== Brinsbury's summer and winter daydreams ==
In Gary Trudeau's wonderful Doonesbury strip, the lead character -- Mike Doonesbury -- has 'summer daydreams' of how things ought to be. In my case, it's year-round and every week! But hey, it's my job and someone's gotta do it -- ponder potential paths -- some plausible and many just kind-of and some not-at-all. Possible paths out of the traps that we face.
And sure, I'm generally relegated to the lamentation of Cassandra, muttering "I told you so!" too many times to count. Though not always, e.g. when the California Democratic Party asked me to propose "near future legislation" to address the plummet of factuality and verification in American politics. Perhaps the most crucial matter of our time! The resulting Fact Act at least got a little attention! Though not enough to get anywhere.
Other proposals include methods to get around the current Supreme Court's outrageous support for gerrymandering. One concept, that would bypass all politicians, got approving attention from a senior US Court of Appeals judge. My collection of such potential maneuvers - many of them non- or even anti-partisan - can be found in Polemical Judo.
But here I'll focus on four concepts that could affect one of the most important and pivotal days in the entire history of civilization.
That pivotal day is today, December 16, 2024.
Trying to get these concepts where they might be acted upon has been futile, of course. The Democratic Party political and punditry clans are frantically circling their wagons to fend off accountability for their incompetent blunders. Above all, any idea Not Invented Here is to be met with savage repression.
In particular, any mention of the Electoral College prompts shrugs and sighs, even though several past elections have tilted this way or that (depending on your view) with either patriotic acts of courage or shenanigans.
Well, well.
With one day left, I must admit I was straying outside my lane.
Still, here are the two EC notions that I tried to convey.
And one more that occurred to me just yesterday!
... Plus one that Joe Biden might still pull off, during his remaining month in office, and be known for it, forever.
== Two now-forlorn ways to shift the Electoral College... and one more that could work, even now ==
Okay, it's too late for these first two. In fact, it's because it's too late that I'm telling you the second one, now.
* The first one is so old that it's in Polemical Judo. It describes how two rich dudes - one Republican, one Democrat and both patriots -- might arrange for the Presidential Electors to actually meet and deliberate in person -- by their OWN volition and without any outside pressures -- as the Founders clearly intended. I describe the concept here. There's no reason it couldn't happen.
But not this year. And maybe - if the Putinists succeed - not ever. Still, here it is
* Second idea: I only hinted at this one, in hopes that I might be able to pitch it directly to Kamala Harris.
Only her.
It would have guaranteed her a place of amazed remembrance across U.S. history!
Alas, her layers of not-invented-here factotums were too thick.
Boiled down to essence, I suggested that she could declare:
"Look, I lost the election! That's on me. By narrow margins but in crucial states, the people chose for the next Senate, House and Presidency to be controlled by Republicans.
"But does it have to be THIS Republican? A capering, frothing madman whose every chosen appointee openly and gleefully declares open war against every fact-using element in American life? Like the Roman Emperor Caligula, who made his horse Consul of Rome, Trump is appointing a whole herd of utter crazies!"
Forget idiocies like "right" or "left." This is now about all-out war vs all fact using professions! From science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror. And so she might have continued:
"Already it's clear that many of those who supported Donald Trump -- perhaps because they feared or disliked me -- are having buyers' remorse. So let me ask this.
"If we're to be led by Republicans, can it at least be grownup ones? Anyway the last thing I should do is stand in the way of the ruling party making their own choice on the matter.
"And hence I am stepping out of the way.
"I now ask all of the U.S. Electoral College members who are pledged to me NOT to vote for me on December 17!
"Instead, I ask that all of them... every single one... vote for the current head of the Republican Party and Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate, the honorable John Thune."
Amid that moment of shock, she could point out that Thune and she have cancelled each others votes any number of times. They support vastly different policies. Moreover --
"If this works, I will oppose him at most levels of practical politics.
"But, unlike Donald Trump, John Thune is an honorable person, a sane person, a person of genuine mental capacity and above all, an American patriot."
Look, here's the deal: If every Democratic elector voted for Thune, the 312 Republican electors would then have a choice. A chance to back out of their monstrous deal with the devil. Just 15% of them could make the difference and turn a madman from all that power. Just 40 or so could instead make a decent human being President!
And then, in a spirit of bipartisan peace-making, maybe vote to make Tim Walz Vice President?
"Just 15% of GOP electors could do this. And don't let those sappy state laws against 'faithless electors' intimidate you! They have no value against the Founders' clear intent for Elector sovereignty.
"And so I urge you Democratic electors who are pledged to me, to follow my lead on this, one last time. Let us lay a challenge before our Republican neighbors. Tell them YOU WIN! Now show us that you plan to use your victory toward an America that is at least not-insane."
== Brin's gone mad? ==
So, okay, it's not gonna happen. I never shared this with all of you out there, in forlorn hope that she might ponder it. Ponder acting as Alexander Hamilton did, in the mixed up election of 1800. Rising above party to pick decency over corruption.
Is the idea at least original?
Sure. It's what I'm paid for...
... and it's why many DP hacks cry "Shields up!" against anything like original thinking.
Okay. Maybe I'm a fool. But at least an entertaining one!
== Tonight's last idea! ==
Okay then, if it's too late for those two ideas, then why am I hurrying to post this blog, on the last of all possible days?
Well, first, to once again remind Joe Biden that his own potential gambit still is possible! I described it here and the potential for utterly rocking the entire political boat is stunning!
(You could do this one thing, Joe! During the next month. It might accomplish nothing... or else transform U.S. politics and society utterly. And you have nothing to lose.)
But that's not tonight's featured idea!
Here it comes.
This one ain't gonna work, either! But it is related to the Biden vs. Blackmail concept. And I'd be wrong not to at least mention it...
...and I promise it is WAY unconventional. Though it would make a great concept for a thriller novel!
Okay, here goes.
Donald Trump has made it clear how much he hates modernity and every smartypants profession -- it is the shared hate that got him support from many former democrats and all of the MAGAs who now pour spite at the universities and nerdy civil servants and scientists and FBI/Intel/military officers and all the rest who are now hated-on nightly by Fox.
Above all, Trump was traumatized when nearly all of the adults-in-the-room he appointed in 2017 later turned and denounced him! Almost 100 of them. Two secretaries of state, two of defense, two chiefs of staff and so on and so on. And Don swore never to let it happen again!
The one common trait of ALL of his new appointees is that there is not a single adult among them. Not one who wants to do a good job. All are meant - above all - to spite every grownup in America and around the world. All of them are Caligula's horses.
But that's not enough. Personal loyalty is paramount to Trump. It is the ONLY thing that matters. And there is one way to ensure loyalty, that he learned from Vladimir Putin.
No, it's not poison tea or upper story windows. Not yet.
Rather, the thing that works.
The one thing that works almost always and almost perfectly is blackmail.
(I can just hear many of you: "Again, Brin, with the blackmail thing?"
(Hell yeah! Because everyone who simply shrugs it off is a pure dunce.
(And I am looking at YOU, right now, my friend.)
Blackmail means that if someone turns on you, you get to ruin their life. It works. It is likely rife in DC right now. And Joe Biden could shatter it, during his final month. He could!
But... but Trump is making hundreds of appointments!
So how could he collect blackmail on all of them?
Or even the top fifty or so?
That's ridiculous, Brin!
Why... he'd have to.... He'd have to...
Ah, I see the light in some of your eyes.
Ah, I see the light in some of your eyes.
You are starting to see.
You begin to picture a set of rooms, in a back corner of Mar-a-Lago...
== The irony of the donkey ==
Okay, we truly are down a rabbit hole, now! Some of you are storming off, in a huff, declaring that I've lost all credibility, if not my marbles.
The rest of you are staying, to see how far down it goes.
Hang in there. It won't take long.
LOOK at the execrable quality of the men and women Donald Trump is appointing! This is their one chance in otherwise miserable lives, envying and hating all those snooty, smartypants fact people who actually know stuff and can think.
These moronic appointees want aboard!
They will do anything Trump asks of them...
... including going into those back rooms at Mar-a-Lago and -- in front of cameras -- giving Don all the leverage and kompromat he could ever want...
...so he can feel secure in their loyalty, forever.
And yes, how lovely - if kinky - the symbolism, if some of the acts involve the symbol animal of the other party?
Before you sniff and roll your eyes... consider. The motive, means and opportunity are all there, along with the expertise.
The method has been standard in Russian secret services ever since czarist times!
The Oprichina, the Okrhana, the NKVD and KGB, the current Kremlin all used it... and quite a few western oligarchs, as well.
Can you give me one good reason why Donald Trump would NOT do this? Given motive, means and opportunity... and the flunkies' desperate wish to get aboard? And his own desperate wish to keep personal loyalty secured, forever and ever and ever?
== And so, one last forlorn hope ==
If any of you out there happens to know anyone who knows any of Trump's menagerie of jibbering losers (and I am deliberately excluding a couple of hugely brilliant winners), you MIGHT pass along word about this. Especially today.
Tell them there's a possible way out of this trap:
- If you reveal it on Monday December 17, you might have the perpetual respect and gratitude of the nation! A nation you just might have helped to save! And the donkey thing won't matter.
- if you reveal it to Biden and/or the FBI before January 20, you will likely get a pardon. And still be thanked for arming us to protect against the worst.
- and if you miss those dates, but ever step up and help us all to topple the madness, I promise that I - at least - will fight for you.
Okay then, there's my last gasp of a "Brin's Autumn Daydreams" about the mad election of 2024...
...except to urge that some of you read the future history novels of Robert Heinlein, who forecast dark times for America, like The Crazy Years...
... followed by a generation of wretched rule by cruel theocrats...
... followed by a restoration of both sanity and enlightenment...
... and resumption of our wonderful climb out of darkness...
...to the stars.
46 comments:
Fantasies, to be sure, but I like the 'Kamala gambit' (Biden's even done it before)
Uh, wow!?!? Dr. Brin, you've misread things completely. Here's what the majority of us (yes I get to say majority, Trump did win the popular vote) see happening, expressed by Stephen Moore better than I could. From https://hotair.com/stephen-moore/2024/12/15/trumpism-is-going-global-n3797899 :
"Why are the dominoes of government tumbling so suddenly?
One word: Trump. The whole world has watched with fascination and even admiration at the peaceful citizen uprising in America. The masses around the world are screaming: We want Trumpism here in our country. They seem to be saying: Make Britain great again. Make Germany and Japan and Korea and Canada great again.
The politicians, bureaucrats and elite academics are horrified. They should be.
The anger at the political class is boiling over with scalding resentment against government incompetence, fiscal mismanagement and statist directives that snatch away basic freedoms.
They have commanded us that you can't have a gas stove or a gas car or a lawnmower or an air conditioner. Parents can't send their kids to good schools.
My, how the tables have turned. The politicians who profess to care so much about the working classes are now despised by the voters.
The masses around the world are seeing the bounce in America's step in the wake of the Trump election. The Trumpian message of prosperity, efficiency, fairness, home rule and love of country.
It's a virtual certainty that voters everywhere are going to demand common-sense Trumpian policies in their own towns and countries. As Trump has said, every leader should put their own country first. Global government is dead for now.
It's a grassroots power-to-the-people movement -- something the Left once believed in.
I wouldn't want to be Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping or French President Emmanuel Macron or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, or Scholz, right now. The Trumpians are coming for you.
Good riddance."
Uh, wow !?!? mcsandberg!?!? "admiration at the peaceful citizen uprising in America"
Peaceful citizens, you say? The January 6, 2001 mob were peaceful? That is a lie. Those citizens who physically attacked Congress and who threatened death for Vice President Pence were not peaceful. The cowardly POTUS at that time was not being peaceful.
Dennis M Davidson,
January 6, 2021 was nothing more than a minor, single day riot. I agree with Stephen Moore that the uprising we are seeing is peaceful, with that single minor exception.
I quite agree that mcs portrays a rage that has fulminated out of the American character repeatedly since 1778. That I believe it is unsapient and mornic is beside the point.
That Trump's loyalty is solely to himself and foreign masters - including Putin seems obvious to anyone with a brain. As is his Caligula appointment of his horse to every responsible position in America.
But none of that matters, nor the fact that every child of Red America who goes to university moves away from the confederate cult. That only means universities are evil. The list of ways snooty bullies have doe evil to Real Americans... with SHOWER RESTIRICTORS?... is jibbering insane, but we knew that.
No... what stands out is the stunning -vile ingratitude. The Red America of 1932 was a hellscape. The Reooseveltean revolution surges across the land with electrification and roads and dams and schools and farm bureaus and union-factories and my parents generation adored one living being above all others... Franklin Roosevelt...
...and then when I was 5, they adored Jonas Salk, who saved us all from summer lockdowns worse than covid and gave kids back their summer. And now Caligula's horse will bring that back.
Remember the South & Appalachia of DELIVERANCE? There was still ots to be done and LBJ sent in what it took and today those are lands of clean streets and utilities and dentists and colleges and internet (thanks to Joe) and the most despicable thing about all this is the churlish, nastiness of never-mention-any-of-that ingrates.
100% of the time dem admins have better economic outcomes. 100% of the time. But your cult has for 40 years poured middle class wealth back into the gaping maws of the uber lords, Saudi princes, hedge barons, inheritance brats, anti-scienc ultises and Kremlin "ex" commissars.
Yeah, yeah, all 30,000 FBI guys are conniving traitors. All 30,000 intel folks. All 150,000 military officers. Sure. Caligula had the mob, as well.
Not a single Internet hookup has resulted from the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program https://reason.com/2024/06/27/why-has-joe-bidens-42-billion-broadband-program-not-connected-one-single-household/
There are reasons for us to be angry, and this is just one of them
mcsandberg 5:54 AM:
"
January 6, 2021 was nothing more than a minor, single day riot. I agree with Stephen Moore that the uprising we are seeing is peaceful, with that single minor exception.
"
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
There are grieving families to whom that day was not minor.
Remember and be wary
The Sixth of January
The treason, sedition, and plot.
I know of no reason
Sedition and treason
Should ever be forgot.
mcsandberg 5:29 AM:
Trump did not get a majority. He got a plurality, one that led Harris's plurality by about 1.5%. In terms of majorities, then they both lost. According to NPR on December 3, Trump got 49.97% and Harris got 48.36%. That's 1.67% left over: to whom did that go?
The ONLY person who died on January 6th was Ashli Babbitt.
Book recommendation: "The True Believer", by Eric Hoffer. I re-read it recently, and every page is topical. In it, the longshoreman-philosopher-aphorist discusses the psychology of fanatics in a mass movement. He discusses their hatred, mutual suspicion, gullibility, and above all their self-contempt. He says that their main motivator is the wish to discard an unwanted self by submerging into unity and self-sacrifice.
Remember Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables"? If anyone ever had called me deplorable, then I'd just shrug it off. They don't know me, and their underestimate is their problem, not mine. But the Trumpists howled with outrage, not because they thought she was wrong, but because they thought she was right. And Trump agrees with them; and since he himself is deplorable, that makes him a suitable representative for them.
Therefore, to subvert that system, I prefer to tell them 'you deserve better', instead of 'you damn fools'.
And several cops soon after.
Don't blue lives matter?
Ashli Babbit being killed was the only GOOD thing that happened that day.
jibber jibber jibber. Step up NOW MCS with wager stakes, whether the broadband initiative had to build backbone infrastructure before it could reach homes. BET NOW you stunning hypocrite. Ignoring all the dams and bridges, hospitals, farm bureaus, schools, colleges, electrical lines, clinics, streets & roads and every other thing RA got directly from Dems and never from goppers. Ever.
BET NOW whether Red America has net-received vastly more tax money than it ever put in the pot! Parasiting on those whom ingrates then proceed to spew venom at. BET NOW! Are you a man?
You assume that we are like you, hateful beings. But dig it. We... don't... hate... you. Sure YOU hate us! And you assume it is mutual and hence you gotta 'win.' But we don't. And the proof is every time there's a natural or manmade disaster.
If it happens to a red state, we rush in the aid while you yatter about space lasers. If it happens to a blue state you call it 'God's wrath!' and withhold aid if you can.
BET NOW over death rates of the vaccinated vs. unvaccinated. I am exactly just old enough to barely remember the heady joy our parents felt, when they no longer had to isolate their kids, covid style, every summer. Freed from grinding fear by Jonas Salk, who was the first living American to rival FDR in popularity. The man who gave back summer to a nation's children.
Oh, I notice you've said nothing about the flood of lucre sucked from your necks by your feudal lords. Of course not. The inheritance brats who made the last 6000 years a living feudal hell need you to distract your suspicion of authority reflex toward...
... toward red America's OWN sons and daughters who got into college and became skilled fact users. THAT is who you hate, instead of the rich parasites sucking your life's blood. Fool.
And step up if you find your balls, to bet over any of it.
We'll fight the madness as best we can.
We... don't... hate... you.
Well...some of us don't hate some of them anyway.
The ONLY person who died on January 6th was Ashli Babbitt.
So by analogy, a terrorist is about to kill his hostage, and a police sharpshooter takes him out before he pulls the trigger. The cop is now the bad guy, because the only person who died is the terrorist?
Had Ashli Babbit been a muslim or black, you would have made a hero of the cop who shot her.
Oh, top thing they never Wager over is the perfect overlap between their list of enemies -- e.g. all the FBI agents/workers and intel folks and military officers & scientists -- and the list of enemies denounced by Putin and his 5000 "ex" commissars who all grew up reciting Lenin and who are now nationalizing all Russian usinesses and rebuilding the USSR...
...the same evil empire USSR whose fall Putin called "history's worst tragedy."
But it's fine with you that Trump has never done one thing Putin did not want. And 'fell in love' with North Korea's murder dictator. And in one month will start to sabotage Ukraine.
The overlap of Fox-enemies and Putin enemies is perfect. STEP UP like an actual man and bet over that, MCS, if you have any balls at all.
"Why are the dominoes of government tumbling so suddenly?
One word: Trump. The whole world has watched with fascination and even admiration at the peaceful citizen uprising in America. The masses around the world are screaming: We want Trumpism here in our country. They seem to be saying: Make Britain great again. Make Germany and Japan and Korea and Canada great again."
No, @mcsandberg, you're confusing cause and effect. The rest of the world has been kicking incumbents out of office for a couple years now. Trudeau, for example, is dead meat politically. But that's because of Trudeau, nothing to do with Trump - would be the same situation if Biden or Harris had won.
(I'll let others express their "disagreement" with the idea that somehow Trump is a problem for his buddy Putin).
"....They have commanded us that you can't have a gas stove or a gas car or a lawnmower or an air conditioner. Parents can't send their kids to good schools."
Um, these are pretty sweeping statements. I live in a bluer state than most and I own a gas-powered mower, a gasoline-powered car and a couple of window air conditioners, though no gas range - the house had an electric stove installed when I bought it nigh on 12 years ago. When my kids were in school in North Dakota, Arizona and Hawaii, they went to good public schools. (The worst school system I had to deal with was in blood red Texas, which had a football system with a few teachers attached.)
When should I expect the Ecotopian Enforcers to bash down my door, take my stuff and de-educate my kids by forcing them to watch Fox News Clockwork Orange-style?
Pappenheimer
Colorado has already taken the first step toward banning gas powered lawn and garden equipment https://coloradonewsline.com/briefs/limited-ban-on-government-use-of-gas-powered-lawn-equipment-approved-by-colorado-regulators/
Multiple states have implemented ICE vehicle bans https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/features/multiple-u-s-states-are-implementing-ice-vehicle-bans
If the federal CAFE rules aren't relaxed, they will ban ICE vehicles as well.
The CPSC made a serious attempt to ban gas stoves. The reaction was fierce enough to make them back off https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/09/business/gas-stove-ban-federal-agency/index.html
These are some of the reasons that Trump was elected.
The CPSC made a serious attempt to ban gas stoves. The reaction was fierce enough to make them back off
And the same will be true of internal combustion vehicles*. Too many people have and love them. Kinda like Social Security. Or the non-Metric system.
* No one really calls them "ICE vehicles", do they? That sounds like a FOXism, like "homicide bomber".
These are some of the reasons that Trump was elected.
Trump was elected for the mistaken belief that he would do things he's already backpedaling on. Lowering the cost of groceries, and peace in the Middle East. And wonderful deportations as far as the eye can see. ("My God, it'll be beautiful.") Those who voted against "Genocide Joe" will get to see what real Palestinian genocide looks like. And those who don't want their gasoline cars banned might get a nice surprise from Elon Musk.
Anyone who voted for Trump for reasons other than "He'll be mean to people we don't like." is a sucker who has been thoroughly played. My only wish is to live long enough to watch them realize it.
"Don't blame me. I voted against him three times."
Ah, so your answer is 'maybe, someday, in a different state'.
Look, I do agree with your thesis in part, that hysteria over stuff like this, pumped by right wing media, helped rumpT take office. He also benefited from Russian disinformation, anti-trans hysteria, anti-immigrant sentiment, and massive media intervention by billionaires who did not want their tax cuts to expire.
There were similar hues and cries about seatbelt requirements, vaccination requirements, outlawing drunk driving....I'm surprised you didn't mention lightbulbs and a rumpt favorite, toilets. Five Hells, imagine the furore when personal duels were made illegal. O tempora! O mores!
Pappenheimer
Here's a good rule of thumb: if you want to know what your moral stance should be, use the Quakers as a guideline. If you want to know what it shouldn't be...well, rumpT himself would make a great Antichrist. That dude is supposed to become extremely popular and lead the world to ruin.
Pappenheimer
P.S. As far as supernatural appearances go, I'd root for an avatar of Athena. Patron of crafts and sciences, cold grey eyes and an inability to tolerate BS from anyone - even her Dad.
Pappenheimer
Did Nostradamus predict Trump? I suspect he did. :)
“These are some of the reasons that Trump was elected.”
No, these are some of the reasons you are clearly a moron, sir.
In California I have gas powered tools and gas house heater and stove. Showers all work fine and the toilets all work great, when I remember to leave vinegar in the bowl 2x per year. (Have YOU tried that, MCS? Then chisel out the push vents in the bowl to get rid of calcium buildup. Well maintained modern toilets simply need less to flush.)
True, gas-powered BLOWERS are officially banned, half because of the noise. But no one has been fined or arrested. In other words, did I already say moron?
Meanwhile, EVERY MAJOR ECONOMIC INDICATOR does better across EVERY Democratic administration than EVERY GOP one. Including debts and deficits. That should matter to you… but instead you show zero guts to either refute it or else BET on that clear and testable assertion… or admit you were wrong.
Your cult supports the one anti-freedom force that wrecked 6000 years of rule by inheritance brats, who are blocked from restoring feudalism by all the smart folks who invented every tool you use, who developed every medicine, who took us into space, who deliver aid when your county needs it and who beat Hitler and Stalin, overcame the Evil Empire, defeated Al Qaeda, restored NATO and …
…did all those great things I mentioned earlier for Appalachia and the South. All the folks you HATE because, despite all that, your blood boils in rage that the nerds you nipple twisted in Junior High are now doing well and don’t fear you, like they used to.
Your cult had ONE reason to support Trump and his Putin-planted traitors. You live to drink our tears. Well enjoy. We’ll weep for a while. Then we’ll step up. And in the words of Bruce Banner – “You won’t like us when we (finally) get mad.”
Oh, we do have photovoltaic AND pool solar. And thanks to better building codes, new homes in California are far safer, snugger and warmer than ever. Our schools are okay... far better than any in confed states except Utah... And BET NOW whether Red states, except Utah, score much higher in EVERY TURPITUDE...
...from domestic violence, gambling, rape incest, divorce, teen sex/pregnancy to STDs and murder. Bet... now... you craven coward.
By their fruits you shall know them... so let's compare Hunter Biden to the black sheep offspring of MTG, Boehbert, Palin Trump and half of the pervs who dwell in upper GBOP ranks. Care to bet over the NUMBER OF WIVES? Tallied across the upper ranks of both paries?
Oh, but wait! MCS/s toilet doesn't flush like it used to! Try the vinegar and chisel, son.
“overcame the Evil Empire”
Not yet, the sequel was that the Empire struck back in ‘22—
a century after the SU was formed.
We were frenemies with them from 1991- ? (You tell me when.)
I am not entirely conviced that the Techbroligarchs will cede power to the theocrats. But then again, they all kissed the ring.
The theocrats thought that they could manipulate Trump. They were right.
The techbroligarchs think they can take advantage of the undermining of regulation to advance their own obsessions. I think there is a bigger risk than with the theocrats of Trump seeing them as rivals and turning against them. They have egos to rival Trump's, albeit with more accomplishments to partially justify them. For some of them the egotism takes the form of them casting themselves as the saviours of the human race. Unfortunately this tends to involve them trying to mould the human race into reflections of themselves.
@Der Oger, if you're interested...
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Dec17-7.html
...
Meanwhile, if there is a German reader who can say something more substantive about what went wrong for Scholz and his coalition, and what might happen when the election is held, please let us know at comments@electoral-vote.com.
Thank you, and done.
How exactly did so many Americans get so freaking stupid?
I keep coming back to brain damage caused by glyphosate herbicides.
Red Rural America's soil, air and water is saturated with the stuff.
https://news.asu.edu/20241204-science-and-technology-study-reveals-lasting-effects-common-weed-killer-brain-health#:~:text=In%20the%20new%20study%2C%20Arizona,disease%20and%20Alzheimer's%2Dlike%20effects.
Study reveals lasting effects of common weed killer on brain health
Findings indicate glyphosate exposure increases risk of neurodegenerative disease
In the new study, Arizona State University researcher Ramon Velazquez and his team demonstrate that exposure to an active ingredient in weed and grass killers, called glyphosate, can result in significant brain inflammation, and increase the risk of neurodegenerative disease and Alzheimer’s-like effects.
“Our work contributes to the growing literature highlighting the brain’s vulnerability to glyphosate,” Velazquez says. “Given the increasing incidence of cognitive decline in the aging population, particularly in rural communities where exposure to glyphosate is more common due to large-scale farming, there is an urgent need for more basic research on the effects of this herbicide.”
Perhaps. I hadn't thought of that. Rather like the effect of lead in petrol in urban areas.
But I suspect a bigger one is the form that religion has taken in parts of the US. Mega churches and the like make cult behaviour common and someone whose religious behaviour is cultish is likely to have cultish political behaviour as well.
Bright kids leaving for the bright lights is also going to have its effect over time. Isolation and Fox filling in for a national broadcaster is also a factor (in Aus, Murdoch's been trying to get the LNP to kill off the ABC for over thirty years).
But what happened last month can be seen in districts across the US, town and country alike. Keep looking.
Well, I understand its off topic, but I must confess I was rather amused by my error in thinking our host was a paid consultant for Apple plus streaming series Foundation.
Goes to shoe u how we can make all kinds of errors due to the human tendency to "read between the lines." Often, we "fill in" blanks between data points that "make sense." Often these fill in the blank answers can reveal unconscious prejudices and biases. Weird thing is, once we make these presumptions, they can live in our memories as confirmed facts. Its one of the reasons why "eyewitness" accounts can vary so wildly.
Even knowing how this effect works doesn't make u immune to it.
And, yeah, I thought the cloned emperors was an inspired modification that really makes the stagnation of the Empire evident. But, a lot of the magical sensing the future stuff was directly opposed to Asimov's point about broad social forces overwhelming individual action.
John,
"Often, we "fill in" blanks between data points that "make sense." "
Yep, that's how humans work. We're heuristic and self-programming. I once saw, while driving in the lava field valley between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, a sunlit patch of green pasture that appeared to be suspended between two layers of stratiform clouds.
"Huh," I thought to myself. "Heaven".
And I am both an agnostic and a trained weather observer.
Pappenheimer
More scientifically, I once reviewed a landing forecast for Pohakuloa Training Area, which is right there between those two peaks and 6000 or so feet above sea level. I called the guy on Oahu who had created the forecast.
"Um, your altimeter setting is a bit off. How did you forecast this?"
"Oh, I averaged the forecasts at Kona and Hilo airports."
Both airports, on the west and east coasts of the Big Island, are less than 50 feet above sea level. Averaging two data points can cause problems if there's a mountain between them.
Pappenheimer
"
Pappenheimer,
To interpolate and average is perfectly normal. But to confuse Orion and Venus with invaders worries me. What's going on down there?
Sounds perfectly normal to me. People look up, see something, say or post something, other people look up - crowds set each other off.
I've been in the situation where, as duty forecaster at Wright Patt (just outside a major city) someone transferred a civilian to me by phone who demanded I go outside and tell her what the UFO was low in the eastern night sky.
I looked and couldn't find anything. "Is it near Venus?" I asked. That planet was very bright but obviously not a UFO.
Of course, that made me sound like an Operation Blue Book cover up artist, but that was the only thing visible out there. She swore it was moving. It is, but, you know, you'd need a pair of binoculars to actually see the movement across the night sky.
Mark I eyeballs are lousy observing equipment, and the lump of grey matter behind them is an unreliable data processor.
I think I've already posted, over a year ago, about the base cop freaking out when he saw the Aurora Borealis overhead (which is in Ohio and seldom gets light shows like that.)
Pappenheimer
correction to clarify - the base is in OH, lat. @ 40 degrees N, too far south to regularly see aurorae but far enough north to catch a really energetic display.
Pappenheimer
I'm not worried about a Betelgeuse nova, but I'm terrified of what End Times psychos will do.
Had enough of hearing about signs and portents in the sky from having to work (during and post-USAF) with fundigelicals, one of them my boss. Blood moons don't actually mean anything. Yes, more worried about someone trying to jump start the Apocalypse, Manson-style.
Pappenheimer
I do worry
On the other hand, Nixon was a Quaker.
P.S. My headcanon is that Athena, Zeus's brainchild, was an android. Therefore always going in armor was just Athena's metal hide. And since she identified as 'she', Athena was a fembot.
MCSandberg came to drink lib'rul tears and I supplied plenty. I truly am horrified, sad and kinda depressed, fellah! But I guess my tears were a bit too sharp and tangy? Gone off to lap up a less ascerbic variety?
Anyway, notice how he ran from the wager demand. They do that. They ALWAYS do that. And lib'ruls are just too dang dumb ever to notice that it works.
I saw it as refusing to engage with your wager demand.
I can think of a few things wrong with the wager demand.
One is that his type refuses to recognize any objective means of assessing facts. Everything is opinion to them and they think theirs is as good as anyone else's. This makes wagering pointless.
Another is the sheer difficulty and cumbersomeness of your proposed means of setting up wagers.
And wagering makes it too personal. It becomes all about proving you right rather than about demonstrating the facts.
I sympathize with the exasperation that is behind your demand for wagers. But I don't think they are an effective way to expose their evasion and goal shifting.
If there is light cloud cover, stars (and planets) can appear to be moving against them.
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