Back to Carson and Trump… and other ideal men!

Last political posting I broached my what-if scenario (1:4 odds) that the powers in the Grand Old Republican Party will try for a brokered convention aimed at throwing the nomination to Paul Ryan. Now let's have a glance at why they are desperate to do this. 

Hate-government propaganda has reached a point where having a scintilla of experience at public governance is poison to a GOP candidate. Our parents in the Greatest Generation would be appalled by this betrayal of everything they fought for, using government as one tool in their ambitious kit. Even more so, they'd be stunned by the boomer and GenXer candidates’ stunning self-obsession.

Donald Trump puts his name on everything and coats his homes with gold. Ben Carson's homes are plastered with paintings of himself (including selfies with Jesus) and blowups of press clippings, even in the baths. Carly Fiorina touts friendships with people who openly loathe her. Ted Cruz calls himself the only Republican with any cojones. What's with the frail egos of these GOP front-runners? Trump's blaring self-touting and Carson's relentless humble-brags say a lot about their followers - our neighbors who would foist such people on us.

== Oh the scenarios! ==

What an entertaining season.  I wrote much of what follows in this posting back when Ben Carson was the flavor of the moment. (It's still fun stuff so read on!) Now it's all Donald Trump again.  Before I go on though...

If Trump gets the GOP nomination, will other goppers (many of them calling him “unhinged” or a “bigot” or "jerk") support him as the other candidates have signed a pledge to do? They used that pledge to corner Trump, now it is they who are cornered. But this article points out why they’ll back him, if he gets the nom:

 “Let’s say you’re a Republican politician who is sincerely disgusted by Trump’s demagoguery. Here’s what you’d have to consider on the other side of the scale. If Trump becomes president, he’d inevitably fill the 3,000 or so appointed positions in the executive branch almost entirely from the Republican government-in-waiting currently camped out in think tanks and advocacy organizations; those people will then proceed to advance conservative goals in every agency of government. He’ll appoint conservative judges who want to overturn Roe v. Wade, undermine laws protecting worker and minority rights, and so on. He’ll carry out a pleasingly belligerent foreign policy. And perhaps most of all, he’ll sign most everything the Republican Congress delivers to his desk, which could be quite a lot; repealing the Affordable Care Act would be only the beginning.”  

Good point.  And yet, recall he’s the only GOP contender not utterly beholden to Rupert Murdoch and the Saudi co-owned Fox News, or to the Bush-Cheney clan.  My own guess is that a President Trump would not appoint the normal GOP factotums.  Oh, but even if he swore to to that, is it worth choosing a maniac?  Well, given that measurable outcomes from both Bush presidencies were 100% negative in every single category, I’d call that a plus in Trump’s favor. 

On the other hand, well, he is a screeching solipsistic bully.  See this article drawing interesting comparisons to the 1920s racist mogul Henry Ford.

Since collating and preparing this piece (in bits) I find that the news cycle keeps shining new lights on this madness. Jeb Bush calling Donald a "jerk" - while declaring support for whomever is the eventual nominee (Oh, multiple ironies!) Then the exchange of respectful praise between Trump and Vladimir Putin! After Fox spent the last several years kvelling and adulating Putin at every turn, crafting a cult of respect-idolatry around the Russian leader (which I dissect and demolish here), Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes must feel personally hurt when Putin goes and heaps praise on the fellow Fox least wants and can least control. See a satirical website, trump-putin2016.com, promoting Putin as Trump's running mate.

Seriously, just like Putin, the man has a seriously high IQ. Trump knows that Outcomes eventually matter to swing voters. Outcomes from governance -- metrics of US national health across the board -- were steeply negative across both Bush presidencies and nearly all metrics of US national health were positive across the Clinton and Obama administrations. This set of diametrically opposite outcomes includes conservative desires like economic activity, entrepreneurship, deficit trends and military readiness. That kind of fact chops away at dogmatic loyalties and starts to tug at some voters sense of self-interest. 

 Hence, Trump recently actually said he hopes for a US economic bubble collapse soon! 

"I don't want to sound rude, but I hope if it explodes, it's going to be now, rather than two months into another administration."

... an openly treasonous sentiment that makes Donald Trump a genuine republican after all, through and through.

But then the cycle veers again!  And now it's Dr. Ben Carson, prying his way back into headlines by saying he is thinking of bolting the Republican Party.  Also he's still beating Trump in one place... on Facebook.  And so... 

I== The other entertaining one ==

Though he's fading, can we linger a little with the other fun-one?  I agree with essayist Amy Davidson that too much has been made of Ben Carson's exaggerated tales about his personal history.  

For example, the 'knife' and 'hammer' stories tell us more about his intended audience -- redemptionist Christians -- than about his actual character.  To them, his past does not show a messy, volatile personality fizzing below the surface, now asking for control over nuclear missiles. (A man who actively prays daily for the world and the United States to come to an end.) Rather, to his core base, these stories fit a specific narrative, that he is a reborn, his past sins and flaws washed away in the blood of the lamb. 

In other words, Carson is tailoring his life story to get support from the radicals who vote in GOP primaries. So? I agree with Ms. Davidson that this is yawner stuff.  No, Davidson urges that we pay attention instead to other Carsonisms:

"He has been utterly dismissive of climate change, and he has fostered the idea that vaccines cause autism. The numbers for his tax plan, insofar as there are any, don't add up. He has said that Joseph, of the coat of many colors, built the pyramids in order to store the grain of the seven fat years… troubling not because we expect our Presidents to be up on the distinction between Early and Middle Kingdom dynasties but because Carson presented it as an example of why one should reject the theories of experts and scientists and turn, instead, to the Bible.

"Similarly, his claim that none of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had experience in elective office, when a great number of them did, is significant not only because it is false but because it speaks to a particular view of history and politics. (Carson later amended the statement to say that none had federal experience. Of course, they couldn't have, because there was no federal government when the Declaration was signed.)  (Brin note: Some of them had served in royal offices, which was the “federal” of their time.)

Davidson continues: "He has suggested that President Obama might declare martial law, and that the 2016 elections might be cancelled amid scenes of untenable civil disorder. He has compared Obamacare to slavery and to Nazism. He has also made what PolitiFact judged to be outright false statements in the last Republican debate about his ties to a nutritional-supplement company. (In contrast, PolitiFact rated Carson's description of West Point's 'scholarships' as mostly true.) Perhaps the problem isn't that the media is too partisan but that, in looking at Carson, there was a hope that there might be a non-partisan way to address a campaign whose success is hard for observers of American politics to understand."

How one is tempted to want him to be the GOP nominee! So that America's endlessly reviving Civil War may come ironic full circle, with an African American man leading the Confederacy's latest attempt to destroy the Great Experiment from within.

Indeed, were there a "moderate" on the GOP side, with a shot at the nomination, I'd say Carson would likely be the Republicans' traditional VP pick -- the usual, stark-jibbering-loopy choice to help keep the crazy wing mollified.... and maybe draw some black vote.  Were Jeb still viable, I would lay money on a Bush-Carson ticket.  (Lately? Money is moving to Ted Cruz as the inevitable, Nixon-like VP choice.)

Almost certainly the Iowa Caucus winner will (once again) not be the nominee. (What's the point of these things, again?) The decision will again emerge from South Carolina... the irony that tops them all.

Oh, but just when you think Carson has plumbed to very bottom of the Silly Ocean, there’s this:  “Various scientists have said, ‘Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge and that’s how they were,” Carson said, at a graduation speech at Andrews University, in 1998. (BuzzFeed found the video.) “You know, it doesn’t require an alien being when God is with you.” 

Um – let’s look at that again: “Various scientists have said, ‘Well, you know there were alien beings that came down…” 

Oh, please try that “the parties are all the same,” malarkey on us, now.  The only hope of US conservatism is for the few remaining sane fellows to rise up and denounce what Rupert Murdoch has done to your movement.

== Strange bedfellows in the war on reason ==

Islamic leaders from 20 countries at the International Islamic Climate Change Symposium concluded their two-day summit in Istanbul, Turkey by issuing a formal declaration on global environmental issues. The declaration — which was clear to stipulate that climate change is both real and “human induced” — was equal parts theological and scientific, using an Islamic moral lens to insist that world leaders take immediate action to assist our warming planet. Thus joining the Pope and nearly all Jewish leaders and so many others in demanding we pay up on our obligation to future generations.  Who does this leave out?  

Not Protestants, per se. Methodists and Episcopals etc have no truck with the War on Science.

Rather, it is being waged by two groups in the world today. Muslim jihadists and a special sub category of protestant Christians called “Book of Revelation fetishists.”  Those relishing the schadenfreude thought that the world can be treated like disposable toilet paper, because it will all end soon, in an orgy of vengeful blood and eternal torment for whomever they dislike.  In that scenario, anyone calling for “creation tending” and care for the planet we were given must be a satanic being trying to defy heaven’s plan.  And the fact that they are clearly morons, does that come into it, anywhere?

== Political Miscellany ==

Under the category of you-knew-this-already…. The House science committee is even worse than the Benghazi committee, with most of the republican members vociferously hateful toward science.

This chart shows where the candidates stand on science and global warming,

A new browser plug-in will highlight the names of U.S. politicians in news articles, letting you hover over them, creating a pop-out that informs you who their major donors are.  A great way to verify that their pronouncements and stances are - yes - bought and paid for.  Says the 16 year old designer of the App: “It is my hope that providing increased transparency around the amount and source of funding of our elected representatives may play a small role in educating citizens and promoting change. If you use the extension when reading about a Congressional vote on energy policy, for example, maybe you’ll discover that a sponsor of a bill has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the oil and gas industry. Or maybe you’ll learn that the top donors to a member of Congress who opposes tort reform are lawyers and law firms.” The motto of Greenhouse is: “Some are red. Some are blue. All are green.” As in the color of cash. 

== A falsifiable hypothesis ==

Winding up, let us take note of an actually interesting and testable suggestion from someone on the far right! "At a time when most college campuses prohibit guns, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. thinks the opposite should be the case -- urging his school's students to be armed, especially in light of this week's massacre in San Bernardino, California."  Yes!  By all means, let us test the mantra of the gun cult that "an armed society is a polite society," as coined by the hyper conservative longtime editor of Analog Science Fiction, John W. Campbell.  Let all students at Liberty University be the first to volunteer to create such a society.

A university campus is perfect.  Almost everyone is there completely of his or her own volition, knowing in advance the school's quirks.  And they are relatively isolated and contained.  Sure the surrounding communities should be consulted and accommodated. But by all means, Jerry, get on with it. Arm every co-ed, jock, cheerleader and Book of Revelation apocalypse fan. Let's see how it goes.

And finally… How on Earth did this SMBC cartoon actually come true?  At least in the Crazy Party...

Tales of Divisiveness - and the drug high of indignation

Anyone who spends ten minutes around me knows that I appreciate good argument. Heck, Contrary Brin is about having fun by sniping "yeah, I agree with some of that... but here's an exception!" even at your own favorite doctrines. The truest sign of sapience -- I believe -- is an eager willingness to at least notice the group-think errors of your own side.

So why am I down on the divisive mania that has swept the world -- and especially America -- in an era that clearly has many reasons for hope?  Because so many of our bickering feuds are not about positive-sum argument, aimed at persuading the other side to budge, possibly even learning from your opponents. In the tales that follow, below, you'll see example after example where sanctimonious intransigence... the drug high of indignant purity... has poisoned the natively American genius at pragmatic negotiation and compromise and attention to the corrective force of evidence.

Let's start with a letter from one of my favorite politicians -- a courteously parsed, yet-devastating single page from California Governor Jerry Brown -- sent to Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson, in response to Carson's snarky dismissal of "scientific evidence for human generated climate change."  The calm maturity of Brown's response is matched by his intelligence, curiosity and hatred of cliched dogmas... yes, including some dogmas of the left. One reason he is so loved in moderate, pragmatic California.

Hence my attempt to stir a groundswell, arm-twisting Brown into the Democratic Party's presidential debates.  To be clear, I don't think Jerry even wants to be president!  But just being in the debates for 6 months would let him shake up all our rigid doctrines, calcified positions and wretched, sourpuss gloom. He -- and we -- would have so much fun!   

== Separating Church and State ==

With his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver is on a hot burn as, week after week, he takes on sacred cows. This time? Televangelist churches, and boy does he turn them a well-deserved inside-out.    

Oliver makes it hilarious! But there is a sober side. For example… how could we reform this outrageous system? Some years ago folks in Colorado got a measure on the ballot to end church tax-exemption.  It started out popular, but the counter-campaign shrieked about how the state could then crush religion, contrary to the Constitution.  Indeed, the first U.S. Chief Justice said “the power to tax is the power to destroy.” 

So in fact, I favor a compromise. Here it is.

Next time a church tax reform measure comes up, include a floor exemption that utterly protects the basics -- a local church of sincere parishioners and the pastor they can barely afford to pay. Here’s how.  Any church gets a property tax exemption allowance of two square meters of floorspace, plus $200 of income per unique parishioner (who is not a member of any other church) up to 200 members. Also, the pastor’s first $20,000 of pay is tax exempt. 

Not high enough? We can dicker over where the lines are drawn, but let’s be generous, so that the state has given religion the benefit of the doubt and so that local, modest places of worship remain (practically) untouched. And richer churches still have that floor, before their far greater incomes start to be taxed, helping to pay for the roads and hospitals and fire and police protection they use, just like the rest of us.  

Further, while funds spent evangelizing are not expensed, actual, charitable good works are. (In fact, I'd make church tithing only a "charitable deduction" for the first $500 or so. Come on!)

That floor-exemption will mean that poor churches are no longer the inherent allies of the televangelist charlatans. Indeed, it drives a wedge between former allies. And it makes the next reform referendum something with a fighting chance.

== And Election politics ==

Ah gerrymandering! Are you proud to be affiliated with cheaters? For example. Business owners try to remove all voters from business district but they forgot one college student! In Columbia, Missouri, the city council created a special 'business' district. This district would be allowed to vote to create a half cent sales tax to pay for local improvements rather than using property tax increases. There is a special rule that says if no registered voters exist in an area, the property owners are allowed to vote BUT one U of M student registered at her CoMO address. And the county clerk has certified that she is the sole voter allowed in the up coming poll. Now the owners are barred from voting. They will have to raise property taxes on themselves (if they want those district improvements) and raise them even more to pay off the debt they incurred to finance this deal. 

This is a familiar thing in California, where most aspects of elective politics have improved markedly, but these legacy “cities” and “districts” have an olden-times grandfathered ability to basically run their own cloistered mafia dens. Did I say we were perfect? But such miscreants are in our crosshairs.

== Back to the Civil War ==

Been doing some reading.  Apparently it is simply untrue to let Robert E. Lee off the hook because he freed his own slaves.  In fact, he owned only a few and as executor of his father-in-law’s will, he delayed freeing that man’s slaves, as required, until 1862, in the middle of the Civil War.  In several writings he did express dislike for slavery on general principles. But he was at best passive and desultory in execution.

Was the Civil War about anything other than slavery?  This video by a West Point colonel-historian examines the issue in devastating detail, with colorful illustrations. He is direct, firm, and clear.  There is no excuse for romantic-nostalgia for treason, when the core and only reason for that treason was so despicable.  Yes, the rebs fought well.  Respect that! But there is no other basis for respect for the Confederate side of any phase – even the current one – of our ongoing Civil War.  

(One critique.  Col. Ty Seidule does not mention the fact that Southerners or their sympathizers actually ran the U.S. Federal Government for most of the thirty years preceding Lincoln’s election in 1860, running roughshod over “states rights” in many matters, such as the Fugitive Slave Act which, in 1852, unleashed swarms of southern irregular cavalry raiding parties across northern states, crashing into homes and dragging neighbors off, into bondage.)

== Did I speak in praise... ==

...Of California?  Well, the Golden State giveth and taketh away.  Sanity, I mean. For example, we know Carly Fiorina very well, here, and rejected her Senate bid by a tsunami. With zero palpable successes to point to, with only failure and collapse ensuing from her time running Hewlett-Packard, what you are left with is slickness ... and sadness for anyone who is fooled. Oh, she seemed so expert when she recited a memorized list of how many Marine battalions and Army brigades we need... and how I wish someone in the press had asked her to define the difference? A delicious gotcha that would have been. An 'oops" of the first order.

Of course the ultimate silliness is for any Republican to claim credibility when it comes to national defense.  At the end of the Clinton Administration, 100% of major US military units were rated 'fully combat ready.' By the time GW Bush left office, not a single major army or marine unit was so rated... half teetered on the edge of frayed and shattered uselessness. Nearly all have now regained that status under Obama... with the irony that Dem presidents treat the military well, yet never brag about that fact. (Since it could miff the lefty-activist wing.) And hence none of you even knew this stark but devastating comparison.

But you will!  Keep dropping by here.  There are plenty of surprises. Just keep this in mind. Some things that are true are also opposite to popular "wisdom."  

It will be an interesting 14 months.