More "designated survivors!" And why our anger should be measured. Controlled.

We'll start with a pair of somber-paranoid thoughts that I hope won't win me any prophetic points. First, with Vladimir Putin's occupying forces collapsing in DC, and his chief asset there plummeting in real life value, I hope security is good at the upcoming State of the Union (SOTU) speech. Several supreme justices should call in sick (RBG please?) Let Hannity call it a "boycott." Who cares? Just be in a safe place.

Here's a litmus. If the "designated survivor" is among the most-solid and least-compromised cabinet officers, then Trump cares mostly about applause and Putin probably isn't planning anything. On the other hand, if DT is ordered to choose one of the most-compromised cabinet officers, then everyone hunker till its over. 

And it's not over till the United States of America retakes Washington. 

Second paranoid musing: it is plain treason that zero GOP senators have demanded that Donald Trump bring along top witnesses for every minute of his coming meetings with Kim, Xi and Putin. But I am also on record suggesting that Trump might be wise not to eat anything those sponsor-despots offer him. Why, when they're his best-pals? Because his usefulness as an asset may shift to even greater value as a disruptive martyr, at any point, now. And sure, it's my job to concoct "thriller" scenarios. Still, God bless the U.S. Secret Service.

== A "classic" that provides vital context

Periodically I call your attention to some of my most popular essays. This one concerns a widely-circulated nostrum called the "Tytler Calumny" and it is the great example of what has gone wrong with the mental processes of our friends on the right, who used to be represented in sage debate by great minds like Barry Goldwater and Friedrich Hayek and William F. Buckley...  but who are now reduced to slinging around aphorisms and fact-free fox-assertions.  

It is often accompanied by another feat of cynicism called the Fatal Sequence.

"Great nations rise and fall in a 200 year cycle. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage."

Both the left and right suffer from tendentious teleology, assuming history has a direction. The left often (not always) views this as inexorably upward progress. Rightists and romantics are forever drawn to “cyclical history” with the latest manifestation being the noxious mythology pushed by Steve Bannon, of a “Fourth Turning” crisis in America, requiring a cleansing of all decadent forces. (You know whom.)

Ironies abound. Bannon rants endlessly that the last "hero generation"... the aptly named Greatest Generation that crossed the despair of Depression, crushed Hitler, stymied Stalinism, got us to the Moon and built the vast, productive and confident American middle class... that these heroes were betrayed by the Baby Boomers -- who just happen to be the only clade on Earth containing anyone stupid enough to fall for Steve Bannon's bullshit. Bannon crisscrosses the planet, helping fascist-populist risings of know-nothing morons, by prophecying a coming Crisis that was nowhere on the horizon till his cult began betraying America.  

As for the new heroes who will save the day? 
Millennials. 
The fourth generation of the cycle, who will stand up and rescue civilization from the crisis/mess made by... boomers like Bannon.  Hence, I have to wonder whether anyone has pointed out to Steve and his InfoWars/Fox buds that Millennials are disgusted by everything those trogs stand for. If they must overcome his 'crisis,' they will start by putting Bannon and his ilk against a wall.

Oh, but do I deny any validity to notions of cyclical history? Does history often rhyme?  Yes indeed, there are relentless attractor states, the most powerful being oligarchy-feudalism, which has rewarded brutally ruthless men with reproductive advantage for at least 8000 years. 

We in the Enlightenment have been inventing a new attractor, one that might win us the stars. But monstrous men are now plotting its demise. Monstrously stupid men, who cannot squint to see that their victory would be the end of us all. And no Patagonia refuge will be safe for them.

"Those who ignore the mistakes of the future are bound to make them."  -- Joe Miller.

== A more recent, nerdy "classic" ==

Phil's Stock World - the investment site that also remembers what made enterprise work in the U.S. (it wasn't oligarchy) - has re-posted my article "The alluring dream of "Central Planning.""

If you seriously want to get past the cliches about "blind markets" and "invisible hands" and grasp why the Greatest Generation knew better than to hand over all power to the 5000 richest oligarchs... come by for perspective. It's not classic liberal or libertarian cant, but an unusual (and historically supported) blend that justifies in unusual ways our ongoing project to end poverty, prejudice and pollution.

== Self-righteous anger ==

An interesting article from The Atlantic - The Real Roots of American Rage - dives into why we seem so angry, all the time, when in fact the world is filled with good trends and reasons for hope. The author hints at how nursing this grudge fest has been in the interest of many powers. After Fox and others innovated Endless Outrage television “Executives from other cable-news channels publicly disdained his approach—and rushed to imitate it. In 2009, a Tufts University study of opinion media found that “100 percent of TV episodes and 98.8 percent of talk radio programs contained outrage.”

Still the focus is more on the relationship between political wrath and a forceful drive to change the world, e.g. Cesar Chavez’s thesis that moral outrage can achieve widespread change.  And later, how a kind of reverse psychology has proved useful at damping down attitudes of hate.

Sure, that’s why we have the human talent for wrathful indignation… because it did empower folks across human evolution to find the guts and stamina to oppose opposition and improve their situations. But as I show elsewhere, it accomplishes this by tapping into natural human addictive processes: the release of dopamine and endorphins that stoke the deeply pleasurable rush of righteous indignation. See my TEDxUCSD talk on “The addictive plague of getting mad as hell."  (And see the scientific background on addiction.)

“It is not enough for people to be angry,” Martin Luther King Jr. told an audience at Carnegie Hall in February 1968. It was the 100th anniversary of the birth of W. E. B. Du Bois, and King hoped to remind those in attendance of his teachings, but also of his methods. Du Bois, King said, had been an angry radical his whole life. He had furiously called for resistance. But he had also sought to make his enemies into allies.” And King went on: “The supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.”

Much ado about Donald Trump’s 2004 commencement speech urging students to go over or through any “concrete wall.” It prompted others to remind folks about the 1950s western “Trackdown” featuring a snake oil salesman character named “Trump” who claimed that only he could prevent the end of the world … by building a wall around the town. “You ask how do you build that wall. “You ask, and I’m here to tell you.” See excerpts on Snopes. Creepy evidence we live in a simulation.. and a shoddy one, at that.