Ideas for when we get out of this mess.

 "We used to say facts don't care about your feelings. 

“Now feelings don't care about your facts."  

Dems may be the (uneven/flawed) good guys... and their policies always have better outcomes, in every category*... but they are tactical dunces. There are dozens of proposals - some that I made over eight years ago (in Polemical Judo) -that might have helped to save us by now. FOr example:

- Separate off the Inspectors General in all departments (and military JAGs) into their own separately-funded, non-executive branch - the Inspectorate - led by the Inspector General of the United States. If that had been done, then no Trump could ever have fired all the IGs and JAGs, as this one has done. (And no dem has stepped up to make that a central issue!)

- Give every House & Senate member one peremptory subpoena per year, so that never again would the minority be silenced.

- End or punish gerrymandering in ways that bypass corrupt court decisions.

- Strengthen the civil service act.

- Make revelation of tax records automatic for officials in all three branches. And investments that might at all involve conflicts of interest. In all three branches, annual medical examination by neutral experts will report results to the other branches.

- Offer Truth & Reconciliation safe harbor or protection for any officials being coerced or blackmailed.

- Ban NDAs, or require that they decay over a reasonable period.

- Establish a spending master who can limit public funds expended for personal purposes such as travel. And a civil serviant White House Manager who protects and manages public property.  

- End the practice of allowing lavish gifts from foreigners to be permanently displayed in Presidential museums, making them in effect actual gift bribes.

And...reconsider tariffs (which were explained in Ferris Beuller!) 

...and many more. Those and other reforms are still on the table!  

In fact, I recently updated them and a dozen more, offering specific and actionable detail. Here is the full list of my own proposed Newer Deal tactics and reforms.

So, are Dems smarter? Well, yes, if you appraise based on verifiable outcomes.  

And absolutely NOT if you score by their utter lack of political/polemical savvy, which has allowed morons, led by morons, to hijack the nation and sabotage the world's future.  Morons who know no history, including why the WWII/GIBill generation adored one living human above all others. Franklin Roosevelt. 

And in the 1950s? The most admired person in America and the world was named Jonas Salk. 

== Appealing to the saner aristocracy ==

Never before was a decade-old essay so important. Not one of mine! Rather I mean...

... Nick Hanauer’s 2014 appeal to his fellow billionaires to consider the one trait that all schools of psychology call central to sanity – satiability. Hanauer tells other members of the rising plutocrat caste that sending wealth disparities skyrocketing – now past French Revolution levels – will have one inevitable outcome… pitchforks and torches.

Till now, I thought there must be elements of the top most castes who are having buyers' remorse, when they realize that Trump's appointments have just one patterned purpose -- to utterly demolish the US government as a functioning concern. A demolition ultimately serving the long stated aims of one person above all others on Earth: Vladimir Putin.  Who openly and repeatedly proclaimed a passionate goal of revenge for the toppling of his beloved USSR.

Are there aristocrats who realize that their victory now threatens the very life of the nation where they keep their stuff... the goose that laid their golden eggs? 

Of course our current crisis distills as a worldwide attempted putsch against the Enlightenment Experiment (EE) by a combine of powers, ostensibly disparate but united in the goal of restoring 6000 years of rule-by-inheritance brats. 

Not all of the rich are ingrate fools - I know a fair number who are deeply loyal to the EE that gave them everything, from comfort and safety to science and fun. And the uiniversities and infrastructures and nerdy collaborators and services that make their wealth worthwhile.

None of those Good Zillionaires are participating in the putsch and some are deeply involved in the fight against it. So, yes, there are good ones! And one metric is whether they fear transparency. 

Which brings us to some of my own ideas on how to deal with the skyrocketing wealth and power disparities that will be exacerbated when crypto and AI wars send electricity use through the stratosphere, threatening all our lives.

I kind of laid it out here, and in this essay: The Chief Threat to our Great Experiment.

But now there's Articial intelligence.  And yes, my brand now book on the topic, covering the gamut of hopes and fears... is aiLien Minds.

== Discovering & Correcting Errors ==

Gonna press some buttons. I assert: Free Speech is not a religious principle - though it must be defended AS IF it is. 

I study history. And the principle goal should be error discovery & correction. Just one society ever made that a priority and it was the one without kings. And only one method ever achieved that - piercing the inevitable morass of delusions foaming about every individual and group and yes, you. And yes, me. And certainly AIs.

That method is vigorous competitively reciprocal criticism. And now the crux. You cannot get reciprocal criticism and error correction without Free Speech.

One problem. Unless the GOAL of error correction is kept in mind, then free speech has no corrective function! Not if it leads to the insanity of "MY yammerings are just as valid as anyone else's!"

No, it is a free, competitive market of ideas and assertions, not utter anarchy, that achieved modern miracles, like disproving racial assumptions or sexist ones or junk science or Nazi or Leninist ravings or the 'superiority' of inheritance brats. 

STUFF MUST BE DISPROVABLE! Not in order to shut people up. But to reduce the credibility of those who are factually wrong a lot. In order to embarrass those who are wrong into shifting their free speech to other criticisms that aren't yet disproved, or that might even be useful to us all.

Am I a heretic for defending free speech for different reasons than you defend it? Because it results in a wiser, more error free society? And not so much because it is the cultural norm that I was raised under. Outcomes matter. And I defend freedom because its outcomes are spectacularly better,

For a rather intense look at how "truth" is determined in science, democracy, courts and markets, see "Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competition." 

....which, in updated form, is now the final chapter of aiLien Minds