A worried mind

Nate Silver says it's not really time to sweat every little movement in the polls, but the current trend has me very worried indeed.

The question I have for a nation that has seemingly gone insane: Why are so many of you so willing to follow a candidate so obviously vile, even when every new news item about him makes him appear more corrupt, more ignorant, more unfit? Why are Republicans made of Teflon?

And why, given a Democratic candidate who is the most competent, best qualified in recent history, should unfounded allegations have such a dramatic effect in the polls? For some reason, Hillary has to be blemish-free or you won't vote for her, while Il Donald can be covered in slime and you don't notice.

I know the Conservatives will roll their eyes at my explanation, because of their own conviction that the white male point of view is the only one without bias: Hillary Clinton is a woman. A woman must be faultless, must not behave like a man, to gain their approval.

Even so, I wonder that so many Americans are so stupid.

Donald Trump voters: You are the victims of the Art of the Bamboozle.

First, I should provide a link to Ezra Klein's excellent article containing every reason not to vote for Donald Trump.

I have just this to add. There is a large pool of disaffected voters who feel voiceless, and who think that Donald Trump will hear their voices at last. Donald Trump hears those voices, all right, and he has promised them everything they long for.

But Donald Trump is a man who has made a long list of promises he hasn't kept.

He has promised millions to charities and not honored those promises.

He has hired people to do work for him and not paid them.

If you are one of the disaffected voters I mentioned above, I wish you luck with your complaints. Donald Trump will not keep his promises to you. He is not your savior. Donald Trump is a con artist.

Disappointment and delusion

Robert Reich is getting on my last nerve.

I'll get back to that statement in a minute.

First, I'll digress to the ultimate story of the persistence of false beliefs. The story is the subject of the book When Prophecy Fails, by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schacter.

In 1954, a woman named Dorothy Martin (aka Marian Keech) led a cult that believed that the world would end on December 21, and that the faithful would be rescued by a flying saucer from the planet Clarion. When the prophecy failed to come true, instead of dashing the cult's faith, it actually made it stronger. Marian Keech, you see, soon received another message from Clarion: God had been so impressed with the steadfastness of the believers that He had intervened to save the Earth at the last moment.

I relate this story because it reminded me of the reaction to today's news that the FBI had concluded their investigation of Hillary Clinton's email practices and found nothing worth prosecuting. Far from calming Hillary's detractors, it only strengthened their conviction that she is evil incarnate.

Now, we know that the right wing has been after the Clintons for years, and that, when the House Committee on Benghazi had to finally give up on the idea that Hillary was responsible for the deaths of embassy personnel, they grasped at the straw of there being criminal activity in her handling of her emails. When the Committee finally gave up even on that, the right had only one hope left: that the FBI investigation would turn up something that they could use to prosecute Hillary.

Now, to anyone who paid attention, the facts never supported the indictment scenario, but hope springs eternal.

This brings me to Bernie Sanders's truest believers. Beginning with the assumption of Hillary's evil nature, their belief system included the following:

Hillary stole the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders, and

Hillary would surely be indicted (they shamelessly bought this from their own political enemies) and Bernie would miraculously get the nomination she had stolen from him.

But I suppose it was predictable that, when the miracle was not forthcoming, there would be a way to claim that that only made the case against Hillary stronger. Sure enough, the attacks against her intensified today, because the lack of an indictment merely reinforced the faithfuls' belief in Hillary's great powers: she is a criminal, her email server committed treason, and yet SHE GOT AWAY WITH IT! Yes, Hillary is so powerful, that even the FBI is afraid of her! In the cesspool that is politics, Hillary Clinton is no common criminal! She is MORIARTY!

So, finally, back to Robert Reich. He is perhaps the most public progressive proponent of the myth that Bernie Sanders still has a path to the Democratic presidential nomination. He has redoubled his attacks on Hillary Clinton in the wake of the FBI's failure to find any criminality in her email practices. I think Mr. Reich needs to take a deep breath, and perhaps count to ten, and ask himself what good can possibly come of continued attacks on Hillary Clinton.

Frankly, I think we should all thank the FBI for saving the Republic. It's a choice between putting the presidency in capable hands, and abandoning the country to the disaster that is Donald Trump.

But the true believers would rather look that gift horse in the mouth.