Tribal echo chambers - can we (can you) break out?

Before launching into the general problem, let's start with the very worst example of echo-chamber thinking: the absolute unwillingness of major political factions in America to negotiate, or even talk to each other, about gun violence in America.  

Fatigued by the lunacy, I present, yet again, my own proposed compromise that might offer a win-win. It would license and register all the weapons used for very bad things... while setting aside permanently our right to own - without registration or interference, ever - the one personal weapon that could serve us if we had to rebel. 

More importantly, my proposal demonstrates how to seek the deepest root of your opponent's fear -- the thing that propels and justifies his intransigence. There can be logic - of a sort - under the obstinacy. And you are supposed to be the logical ones.

Do not mistake the disease for the symptom. It is this sickness of obstinate intransigence that our enemies most wanted to instill. It is how civilizations fall.

== Our greatest talent -- self-delusion -- now weaponized ==

In Earth (1989), I made one of the earliest forecasts that our then-new public Internet would lead to millions creating echo chambers of self-reinforcing opinion — bubbles of online tribalism — that could even verge onto veritable e-nuremberg rallies, exploited by dark powers. In that novel, I proposed that the solution might come via tools of transparency, a concept that evolved into The Transparent Society.

Now we see that the Web - which was supposed to be our immune system against lies and error - has been turned against us, much like a deliberately induced auto-immune disease. 

This is well and terrifyingly described at Berit Anderson’s SCOUT site. There, she appraises the way enemies of the Enlightenment have deployed against us “AI weaponized propaganda.”

It’s a complex dilemma, much as AIDS was. Only, as I also described in EARTH, there are powerfully smart and creative forces who seek solutions. Some are doing so out of survival self-interest, e.g. Facebook is now vetting news sources that feed their customers’ biases.

(Full disclosure: I consulted with Facebook's teams about this, last summer, when the extent of the calamity was just becoming clear. I'm told that some of my ideas were "influential" but I'm not clear yet on which ones. There are definitely ways to alert users to refutation of rumor, without making the surfing/posting experience less pleasant.)

Other efforts are described by Nathan Gardels of the World Post:

“In fact, we are already seeing evidence of a “flight to quality” in the wake of the dominance of peer-driven social media that is populated with hate speech, fake news and alternative facts. Online subscriptions to The Washington Post — The WorldPost’s publishing partner — have tripled during the first year of the Trump presidency.

“Even so, the Internet remains the battleground of tribal warfare, where a cacophony of voices contends to establish the consensual truths that are the essential foundation of democratic discourse. The global “anti-tribe tribe” claims authority through the impartial methods and universal standards of reason it employs in the pursuit of an objective social consensus. Ideological, religious or nativist adherents embrace allegiance to the solidity of belonging against what they regard as the rootlessness of a cosmopolitan caste....

“As the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk noted, the eruption of tribalism in our global age is a response to the “liquidized” identities that have supplanted the territorial patriotism that was culturally ingrained during the long history of agricultural societies. New assertions of identity, he argues in an interview, also mark a “return of plurality” in the face of “helpless universalism.” ...

“Similarly, David Goodhardt writes that reconciling tribal attachment and the notion of a “common good” is the great challenge. “Moderate nationalism,” Goodhardt notes paradoxically, is “an important glue for liberal societies” — in short, a home between the globalist “anywhere” and the local “somewhere.””

Okay, maybe that's a bit hifalutin and arcane. I prefer pragmatism, pointing out to today's confederates -- and ISIS nostalgists and other romantics -- that there are zero measures by which their prescriptions work. When was "America Great"? Presumably under the "Greatest Generation"... who invested heavily in our shared infrastructure and major projects, under a social contract fashioned by their favorite living human. Franklin Roosevelt. 

== ...and from one of Earth's worst humans ==

In contrast, George F. Will is at it again. Openly admitting that U.S. Conservatism has gone insane, Will refuses to take any responsibility for his open-eyed and knowing choice to foster the movement’s capture by feudalist enemies of the Western Enlightenment Experiment. Enemies not just of democracy but competitive-fair market capitalism, as well -- the very this that (lying) he claims to revere. 

Rather, he keeps waving hypnotic baubles and incantations in front of millions of gullible readers: “Yes, our side has gone corrupt, treasonous and crazy… but… but lib’ruls are worse!”

In this latest version of the magic spell, I carefully looked for any paragraph that was not essentially a lie — either directly or through verbal legerdemain. I found three!  Just three paragraphs, in which the core was not: “Listen to how smoothly and confidently I spin out erudite-sounding citations! Never mind that almost nothing that I am saying is actually true!”

And I mean it literally. Only three out of thirty paragraphs did not contain an open and bald-faced lie. Shame on the Post and anyone else who does not follow this traitor around, calling him what he is.

== Are you taxed more for income you sweated for? ==

Listen to this brilliant economist all the way through... Dambisa Moyo interviewed about automation, investment, demographics and helping to keep capitalism healthy.

Nothing better distills Republican philosophy better than this: “The House tax overhaul raises taxes on high-income earners who make their money through labor, but delivers a huge tax cut to passive business owners."

This is classic. Adam Smith described how elites of any society adjust the rules to benefit passive “rent-seeking,” so the owner caste won’t have to innovate, build factories, take risks or lift a finger, just collect dividends, interest, rents or stock rises at low tax rates. (Rates were ZERO for nobles in Smith’s day, leading to revolution in America and France.)

Adam Smith denounced this cheating, which warps markets and demolishes genuine competition by those aiming to create goods and services. Smith knew this kind of lordly cheating ruined free and creative-competitive markets in every civilization. In comparison, socialism and “bureaucrats” can be threats to markets -- but historical examples of lethality are far, far more rare than the prevalent danger. Oligarchy.

Again, our parents in the Greatest Generation (GG) knew this. Watch movies from that era! Just as the U.S. Founders rebelled against the King and his caste of cheaters, and the Union overcame the cheating plantation lords, the WWII generation tamed -- without killing or ruining -- its own oligarchs who plotted to revive feudalism. Only, led by FDR, the GGs did it with mild reforms, not revolution, tilting the balance to favor honest labor and entrepreneurial creativity, instead of passive rent-seeking.

But the GG revolution has been chipped away. The Cheater Caste is back. The top 0.1% owns more than the bottom 90%, yet they have 40% of Americans convinced that the only threat to freedom and markets is “bureaucrats.” Since Reagan, the incantation has been to slash taxes on the rich, in promise that the rich will then do what the vast majority of them have never, ever done in the history of our species… investing their gusher of tax gifts in productive innovation or “supply.”

To be clear, not one prediction for “Supply Side (Voodoo) Economics” (SSVE) has ever come true, ever. Once. Even once. At all. Ever. Demand that your crazy-confederate uncle come up with one example.

Oh, their hired shills offer lines like “The Inheritance Tax is a DEATH TAX!” In fact, the heirs who receive money are U.S. citizens RECEIVING MONEY, and our social contract is that you get taxed when you receive money! You pay 25%+ on money you receive for working hard. The Republicans want pampered scions to pay nothing for wealth they receive by doing nothing.

== Put it starkly ==

Passive income is preferred over money earned through labor? Or from creativity, or active investment? How did we get talked into such an outrageously monstrous cheat? Your taxes are higher precisely because the Rentier Caste pays at low rates that have allowed them to amass nearly all of the nation’s wealth.

Make no mistake, this betrayal of fair competition leads to revolution, as it did in Adam Smith’s day. The smartest of the rich - those who actually invest in R&D and innovations and products — know this, and want their own class to be taxed higher!

They want this because it’s fair and will help us to thrive.

They want this to avoid pushing a spectacularly skilled and educated middle class into torches, pitchforks and tumbrels.

The tech zillionaires are not like the ones financing the GOP’s oligarchic putsch - the gambling kingpins, Wall Street parasites, inheritance lordlings, and those who bribed their way into cushy resource extraction boons.

The smart ones, who can see, are like JFK’s father, who supported FDR, saying: “I’d rather give up half my fortune, helping make a healthy middle class, than lose it all to revolution.” (paraphrased)

And finally....

Passed along by Russ Daggatt: "Thanks to Trump, Democrats now have a more favorable view of the FBI than Republicans do. In the last month, Republicans have gone from 65% favorable to 38% favorable. Trump has already caused a radical shift in Republican opinion on Putin and Russia (more positive) and the NFL (more negative)."

Fascinating. The very same poli- tburo plotters who the US right despised and feared, became best-buds due to... a change of symbolism. From communist lapel pins to oligarch/orthodox pins. The same guys (wearing better suits), pursuing similar methods with the same aim - bringing Pax Americana and American world leadership to an end - are suddenly great pals of the US right... because Rupert Murdoch says so. 

And the FBI that has always opposed those agents - many of them the very same people - are now villains.

The... Confederacy... is... treason. Always was. Always will be.

Perspectives and politics

Today is a roundup of some wider perspectives that've piled up.  After a couple of news blips:

1-  Jared Kushner was in Riyadh, consulting for a whole day with the Crown Prince, just days before the latter staged a major putsch, toppling every power rival in Saudi Arabia. No one in media seems to consider this as a precursor to the long-planned war vs. Iran. See how many forces want this, from the Saudis and Trump/Breitbart to Putin and even the Iranian mullahs, themselves.

Still, the image of an orthodox Jew dickering with the Saudi leader... might a silver lining to this be an Arab-Israeil rapprochement? I'll discuss all this in a future missive.

2- The Democrats' sweeps in Virginia, New Jersey, Washington State and elsewhere  show not only Trump's unpopularity and liberal vigor, but the vital importance of down-ticket races.  Finding candidates to take on "safe-seat" incumbents has paid off. Hence leave no office - state assembly or even dog catcher - uncontested in 2018. In an earlier three-part series I described how to do this.

== Wider Perspectives ==

Steven Pinker - the rascal who uses facts to defeat defeatism - points out that 2016 was not as bad as it seemed:  

“War deaths have risen since 2011 because of the Syrian civil war, but are a fraction of the levels of the 1950s through the early 1990s, when megadeath wars and genocides raged all over the world. Colombia’s peace deal marks the end of the last war in the Western Hemisphere, and the last remnant of the Cold War. Homicide rates in the world are falling, and the rate in United States is lower than at any time between 1966 and 2009. Outside of war zones, terrorist deaths are far lower than they were in the heyday of the Weathermen, IRA, and Red Brigades.”

He admits that: “Several awful things happened in the world’s democracies in 2016, and the election of a mercurial and ignorant president injects a troubling degree of uncertainty into international relations. 

"But it’s vital to keep cool and identify specific dangers rather than being overcome by a vague apocalyptic gloom.”

Pinker adds: “More generally, the worldwide, decades-long current toward racial tolerance is too strong to be undone by one man. Public opinion polls in almost every country show steady declines in racial and religious prejudice­ — and more importantly for the future, that younger cohorts are less prejudiced than older ones. As my own cohort of baby boomers (who helped elect Trump) dies off and is replaced by millennials (who rejected him in droves), the world will become more tolerant.”

Yesterday I spoke to several classes at a nearby high school, and was impressed with the eye-contact, strong voices, confident attitudes and diversity. Though propaganda - especially Hollywood - has convinced them that the world is going straight into the toilet, when that's just not true. But back to Pinker.

He reiterates a distinction: “between complacent optimism, the feeling of a child waiting for presents, and conditional optimism, the feeling of a child who wants a treehouse and realizes that if he gets some wood and nails and persuades other kids to help him, he can build one. I am not complacently optimistic about the future; I am conditionally optimistic.”

Finally... Echoes of 2014: Margaret McMillan writes that we should fear one thing… a pattern that centuries begin their themes a decade and a half in. 

“I wish I could stop, but I find myself thinking of 1914. The world then had seemed so stable, so manageable…. That confidence was dangerous because it meant that people didn't take the warning signs seriously enough.”

See where I wrote about how the pattern of each of the last several centuries seems to have begun about a decade and a half in...and the election of Donald Trump, along with meme-war depredations by our enemies, appears to bear this out.  But which theme will prevail until 2115? The Putin-Saudi-Trumpist re-ignition of our civil war?  Or our sound and decisive rejection of this putsch, reclaiming pragmatic confidence?

== Semper Ubi Sub-Ubi ==

Universal basic income (UBI) is a concept that was pushed by - among others - Robert Heinlein in several of his novels. A century ago, JM Keynes predicted we would see so much automated production that the average work week would fall to twenty hours. He was a hundred years premature, but many harbingers suggest we’re verging on that era, at last. UBI could be a way to ensure that it happens with decency, keeping the spirit of an egalitarian civilization.  The snarl by cynics is that this is “welfare” encouraging a generation of lazy, demanding lotus-eaters, is a cliché that’s been tested in the last decade, when some experiments in the developing world have shown that giving raw cash to poor families can be more effective than closely supervised-paternalistic versions of aid. And almost none of the cash is used on fripperies.

Now such experiments are arriving in the US. Y-combinator is pursuing a UBI project. In a new blog post published on the company’s website this week, they reveal their plans to pick 3,000 individuals from two states at random to receive a monthly cash handout. 1,000 participants will receive $1,000 per month for a period up to five years, while the other 2,000 will receive $50 per month, serving as the control group.

== Free Speech ==

Who favors free and open speech? Who fought against the Fairness Doctrine and all the rebuttal rules requiring broadcasters to offer a few minutes of rebuttal each night?  

Rupert Murdoch howled over letting on-air anyone who might refute his hired gas-bags. At his urging -- and the radio hypnotists at Clear Channel - the GOP rescinded it, and Fox hollers at any hint of its return, knowing just 5 minutes per day of factual rebuttal would tear them open like a dim-witted matador.

Funny: the "fake news" mainstream doesn't fear a rebuttal rule. The UK still has one. The Murdochs are lobbying like hell to get rid of it.

== You’re kidding me, right? ==

I'm not always a fan, but Thomas Friedman; in the New York Times is very smart and he can be pointed: "Having just traveled to New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, China, Taiwan and now Hong Kong, I can say without an ounce of exaggeration that more than a few Asia-Pacific business and political leaders have taken President Trump's measure and concluded that - far from being a savvy negotiator - he's a sucker who's shrinking US influence in this region and helping make China great again.

"These investors, trade experts and government officials are still stunned by a... Trump's decision to tear up the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free-trade deal ... without having read it or understanding its vast geo-economic implications. (Trump was so ignorant about TPP that when he was asked about it in a campaign debate in November 2015 he suggested that China was part of it, which it very much is not.)"

== Miscellaneous! ==

The percentage of adolescents in the U.S. who have a driver's license, who have tried alcohol, who date, and who work for pay has plummeted since 1976, with the most precipitous decreases in the past decade. Teens have also reported a steady decline in sexual activity in recent decades, as the portion of high school students who have had sex fell from 54 percent in 1991 to 41 percent in 2015, according to Centers for Disease Control statistics.  “According to an evolutionary psychology theory that a person's "life strategy" slows down or speeds up depending on his or her surroundings, exposure to a "harsh and unpredictable" environment leads to faster development, while a more resource-rich and secure environment has the opposite effect, the study said."

Okay, put on your list of ways to help the Earth... limiting your subsidizing cow farts. One more reason to eat less beef. And to invest in these great new veggie-burgers they're developing. And vat-grown meat.

This fellow says we could cut methane from beef by 70% by adding 4% seaweed to their diet. He estimates that to farm enough seaweed to cover Australia's livestock, we'd need to establish roughly 6,000 hectares of seaweed farms, which isn't going to be easy to find. But let’s start a pilot study.

The good news? U.S. greenhouse gas production went down last year. Solar/wind have skyrocketed. And climate change is proved. And the denialist cult has been proved wrong about absolutely everything.

Oh. Peaktu San. The highest peak in Korea (and the alleged birthplace of Kim Jong Il in official state mythology) is also an active super-volcano, one which, if it erupted, would obliterate most of North Korea and China too. 

== Colorful Political Miscellany ==

Dang. Some of you thought I was a bit... fierce... in taking down that traitor-toady George F. Will. But I'm dry toast compared to Jim Wright. Go read his choice fury ... 

And yes, we will only end this phase of the American Civil War when several million residually sane American conservatives realize that enough is enough. That this is not the conservatism of Barry Goldwater – whose grave spinning now supplies most of the power to Arizona.  

So what will it take? Pence’s chief of staff floats ‘purge’ of anti-Trump Republicans to wealthy donors. Oh, please. Oh do this.  The moderate sane conservatives of America have been frozen in stunned disbelief and cowardly inaction for years, unable to do their duty – to America and to conservatism – and form a new party not defined by Rupert Murdoch. But this could do the trick.

Nothing signals Melania Trump’s effort at independence more than this. 

White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner has used both a private email account and an official email address to communicate with other government officials, his attorney says.  So… the very worst thing that Hillary Clinton was ever confirmed to have done wrong… is the very smallest piece of almost daily insane-malfeasance pouring from this White House. 

Disturbing insights into anomalous voting patterns.

Do you doubt there’s a lot going on that runs below what we see bandied about?  A third of rural whites, and 40 percent of rural white men, are resigned to believing that their children will grow up with a lower standard of living than they did, a far higher proportion than people who live in cities (23 percent) or suburbs (28 percent), a survey by the Pew Research Center found.   In addition to other problems, rural areas contend with drug and mental-health issues, poverty, and a lack of high-speed access to the internet. “This has become a cultural phenomenon. It’s not an educational phenomenon,” Fluharty said. Encouraging a rural student to go to college instead of doing the same work as the adults in a community, he said, is like “suggesting that that child should not do what I have done…” Among other insights: “Disdain toward rural people, which he called commonplace on campus, “is the last acceptable prejudice in America.” 

== Finally... ==

Conservatives continue push for probes of Clinton and her campaign. And it’s the theater that matters!  24 years and half a billion dollars spent seeking "smoking guns" on the Clintons, the most thoroughly probed humans in the history of our species. Every document scrutinized, every micro assistant grilled. The Kochs offered rewards for whistle blowers to rat out the "secret deals and travesties." And what did we wind up with? Nothing but 

(1) a husband fibbing about some 3rd base consensual-adult infidelity in a hallway, and 
(2) a cabinet secretary making the same mistake with emails as all of her predecessors and the Bushes all made.

Face it. Either the Clintons are decisively proved to be clean... or else the lynch mob that wasted all that time and money is beyond incompetent.

Tax "reform" or not?

In Edinburgh I just posed for pictures next to one statue of Hume and then in front of Adam Smith, the founder of liberal economics.

(Oh the handsome scotsman posing with me? Edinburgh science fiction legend Ken MacLeod. Look up his fine novels, such as The Corporation Wars.)

Back to Adam Smith; it’s clear where he would be writing, were he alive today -- at the website that mentions his name most-often. Evonomics is the fast-rising site where liberals and moderates in the commercial and academic worlds of economics offer spirited resistance to fanaticism. 

While the far-left and the entire-right seem hell-bent on betraying the system that brought us all this vast wealth and opportunity, moderates are rediscovering Smith, who knew that creative-competitive markets can only work when they are regulated to keep them flat-open and fair.  

6000 years of cheaters have showed us that vast disparities of wealth do not lead to healthy market enterprise, but stifle it. (Try running a competitive sports league without "regulation." Alas, leftists reflexively despise the word "competition" and rightists despise "regulation" when it is only the combination that works.) See my posting on Competition and Regulation.

If our parents in the Greatest Generation could stymie oligarchic cheaters, spurring lively market competition by keeping things relatively flat and fair, then can't we?  These re-sets have to be made about once per U.S. generation, and the plantation lords - desperate to prevent it - know that feudalism might be prevented permanently, if we perform just one more.  

Which brings us to…

== The Tax Bill: fool me ten times…. ==

The one and only actual priority of the plantation lords is now forefront in the hilariously sob-worthy new 'tax bill':

"Our expectation is that with the growth we create and the elimination of many deductions that we will make it revenue neutral," said Marc Short, the White House Director of Legislative Affairs, doubling down yet again on Supply Side Theory.

Well, it's a theory that sounded plausible when JFK pushed the first big tax cut in the 1960s. It still sounded conceivable when Reagan pushed the next round in the 80s. 

Then ridiculous when Bush Sr. got us to go a third time with this “voodoo” that has never once worked, ever, in any way.

At any level.

Even once.

At all.

Ever.

Then came the big tax cut for the rich under Bush Junior, when most economists and a majority of Americans asked: “Are you kidding me?” It didn’t work (again) and deficits skyrocketed, along with wealth disparities now approaching those of France in 1789.

So now the Trumpists are doing it again. Read the details, like elimination of inheritance tax so that oligarchy can preserve its feudal power across generations, and the alternative minimum tax, so they do not have to pay for wars they declare. Oh, and you lose your medical expense deduction. And the old excuses aren’t even being pushed hard. The masters want this. And that’s that. It’s no longer “fool me once.”  See: This Isn’t Tax Policy; It’s a Trump-Led Heist.

Heck, there aren't even fig leaves to actual stimulation. R&D credits? Nope. Depreciation for domestic productive capacity? I don't see any. Credits for public-private infrastructure investment? None that I can spot.

What is in the bill is a set of provisions that openly and savagely attack the finances of blue states. The confederates seem determined to wake us up. This is Fort Sumter, guys.

== Tax Simplification? ==

If "reform" means wanting to simplify the system, so it is no longer a 10,000 rule monstrosity, I have long offered an absolutely guaranteed way to do it.  The non-partisan method is technical, using computer optimization. But my "No-Losers" method not only can work... it works almost by definition. 

In contrast the Trump "reform" has one aim. At risk of repetition, in the 1980s and again in the 2000s, "supply side" tax cuts poured wealth from our carotid arteries into open oligarch maws without once, ever, at all, even one time, having the predicted outcomes. 

Nothing so well proves the stunning stupidity of these neo-feudal lords, that they think this has any logical conclusion, other than tumbrels.

== The Influence of Propaganda ==

From the new Scout site: Welcome to the age of Weaponized AI Propaganda, by Berit Anderson:

"By leveraging automated emotional manipulation alongside swarms of bots, Facebook dark posts, A/B testing, and fake news networks, a company called Cambridge Analytica has activated an invisible machine that preys on the personalities of individual voters to create large shifts in public opinion. " 

This company helped elect Donald Trump and helped with the Brexit Leave campaign. "The company is owned and controlled by conservative and alt-right interests that are also deeply entwined in the Trump administration. The Mercer family is both a major owner of Cambridge Analytica and one of Trump’s biggest donors. Steve Bannon, in addition to acting as Trump’s Chief Strategist and a member of the White House Security Council, is a Cambridge Analytica board member. Until recently, Analytica’s CTO was the acting CTO at the Republican National Convention."

This report on the science reporting site “Scout” explains: “In the past, political messaging and propaganda battles were arms races to weaponize narrative through new mediums — waged in print, on the radio, and on TV. This new wave has brought the world something exponentially more insidious — personalized, adaptive, and ultimately addictive propaganda.”

Speaking of weaponized info: recall he beat up on Hillary about how incredibly irresponsible she was by allowing her email, and classified documents, to be exposed to hackers, by using email exactly the way her predecessors had. Now a congressman calls for House investigation of Donald Trump's terrible Android phone In the month since he took office, Donald Trump has refused to drop his Samsung S3 in favor of the standard secured phone. That's a huge security problem, since conventional phones are vulnerable...

== A Ray of Light ==

The United States Is Not an Apocalyptic Wasteland, explains Steven Pinker in this interview with Phil Torres. Professor Stephen Pinker, along with Peter Diamandis (Abundance: The Future is Better than You Think) has used evidence to shatter the delusion that everything is spiraling into hell. That mythology doesn’t help inspire us to save the world, but rather spreads nihilism and cynicism. In fact, statistically, there are dozens of reasons for (guarded) optimism!  Which, in turn, ought to inspire a can-do spirit and belief that we can act vigorously, to solve problems.  See his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. One special insight: When people believe that the world is heading off a cliff, they are receptive to the perennial appeal of demagogues: "What do you have to lose?"  Sound familiar?

Yes, both right and left contain critics, who admit the veracity of Pinker’s impressive statistics, yet cast clouds. Conservative writer Tom Nichols’s book -- The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters -- details aims at dangers that he (largely erroneously) believes Pinker is overlooking.  What makes Nichols significant is that he calls the Populist Rejection of Expertise not just damaging, but potentially deadly for our future, with potential to turn large portions of the USA into what are "Apocalyptic Wastelands."

I used to have a fantasy that fellows like this were simmering all over American conservatism. If Nichols' version of Conservatism were to prevail, we could see a GOP that returns to sanity, promoting science, adult argument, mature, success-oriented negotiation based on appraisal of real facts and outcomes. Alas, year after year I see most of the best conservative thinkers just burrow deeper into their ostrich holes of denial. Oh, they are able to admit: “my side has gone insane.” But this only propels them to guzzle the murdochian koolaid rationalizations that “all the scientists, journalists, professionals, democrats and blue Americans are just…as… crazy.”  And of course, that’s plain crazy.

Sure, there are occasional exceptions, willing to stand up and step forward.  Who would imagine that Glenn Beck would be one of the brave ones? But there is no critical mass. No core that is courageous enough to emulate what democrats did to save their party from radicalism and treason, in the “Miracle of 1947.”

== Muddled speech ==

Seriously.  Read every word of this interview with our president. It is verbatim, so he’s not being treated unfairly… though note how many places were marked “unintelligible.”  Transcript of AP interview with Trump.  

Let’s be fair. I am interviewed a lot and I’m well aware that spoken English doesn’t always look so good, when directly transcribed.  I try to speak in sentences and paragraphs, as does any careful and experienced hand. Still – despite lots of practice – I know there’ll be passages that come across either unclear or sounding repetitious or distracted. We should make allowances.  And yet, even so –

-- see if you can pick out one passage, even one, that is cogent and/or uttered as an adult might speak. One. Even one. Heck, find more than a couple that are coherent at any level.

BTW, which seems more likely? That we just saved $70 million on each F35 plane because of hard audits set in motion months ago by the Obama Administration… or because Donald Trump shouted the word “Boeing!” at Lockheed. (The former is what actually happened.) Even if there weren’t firm contracts, does he believe Boeing could underbid the contractor who is now fully tooled and in production, just because the president shouts their name as an incantation?  Bluffing your partners out of some real estate is not the same as managing a complex, 21^st Century defense contract.

Sensible Tax Reform, Wealth disparities.. and Gun Control

I haven't opined on politics for a while, but recent events compel me to go back to that blather-well.  Some time soon I expect to comment on the Boston Bombing and the myriad implications for our looming transparent society.  But for now…

1) Sensible Tax Reform?

It appears that Republicans in the U.S. Congress are veering away from the (politically) dangerous ground of entitlement reform, even though President Obama has put on the table an offer to let them have something they long demanded -- a reduction in the inflation adjustment for Social Security and Medicare, plus possible even the Bowles-Simpson age-adjustments.  It seems that (as happened with Obama Care) the GOP finds nothing more loathsome than when the opposition says, "Okay, we'll do it your way. So let's make a deal."

Instead, reports suggest that the GOP leadership in the House is leaning toward attempting Tax Reform, with the aim of eliminating almost all deductions, in exchange for a dramatic lowering of tax rates.  Read up on this, because it will raise a firestorm!  And the attempt will run into the same forces that stymied tax simplification for 60 years… a coalition of powerful interests who -- though hating each other -- will join forces to protect their sacred cows.

As it turns out, I have long suggested an extremely simple approach that would avoid this pitfall, by simplifying first and then  dealing with political matters second.  It sounds impossible, but it is actually rather straightforward, if only we tried the method called "No Losers Simplification."

Easy, logical and blatantly sensible… and do-able because it has a trick to keep everyone calm from the git-go. So, what d'you think are the chances?

Oh, a final note on U.S. taxes. How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing. Intuit has spent millions lobbying to keep tax season miserable.

See also: Part of the "Fiscal Cliff" Solution: The Best Tax Simplification Proposal.

2) Are things getting better?

Optimism is so out of fashion these days, on both the left and the right, that  - ironically -  a guarded optimism has become the natural state for any genuine contrarian. I could try to ignore that reflex and stay true to my natural dour cynicism.  But facts are lining up with those who see light at the end of the tunnel. For example, I often cite Professor Steven Pinker's proof (The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined) that on average, per capita levels of violence have declined steeply (if unevenly) around the world every decade since 1945.

Now Oxford University has released  a study that breaks down human well-being into a ten-factor "Multidimensional Poverty Index" that encompasses nutrition, school attendance, access to clean water and electricity and so on. While there are many laggard zones of misery (e.g. Ethiopia and Malawi), there are also zones where recent good news has been  very strong. For example, if the study’s 'star' countries, Nepal, Rwanda, and Bangladesh, continue to reduce poverty at the current rate, they will halve MPI in less than 10 years and eradicate it in 20. These leaders are followed by Ghana, Tanzania, Cambodia and Bolivia.

In truth, I have my doubts in some ways.  There is a certain level of "take-off" development that is fairly easy to get rolling when dynamic people are allowed to strive effectively for their families under honest government that  blends top-down investment, infrastructure and care with a looseness that encourages enterprise, under predictable and reliable law. Hernando de Soto's reforms in Peru showed that a mix of liberal and libertarian measures can have stunning positive effects that neither could achieve alone.  (Defying simplistic fools who demand we choose only one wing of the lobotomizing "left-right axis.")

Still, there are many pitfalls, like endemic corruption, plus the fact that every phase presents new problems, as China is finding out. As we found out.

But that's just me, trying hard to remain cynical... and yet forced -- as I was while writing Existence -- to conclude that we are a bright species.  And our natural condition is a brilliant insanity called hope.

3) The New Great Divide

Oh, but then I turn and see trends that threaten to wreck it all!  Like the ongoing train-wreck demolition of the egalitarian "American Dream."

Wealth disparity in the US hit its lowest levels during the generation after Franklin Roosevelt, with the booming of a healthy middle class and the flattest society ever seen (when it came to matters like social class)… all of it during the healthiest market entrepreneurial economy in history, amid unmatched economic growth that lifted nearly all boats and enabled us to finance bold new projects like space, science and civil rights.

Alas, since 1980 we have seen a trend back toward the steeply pyramidal social structure that dominated in 99% of societies that had agriculture and metals. Now the trend is accelerating. It took off since 2001 and continued in the first two years of recovery.

From Pew Research: A Rise in Wealth for the Wealthy, Declines for the Lowest 93%:

"From 2009 to 2011, the mean wealth of the 8 million households in the more affluent group rose to an estimated $3,173,895 from an estimated $2,476,244, while the mean wealth of the 111 million households in the less affluent group fell to an estimated $133,817 from an estimated $139,896.

"The upper 7% of households saw their aggregate share of the nation’s overall household wealth pie rise to 63% in 2011, up from 56% in 2009. On an individual household basis, the mean wealth of households in this more affluent group was almost 24 times that of those in the less affluent group in 2011. At the start of the recovery in 2009, that ratio had been less than 18-to-1."

Which raises a pertinent question to ask our conservative friends. Is there ANY wealth disparity that would cause some of you to admit that "Class Warfare" has historically been waged top-down, and that pattern always tries to return? Our parents' generation knew the answer. President Obama spoke of his love for his Kansas grandparents who both served in World War II and who pretty much raised him.  The "Greatest Generation" that defeated Hitler and overcame the Great Depression -- they adored FDR and re-elected him by huge margins. Not in order to destroy capitalism, but to save it. From the enemy that always, reliably ruined free and fair competitive enterprise -- and freedom -- in 99% of all human societies.

Those who today have one supreme goal... to portray FDR as satan ... they stand with the oldest and most pervasive enemy of freedom and yes, the foe of market capitalism that Adam Smith denounced and against whom the American Founders rebelled.  Is there some point when you would recognize that old foe?

Hint: it is not a dogma or doctrine, or any particular group of people.  It is a drive that fizzes out of most of us, when we find ourselves atop a pyramid. A drive to thereupon grab the power to stay up there. By cheating.

But it gets worse when 40% of the world's wealth is controlled by less than 150 people. How does competition happen when our lords own a higher percentage of the wealth than the French aristocracy did, in 1789?

4) Interesting political miscellany

Have any doubts about my comparison with the French Revolution? Read about the most expensive real estate on Earth - One Hyde Park, in London - where apartments sell for almost a quarter of a Billion dollars, to secret shell corporations that disguise the owners from the nosy masses. That's a "B" in "billion."

Plus…..

And shifting over to provocative potpourri... The most religious states show highest rates of anti-depressant use.

Does this really surprise you?  The origins of the Tea Party - and climate denialism - in the  tobacco industry. (See also Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway, as well as my article: Distinguishing Climate "Deniers" from "Skeptics.")

Lipstick on a pig? Reince Priebus gives GOP prescription for the future.  Sorry. I miss Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley, true conservative intellects who enjoyed high-level argument and science, who reacted to bad outcomes by changing their minds, and who above all believed in negotiation.  Even, occasionally compromise. If Mr. Priebus and his colleagues ever decide to get serious, the great result will be to stop Barry Goldwater spinning in his grave.

Oh, but then - when you least expect it - sanity appears to be flowering in one area, at least, and some Republicans are leading the way!  California GOP Representative Dana Rohrabacher's Respect State Marijuana Laws Act (H.R. 1253) is far from the only bill in Congress that would wind down the federal war on weed.  But unlike the efforts of liberal Democrats who want to remove marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, this bill or something like it may have a decent shot at passing in the not-too-distant future.  I can't believe it.  This madness seems finally to be ebbing. And if that insanity can ebb, let's work on others?

5) And finally, regarding gun control...

Did you notice that for a decade liberals were quiet about this issue?  And even now,  spurred by stunning tragedies, all most of them are asking for is background checks and a restored limit on assault weapons.  Why so little?  Simple.  Under Bush, many liberals started quietly arming themselves. Despite noise from some irredentist lefties, many liberals (a totally different species) are fine with responsible and accountable weapon ownership. Like their own.

If we are going to debate an issue, let's start with clean facts.  Yes, Mother Jones has a left-ish perspective.  But this set of graphics (Challenging the Myth that Guns Stop Crime) is effective when they take on some of the fibs being told by the NRA.

Again, I claim the middle ground. Frankly, I am more sympathetic with moderate gun owners than Mother Jones is. In fact, many liberals and moderates understand the undercurrent motive that makes the gun folk dig in their heels… a fear of eventual confiscation of all personal weapons.

A fear that I go into, with some evenhandedness and detail, in my article, The Jefferson Rifle: Guns and the Insurrection Myth.

I've said it before.  Simply screaming aloud the second half of the Second Amendment will not make the first half go away.  And that first half (twelve words) will serve as a loophole wide enough to drive a bulldozer through, if some future panicking public and a new Court decide to "well-regulate" the "militia." You guys need another, better amendment. And I am offering one that liberals would help you to pass.

Again, most Americans don't wish to eliminate personal gun ownership, and would join in rising up, if it were ever tried. They simply want more responsibility and accountability, the very thing that we achieved with motor vehicles....

But the Slippery Slope Syndrome poisons so many issues on the national agenda. Look at it.  Face it.  Then do the unexpected.  Negotiate.