Why do people deny the obvious?

I think I have asked this question before, but I want to ask again for this specific case. When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, it was immediately obvious to me that he was unfit. His lack of any plans that looked like anybody had done any work on them, his xenophobia and misogyny, his obvious vulgarity, his bullying and the violence he encouraged at his rallies--and a thousand more things--revealed him as a candidate who was utterly worse in kind and in degree than any candidate I had ever seen. He was orders of magnitude worse, in my eyes. Still, there were, among my acquaintances, people who did not recognize the gap between Trump's and garden variety political misbehavior. "But Hillary's emails!"

And after all this time, I know people who don't see the difference between his mountains of transgressions and those few of their political enemies. I have an acquaintance who, when told that Trump is a pathological liar, trots out examples of his political opponents' lies. Always the same two examples.

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

"You'll be able to keep your same doctor with the Affordable Care Act."

Just those two examples, and the second one isn't even a lie. Maybe she could think up a few more examples if she put her mind to it, but I could drown them in Trump's sea of lies.

I'll admit that we all have a tendency to overstate the flaws of our political enemies, and to understate those of our champions, but most people have a limit beyond which they won't go. Not so in the present case. It strikes me that it takes a herculean effort to not see the mess that Donald Trump is making day by day. My question is, What makes that effort worthwhile?

Is there a Deep State? If so, whom does it serve?

Senator Lindsey Graham said last week that, "When you find out who the whistleblower is, I'm confident you're gonna find out it's somebody from the deep state."

Senator Graham was speaking, of course, of an entity that exists in the minds of conspiracy theorists. I think that if such an all-powerful, secret organization existed, Donald Trump would never have set foot in the White House.

Or maybe keeping Trump out of the White House would not be in the Deep State's interest? Just what is understood by "Deep State?"

According to Wikipedia, "Conspiracy theorists believe that there is 'a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process....'"

Well, hell, that might describe the way the Republican Party currently operates in the open. I have heard conservatives say that they believe the electorate would vote more wisely if it consisted only of people who own property. This is an open admission that the "consent of the governed" is not their priority. And the practice, in red states, of trying to make voting ever more difficult for certain populations is an attempt to achieve just such a restricted electorate.

But I think that Trump voters actually believe that Trump is the first president elected "by the people" in a long time, despite his having lost the popular vote. They think that Trump is finally working for them, and that the current attempt to remove him from office amounts to a coup, a Deep State action.

Anyone with one eye open, however, can see that Trump is unfit for any office, that he has no regard for constitutional government, and that he is causing great harm to the country, in both foreign and domestic matters. Trump's lack of regard for the Constitution makes him a natural ally of the Republican Party that has been evolving since the Reagan administration.

For me, an ideal Deep State would be a collection of watchdogs in government who are dedicated to protecting our democratic institutions. In fact, that describes just the entity that horrifies Lindsey Graham. There are people in government, including the career civil servants who have been testifying in Trump's impeachment hearings, who understand how government should work, and what endangers democracy. There are people at the Pentagon who are exceedingly alarmed at what their commander in chief is doing. That is what I hope the Deep State is.

There's a real balancing act going on at present. Trump won the presidency according to the rules (if one assumes that Russian meddling didn't change the election's outcome), so, according to the Constitution, he entitled to certain powers. The military must follow his orders, for example. The Secret Service's job is to protect him and his family from harm. If the president, however, exceeds his constitutional powers, at what point is it proper for the military to refuse to carry out his orders?

Right now, the House of Representatives is carrying out a process that I find absolutely necessary, but we are saddled with a Republican Senate filled with senators who seem determined to brazen out the whole process and thereby damage our country for a long time.

Things blamed for mass shootings, other than guns

Whenever there's another mass shooting (and this has been a banner week), the professional obfuscators create a smokescreen of alternate reasons for gun violence. This week the deflection of choice was violent video games.

I've collected a little list of some of the things that gun-coddlers blame to protect their precious guns from negative attention.

mental illness

lenient parenting

lack of prayer in schools; sin and evil in general

too many doors in schools

schools are "soft targets"; gun-free zones; not enough guns in schools

failure of the FBI

not enough good guys with guns

toxic masculinity

media coverage of mass shootings

school kids are mean to the ones who are troubled

social media

strict gun control laws

violent video games

Democrats

Ritalin

pornography

I've got an acquaintance who comes back with the usual "Guns are not the problem!" response, which she supplements with the idea that the problems of this country are deep and complex, and that, by gosh, we need to get right down to solving all those problems!

Well, isn't that helpful? No. If you've got a country full of deep, complex problems, and you know that you can quickly cut down the number of deaths by better control of guns, that's the problem you solve first.

Nowadays, there's a not-so-new wrinkle in mass shootings: most are being carried out by young white men who are emboldened by the current occupant of the White House to express, through violence, their racial hatred. This is a fact surrounded by deep denial, as is the fact that guns are the problem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Does Medicare for all equal higher taxes for the middle class?

Most of the Democratic candidates back one version or another or Medicare for all. They differ on whether a private option should be available, for example.

They say that it will be paid for by taxes on the rich. Reporters have asked them whether higher taxes on the middle class will also be necessary. Our politicians have been cowed by the Republican stance on taxes, which is that taxes should never go up, but always down. It's a winning position, because nobody wants to pay more taxes.

But consider this: What if a good healthcare system necessitates higher taxes for the middle class? How would that change the lives of most people?

If your taxes go up, you might see a slightly smaller paycheck. Or a smaller tax refund. Or a slightly higher bill on April 15.

But look what that buys you: security from huge, unexpected medical bills. The tradeoff is that a predictable, small monthly or bi-weekly cost guarantees that you won't go bankrupt if you get a catastrophic illness.

I don't think that Democratic politicians should try to avoid answering the question of whether taxes will go up: they should stress what the tax increase gets you: peace of mind.

Allocating blame

So, among many other Trump-enabled problems, Roe vs. Wade is hanging by a thread. If we are to believe the poll numbers, the majority of Americans do not want Roe overturned, and yet here we are.

The polls also say that the majority of Americans favor more control over guns.

But somehow, politicians who disagree with the majority of Americans keep getting elected. They are in control. Donald J. Trump is president, and he shows an appetite for dictatorship. There are just too many rules thwarting his getting everything he demands. Meanwhile, the Republicans in the House and Senate keep backing him up because he enables their undemocratic and theocratic designs on America's future.

Now, there is a certain amount of blame that can be laid at the feet of politicians who gerrymander and suppress the vote of their political enemies. But a great number of everyday Americans made this happen, and a lot of it is unforgivable.

First, obviously, are those hardcore Trump supporters who watched his rallies, heard him encourage his supporters to rough up protesters, and said, "Yeah! I like this guy!" There's not much to be said about them, other than they are a horribly malicious bunch, and that they are greatly lacking in brains and morality. They are still with him, and there isn't much that will change their minds.

Now, aside from being an obviously amoral bully, Trump obviously had no policy plans whatsoever. When he said things like, "We're going to overturn Obamacare and replace it with something terrific!" the proper response, it seems to me, would be to say, "Oh, really? Can you tell us more?" But too many of the electorate are just too lazy for details, and apparently were enjoying Trumps's insults of his rivals during the primaries. Getting those liberals mad was entertaining. They didn't need no stinking substance.

It should have been obvious to any adult paying attention during the 2016 campaign that Trump would lead us precisely where we are today. But some people are slow. And some people still are unable to grasp the light years of difference between Trump and other politicians. So many (and I number many of my friends on the left among them) could not bring themselves to vote for the oh! so odious! Hillary Clinton, even to save the country from the pussy grabber. No, they couldn't see Trump's danger to America; it was just another election.

Another group I'd like to point one or more fingers at are the non-voters. "The candidates are all the same." "I'm not a political person." "My vote won't change anything." No. The fact is, these people are just too damned lazy to try to understand politics and to get off their asses and vote. I suspect some of these people are the same ones who answer "not sure" in opinion polls. "Do you approve of Trump's handling of his duties?" "Has Donald Trump committed impeachable offenses?" There's always some percentage who just aren't sure whether they approve of Trump or not. This sort of intellectual laziness is unacceptable. Get curious, and find out what Trump and the other politicians are up to! Care about your own damned life.

Donald Trump got sixty million votes in 2016. That number makes me ashamed of an awful lot of my fellow Americans. A few Republican conventions ago, Nazi sympathizer Pat Buchanan made a speech about the culture war in America. It was seen at the time as over-the-top extreme, but Republicans have been fighting that very war ever since then, and they're way too close to winning.

Are you to blame for not taking politics seriously?

Climate change denial by politicians is an insult

There is  an article in Business Insider listing all current members of Congress who are climate change deniers or "doubters." Under each legislator is a sample of the arguments he or she has used against the science, as well as a score from the League of Conservation Voters on how the member has voted on climate legislation.

Any person who has truly made an effort to understand the science behind claims of global warming should find these politicians' arguments insulting. Examples follow.

From Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama: "Important scientific research is ongoing, and there are still many questions that must be answered before we take steps to address this issue. For example, is the climate change phenomenon cyclical or is it a function of man-made pollutants, or both? I believe the science must be firmly grounded before we take any actions that could seriously cripple many sectors of our economy."

Very reasonable sounding, but here is the problem. It is often argued by deniers that there are natural climate cycles that could be responsible for our current warming trend, and that we shouldn't jump to the conclusion that it's man-made greenhouse gases that have put us in this predicament. Now, think about this argument for a minute. Do you for one second imagine that climate scientists, who have studied climate for many years, don't know about the natural cycles? They know more about climate than any layman or any member of Congress, because the study of climate is their profession. They know about the cycles, believe me, and they have taken the cycles into account. They know where we would be in the natural cycles with and without adding greenhouse gases. I imagine that climate scientists get sick of hearing this argument all the time, as do I. Imagine a climate scientist at a cocktail party, and somebody lays this new bit of cycle information on him or her. "Oh! Of course! The cycles! I never thought of the cycles! Thanks!"

Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama: "What about erosion? Every time you have that soil or rock, whatever it is, that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise because now you've got less space in those oceans because the bottom is moving up."

Well, that one doesn't sound as reasonable as the last one. Sounds kind of dumb, actually. Erosion deposits silt into the oceans at a regular rate. What is new, and what is the culprit in sea level rise, is the speed at which glacial ice is melting from land masses and returning to the ocean. The deniers have not given much thought to their argument. Their tactic is to simply give some plausible-sounding alternative cause for sea level rise, and declare their job done. They may think they've done the job of refuting the scientists' claims, but they have done a piss-poor job. Scientists have done the work, and they have predicted that melting ice will cause the sea level to rise. And the sea level is rising, as predicted. You don't get to throw out an alternative theory without doing the work to back it up.

Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona: "I do not believe climate change is occurring. I do not think that humans have a significant impact on climate. The federal government should stop regulating and stomping on our economy and freedoms in the name of a discredited theory."

Well, that's a very Libertarian argument. There is no attempt at all to present a scientific argument, except to flatly say the science isn't there. Biggs's argument betrays his real objection to the notion of human-caused climate change: government shouldn't be telling us what to do. The freedom of people and industries to continue behaving has they like trumps any scientific argument.

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas: "The simple fact is that for the last 16 years the earth's temperature has not warmed."

Senator Cotton said this in 2014. In the early 2000s, many climate change deniers tried a new tactic. Where they had once said that global warming was not occurring, they changed their argument to "it was occurring, but it isn't now. It has reversed itself, and now the earth is cooling!" What caused this change in strategy? In 1998, there was a spike in the temperature of the earth. It was an exceptionally hot year. For a few years thereafter, while the long term temperature trend was still upward, yearly temperatures did not match 1998. Now, as I write this, here in Washington DC, it is springtime, and I think we can all agree that it gets warmer in spring and summer. But the temperature doesn't go up in a straight line. Last Tuesday's high was 81; today's high was 72. If I took those two pieces of data and concluded that summer won't be coming this year, you would laugh at me. Well, the earth's temperature in 1998 was higher than it was in 1999, and for a few years after that. Senator Cotton would have us look at the graph for only the few years after 1998, and say, "Problem solved!" But the temperature since then has continued to lurch upward, much higher even than the "spike" year of 1998.

Senator Cotton also revealed his true, political objection to doing anything about global warming with this argument:

"They believe that Americans driving around in trucks on farms, or commuting from the suburbs where they can have a decent home into the city to work are a fundamental threat to the world, and they have to have the power and control of those Americans' lives to implement their radical vision for humanity."

Again, there is no science in Cotton's argument. His argument is not that humans don't cause climate change; it is that it would be unfair to force any behavioral change.

Representative Tom McClintock of California: "The climate has been changing for four and a half billion years. The extent to which human activity has a role to play is being hotly debated right now."

Hotly debated by politicians, yes. By politicians who, for reasons having nothing to do with science, refuse to let the science penetrate their defenses.

Representative John Rutherford of Florida: "Climate was changing before we had carbon emissions. I need to be convinced how much of that is man and how much of it is just the global climate conditions."

Well, Representative Rutherford, the numbers are there for all to see, if you are truly interested. What would it take to convince you? If you were holding hearings in the House, and a scientist laid the science before you, would you listen, or would you defensively continue saying that climate has always changed? There is no doubt that climate has always changed. The fact that the climate has always changed does not address scientific arguments about what is causing it now.

Representative Jody Ice of Georgia: "It is a shame that because a scientist has reached a different conclusion on climate science than the liberal elite that the integrity of her research would be called into question."

Again the political argument that science has a political agenda. If the "integrity" of someone's research is called into question in scientific circles, it is because the science is sloppy or in some way dishonest, not because the scientist "reached a different conclusion."

Now, I have probably used too many examples already, but the conclusion that I come to is that, for nearly always political reasons, politicians are actively engaged in a refusal to be convinced by scientific argument, and also in attempts to muddy the waters so that the general public believes that there is still some hot debate among scientists as to the causes of climate change. There isn't.

So, what are these political reasons I've been talking about? In the main, their reasons are economical (regulations are ruining our economy); and ideological (the government is interfering in people's lives; government is too big).

We can continue to argue the politics from now until doomsday, but such arguments have no bearing on whether the science is true. The scientific approach is to look at what is happening, and to try to figure out why. The scientist does experiments, and makes predictions. If the predictions don't come true, the scientist does more experiments to find out why. If the predictions do come true, the scientist writes a paper for other scientists to look over. The other scientists may criticize; the other scientists may try to reproduce the original scientist's results.

Scientific work on any worthwhile subject is painstaking, and it can take years. The scientists definitely know more about their subjects than do politicians and other laypersons. The politician's job is to sincerely consider the science, and to make policy that addresses problems. The politician who flippantly dismisses the scientific consensus is insulting scientists, and is insulting the intelligence of his or her constituents.

How Donald Trump gave my life meaning

Pay no attention to the title. Since I saw the so-called Attorney General's summary of the Mueller report, I've felt worse than at any time since election night 2016. I've got the same deflated feeling as I had when I realized that Trump had the electoral votes to win.

I knew exactly the kind of horror show a Trump administration would be; I was never silly enough to believe that there would ever be a "pivot." The elected Trump was exactly what candidate Trump promised, and I knew he would be.

On November 8, 2016, the electorate let the country down. I say this even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by three million. That sixty million voters could be stupid enough to vote for someone as vile as Donald Trump is enough to make a person feel like a stranger in his own country.

Although I never believed in the "pivot," I did have a tiny speck of hope that some of the members of the electoral college would take their jobs as protectors against an unfit president seriously enough to be "unfaithful." That, of course, didn't happen. In fact, there were some unfaithful Clinton electors, to add insult to injury. The electoral college and the system let us down.

My next faint hope in the time of dread that was the period between November 8, 2016, and January 20, 2017, was that the Democrats in the U.S. Senate would pull the dirty trick that had been suggested, and sneak Merrick Garland onto the Supreme Court. They didn't try that. It was a long shot, but the desperate grasp at straws.

Now, about that "meaning" part in my title. I retired in 2016, and looked forward to a quiet, relaxed coast to the graveyard, but because of Trump and his Republican henchmen, that was not to be. First, there was the matter of Obamacare. Now, I'll admit that the premiums were already too high for a retiree. (I'm on Medicare myself, but my wife is too young for that, and is unable to work.) But, with Democrats in power, things like that could be improved. With the Republican sabotage that was really designed to kill Obamacare off forever, there is no hope for improvement.

Now, during my whole life, it has been the Democratic Party that has tried to improve the lives of the citizenry; the Republicans have long been the party of maintaining the status quo, no matter how dire. Sometime after the Nixon resignation, however, an especially deadly mean streak began to show itself. Once upon a time, for example, the Republicans merely tried to avoid spending money on welfare for the unemployed. That stance has metastasized into one of outright hostility towards people who are working hard, and yet can't make a living wage. Once upon a time, the Republicans merely fought against the right to an abortion as granted by Roe vs. Wade. Again, metastasis: now they attack birth control itself.

You can choose your own examples of ways in which today's Republicans, far from merely refusing to make life in America better, are actively trying to make it worse.

You may have guessed that the way Trump has given my life meaning is that he has made it more interesting. For more than two years now, I have done all I could (in my own insignificant way) to resist Trump's fascistic intentions. So far, so so-so.

I still hang onto a thread of hope that, if there is such a thing as a "deep state," it doesn't let us down. Or that the electorate has awakened enough to not make the same mistake again.

A snowball's chance in Washington: Trump and Global "Waming"

"In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!" - Donald J. Trump

Trump and other climate change deniers, notably Senator Inhofe, seem to think that cold weather proves that the atmosphere isn't heating up. Climate scientists have made various predictions over the years, based on how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are added to the atmosphere. Among those predictions, how much higher average global temperature will be, how much the polar ice sheets and glaciers will melt, how much that melting will raise sea level, how warming will intensify storms, etc. These predictions have been coming true without any acknowledgement from the scoffers.

Note that no scientist has made the following predictions:

Global warming means that it will never get very cold, ever again, anywhere on earth.

Global warming means that it will never snow again, anywhere on earth.

Global warming will put an end to winter for good.

So, what does the scoffer-in-chief think he has proved here?

 

 

A quick thank-you to Speaker Pelosi

I appreciate so much that Nancy Pelosi stayed strong and never wavered during the Trump shutdown.

I say that as a person who, as the shutdown got longer and longer, felt my own resolve weakening. The empathetic me did not want to see civil servants and contractors suffer, and I found myself thinking, "Gosh, this thing has got to end. People are suffering."

But I also knew that giving in would lead Trump to use the shutdown every time he didn't get his way. Not giving in was the wise response.

You don't give in to extortion. You don't negotiate with a terrorist.