes remotely). So I can literally say:


"There comes a time in a man's life that you cannot know. When he looks down at the first smile of his baby girl and realizes, he must change the world for her - for all children."


When in the course of human events...

Lorraine said...

If our children strain under debt burdens it will be from private debt, not public debt.

TCB said...

The Brooks Brothers Riot was a hell of a thing. The Republican Party paid to fly in perhaps hundreds of operatives. A number of GOP congressional aides were identified from photos. These included aides to Fred Thompson (you may recall him from a movie or two), Jim DeMint, and Don Young. Roger Stone helped organize the riot and put the word out to all local loyalists to come and raise Cain. Afterward they threw a Thanksgiving party at a Miami hotel, where Wayne Newton sang Danke Schoen to them.

That's how tacky they are.

P.S. Hunter S. Thompson said that, during the recount battle, when he saw George W. Bush on TV looking groomed and wholesome with all his family, that was when Thompson knew Al Gore would never be permitted to be president.

TCB said...

I'm no Napoleon but the little bit I've seen of Hunger Games combat tactics does not impress me. Better, however, than Game of Thrones battles when Jon Snow is giving the orders (Olly was right).

But vastly inferior to Blackwater, where Tyrion actually did some competent things (and historically based, too! Siege of Constantinople, 1453, the chain across the harbor mouth. Constantinople fell to the besieging Turks, of course. But it wasn't because the Byzantines did anything obviously dumb.

Alfred Differ said...

What will you do when Trump declares himself a winner before the votes are counted?

Laughing mostly. He will try, then I'll count noses to see is getting upset at him trying to invalidate the count.

What will you do when he calls out his brownshirts and little green men to squash any protest after he declares martial law?

Count noses and remind folks that a fight is what Putin actually wants. Don't be a sap by serving the Russians. For any who get that point, promise to talk. For those who don't, promise prison time.

Larry Hart said...

I leave you this evening with this passage from A Tale of Two Cities:


In the hunted air of the people, there was yet some wild-beast thought at the possibility of turning at bay. Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them; nor compressed lips, white with what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted into the likeness of the gallows rope they mused about enduring, or inflicting.
...
For, the time was to come when the gaunt scarecrows of that region should have watched the lamplighter, in their idleness and hunger, so long, as to conceive the idea of improving on his method, and hauling up men by those ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the darkness of their condition. But, that time was not to come yet, and every wind that blew over France shook the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine of song and feather, took no warning.

Joe D said...

Your footnote 17 is not a reference but a sub-rant. You say, "when their offices were trashed by jubilant activists." Okay, then: When were their offices "trashed by jubilant activists"? To use some of your own judo, I ask that you provide citation for just two (as you yourself used the plural).

As someone who is not himself an academic, but academy-adjacent, I don't see conservatives being forced out of universities. In fact, the home of supply-side economics is the "Chicago School," at one of the lefti-est private universities around.

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

"What will you do when Trump declares himself a winner before the votes are counted?"

Laughing mostly. He will try, then I'll count noses to see is getting upset at him trying to invalidate the count.


That's doable in California. Probably in Illinois where I live too, at least in the part of Illinois I live in.

My brother in Pennsylvania is feeling understandably less sanguine. He is afraid that the police and state troopers would back up any right-wing agitators rioting in the streets. I am in no position to judge how accurate his assessment is, but if enough states are of that ilk, we might end up with a "two-state solution" right here in America.

Larry Hart said...

TCB:

The Brooks Brothers Riot was a hell of a thing. The Republican Party paid to fly in perhaps hundreds of operatives. ... Roger Stone helped organize the riot and put the word out to all local loyalists to come and raise Cain.


But what did they actually do to stop the recount? Make so much noise the officials kept forgetting what number they had just counted to? Threaten the officials' lives?

I ask because I get the impression that the riot worked mainly as a protest movement. Like, "Lots of rich white people are unhappy with what we're doing, so we'd better accommodate their wishes." In stark contrast to BLM or kneeling football players, in which the act of protest is considered terrorism and the last thing we should do is let the protesters determine what we do.

Hailey said...

Dr. Brin I will!

I have trouble participating a lot of the time due to overthinking; often I type out a long comment, feel like it's nothing but inane commentary, then delete it (thanks ADD & OCD!). All the stress between the pandemic and politics and health issues hasn't been very helpful either. It seems like most people are stretched pretty thin trying to cope lately.

Are y'all coping okay? These are interesting times...

Tim H. said...

Something of interest from one of the free thought blogs:

https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2020/09/14/how-dirty-money-subverts-democracy/

Remember when Republicans were known for other things than dirty tricks? And doesn't that sound like "Get off my lawn!"?

Zepp Jamieson said...

Off topic, but likely to be of interest here:
Scientists find gas linked to life - phosphine - in atmosphere of Venus

The only known source of phosphine is stressed microbial life.

OK, I don't want to rush of to Venus based on that. But if we can convince Republicans that not only does Venus have life, but also has "blanket trees", "ham bushes" and "soap roots", we may be able to solve some of our most pressing social problems.

David Brin said...

Thanks Hailey. And yes, down here the smoke is less thick. Still things are revolution-worthy. Feel free to post!

Joe D, thanks for the CITOKATE. I did a cursory seach and could only find side references to "campus bullying," though it seemed to me that the office trashings were common knowledge. Seriously? You deny the existence of such campus lefty radical vehements? Jesus we see them all the time, and not just on campuses but lately accosting white diners seated at sidewalk table, screaming at them to apologize for racism. And thus doing far more harm than good.

Dig it. ALl emotionally charged issues attract flakes and I have been victim of such left-extrema more often than I can count.

Yes, the FAR left CONTAINS fact-allergic, troglodyte-screeching dogmatists who wage war on science and hate the American tradition of steady, pragmatic reform, and who would impose their prescribed morality on you.

But today’s mad ENTIRE right CONSISTS of fact-allergic, troglodyte-screeching dogmatists who wage war on science and hate the American tradition of steady, pragmatic reform, and who would impose their prescribed morality on you.

There is all the world’s difference between FAR and ENTIRE. As there is between CONTAINS and CONSISTS.

TCB said...

@ Larry Hard, who wrote:

But what did they actually do to stop the recount? Make so much noise the officials kept forgetting what number they had just counted to? Threaten the officials' lives?

Did you see the photo in the article I linked? That was taken in the hallway right outside the room where the recount was happening. The GOP thugs threw punches, roughed up people coming and going from the office, accused a worker of stealing ballots when he was seen carrying a sample ballot, and swarmed him when he got down to the lobby.

More details here.

Brendan Quinn, executive director of the New York GOP, told about two dozen Republican operatives to storm the room on the 19th floor where the canvassing board was meeting, Tapper reported.

“Emotional and angry, they immediately make their way outside the larger room in which the tabulating room is contained,” Tapper wrote. “The mass of ‘angry voters’ on the 19th floor swells to maybe 80 people,” including many of the Republican activists from outside Florida.

News cameras captured the chaotic scene outside the canvassing board's offices. The protesters shouted slogans and banged on the doors and walls. The unruly protest prevented official observers and members of the press from reaching the room. Miami-Dade county spokesman Mayco Villafana was pushed and shoved. Security officials feared the confrontation was spinning out of control.

The canvassing board suddenly reversed its decision and canceled the recount.

The recount never restarted. Gore might well have caught Bush in numbers if it had... If you could emerge from that canvassing board office on that day and not feel physically threatened, you've got cooler blood than I do.

TCB said...

@ Zepp, that reminds me of the land of Cockaigne, which sounds a lot like life in the modern world if you have money.

Larry Hart said...

Tim H:

Remember when Republicans were known for other things than dirty tricks?


That does seem to be all they've got now, doesn't it? After all, it's pretty much stated openly that any suspense around the November elections is not over whether the Republicans can sell their agenda, but over whether they can successfully game the system enough to win. People disagree about whether their doing so is a good thing or a bad thing, not over whether that's what will decide the race.

And I believe the media are complicit, not necessarily because they want Republicans to win, but because their business model requires the suspense.

Hailey said...

Speaking anecdotally, even when I lived in Portland, OR the number of anti-science far leftists I met was in the single digits. They were pretty loony though, and actively wanted the US to fail because they actually believed they'd get to form a pacifist hippy commune in the aftermath. Trying to convince them that no, they'd much more likely be hunted down for sport by right-wing militia groups was an exercise in futility.

The rest of the lefties I knew there were mostly reasonable and could be swayed by facts when wrong. Still, there was that worrying tendency of some of them to shout down dissenting opinions and accuse others of racism/sexism at the drop of a hat.

When I lived in Wichita, KS, every single conservative I talked to (i.e. most of my coworkers and classmates) firmly believed that global warming and the ozone hole were liberal hoaxes. Any facts to the contrary were falsified data by scientists trying to get more funding (you'd think if these scientists really wanted more money they'd just work for the oil companies, but the real money is in grant proposals!). Coworkers would often "joke" about stuff like hunting hippies for sport or that only landowners should be able to vote.

Larry Hart said...

TCB:

Did you see the photo in the article I linked?


No, sorry, I missed the fact that there was a link there.

Gotta love this phrase all by itself:

An angry mob of conservatives...

Larry Hart said...

TCB:

The recount never restarted. ...


That's the part I was getting at. I'm having trouble imagining an official proceeding allowed to be threatened into being called off by BLM or OWS (or antifa) riots. The police, national guard, and army would simply escalate until the mob was driven away and the proceeding could continue.

I don't disagree with such a response. I disagree with letting a Brownshirt mob have its way. Which is what some of us are concerned with will happen with this year's election. "We can't hold an election with angry mobs of conservatives protesting it. I guess Donald Trump just stays president forever."

David Brin said...

Citigroup is a mess, even worse than the rest of the sick banking sector. Last month they mistakenly paid $900 million in principal on a Revlon debt that only needed interest. The CEO is being eased out for Jane Fraser, the first ever female CEO of a major Wall Street bank. And now? There’s be a detailed outing of one of Citigroup’s Senior Vice Presidents, Jason Gelinas, as the man behind the notorious QAnon conspiracy website. Oh! let some light in!

If Dems were running the "stimulus" bills like they did in 2009, we'd be demanding collateral for bailing out these monsters. The 2009 'bailouts" almost broke even for us! Taxpayers made a PROFIT on Fannie and Freddie and almost did off the loans that saved the US auto industry, over fierce GOP objections. This time, McConnell & Chao insisted on free gifts to the oligarchy, in order for Pelosi to get the other half sent to the working class.

Again and again, anyone who maintains the delusion that Republicans are fiscally responsible... and dems aren't... should not be allowed to walk with scissors.

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/09/citigroup-was-having-a-helluva-bad-year-now-a-citi-senior-vp-has-been-outed-as-the-man-behind-a-qanon-conspiracy-website/

Gator said...

I'm over 50 and I've not seen a responsible Republican party for any of my adult life. That list of CCVs? That's maybe 1950's Republicans and completely irrelevant to today. I don't know how it would be possible to get a modern conservative US political party to sign up to much of that any more. Even the "responsible" republicans are simply anti-Trump. They are looking past tomorrow to the coming decade, and Trumpism will just interfere with their pro-rich, pro-corporate schemes because Trumpism will eat itself. I can't think of a single Republican famous for pushing CCVs in the last few decades.

I'm on the lefty side of the spectrum but I would love the return of a sane right side of the spectrum.

matthew said...

Remember that the Democratic party *is* the center-right party in America.
We don't have anything to speak of to the left of the Democrats. The Greens don't count - they are a stunt and not a political party. If Dems win this time, I do believe that the party will split in the next four years.

We are, as a nation, very, very far to the right of the rest of the world, save a bunch of dictators and bank-buggerers.

That being said, what do Progressives do in a nation that is far to the side of conservatism and authority when measured on a global scale?
Search for allies, cut deals, and make compromise.

Pragmatism is the hallmark of adults.
Politics is the art of the possible.

Eventually, all the rest of you will figure out that we're right.
Or die in a fire when your pay-for-play fire department says your credit card doesn't have a big enough credit limit to turn out the fire truck.

Pappenheimer said...

If my readings back in the Dark Ages were accurate, the Byzantines did do something foolish - but only in hindsight. A gentleman named Urban offered to build them cannon to defend their walls. His fee was exorbitant, and he was refused. He took his expertise to the Turks, who shelled out the cash; the Turkish battery (an apt a plural noun as has ever existed) never quite brought the triple walls of Constantinople down, but helped bring about the fall of the city. This may be a lesson for those who refuse to invest in R&D or study new methods. Urban, though, was hoist by his own petard when one of his big guns blew apart.

David Brin said...

matthew you began with non-historical incantations. Some pretty loony stuff until you got to "That being said." Then sure. Let's save the civilization and restore the existence of politics. Then use it to argue how to do more.

Larry Hart said...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/opinion/caputo-trump-2020.html

chutzpah:

He [Trump] said it again on Saturday, to cheering supporters at a nearly mask-less indoor rally in Nevada. “I am going to start by saying that the Democrats are trying to rig this election because it’s the only way they are going to win.”


And truth:

In a half-functioning country, all of the president’s rhetoric on this score would be grounds for removal from office. But we don’t live in a half-functioning country — we live in the United States of America.

Larry Hart said...

https://www.businessinsider.com/stone-calls-for-trump-to-declare-martial-law-election-loss-2020-9

...
Stone encouraged Trump to consider declaring "martial law" should he lose reelection, or invoke the Insurrection Act. Using those new powers, Stone suggested, he should order the arrest of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, "the Clintons," and "anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity."
...


I hope the tech media CEOs who think that the Brownshirts are on their side understand what their fate looks like under a second, lawless Trump administration, and take appropriate steps.

jim said...

I think that Mathew is correct the Democrats are a center right party now. In the 1990’s the democrats abandoned the working class and increasingly became the party of the professional managerial class + black folks. As AOC noted in any other country Joe Biden and her would not be in the same party. The lefties still work with the democrats because the FDR to LBJ democratic party was actually pretty good for working class americans and the republicans have traditionally been for the wealthy class.

The thing that is still up in the air is that the Republican party seems to be in flux. Trump has them abandoning free trade, retreating from entanglements of the global empire, actually enforcing immigration laws, and is now trying to eliminate the payroll tax that funds social security and instead just fund it out of the general fund. This would be a very progressive tax cut that would mainly benefit the working class and also decrease the business tax cost of employing people to work. That is a far more progressive, pro worker proposal than anything coming from corporate Joe. But the republican party is still going for tax cuts for the rich, a conservative social agenda, has a real strain of anti-environmentalism and seems to have to have some real competence problems.

For the last ~30 years the democrats have moved to the right and for almost that whole time the republican party has also moved to the right in terms of government serving the interest of capital, while the country as a whole became more socially liberal. So here we are in 2020 the progressives have won the culture war and lost the war for governance. We have democratic party taken over by corporate interests and the republican party taken over by people far more “ideologically flexible” who’s goal seems to be – do what it takes to stay in power. All this is taking place at a time when industrial civilization is running face first into the limits to growth crisis while desperately denying that there are limits to growth.

This poem by Yeats is describing our situation

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Robert said...

David, matthew's right about US politics being considerably to the right of the rest of 'the West'.

Your Democrats seem to cover the range from the right wing of Canada's Liberal party (Sanders) to Alberta's United Conservative Party (Biden). You seem to have nothing that maps to the whole left wing of Canadian politics (the NDP and left wing of Liberals). Your current Republicans seem closest to Bernier's People's Party, which got 1.6% of the vote.

Compared to French politics, American politics seems even narrower.

Gator said...

Dr. Brin, matthew may be making what you see as non-historical statements, but I think that is the point of where we are today. The America that "saved the free world" is in the far past by political standards. We now live in the America that attacks our NATO allies while cozying up to North Korea and Russia. We used to live in an America that had a Republican party that at least professed to care about stability and thoughtful governance, now we live in an America that has a Republican party that exists firstly to push the GINI index up, secondly to work towards a theocracy. So yeah, in today's America the Democrats are the center right party, who espouse just about all of the CCV's you list, and have for the last few decades.

Alex Tolley said...

OT.

A couple of years ago I had a bet with a commenter here about whether there is a subsurface ocean on Ceres. Recent findings suggest there is, even it is rather slushy. I have therefore accepted that I lost and have sent the $25 bet to MSF (Doctors Without Borders, USA) as agreed.

scidata said...

This Venusian phosphine thing seems to me to be a good example of how much scientific research could/should be automated. It's basically bringing together observational data from Hawaii and ALMA, then doing some crunching (specifically eliminating all non-biological possibilities). AI can do this. I hope science doesn't devolve into stamp collecting. Big brains are a terrible thing to waste.

David Brin said...

The Ceres bet you made seemed reasonable since there's no source of gravity-tidal heating. But radioactives and Seperntine mineral conversion may be enough!

David Brin said...

Except that every single assertion by jim is utterly refuted here
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2019/08/five-devastating-rebuttals-to-use-with.html
… I mean other than that, he makes some good points. Too bad the utterly fact-free nature of his railings kinda spoils them.

Given that the Democrats had a filibuster proof ability to legislate for just 72 days across the last 25 year, one helluva lot got done by the 111th Congress… and is being done every year by Dem majorities in blue-coastal states. Facts that jim never confronts or refutes.

Was it tactically foolish of the dems - especially Obama - to keep trying endlessly to negotiate with a Republican Party that’s been nuts since at least 1990 and treasonously so since 1996? Yeah, in retrospect, they should have accepted that it was war and fought it. Do you honestly think ANYONE in the DP political caste doesn’t know that, by now?

Have you seen how AOC types have been winning primaries against sincere but too-tepid liberals? They are building their caucus.

You have it 100% wrong. The Democratic Party is not a Center-Right party. It is THE American Republic’s political spectrum, it’s Parliament with all wings… having to face obstinate thwarting from the House of Lords.

scidata said...

Sorry if I come across as a bit dismissive of good researchers. I just want the Foundation to emerge. Busywork isn't the best use of our tiny population, and even tinier academia. Leave that for AI. We're at a watershed moment between back the caves or on to the stars. Logic, reason, evidence, inference, and even analogy are lost on zombies. The only solution is to revive them. Fewer scriveners, more nosecones.

Larry Hart said...

Robert:

David, matthew's right about US politics being considerably to the right of the rest of 'the West'.
...
Compared to French politics, American politics seems even narrower.


I'd say much of the blame is with the Electoral College and the configuration of the Senate, which requires Democrats to have to do well with the minority which controls many states. They can't win by appealing to a majority who only live in 15 or so states.

And it's not the electoral college per se which skews the vote so much. Rather, it's the winner-take-all rules in all but a few states which disenfranchise the 40% of Illinoisans who vote Republican and the X% of almost every state in the South or the non-coastal West who vote Democratic. It's not that Trump won Michigan and Wisconsin, but that by winning them so narrowly, he nonetheless claimed all of their electoral votes.

Cynical prediction: Republicans will probably agree to make Texas's EVs reflect proportion of votes in the state in exchange for California doing the same thing--right before Texas turns blue.

Der Oger said...

@ TCB
"I'm no Napoleon but the little bit I've seen of Hunger Games combat tactics does not impress me. Better, however, than Game of Thrones battles when Jon Snow is giving the orders (Olly was right)."

Twenty years ago or so, I read an interview with G.R. Martin in the now-defunct Dragon Magazine. From what I remember, he seemed to be an old-school gamer - having done his research on old military affairs, especially the War of the Rose on which much of GoT was originally based.

Modern writers like Weiss, Benniof and (shudder) J.J. Abrams do not seem to bother with acquiring background knowledge to accurately and logically set their stories up. The Rule of Cool.

TCB said...

Be it noted that counterterrorism expert Michael Scheuer is a piece of garbage now.

Apparently he was already extreme, but now he's a QAnon-loving fascist.

To Scheuer, there are no protesters. There is instead a “sub-human insurgent threat,” armed by the Democratic Party and funded by people like George Soros and Bill Gates, “rioting in honor of felonious scum” like police brutality victims George Floyd and Jacob Blake. “If you have enough loyal general officers to destroy the domestic enemy, arrest the disloyal generals and do so as soon as you can, and use as much violence as is necessary to terminate this threat forever,” Scheuer urged Trump on June 5, when the president’s D.C. crackdown was underway. The generals who opposed using the military for that termination were exemplars of America’s lost wars who were now “helping the Democrats to destroy the republic.” If Joe Biden wins the election, Scheuer predicted the next month on his podcast, Democrats would be “silly to imagine it’s going to preserve their lives.”

Larry Hart said...

I wish Alfred would post here more. He's the only one who isn't convincing me to go on a hedonistic pleasure binge followed by a painless suicide as the best method of avoiding the carnage that will be America after the election (no matter the outcome).

Der Oger said...

"Lets talk about the US as a failed state":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjtzXryZ-7o

@Dr. Brin:
"You have it 100% wrong. The Democratic Party is not a Center-Right party. It is THE American Republic’s political spectrum, it’s Parliament with all wings… having to face obstinate thwarting from the House of Lords."

The problem isn't necessarily that the democrats consist of the sane political spectrum.

The problem is that 40%+X of your country are not part of this spectrum, compared to our 10%+X. (And even they make my blood pressure go up).

I severely doubt that will change in the next four years even IF Biden wins, and even eight, twelve or twenty years of blue presidencies and congresses and supreme courts might not change it. OK, perhaps twenty years.

All factors that brought Trump into office are still in place. The radicalized electoral base, the great social inequality, education, healthcare ... the list is seemingly endless. (OK. I'll grant that Biden MIGHT fix some of it, but not so much that in 4+X years, a smarter, younger, more charismatic version of Trump might not reappear and try it again. The hot phase of the civil war might just be postphoned.)

TCB said...

@ Der Oger, actual military history IS cool, though. Writers who ignore it are cheating the audience and even themselves. The history of conflict is the history of smart, motivated people trying to best each other with the tools available.

For example, I watched a pretty long video about why the US P-51 Mustang fighter plane had better performance than the Messerschmidt ME-109, even though the 109 had a bigger engine. The answer was pretty technical, and it wasn't because the Germans were bad engineers or because the 109 was a few years older. There were several factors:

Those piston aircraft engines could be tuned for more efficient operation at high altitude or low. Mustangs arrived tuned for low altitude work (like strafing trains) and had a kit that could be added for high altitude performance in thinner air (escorting bombers and fighting enemy fighters.) The German mechanics had no choice but to tune their 109s for medium altitude because they needed to fight Allied planes both high and low. Also, Mustangs ran their engines at higher compression than 109s because the Allies had aviation gas of MUCH higher octane. The Germans had to run their fighters on an octane comparable to premium car gasoline at the local pump. We had racing fuel.

This is a pretty daffy level of gamesmanship necessary to win the advantage in one tiny corner of the incredibly complex efforts to win World War 2. And people have been matching wits in a similar way since the Paleolithic.

Alfred Differ said...

Those of you arguing that the Democrats are center-right are kinda missing the point. The US certainly IS to the right of most other nations in The West, but that's not really about our equivalent of Tories. We simply don't have the heavy socialist wing. Some of you are out there, but your numbers are just not there.

What we have instead is mistakenly called 'center' when it is really just 'liberal' in the older sense of the term. Not the progressive liberals. I mean the others that might not actually use the term. Even some of our conservatives are liberal in this sense. To see it, just ask what they conserve. Many of them are not well described as reactionaries.

Larry's point that it has something to do with the EC is fair. I consider it a feature instead of a bug, though, because I would rather the US was not a parliamentary system. A governing faction should represent minority positions and be just attractive enough to hold minority position holders BEFORE we choose to elect them.

Democrats are simply larger in terms of people. That's why they appear to hold to the 'center'. Democrats are an alliance of factions… some left… some right… some progressive… some liberal… some reactionary. No matter which faction you find most attractive, though, all the others will seem 'out there' and pulling the coalition where you'd rather not go.

Robert said...

The Democratic Party is not a Center-Right party. It is THE American Republic’s political spectrum

Which kinda shows how narrow the American political spectrum is. Because in Canada, or France, or Germany, or Norway, or… there are political parties to the left of the American Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders would be a middle-of-the-road politician in other countries, rather than being at the left-most edge of politics.

Larry Hart said...

Der Oger:

All factors that brought Trump into office are still in place. The radicalized electoral base, the great social inequality, education, healthcare


But the thing is, the ones who are so aggrieved as to want to tear the system down are the beneficiaries of much of that inequality. It's not the underclass rebelling against the master race, but the privileged who seem to perceive any move toward equality and justice as an existential threat. And the people who most lack health care froth at the mouth against politicians who would dare offer it to them.

duncan cairncross said...

Der Oger

Says effectively that the USA has 40% loonies while Europe tends to 10% loonies

In one way he is correct - the USA has got a huge cohort of people who were badly brain damaged as children by lead in petrol

From the 40's to the 70's the USA was a LOT richer than Europe with a LOT more cars
Brain damage from that time period is worse in the USA because of the cars
And worse in the UK than in Europe for the same period
People born after 1980 do not have this problem

The USA had lead AND lots of cars from 1940 to 1980 - so people from 80 years old to 40 years old are affected
Europe did not have a lot of cars until the 70's - so people from 50 years old to 40 years are effected
The UK had lots of cars from the 60's so people from 60 years old to 40 years old are damaged

The good thing about that is that the USA will age out of the problem
The bad thing is that political power is greatest from the ages 50 to 70 (my guess) so the USA will continue to be run by the brain damaged for another couple of decades

And Europe will start to have more brain damaged people in their political power years

Larry Hart said...

On the difference between the American political spectrum and everywhere else, is the difference as simple as the Second Amendment?

Maybe when people think they can solve any argument with firearms, they don't feel inclined or motivated to compromise?

Alfred Differ said...

herd immunity
herd mentality
herd mental
I heard he's mental


There are days when I wonder if his vocabulary isn't rich enough to distinguish concepts. Yah. Strokes can do that. So can pharmaceuticals. All sorts of things.

Sigh. TG the election is close now.

Acacia H. said...

Scientific American breaks 175 years of tradition and endorses a Presidential candidate - Joe Biden. Or to put it bluntly? After decades of the Republican Party spitting on scientists and calling science so much fakery except when it comes to the science behind killing people, scientists and their periodicals have finally said "enough" and are choosing the Party of Sanity and walking away from the Party of Authoritarianism.

You can only be abused for so long before you wash your hands of certain people... or a political party. David Brin has talked in the past of how so few scientists these days are Republican. It has finally achieved critical mass. And scientists have realized that for all that they try to avoid being political, authoritarian politics doesn't give a shit about apolitical groups and only believes in using people.

Acacia H.

Der Oger said...

@ duncan cairnross: While I could imagine that the lead in car petrol could affect the brain in people born in these areas, it isn't the only contributing factor. There are a myriad of others, most of them already being mentioned in this community.

I'd like to add one: The absence of neutral, critical and trustworthy media. US news have become partisan entertainment. If there is no reliable source of unbiased information, indoctrination on the level of Fox becomes much more easier. Guess why Boris Johnson has set his eyes on the BBC, and why the German Far Right object to the fees for the public radio and TV services.

Also, thinking about it, if lead would play that role, I'd assume that urban population centers would be the stronghold of Republican rule, not the rural areas.

Joe D said...

I in no way "deny the existence of such campus lefty radical vehements." Nor, if you read my comment, did I say any such thing.

I questioned whether they had "trashed" the offices as you claimed, and I deny that they force out conservatives in any significant number.

You yourself have said, in other places, that the reduction in conservatives on campus has largely been academics changing their views in response to the Know-Nothing trend of the right.

There are certainly extremes and bullies, but the "canceling" in recent years has been largely groups protesting and, yes, preventing campus lectures by visitors whose beliefs would deny full humanity to certain groups.

Tim H. said...

Something darkly amusing:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/14/trump-ad-asks-people-to-support-the-troops-but-it-uses-a-picture-of-russian-jets-414883

One hopes this is nothing more than the work of someone who can't tell one jet from another, like the scene in "Starman", where an F-16, through the magic of Hollywood, becomes an F-106.

Tim H. said...

@TCB, Another factor in Bf-109 vs P-51, aerodynamics had moved on in the intervening years and North American had a Messerschmitt veteran, who likely had an idea of the deficiencies of the Bf-109, on the project. Consider the difference in top speed between the P-51A and the P-40E with identical engines.

Robert said...

On the difference between the American political spectrum and everywhere else, is the difference as simple as the Second Amendment?

Maybe when people think they can solve any argument with firearms, they don't feel inclined or motivated to compromise?


I doubt it. Back before Canada had gun control, when even children could walk into Canadian Tire and purchase a firearm and ammunition, the Canadian murder rate was still 10% of the American one — and our politics weren't anywhere near as extreme. Political negotiation happened, just as it did in your country.

Firearms — and the way a significant chunk of your population fetishize them — aren't a product of the second amendment. The second amendment was in play when Western towns (like Dodge City) banned guns. It was in play when the NRA supported gun control.

To an outside observer, the problem seems to be that a significant chunk of your population has decided that rules don't apply to them — and they've been allowed to get away with it, so in a sense they're right. Not just the guns, though. If the folks in the Brooks Brothers Riot had been black, would they have gotten away with it? If it was BLM that showed up at the Michigan Capitol with guns (or even without them) would they have been treated so gently?

Larry Hart said...

Yeah, about that liberal "cancel culture"...

https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/rex-huppke/ct-bears-lions-nfl-protests-national-anthem-black-lives-matter-huppke-20200914-omot6okpvrbcrf2yypiarwexcq-story.html


Sunday, in stadiums coast to coast, we saw [Colin] Kaepernick’s decision to express his righteous outrage validated. The players showed it. The coaches showed it.

No team or player or coach was cowed by the chorus of opportunists howling “Just play football!” and threatening, out one side of their mouths, to boycott the NFL while wailing about “cancel culture” out the other.

Larry Hart said...

Robert:

To an outside observer, the problem seems to be that a significant chunk of your population has decided that rules don't apply to them — and they've been allowed to get away with it, so in a sense they're right. Not just the guns, though. If the folks in the Brooks Brothers Riot had been black, would they have gotten away with it? If it was BLM that showed up at the Michigan Capitol with guns (or even without them) would they have been treated so gently?


To an inside observer as well. :)

That was exactly my point about the Brooks Brothers riot--the most egregious aspect was not the riot itself, but the fact that the riot was allowed to accomplish its goals by intimidation and everyone in authority seemed to treat that as acceptable. And you're darned straight that such a thing would never have been tolerated had the rioters been blacks or women or hippies.

David Brin said...

Der Oger, I appreciate your concerns and your comprehending. The larger of two Americas is easily as sane in its political range as citizens of Canada, for example. But you miss the CYCLICAL nature of these periodic outbreaks of manic civil war. If the current fever is overwhelmingly rejected at the polls… and if Biden etc throughly spank the foreign powers who have artificially stoked the outbreak… then many confederates will renounce the madness and many others will glower back to a simmer in those geographies that have always been infection zones.

“The radicalized electoral base, the great social inequality, education, healthcare ... the list is seemingly endless.”

Bah, it is a list of one line item… cultural resentment of smart people, including their own sons and daughters who went to college… or the college girls who wouldn’t put out. Sure I oversimplify. But the drivers are anything BUT self-interest.

Alfred describes some of the ‘things we share in common’ which I discuss in Chapter 2 of Polemical Judo. In our case Suspicion of Elites has been a source of freedom… but has lately been applied against us, getting many Americans to enter full hysteria toward one elite while ignoring their own.

“Because in Canada, or France, or Germany, or Norway, or… there are political parties to the left of the American Democratic Party.”

*I* don’t deem that to be brag-worthy. But Parliamentary systems encourage splitting. As US states incorporate Ranked Choice voting, small parties will get some more air to breathe and grow, WHILE reducing some of the defects of parliamentary radicalism.

Duncan, you know I helped eliminate lead from gas. (NOT in a huge way but at least a bit.) I pray that lead poisoning is not as huge a factor as you suggest. After all, it’s rural folks who seem most susceptible to Putinism.

Joe D your CITOKATE is welcome that I do not cite cases of ‘trashed offices” largely because it never occurred to me that anyone over 40 doesn’t clearly remember many scenes of these events in mass media. I look back and recall at least a dozen. Were this a significant issue, I’d trawl harder for references. But seriously?

jim said...

Larry,

I certainly do not want you do go on a bender then kill yourself on Nov 3 because you have come to the realization that we are on a downward trajectory no matter who wins the election in Nov. And that although you truly hoped that
"There comes a time in a man's life that you cannot know. When he looks down at the first smile of his baby girl and realizes, he must change the world for her - for all children."
you are now coming to the realization that you do not have the power to change the world for her.

These are very tough things to deal with and your grief will be real. But once you go through that long dark night of the soul and you realize that most of what happens in the world is far beyond your ability to control, you can get to a place where you can actually focus on things that you can actually do.

You are powerless to change the world for your little girl, all you can do is change how you participate with and your expectations on a world you can’t control. Then do that---- change what you are doing and what you are expecting and take the steps that you can actually do to help protect and care for you and your loved ones. It may or may not be enough to protect yourself and your loved ones from the changes you can’t control but it beats the heck out of being blind sided.

(another thing you might want to try: envision your death on a regular basis, get comfortable with your own mortality. If you do this on a regular basis you can greatly reduce your own fear of death and find that it is easier to enjoy the life you have and it is easier to live the values that you have. )

TCB said...

Robert wrote:

Maybe when people think they can solve any argument with firearms, they don't feel inclined or motivated to compromise?

I doubt it. Back before Canada had gun control, when even children could walk into Canadian Tire and purchase a firearm and ammunition, the Canadian murder rate was still 10% of the American one — and our politics weren't anywhere near as extreme. Political negotiation happened, just as it did in your country.

Michael Moore addresses thins in Bowling For Columbine. He went to a "bad neighborhood" in (I think) Toronto and the place was totally mellow. He concluded that although Canadians had plenty of guns, they have much less gun violence, and a better explanation is that the US has raging inequality and a rotted, inadequate safety net. Canada isn't Utopia, it just looks that way compared to the US.

Robert said...

Parliamentary systems encourage splitting. As US states incorporate Ranked Choice voting, small parties will get some more air to breathe and grow

David, I think you're mixing up (or lumping together) parliamentary governments and first-past-the-post voting. We have both up here, which is why a government with only minority support can still have a massive majority in parliament. Something other than FPTP would shift Canadian governments to the left, as the public has consistently voted more left wing than election results (40% Conservative, 35% Liberal, 25% NDP, for example, means Conservatives get in although 60% of voters don't want them).

matthew said...

If anyone wants to dive into the rabbit-hole of comparing the political positions of various parties across the western world, here is the reference I was using when I called the Democrats "center-right." It is lengthy and tries to use a few different metrics than simply picking a reference party and ranking everyone else based on that reference.

http://comparativepolitics.uni-greifswald.de/gcp/GCP-11-2018.pdf

It is from a non-American source, which I chose to dampen down the nationalistic effect of the research.

***

Setting the semantics aside, it is the second part of my OP that is the most important - noting that the Democratic Party's Big Tent is indeed very big and needs to be very big to defeat an existential threat.
David hits the same point on his reply. We agree on outcomes (GOP out of power) and at least some on methods, so I'm happy with the discussion regardless of terminology. Like AOC (and to a smaller degree Bernie), I'm happy to find allies where I can in this fight against literal American fascism.

Right now, there are armed gangs of vigilantes patrolling about 20 miles from my house. In the evacuated areas of Oregon, being a reporter is a very dangerous job. See: https://newrepublic.com/article/159362/oregon-fires-militias-disaster-capitalism

Once again, ask yourself what you will do if Trump steals this election. General strike? Move to a new nation? Hunker down and try to blend in?

No matter what, the results of the election will be disputed. Even if Trump loses in a landslide, his die-hard supporters are about 20% of Americans, and they do not trust anything other than those who have drank from the same KoolAid.



matthew said...

Oh, and kick some money to Jamie Harrison, who is tied with Lindsey Graham in South Carolina according to a bunch of recent polling.

https://poll.qu.edu/images/polling/sc/sc09162020_bgjm67.pdf

Larry Hart said...

I thought I posted this earlier, before Dr Brin's latest comment. I wouldn't bother to re-post, but I'm curious to see if anything of mine gets through the spamwall:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/rex-huppke/ct-bears-lions-nfl-protests-national-anthem-black-lives-matter-huppke-20200914-omot6okpvrbcrf2yypiarwexcq-story.html

Sunday, in stadiums coast to coast, we saw Kaepernick’s decision to express his righteous outrage validated. The players showed it. The coaches showed it.

No team or player or coach was cowed by the chorus of opportunists howling “Just play football!” and threatening, out one side of their mouths, to boycott the NFL while wailing about “cancel culture” out the other.


Might as well throw this on the pile too:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/rex-huppke/ct-trump-rigged-election-ballots-mail-fraud-election-biden-huppke-20200916-c5la6itxnjcznekfznc3vwwl2q-story.html

Then ask yourself this: What does it say about a person who thinks the only way he can lose is if someone else cheats?

Alfred Differ said...

Larry,

He's the only one who isn't convincing me to go on a...

Heh. If I recommend anything right now it involves doing something your civilization will appreciate later even if it doesn't correctly give you credit for it.

I'm not much of a believer in the capitalized-F version of 'faith', but I am a big fan of being 'loyal to' things bigger than we are individually.

When your civilization needs you, pick something bite-sized and do it. You'll know when you get it right. 8)


As for the carnage, I strongly suspect some people are going to regret screwing with us in a couple years. If it were me, I'd be going to war over what has happened lately. Yes. Including risks involving nukes. I'm pissed off.

Anonymous said...

Der Oger, I appreciate your concerns and your comprehending. The larger of two Americas is easily as sane in its political range as citizens of Canada, for example. But you miss the CYCLICAL nature of these periodic outbreaks of manic civil war.

Dr. Brin has just endorsed the Cyclical History argument.

Larry Hart said...

jim:

you are now coming to the realization that you do not have the power to change the world for her.


"Today, perhaps. But if there are others with the courage of Admiral Jarok, we may hope to see a day of peace when we can take his letter home."


You are powerless to change the world for your little girl, all you can do is change how you participate with and your expectations on a world you can’t control. Then do that---- change what you are doing and what you are expecting and take the steps that you can actually do to help protect and care for you and your loved ones. It may or may not be enough to protect yourself and your loved ones from the changes you can’t control but it beats the heck out of being blind sided.


Strictly speaking, you are correct. I can only hope to have prepared her to live in the world my generation leaves her. However, if I can emulate Sydney Carton and interpose my own life to save hers, it's the least I can do.


(another thing you might want to try: envision your death on a regular basis, get comfortable with your own mortality. If you do this on a regular basis you can greatly reduce your own fear of death and find that it is easier to enjoy the life you have and it is easier to live the values that you have. )


I wouldn't have understood that in my twenties, but I sure do now. I feel for my daughter because her adult life is just starting, and she has to live with this crap. Me, if I were to die today, I've had a better life than I would ever have guessed and than most humans could hope for. My motto really is, "I can't complain, but sometimes I still do."

The good moments from now on are gravy.

And, ince it's my day for answering quote with quote:

Hamilton:
I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory.
When's it gonna get me?
In my sleep? Seven feet ahead of me?
If I see it comin', do I run or do I let it be?
Is it like a beat without a melody?
See, I never thought I'd live past twenty.
Where I come from some get half as many.
Ask anybody why we livin' fast and we laugh, reach for a flask;
We have to make this moment last, that's plenty.

Larry Hart said...

matthew:

Right now, there are armed gangs of vigilantes patrolling about 20 miles from my house. In the evacuated areas of Oregon, being a reporter is a very dangerous job. S


Imagine what it's like down south of Roseburg. :)

(Another Brin novel prediction coming true)

Larry Hart said...

There have so far been two times in my life when I truly felt that "life as I know it" had an end date in the near future. Not that I expected to die, but that I expected the parameters of life to change so extensively that I could not reasonably plan ahead for what life would be like after the date of change. Like that scene in Dune where Paul describes his prescient vision as akin to being on a choppy sea, oft times able to see great distances ahead, but occasionally so far in the trough of a wave that one could hardly see anything ahead.

The first was when I away to college. As the oldest child, I really had no way to understand what day to day life would be like after moving away from home. That summer of '78, I literally counted down the days until August 20 as "X days left of life as I know it." I was not in fear--more like a kind of awe, but with some trepidation as to how I would take care of myself in that Brave New World.

The other such time was when my daughter was born.

I'm trying to convey that a third such time seems upon us now. Nov 3 will end life as we currently know it, for good or for ill. Or I should say has a good chance of ending it, with enough probability to take it seriously. I feel myself saying things like, "I'd better enjoy thus-and-such while I'm still able." (The pessimistic part of me wants to add, "For tomorrow, we will surely die.")

The other two times proved navigable after all. I hope this one does as well.

duncan cairncross said...

Der Oger and Dr Brin
Damn - you are correct - Lead would affect the urban population more than the rural - so that hypothesis dies - or at minimum becomes much less important

Then WHY did America move from being "The Land of the Brave" - to "The Land of the Afraid" ??

TCB said...

duncan cairncross asks

Then WHY did America move from being "The Land of the Brave" - to "The Land of the Afraid" ??

This is gonna sound crazee

but

It was a choice.

"Come on you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?!" – Sgt. Maj. Dan Daly, USMC

Sjt. Maj. Daly was on to something. As far as we understand it, physics tells us that everything we know and love literally comes from nothing. Literally. A puff of quantum probability, a fluctuation, a thermodynamic moment, everyone we love and everything we own, every thought, every memory, every hope and dream. Less than fourteen billion years ago it was all a hot plasma, and not long before that it was merely some sort of unbalanced equation. God laughed and here we are, for a moment.

Physics also tells us that, probably, everything will thin out and go dark, until cold atoms evaporate and there is nothing left but a silence so complete that it howls.

We can choose what we will believe about all this. That our whole world is an infinitely precious, glittering moment, in which we have both a right and a duty to shine. Or we can choose to believe that we can somehow scare off oblivion, outgun death itself, and if we just kill enough terrorists and protesters we can somehow not have to face the end of all things.

Well, the problem with that second belief is that it is an opiate lie, crafted by greedy narcissists to enforce total obedience. After all, if we fear the disobedient, we also fear to disobey.

I guess what I am saying is that you can live to a ripe old age being a chickenshit in a nice stable empire... and that is what a lot of people are, these days.

But in times of real trouble, the chickenshits get sorted in a hurry, one way or another.

Acacia H. said...

Because Republicans under Bush found Fear to be a warm and comforting blanket to wrap themselves around. After 9/11 had happened they embraced fear and it became their tool and their security blanket. Fear the Outsider. Fear the Immigrant. Fear the Democrat. Fear the Voter. Fear Change. Fear Life.

Think of how Trump describes Mexicans. Rapists. Murderers. Thugs. This is a depiction meant to invoke fear. And Trump uses this same exact language to describe Biden and the Democrats. If he loses in November? I would not be at all surprised to see him try to use fear to convince his followers to rise up, hoping in turn that fear and a need to "do what's right for the country" will get Biden to concede the election and allow Trump to remain in office.

Either that or he'll do a "farewell tour" around the world and "vanish" from his handlers to show up in Russia and state he's the rightful head of the United States and taking shelter in Russia because of a coup removing him from office. He most definitely won't stick around waiting to be arrested and put on trial.

Acacia H.

Robert said...

Then WHY did America move from being "The Land of the Brave" - to "The Land of the Afraid" ??

It was there on 9/11. Looking at the hysterical reaction and the way it seemed most Americans were quite happy to trade freedom for the illusion of safety was… interesting. It was obvious the America I remembered from the 1970s was no more (or possibly had never been).

David Brin said...

Extensive simulations of the Prisoner's Dilemma have shown that being "nice" confers huge advantages to large groups of players, like a nation or community, allowing the emergence of positive sum games in which everyone benefits... so long as being nice is the default in most cases and so long as cheaters or defector-exploiters are made not to benefit much from their defections. One of the earliest traits shown by infants and chimpanzees is distaste toward non-cooperators. The irony being that once a society is cooperative to that extent, it can then create flat-fair playing fields like markets, democracy, science and sports, wherein the creative benefits of competition can flower.

David Brin said...

I had a summer job helping run the solar telescope, while at Caltech. A sacred place! “Los Angeles' Mount Wilson Observatory, the site of major 20th century scientific discoveries, has so far survived a terrifyingly close brush with a wildfire in the hills northeast of the city. But the threat isn't over”

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/16/913649688/firefighters-battle-to-save-las-historic-mt-wilson-observatory

David Brin said...

onward

onward