What Putin and Other Haters of the Enlightenment Experiment Really Want

First some good news? Bringing manufacturing back home to the U.S. - onshoring, re-shoring or near-shoring – is happening at a greater clip. 

“The construction of new manufacturing facilities in the US soared 116% over the past year, dwarfing the 10% gain on all building projects combined, according to Dodge Construction Network. There are massive chip factories going up in Phoenix: Intel is building two just outside the city; Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is constructing one in it. And aluminum and steel plants are being erected all across the south…” reports Bloomberg.  

(Mexico has also become a popular choice – as it should be, since Mexican plants use gobs of US-made parts and vice versa. Moreover, turning Mexico into a middle-class nation – already far along! – should be one of USA’s very top priorities.)

==What does Putin want? ==

Those wondering "what Putin wants" are making it too complicated. Try for Context. Across 6000 years, 99% of our ancestors languished in dullard, insipid feudal societies, ruled by delusional lordly-owner castes. And that's across all nations, races and continents.

But there were exceptions. Every Enlightenment Experiment in democracy/freedom and flattened hierarchies, has resulted in dazzling creativity, productivity, science, art, diversity etc.

Faced with such huge difference in outcomes, neighboring despots and feudalist rivals always concoct the same zero-sum rationalization:

"Those decadent, soft (Athenians, Florentines, Americans, etc.) got their pleasures, toys, inventions, wealth & indulgences by trading away what's important - grit, endurance, courage... manhood."

(If you don't like my using those terms, do not blame me. Macho has been the core of every feudal despotism. You and I are the weird exceptions.)

That concocted contempt for 'decadent and effeminate' yankees dripped in the song "Yankee Doodle"... till it was disproved at Monmouth, at Cowpens and at Yorktown. It was recited by Confederates vs. city northerners, till Gettysburg and Appomattox. Nazis repeated it till Bastogne. It was Soviet doctrine. It remains chanted in palaces and conspiring basements in all of today's autocratic nations.

And it is the central catechism repeated - now with ever increasing desperation - by Vladimir Putin, especially since he succeeded so well for a while at exploiting our distractability, e.g. imposing Brexit and Trump and disinfo-tsunamis on the West and taking over US conservatism. Hence, Vlad was shocked when NATO finally said "enough" and stood firm.

Alas, like all psychopaths, he cannot re-evaluate a masturbatory delusion, even in the face of overwhelming disproof. He is so sure that Biden and the West will fold, any day now, that he will spend Russian youths like kopeks, betting on the same delusional and repeatedly-disproved incantation, over and over again.

And trust me. If we get past this current phase of world oligarchic/macho-feudalist putsch, your children will face the same delusional incantation by enemies of democracy and freedom.  They can't help it. It's all they have.

== JoBee's MAGA Treason Speech ==

OMG. Lately several of my longstanding tactical suggestions have apparently gained a little traction! I have no idea if anyone listened… or else some others simply thought up the same things. But Biden's speech at Independence Hall - while disappointing in its incompleteness and missed opportunities - at least threw down the gage and said 'we see you now!' to the Risen Confederacy.

And others are trying hard for new tactics! Robert Reich is great and you must watch this short video!  Alas, I am always saddened when I see such a bright guy just barely miss a key point. Not only are Red State legislatures bound and determined to cheat and repress voting, with likely support from the Roberts Court. The entire argument put forward by John Roberts - that those state legislatures have sovereignty - is based on the notion that those legislatures were elected by those states' citizens. And in gerrymandered states that is simply not true. They are not legitimate and all else devolves from that.

(Ever since the left stoopidly murdered Al Franken (politically), Reich is just about the only alpha paladin we have, alas.)

Or take this example. “Thousands of Democrats changed their voter registration in Lauren Boebert’s district ahead of the primary.” Damn straight! Let em howl! Their gerrymandering cheats did this. 'For the last few years, Colorado’s “open primary” system has allowed unaffiliated voters to participate in either party’s primary elections. That means voters like Hallenborg can weigh in on Boebert’s primary run — without actually joining the Republican Party.'

This is straight out of Polemical Judo.

As the Rank Choice voting reforms - like the one that scotched Sarah Palin's comeback - are straight outta sci fi fandom!

== Finally some judo vs Gerrymander cheating? ==

Again, the greatest betrayal of democracy and fairness perpetrated by the Oligarchy Party – gerrymandering - has been given cover under lame, atom-thin rationalizations by Chief Justice John Roberts. In fact, there are ways to neutralize the Roberts Doctrine. Methods that have never been broached or even considered by our paladins fighting for fairness and justice… not even Lawrence Lessig. Again, I offered a number of agile maneuvers in Polemical Judo.  And the one that’s most pertinent to gerrymandering still awaits even minimal discussion or refutation. 

It would very likely work! Or at least force John Roberts back to the drawing board, begging the Federalist Society for another rationalization for treason. See “The Minimal Overlap Solution to Gerrymandering.”

Now, if only dem lawyers would consider my two suggestions for defeating gerrymandering and "voter ID restrictions." And no, they aren't 'already doing that.' Not even remotely.

And finally... Can’t get enough of well-written and cogently insightful blogging?  Come visit down in the comments section, below! Smaller than many out there, it’s probably among the smartest blog-communities (blogmunity?) around.)

Sometimes I urge these folks to spin off their own blogs. One of the members of this community, with the monicker “Catfish ‘n Cod” has done so. Good stuff. 

Disputation - and disinformation

I'm in DC for NASA and other meetings. So let's offer up a trove of observations about privacy, transparency and freedom....

A new debate platform - Kialo - goes some way toward the sort of “Disputation Arenas” I’ve been talking about and urging for 20 years. Kialo enables you to visualize discussions as an interactive tree of pro and con arguments. At the top is the thesis, which is supported or weakened by pro and con arguments underneath. Each one of these arguments can branch into subsequent arguments that support or attack them in turn.  (I do offer some added and important layers.)

The greatest innovation of our enlightenment experiment wasn’t democracy, or freedom, or fair-competitive markets, though these are important. One thing is enabled by those things, and makes them enabled – reciprocal accountability.

Reciprocal accountability (RA) is what lets us criticize each others’ favorite delusions and errors, the synergy that led to all our recent successes... that kings, lords, owners and priests all reflexively punished for 6000 years.  RA can come via cooperation, or by negotiation, or via fair-open competitive argument.  By applying RA, we got our five great positive sum arenas for competitive creativity… democracy for policies and law, Science for zeroing in toward better models of the world, markets for creating ever better goods and services, justice courts for adversarially and openly iterating justice, and sports – 

-- the example that makes clear how necessary regulation is, to deter the otherwise inevitable cheating that always spoiled these arenas, in eras past. The kind of cheating that threatens to spoil everything today, as cooperation, negotiation, and fair-open competitive argument are all being directly and deliberately undermined in America and the West, by powers that want a return to those 60 centuries of feudal misrule.

Can we transform the Internet from a swamp of lies into a process by which RA works, as it has in the other five arenas, till now? For a rather intense look at how "truth" is determined in science, democracy, courts and markets, see "Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competition," now posted on my website.

== The poisons chilling reciprocal accountability ==

At the opposite extreme… "Substitute arguing services" offered in China

A number of online services in China offer professional arguers who will verbally or electronically assault other people for a fixed fee. According to Radii China, “20 RMB (3 USD) gets you the standard angry phone call or WeChat message; 40 RMB (6 USD) guarantees a full day of spam calls; and 100 RMB (15 USD) blows up your target’s phone with 999 hate calls.”

Also from the  Institute for the Future (IFTF) -- social and issue-focused groups are particularly susceptible to disinformation campaigns and were targeted with computational propaganda during the 2018 mid-term elections. It also shows why the targeting of these groups will continue, and potentially worsen, in 2020. The research, The Human Consequences of Computational Propaganda, led by IFTF’s Digital Intelligence Lab, provides recommendations for fighting back.

Do these new changes at Facebook “change everything?” - or even anything? Right after the 2016 election, I spoke to some of the folks at Facebook who were looking into the fake rumors crisis and offered what I deemed unconventional but simple suggestions that would utilize competitive processes to quickly denote falsehoods... not one of which was tried. There are simple, efficient things FB could do, to start making their system more self-correcting. They are not remotely interested in achieving that outcome, alas, so it will be up to us. (If their current ameliorations fail atrociously in 2020, you can be sure Facebook will be broken up.)

Beyond FB, no one - and I mean no one, to my knowledge - seems to grasp what's missing from the Internet ecosystem.  It is the one thing that enabled markets, democracy, science, courts and sports to function. It is right there, glaringly obvious.

For a look at how "truth" is determined in science, democracy, courts and markets, see the lead article in the American Bar Association's Journal on Dispute Resolution (Ohio State University), v.15, N.3, pp 597-618, Aug. 2000, "Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competition."  Now posted on my website.

== Face Recognition points the way to… Big Brother? Or else… ==

In October, Shanghai’s Hongqiao airport reportedly debuted China’s first system that allowed facial recognition for automated check-in, security clearance, and boarding. And since 2016, the Department of Homeland Security has been testing facial recognition at U.S. airports. Delta has an optional biometric system in Atlanta that uses facial recognition kiosks for check-in, baggage check, TSA identification, and boarding.

And if you howl in objection, exactly how do you foresee stopping this? Even if you pass fierce, European-style restrictions, all that Privacy Laws accomplish — according to Robert Heinlein — is to “make the spy bugs smaller.”  And smaller, faster, better, cheaper and more numerous they are getting, as predicted in Brin’s Corollary to Moore’s Law.

The reflex to solve these issues by shutting down information flows is impractical and impossible, and it runs diametrically opposite to the methods we used to get the very freedom and privacy we now fear losing. The only approach that ever worked - or can possibly work - is to start by asking

“which do I fear most?

What elites know about me?

Or what they can do to me?”

The former will never be constrained in any major way — name one time in the history of our species, when the mighty let themselves be blinded for long. But the latter — limiting what powerful men can DO to us — can and has been seriously accomplished during this enlightenment.

That is the difference between China’s implementation of these technologies and what we see in the West. And yes, it might end here tomorrow!  I am as frightened of Big Brother as you are. Probably more so. 

There is a narrow path out of this danger zone. And it does not start with futile howling “Don’t look at me!”

== On Data Privacy ==

Vint Cerf sent me a note saying the following passage reminded him of The Transparent Society:

“Worries about data privacy erupted in the spring of 1964 with the publication of “The Naked Society,” by Vance Packard, a journalist best known for his unsparing critique of modern advertising. “The Naked Society” made a comparable assessment of the marketing schemes of big corporations, noting their immense and profitable traffic in personal data about American consumers. But he trained most of his attention on the entity that was then the largest user of mainframe computing power: the United States government.”

My recent podcast on surveillance, transparency and the future of freedom is “The future of privacy policy: A Q&A with author David Brin,” Interviewed on the AEI site by James Pethoukis.

I began tracking this when I lived in Britain in the 1980s and they led the world introducing CCD cameras on the street. Now: “Thousands of San Diego street lights are equipped with sensors and cameras. Here's what they record.” 

== Wellsprings of freedom ==

A federal court ruled this December that secretly recording government officials, including police officers, is protected under the First Amendment, over-ruling a 50 year old Massachusetts law. And if you expect me to rejoice, well, sure, yeah. This is the most important civil liberties issue of our times. For it is on the street that citizens are most likely to encounter dangerous authority and need tools of accountability. Yet, I am willing to admit a need for some discussion re: the “secretly” part. Yes, in most cases. But there may be some room for compromise. Especially since it can happen that the bully is the one holding the camera. (A truth that was interpreted all-wrong in The Circle.) 

My other cavil is that the First Amendment is not the most crucial bulwark for this right to see-and-record. 

The real justification is the almost never mentioned Sixth… the sacred Sixth… that most concerns a citizen’s right to see, to access fair witnesses and to assertively get any evidence that might exculpate and prove innocence.  Why do none of the attorneys in these cases ever mention this vastly stronger argument?

Meanwhile. “Must Writers Be Moral? Their Contracts May Require It.” Seriously. We need to remember that extreme social justice warriors may be our current allies against a far-worse, worldwide mafia-oligarchic putsch… nevertheless the worst of these allies are just another kind of bully and no friends of the Enlightenment that gave us everything. Including social justice. We can agree about the direction - ever-increasing tolerance/diversity and accountability – while recognizing that sanctimony-driven bullies will be drawn to any height from which to thwart reason.

Crowd wisdom?  Someone out there explore this site claiming to be on internet censorship, and report back in comments?

== Not getting it… and getting it too much? ==

Anonymous browsing? This piece reveals how hidden your activity really is when using popular privacy tools. 

A reporter commissioned a 3D printed model of his own head to test the face unlocking systems on a range of phones — four Android models and an iPhone X: only the iPhone X defended against the attack. As far back as The Transparent Society (1998) I forecast that both the optimists and pessimists would be disappointed in face recognition and related technologies.

A disturbing article shows you how easy it is for companies to parse your activities, even when personal identifiers are stripped away, as promised by modern privacy policies. Your apps still report movements in a gross, non-ID way… and meta analysis can swiftly correlate to rebuild the fact that each movement was you.

Seriously, if your enraged or anxious reaction is to demand regulations to ban such correlations, who knows? You might succeed! And in your victorious smugness you will celebrate a potemkin triumph, an exercise in stunning delusion and futility.

I’ve said this since before The Transparent Society. We cannot base our security or safety or freedom on “policies” that aim — even with good intent! — to obscure our personal information.  

At risk - certainty - of repetition... there is a solution, when you recall that it matters far-less what elites *know* about you than what they can *do* to you. And there is a way to make them afraid of doing bad things. It is a proven way, demonstrated by 200 years of increasingly successful experiments, while “privacy via secrecy” has almost no track record of ever succeeding for long.

Want evidence?  Look at how hard the world’s elites, especially the rising oligarch-mafia, are striving to get information obscured behind veils and clouds. In such a world, they thrive. We don’t.

Spreading disinformation - we can fight it with wagers

Alas, the "Union" side in this already-ignited civil war appears to have no generals. At least none with any sense of where the battlefield really is.  

It is all about the notion of "fact" or objective reality.  The top-foremost aim of the other side -- the mafiosi who have taken Washington and who are sweeping the globe -- has been to undermine every profession that deals in evidence, proof and the testing of assertions. From science to journalism to "deep state" law and intelligence agencies and the U.S. military officer corps -- all are denounced at every rally and Fox show.

No other issue matters like this one, because almost all other matters would swing their needle hard toward sensible negotiation and resolution, if factual reality itself weren't Enemy Number One. 

Efforts to counter this calamitously clever assault do exist. The Annenberg Public Policy Center set up FactCheck.org and we all know about Snopes. There are dozens of worthy efforts and you can find many more below, under comments. But these earnest endeavors all suffer from a fatal flaw. As soon as each one starts operation, its tally of lies and misleading statements will point overwhelmingly at right wing pols and media. 

This, in turn leds to denunciation of the fact site as a "clearly biased" liberal mouthpiece, or an attempt to impose a "Ministry of Truth."

My own 12-part proposed Fact Act would get around this, by emphasizing fact-adjudicating methods that are inherently competitive. For example one provision would re-introduce five minutes of rebuttal per every five hours of one-sided opinion on any channel or station that takes advertising. You know who would oppose this! But the proposal does sound fair, and that is the first step to winning the war of polemic.

But we needn't wait. I have found one thing rocks our mad uncles out of their trances. One thing halts the spew of canned fox-incantations about Clintons and climate change hoaxes. One tactic always works! It is the one area where a good-old-boy still admits that facts matter. I've said it till I was blue in the face.

Wagers. Offer to find a neutral bartender or lawyer or scientist to first hold the stakes, then demand: "Put money on it!"  Watch.  Most of them will flee, of course. But a certain fraction... the ones we need, to tip the balance, will blink and start backpeddling, and at minimum you'll get some amusement.

"You are so sure that climate change is a hoax (or supply side tax cuts work, or there's massive voter fraud, or Republicans are better for market enterprise...) that you're willing to stake our children's future on it? But you aren't sure enough to make a bet and take my money? 

"Then the issue here isn't facts. It is cowardice and hypocrisy. It's weaseling and hot air!"

Here I detail six surefire-killer wagers that are NAME ONE EXCEPTION challenges. For example, name one fact-centered profession, from science to the FBI, that's not under direct assault by Fox. Or: name a single factor that won us the Cold War that’s not been dismantled by the Trump-Fox-GOP. Our mighty alliances like NATO? Our peerless and admired American science? Strong and confident intelligence agencies, or a public that’s united against Kremlin scheming, or IRS auditors tracking KGB cash flows? Protection of Russian defectors, or an American tradition of adult negotiation based on evidence. Oh and climate change has given Russia twelve new seaports along a valuable, ice-free Arctic they now control.

Oh, sure, your mad uncle won’t wind up taking an actual fact-centered bet. But use that fact! The macho may never recover. 

I've discussed this elsewhere, earlier this year and other years, yet not one other public figure-centrist I know of has tried this simple gambit. It was tried, briefly, against Rick Perry by Mitt Romney, who blew it, letting it be portrayed as bullying by a rich man... one of many wriggling excuses they'll use, and that incident may have deterred others from trying. But there are a million ways around such squirms: "Let's bet 5% of your wealth (or income) against 5% of mine," or "one day of your income vs. one day of mine," or "let's pick any random five people off the street and let them choose the stakes!"

Oh, the squirming that ensues. The specific terms of the bet, who holds the stakes... and none of that is the point!  The point is to let the public see who is doing the squirming!  And if it is just you vs. your uncle?  If he is an honest person, deep inside, then he will be the one to notice that.

I'll finish this time with a recommendation for his wife... your aunt... or any other American female who feels repelled by the current madness, but helpless in the face of political mania by the man she loves.

== More ammo for wagers ==

Elsewhere I list some great wagers, like demanding your Mad Uncle (MU) go with you to the beach to personally measure ocean acidification. (Watch him squirm!) Now on to some fresh items from the news.

A recent NY Times exposé on Trump family finances is just the tip of the spear in our guts. In his new book "House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia," veteran investigative journalist Craig Unger presents a detailed and exhaustively researched account of how Donald Trump has for decades laundered billions of dollars for Russian organized crime figures and other oligarchs. This fits a larger pattern in which Trump and his inner circle have shown a great comfort with financial crimes and other forms of unethical or illegal behavior to personally enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.

The bet? That the tally of Donald Trump's foreign 'friends' is nearly all mafia states, while those he rails at the most are traditional allies and democracies. The folks standing in Putin's way.

 Study patterns! In 1930 the German Junker aristocracy and the industrial moguls threw money behind a populist-nationalist movement that they thought would prove an effective way to destroy the Social Democrats... who were the only force keeping the communists out of power. It worked. Both communists and social democrats were slaughtered by the Nazis en masse. Then - too slowly - came the "what have we done?" realization that the rabid beast the aristos had released was no longer saddled. At which point they could only hold on for dear life... and many lost their lives and everything else.

Now we see something similar, in eerily ironic ways as Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson is pumping tens of millions of dollars more into Republican Party coffers in an 11th-hour push to save their congressional majorities. Confront your mad uncle (MU) with this! How conservatives reversed from hating gambling as a sin/vice to the GOP being owned and operated by casino moguls like Adelson, Wynn and Trump - the one profession on Earth that absolutely requires daily mob ties.  BTW, Adelson’s most  uncannily profitable casinos are in Macau — almost certainly laundering and channeling PRC money straight into our elections.

The bet? Find a core element of morality that the confederacy hasn't reversed, from gambling to accepting the vastly higher divorce rate among GOP politicians than democrats, to acceptance of dozens of sexual predators and child molesters as high officials, including one who spent ten years as Speaker of the House and the nation's top Republican. Dare him to bet on that! Or on relative rates of teen sex, teen pregnancy, STDs and so on, in Red America vs. Blue.  Oh, you'd win the bet! But watch, he will flee, rather than put up honest stakes

Is this more "fake news"? Concocted by the "deep state"? The same U.S. intelligence agencies that your Mad Uncle used to root for, when they struggled against the very same Kremlin foes, back when they wore hammer-and-sickle pins? Again, ask your MU to explain how the GOP swung from hating gambling to being owned by Casino moguls, slumlords and Cayman bankers. And who on Earth is more likely to have mob ties?

== As for your aunt? ==

Married Women May Be Moving Away From The GOP. That’s fine. Loving him doesn’t mean you have to adopt his loony politics, especially when you are alone in the booth. But you can do more. 

On election day, vote early, with friends - maybe dragging along some young people? Then bring home a case of his favorite beer. Put on a good game. Nag him to go vote half an hour before the polls close, but dress in a way that makes him want to stay. Think of Lysistrata. Save the world for your children.

== And if you know one of the masters of this treason? ==

The notion that shortsighted plutocrats are actually smart is one cultivated by their sycophant flunkies and it proved catastrophic in every past oligarchy, feudal or royal or theocratic or leninist. In EXISTENCE I tried to portray what some trillionaires might do, if they truly want to stay on top, while riding a healthy civilization upward. A civilization never angry enough to turn and look closely at the aristocracy. It was a pretty good scene, if I do say so... and I see no signs that any of today's oligarchs are smart enough to know how badly they need this.

Instead, we have (1) a war on all fact-using professions... how will that go, when you've angered all the folks who know nuclear, bio, nano and every other technology? and...

(2) A riled up, know-nothing, mass-populist movement that will either swing hard to the left, when folks remember their parents' devotion to FDR... or much worse...

... that the rabid populism stirred up by Fox-Jones-Breitbart will stay fascist and turn on the oligarchy with ferocity. We are seeing the latter now, and Charles Koch would do well to prove he truly is smarter than the average billionaire. If he and a few others don't waken, they had better learn the word "tumbrels."

The polemical power we don't use. Wagers and Exceptions!

Alas, we have poor generals. One thing that Dems and libs never seem capable of understanding is the importance of polemical technique, a skill displayed daily by the Kremlin/GRU, by Rupert Murdoch’s expert manipulator-shills, and by Donald Trump. Take for example the way that social media bots and Russian trolls have been spreading disinformation about vaccines on Twitter to create social discord and distribute malware.

As we speak, top officials of Facebook, Google and Twitter are testifying before Congress about their near helplessness before tsunamis of manipulative lies. Wringing hands, they explain that they are trapped between those lies and the accusations of bias and censorship that whirl, each time they try to cull away the worst of them. The most orwellian enemies of freedom will accuse them of acting as a "Ministry of Truth." 

There are countless ways to counter the oligarchy’s mastery of this manipulative art. But liberal or moderate pols and pundits – even neutral-minded or independent grownups -- seem obdurately incapable of even noticing how bad they are at it! 

Take the recent attempt by several dozen prominent news outlets to link arms and denounce Trump’s war against the profession of journalism, calling it "fake news" and an “enemy of the people.” Talk about falling for a blatant and obvious trap!

All right, you ask what methods might work? Let’s dial in here. 

Try to grasp the top Foxoid tactic.  When we trot forth a myriad facts, members of the alt-right cult deflect them with irrelevant anecdotes and assertions.  And, to your endlessly repeated blinking astonishment, it keeps working, as you stammer “But… but… I just showed you facts that…”

Look, I’m all in favor of enlisting facts as soldiers in this fight. Take my proposal for a twelve-part FACT ACT that a new Congress could enact, using neutral, competitive techniques that nimbly evade any accusations of “Ministry of Truth.” Good methods…if we ever had a Congress. 

But 99% of today’s confederates are already immunized against every such effort with magical incantations that have playground-level purity.

“Oh yeah? Well I say YOUR the liar!”

That’s all it takes. And fie on stupid dems/pundits for not realizing they need better tools of seriously pragmatic polemic! There are dozens, even hundreds of possible riffs that could work better than announcing “pants-on-fire” and “pinnocchios” or joint editorials that only reinforce the notion of a “Fake News" conspiratorial community. 

One trick, above all others, has real potential, and forgive me for repeating a point I’ve belabored ad nauseam:

Wagers. Bets. Dares. Challenges. Sure, we saw Mitt Romney try it, once, only to get shot down as a rich man trying to bully truth. So? There are ways to set up a bet that stand firm, in the face of deflections. 

The fact remains that a wager is still the one place where a good-old confed will admit the vital importance of objective reality — that factual evidence matters.

It may take care and experimentation. But this could be a chink through which ten thousand facts and truths might pour. It’s certainly worth more than one try

== How to counter the immunity against all facts ==

Again, demanding “put up or shut up” - with cash on the line - is the one realm where even a confederate admits that objective reality and facts still matter.  In confronting your neighbor or mad uncle (MU), you are free to pick any of the 7000+ outright Trumpian falsehoods listed by the Washington Post’s “Fact-Checker” Glenn Kessler. 

Start with giant howlers that offer your confed no wriggle room.  Like Donald Trump’s assertion that ice caps are “setting records” when photographic evidence shows that much of the world’s ice from the Alps to the Andes is melting amid global warming. As we saw after the “biggest inauguration, ever!", photography can be deflected, except in a wager.

Or demand that your mad uncle accompany you to the beach with a simple Ph meter and measure for himself ocean acidification. (It has only one possible cause: human-generated CO2, which is why Fox-heads quickly change the subject, instead of denying it.) When your MU shrugs and calls it an exaggeration or exception, answer “tell our grandchildren that!” And then demand he actually, actually pay the bar bet! Then corner him with another. Taking his money helps to make it all worthwhile!

See: "Greenhouse gases aren't just warming the planet. They're also acidifying our oceans."  

(The best example of a Fox-incantation and stunning intellectual dishonesty was the catechism of the right for decades that "There's been no warming for 15 years!" Then "There's been no warming for 16 years!" Then 17 years.  And I grew curious why so specific? If this one is tried on you… come to me.)

Choose carefully, and learn to recognize in advance wager matters that have any ambiguity, that leave any room for squirming. And remember how to phrase it: “You’re so sure of this crap that you’re willing to bet the lives of our planet and nation and children, but not a hundred bucks?”

Why bother? Because “Heaven rejoices at a sinner, redeemed.” Seriously, there is nothing more damaging to the Putin-Murdoch-Oligarch cabal than a wakened RASR (Residually Adult-Sane Republican.) If you waken one such “ostrich” enough for his head to lift out of sand-of-denial, that oasis of roused sanity and loyalty to America will infect and vaccinate others. 

(Lefties are fools to ignore this central fact about phase 8 of the American Civil War – that some of our neighbors are decent citizens who are clinging desperately to an obsolete loyalty, and can be talked -- some of them -- back into the light.)

== Devil in the details ==

Okay, okay. I hear the objection: "All the confederates I know will wriggle out of any wager with a million excuses!"

 I agree that any wagering system is unlikely to work at all with confed squirmers who, when they see they are being cornered by hated “facts” will fall back upon magical, murdochian incantations. But you can make it harder on them by saying:

1) “Let’s pick agreed-upon neutral parties who will adjudicate the terms of the bet, making its language clear, unambiguous, and in-advance what it will take for either side to win.

2) "Those 3rd parties will hold the stakes in advance, and distribute them according to agreed rules." 

If the confed you are cornering is a friend or relative, you can probably find a respected friend or relative.  If the red-reb is hostile, demand to talk to his lawyer, after $1000 has been deposited with said attorney. And it’s agreed that the loser pays all lawyer bills. And you can taunt -- 
"till I hear from your attorney, it is simply given that you do NOT believe the nonsense you've been howling at us. Because if you truly believed it, you'd be willing - eager! - to test them with facts and take... my... money! The fact that you are squirming and evading is the behavior of a coward and a liar. And till I hear from your lawyer, we'll leave that as the central, proved fact."

Dig it. Almost never does it reach the point of actual wagers. The hostile ones run away and hide. More importantly, the somewhat friendly, residually sane ones start squinting at the notion, at the outlines, and some of them start to get a dawning sense of realization, how far out a limb they have let themselves be drawn by the madmen and hypnotists on Fox. Before it gets to actual money on the table, they start to budge.

That is the actual objective! To be so confident, so sure that the facts support you, that you are the one pushing for a test, a trial, and they are the ones constantly squirming away.  If you can get an ostrich to realize this, then maybe… sometimes… often enough… one of them will lift his bleary head out of the insanity, blink, and rejoin civilization.

== Name an exception! ==

Another approach to wagers is challenging your RASR to Name An Exception!

This one is more sophisticated, but also more effective. Think about this, carefully, because it applies well beyond politics.

If I make a specific accusation, say about a particular crime, then the burden of proof is on me. Fair enough. 

But when I challenge you to disprove a General and Universal Accusation, well, it should be easy for you to do, by finding one exception. And hence, your failure to do so proves me right!

Not in a court of law. Indeed, if they can name exceptions, then the argument falls back under rules of preponderance of evidence. Any member of the Denialist Cult can cite weather examples that seem to violate global warming, hence it cannot be proved by Name an Exception, only by tediously showing the overwhelming factual basis for why 99% of scientists agree about climate change.

 But when a general accusation is very broad, and your opponent cannot name even one counter-example, it has profoundly effective import. Then the generality enters territory like “the sun always comes up at dawn,” or “a rock thrown in the air will always come down.”  

One counter-example – even one – will destroy the word “always.” 

But failure to cite any counter-example makes the “always” very powerful.  Especially when the assertion is in history or politics. Jiminy, almost everything in those fields has exceptions! If you can’t find even one….

== Use it in our political civil war ==

For the following general assertions, the burden of proof is on your conservative friend or MU to show how these six general accusations have any exceptions. Any at all! And if your RASR fails, then they are true. 

Moreover, if any of these cannot be refuted with even a single counter-example, then your opponent’s movement is not a political party, it is a dangerously insane and incompetent cult.

1-  Can you NAME ONE fact-centered profession of high knowledge and skill that’s not under attack by Fox/Trump &cohorts?  Teachers, medical doctors, journalists, civil servants, law professionals, economists, skilled labor, professors… oh, yes and science. Above all, science. Thirty years ago, 40% of U.S. scientists called themselves Republican, now it is 2% and plummeting. They are voting with their feet, the smartest, wisest, most logical and by far the most competitive humans our species ever produced. 

And now?  The FBI and law professionals plus the U.S. military and intelligence officer corps; all are dismissed as "deep state" enemies. Oh no, this is not your daddy's conservatism.  Name one exception.

2- NAME ONE major metric of U.S. national health that did better across the spans of GOP administrations, than across the spans of the Clinton and Obama admins.  Nearly all such metrics declined - many plummeting - across both Bush regimes.  Nearly all rose, many of them by a lot, across both DP terms. The record of almost perfect mal-governance would make any sane or scientific-minded person flee the GOP screaming and never trust them again. 

Clinton& Obama scored better in every sane conservative desideratum, including rate of change of deficits and military readiness!  The condition of our alliances. Small business startups. Entrepreneurship. Name one exception.

The next is a doozy.

3- NAME ONE MAJOR GOP LEADER between Reagan and Ryan who was even mentioned at the 2016 Republican Convention. Except for Newt, all were brushed under the rug, including both Bushes, Cheney, Rumsfeld, former House Speaker Dennis (friend to boys) Hastert, former GOP majority leader Tom (convicted felon) DeLay, former Speaker John Boehner.

In fact, name a republican top leader between EISENHOWER and Ryan who was even mentioned by the party at the RNC, other than Reagan and Newt! This shows how writhing ashamed Republicans are, of their record at governance.  And if you disavow those past Republican administrations as incompetent, Russia-hating, enterprise-destroying, warmongering liars, then where is your party’s credibility? Name one exception.

4- Name one of the DARK FANTASIES about Obama, from black UN helicopters to taking away all our guns, that happened or was even tepidly tried.  Indeed, after 25 years and half a billion dollars of Clinton Investigations… well… see number 6. Name one exception.

5- NAME ONE TIME WHEN SUPPLY SIDE (Voodoo) "Economics" made a successful prediction?  One? Ever?  One time when slashing taxes on the rich led to reduced deficits and to vastly stimulated economic activity, or even much investment in "supply" capital? Or increased money velocity or middle class health? Once. One time when this cult religion actually delivered?  Name one exception.

A related riff? When was “America Great”? I say it's great right now! While we’re sending probes past Pluto, and rovers across Mars, discovering thousands of planets across the galaxy, curing diseases, raising billions of children out of poverty around the world and so on, as we're inventing like mad, ending the insane Drug War, and creating generations who are vastly, vastly nicer and smarter than Baby Boomers. 

But sure. You fox-folks please tell us when you think it was all better!  The1950s? Run by the Greatest Generation… who adored FDR? They knew the dangers of oligarchy and passed many rules to control it. Rules like forbidding companies to waste money on stock buybacks, on which nearly all of the recent Trump Tax Cut was frittered away, without tangible investment in R&D or factories.

“Supply Side” is doing exactly what it was designed to do, stealing from the middle class that the Greatest Generation built and augmenting the oligarchy that great generation defeated. Every major retraction away from the Rooseveltean social contract resulted in lower growth, wider wealth disparity, lower money velocity, shorter commercial ROI horizons, declines in R&D and increasing dominance by a crazy MBA caste.

Name an exception!

6- Name one other time in American — or human — history, when an administration spanning 8 years had zero scandals or indictments concerning malfeasance in the performance of official duties. It has happened twice in American — or human — history. The administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  Name another!

You can’t. There was one four year U.S. administration that had no malfeasance-of-office scandals… that of Jimmy Carter.  (Yes, there were a few scandals outside that description, “malfeasance in the performance of official duties,” though fewer than any month of a Trump or Bush administration.)

Let’s be clear. The Reagan, Bush and Bush administrations looked hard for evidence, some smoking-gun, to pin on Carter, Clinton and Obama. When they owned every federal department and record, they held endless hearings, rifled every filing cabinet, sifted like crazy, wasting hundreds of millions looking for something — anything.  “W” ordered FBI agents away from counter terror duties to join this witch hunt, before 9/11… arguably treason that cost thousands of American lives.  And they found… nothing but a husband fibbing about some 3^rd base infidelity and a wife making the same email mistake as both Bushes, Colin Powell, Condi Rise and Jared Kushner.  

Howl away "lock her up!" But not a single Hannity-shouted accusation was ever, ever, ever proved. Not one, ever. In contrast, GOP administrations – all of them -- were rife with indictments, convictions and pardons.

7- Name a counter-example to the pure record of Republican damage to every single strength that won the Cold War. Almost every thing that bolstered us during that struggle is being systematically dismantled, from our alliances to science, from dedicated intelligence and law agencies to the moral high ground and the rule of law and the respect of the world.  There may be exceptions, though I know of none. Name one.

Oh, winning these bets takes you to the next bulwark of insane treason. Watch out for the last resort of the RASR, who admits: “I know my side is crazy and has done nothing right at all! I know everything they say is a lie and that all their outcomes were negative and they act like cranky 4 year olds. But… but… but liberals are just as bad or worse!!"

Treat it as another cause for a wager. (Admitting that the lib-side does have some stunningly awful lefty flakes.  Some.)

It still comes down to one thing. Take their money.

== Outcomes? ==

Okay, I’ve had limited success in my own wager demands. Generally, when I confront folks with these challenges, they shout “squirrel!” and point offstage at some assertion or distraction, concocting scenarios and excuses to explain why they cannot answer any of these… or dozens of other… challenges. 
Or else they run away. 

Still, there is one more riff you can hurl at their retreating, cowardly backsides.

When something happens relentlessly, systematically, and without recognized exception, it is time to invoke Goldfinger’s Rule:

Goldfinger’s Rule: 

“Once, Mr. Bond, may be happenstance. 

"Twice could be coincidence.

“Three times is enemy action.”