When a country is attacked, and the attacker is focused solely on total victory, domination, destruction, something else is going on, behind the scenes, in the global environment. With news and instant communications flying around the planet, a peace loving burgeoning majority of humans (peace is after all an intrinsically life sustaining natural order and we would not be alive without it), are taking sides.

After all, we can’t help projecting, what if it was us being bombed? Thus a wave builds, almost invisibly, which at its routes is akin to an Hegelian anti-thesis.

And as criminal thugs are cast out of planetary societies, so too are whole groups (which can be described as “whole nations”) are, by necessity, cast out of a planetary society.

This “casting out”, this penalty, is evidence of what the philosopher Hegel surely would have called an “antithesis.” This species human survival trait is what is happening now. It is going to take some time. Hegel called what emerges a “synthesis.”

So after death and wide destruction, peace and harmony inevitably returns to the planet. And yes, we all do suffer fools and evil doers. Part of sharing a planet together.

Almost any publicly facing issue is subject to political (or similarly, social) contention. Now, mind numbing contention. This likely also results in procrastination in working out and testing potential solutions. This routine delays achieving good outcomes, or worse, invites bad outcomes. It is better to anticipate potential problems, and thoroughly understand their underlying trajectories and likeliness. For example, aggressively delaying dealing with global warming, will likely bring us to the point of “much harder to reverse,” or worse “the point of no return”. Conversely, weighing epidemics, recessions, inflation, wars, and climate change, by their probabilities, with constant reference to their potential damage to humanity, is the only logical way to address them in a rational society.

Walking down most streets in American cities, one can’t help but reflect that on average, almost every other person that walks by you, voted for Trump.

Yet well before election time, a plethora of disqualifying information, revealing future predictive behavioral characteristics, had already emerged. We had Charlottsville. Or credible reports of female molestation. Or grabbing woman by the …….

Or after his election loss, the devastating directions to his staff at his election denying rally to disable metal and gun detectors, because the people in the crowd, were “not there to hurt me”. Never mind the police, other guards. And members of Trumps’ own crowd.

Those that have joined Trump as political allies, have been learning some of Trump’s elementary secrets. Like how to cheat a political or business opponent. Think Trumps’golf game, and his habit of moving the ball when other players were not looking. Or gaming the IRS. Or misleading one’s bank, to make him more “loan worthy”, or wildly inflating property insurance claims. No one really questions the validity of the respective news reports.

News is not all fake. If it were, by now, no one would trust anything, which is absurd. Almost everyone believes there is a material substance to at least some of the reporting regarding Trump’s behavioral foibles, Nothing can remain a secret for long anymore. There are too many observers and observation points.

For Trump, everyone is really an opponent or potential opponent that needs to be treated accordingly. Those seeking Trumps endorsement, surely, if elected, or before, will likely have to perpetuate some “good” relationship. Probably based on such things as accolades, money, status and the promise of pardons for Trumps’ people, or Trump himself, as reciprocation.

A potential danger is electing another Republican, that might be a “wolf in lambs clothing”, or a baby wolf in lambs clothing. Adopting Trump techniques and style. A Disantis for example, may have to privately pledge loyalty to Trump to “earn” a hardy endorsement, and one that is not rescinded prior his own re-election or presidential run. Do we know now what contingent currency Trump will demand in return? And, of course, part of the endorsement would no doubt require the quid quo in the form of a Trump pardon when or if needed. A profitable business deal perhaps? It is all a matter of endorsements. It is sadly already obvious that a Republican presidential candidate may not have much of a chance of being elected president absent a Trump endorsement, and an un-endorsement would likely be fatal. This is the “curse” the Republican leadership has brought on themselves.

Republican politicians, hoping for re-election, now have to publicly compliment the naked emperors’ clothing for all to see. While non-captives of his cult, can only look on in amazement. It is unreal, and truly unbalancing, sadly bearing a resemblance to the very early days of Hitlers’ rise to power.

Trump is adept at using persuasion techniques, which largely explains his following. It surely was not his skill at governing a country, state, or city, and arguably, even a business (I say arguably) because he has now really “gotten caught”. (Using this phrase “gotten caught” is ironic because it is itself one of his favorite persuasion techniques), bringing public suspicion to any adversary of his choosing.
Caught for what, you might ask? As the mind falls asleep, few ask. These techniques are well known to those who study the science of persuasion. They are incredibly effective. For example, using “social proof.” Example, the claim “everybody knows,” “everybody is saying,” makes the listener want to join “everybody” by simply agreeing with the claimant.

Or nicknaming his adversaries, making them fight to get their identity back. He has got 6 or seven of these tactics, and they are highly effective, having enabled him to get this far. Even Hitlers’ Mein Kampf, highlights, for example (though many more comparisons can be sited) the concept of large rallies, one of Hitler’s favorite tactics, providing all onlookers the persuasion technique of ‘social proof.” “Wow”, one bystander might reason, can all these people be wrong?

No need to define how far Trump got, it was an amazing feat, but with unfortunate history making repercussions, and now books and books have and will continue describing the journey. The cascade has years ago started. The historical record, looked at through almost any perspective, will be hard to deny by future generations of Americans. It is an inevitability.

Historical events, and the reality that surrounds them, though subject to some level of debate, are hard to completely deny. A famous man’s Ill judgement, irrationality, poor mental condition, countered by cunning, evilness, narcissism, will all be universally recorded, and eventually seen, alike, by most onlookers. It will be a long-term embarrassment to America.

There will always be lots of eyes on Trump. He has made himself a “newsmaker.” He has a “following”. That is both good and bad. Every front has a back. The bigger the front, the bigger the back. Trump (and his eventually humiliated followers) will pay an awful price. The only pertinent question is how much will all the rest of us pay?

7/9/22: Martin Westerman

A black hole at the center of a spiral galaxy called The Milky Way causes it to revolve in the universe. But 25,800 light-years away at the galaxy’s far end, on a tiny planet populated by tinier creatures – a small collection of pale-skinned hominids, think the galaxy revolves around them.

They call themselves “homo sapiens,” they call their planet “Earth,” and they are the latest hominid species to exist on Earth, which is 4.5 billion years old (1 year = a rotation of Earth around the “sun,” a minor star at the center of their solar system). Hominids have existed there for 1 million years. Sapiens – also known as “humans,” have existed for 100,000 years.

But today, about 40 million loud, pale humans who call themselves “White,” and live in an artificially bordered area called “the United States” (located between two bodies of saltwater they call “oceans”), are screaming and arming themselves against being “replaced” by hominids of other skin colors. Earth is divided into many artificially bordered areas (“towns,” “counties,” “cities” “states,” “provinces,” “countries”), each with its own human population, in various shades of skin color, various levels of “development” (ability to provide populations with adequate water, food, shelter and commerce), and various languages for communication.

Sapiens have developed a trait they call “humor,” which involves creating surprise at incongruity in context, or in a short story or question called a “joke.” The final statement of a joke is called a “punch line.” Humor stimulates a range of reactions, from a relaxation of the face to several bursts of exhaled air. Most sapiens possess some capacity for generating or appreciating humor, but generally, the more agitated the humans (like the Loud Whites), the less they appreciate humor. Humans judge humor with one of two statements: “That’s funny,” or “That’s not funny.”

Here is some humor:
• If sapiens are the last of five hominid species who once walked on Earth, and they have already replaced the other four species by seeing them die off, killing them or interbreeding with them, why is any sapiens worried about replacement?
• A joke: what do you call a sapiens whose skin color ranges from pink to brown? Punch line: A White.
• Another joke: What do Whites call non-Whites? Answer: “People of color” (or “POCs”).
• Another joke: which sapiens group represents less than 0.5% of Earth’s total population, and barely 20% of the United States White population, but thinks they’re the only humans who should occupy the Earth? Punch line: Loud Whites. Is that funny?

The Loud Whites’ activities in the United States would be humorous and insignificant if they existed in a vacuum, such as an asteroid in space. But they live amongst other humans, and magnify their agitation through demonstrations, murders, and broadly distributed public media, and control of local governments (agreed-on structures for managing affairs within borders).

Most Loud Whites subscribe to the “Christian” religion (religion: a belief and principles system generally based on myths, and presided over or commanded by one or more all-powerful gods or god-like sapiens). Must humans on Earth have agreed to abide by a Christian calendar based on the supposed birth date of the demi-god Jesus Christ, even though there is no agreed Year 0, time actually began at the birth of the Earth, and many hominid religions mark time differently, starting from 5780 to 10,000 years before the present year. The current Earth year is 2022 post-Jesus Christ birth, but is called A.D. (after death), while the years before the birth are called B.C. (before Christ). No Christians acknowledge the indulgence of other cultures in granting their time frame primacy, by calling it the “Common Era.”

Christianity shares founding documents (The Bible) with two other religions – Islam and Judaism. The Bibles are contradictory: they counsel both loving and respecting all creations on Earth, and dominating and killing all creations on Earth. The Loud Whites speak of the former, and act on the latter.

To power their activities on Earth, hominids originally used energy resources on the planet’s surface – water, wind, burnable materials (woody plants, oils from plants and animals), and heat from their sun. But late in the 1600s A.D., they discovered burnable, carbon-based energy sources beneath Earth’s surface (coal, oil and gas). These “fossil fuels” are the decayed by-products of life forms that lived on Earth 65 million years before hominids. They were wiped out by a meteor that struck Earth, caused geological disruption and oxidation, left dust and carbon compounds blanketing the atmosphere, and killed most of Earth’s life forms. Eventually, other life forms replaced them, including hominids 64 million years later.

Now, burning fossil fuels powers most hominid activities and inventions. Their oxidation produces carbon dust and compounds, which are again overloading Earth’s atmosphere and killing its plants, animals and humans. Hominid activities, including agriculture, habitation development, resource extraction, and landfills (designated collection areas for unusable objects), are displacing living areas of other life forms, driving many to extinction, and replacing them with imported species of flora and fauna.

Most of Earth’s flora and fauna exhibit both intelligence and the ability to communicate, but humans consider themselves Earth’s premier life form, and rarely recognize other species’ capacities, or communicate with them. Instead, humans exploit them for their food and economic assets. Humans even cannot recognize intelligence in other humans, or communicate with them, if their beliefs, cultures and/or colors differ from their own.

Since the Christian (or Common Era) 1400s, Whites from Earth’s Northern hemisphere have conquered vast areas of Earth’s Western and Southern Hemispheres by force, overwhelming, enslaving, subverting and/or killing (replacing) the original inhabitants (White and non-White alike) – all for the glory of the Christian gods. Whites accept and celebrate replacing others, but not others replacing them.

As part of their conquests in the 1700s, Whites created the ironically named “United States,” structured to favor only Whites over all POC, including the original inhabitants (misnamed “Indians”). Their founding document states that “All men are created equal,” but it meant only White males, not White females. POC were imported from the Southern Hemisphere to labor as slaves on farms without citizenship rights, and forcibly converted to Christians. When large groups of other United States Whites in the 1800s decided slavery was wrong, the pro-slavery Whites declared war on them to retain their slaves. They lost the war, and the anti-slavery Whites, who controlled the government, freed the POC slaves, and granted them citizenship rights. But pro-slavery Whites have been resisting this progress ever since, and now they control the United States government.

As POCs (and women) sought to achieve the freedom, economic and political status of White males, ruling Whites restricted their opportunities. The small group of Loud Whites has invented “white replacement theory” as the latest reason to restrict POC rights. Most POC Christians and non-Christian Whites think benefits can derive from shared opportunities, and do not subscribe to “White replacement theory.” But many Whites acquiesce to restricting POC and women’s opportunities, as a way to retain White male supremacy. Many Loud male and female Whites use their Christianity and 18th Century United States founding documents to justify restrictions on the rights and opportunities of anyone who does not agree with them – both POCs and non-compliant females.

Loud Whites insist the Christian religion is the best and only belief system, and that fossil fuel production, poisoning of air, land and water resources and life forms that depend on them, and warring activities are harmless and justified. They also insist that anyone who disagrees with them should be destroyed. Loud Whites therefore pose significant dangers to others on Earth.

It would appear that Loud White hominids should worry less about POCs replacing them, and more about their effect on Earth. Their planet’s natural processes may dispose of them and the hominids they fear, and replace them all with new life forms in due ourse. Whether this happens or not won’t matter to the planet, its solar system, the stars or the black hole around which they, not the Loud Whites all revolve.

Why the environmental movement will fail, and how you can make money on it
 Martin Westerman / ©2022

If you had let environmental groups pick your stocks since the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, instead of paying high-priced “gurus” to pick them, you’d have long-ago made your fortune. Why? Because the environmental groups’ villains included aircraft, chemical, fossil fuel, pharmaceutical, tourism and other bedrock enterprises of the New York Stock Exchange, S&P 500 and mutual funds. Environmentalists would have picked you a winning portfolio at a bargain price.

More than 50 years after Earth Day #1, every country in the world still depends on fossil fuels to power its economy – from energy generation and leaf blowers to transportation and wars (currently, U.S. vs. “drugs” and Russia vs. Ukraine), all supplied by such climate change deniers as Shell, Exxon, BP and Gazprom. As the price of fossil fuels rises, economies decline; as they fall, economies rise.

Today’s Americans have bigger things to think about than the environment. As former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson asked Exxon shareholders on May 29, 2013: “What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?”

One might find that statement ironic. Without a planet, there would be no humanity, hence indeed no suffering. And thus all human potential forever gone.

Economists in the early 1990s conservatively valued the environment’s benefits and savings (ecosystem services) at $33 trillion a year (Robert Costanza et al.), a number that dwarfed the $28 trillion generated by the world’s economies. But ecosystem services do not show up on any public or private entity’s balance sheets. No accounting standard (GASB or GAAP), or budgets or financial statements assess or account for oxygen production, carbon sink, erosion control, stormwater management, public health, property value enhancement, extreme weather moderation and more that the environment provides for free. In 2022 dollars, the $54 trillion value of Earth’s ecosystems still dwarfs all value that enterprises create (E-commerce? Only $5.5 trillion).

While irony informs environmentalists, it doesn’t inform investors. Even though the scale of “soft” green assets (the environment) dwarfs the scale of hard “grey” ones (built infrastructure), investments in “grey” assets dwarf those in green. Successful enterprises operate “in the black,” unsuccessful ones “in the red.” None operate “in the green.”

Following Rachel Carson’s 1962 expose book Silent Spring, the U.S. banned DDT, which major U.S. chemical companies had been producing. Yet, the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants (POPs) includes an exemption for DDT, where its benefits to control insect-borne illnesses “outweigh (human) health and environmental risks.” Where humans benefit, harming the planet and its life forms is an acceptable trade-off.

Americans’ balanced portfolios and wealth building are based on investments in enterprises that create more negative than positive impacts on the environment: the real estate, agribusiness, aircraft, automotive, asphalt, beauty, building materials, cement, chemical, clothing, coatings and paints, construction, defense, electrical and electronics, fast food, fossil fuels, furniture, glass, government, grocery, health care, hospitality, marine, medical, metals, mining, pharmaceuticals, plastics, tourism, treated wood and waste management industries.

Besides stuffing landfills, North America’s investment sweethearts have also created “forever chemicals” and substances that either do not, or take decades or centuries to break down in the environment: DDT, heat- and oil-resistant poly- and per-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), flame retardants (PBDEs), insulation liquids (PCBs), lethal radioactive waste (from the energy, military and medical establishments), and micro-plastics, phosgene, cyanide, herbicides (e.g., DuPont’s Agent Orange and Monsanto’s glyphosate), roadway paint, vehicle tire and rail brake dust, lead, arsenic, asbestos and mercury. Most of these products are now found in and harm humans, other fauna, flora, air, land and water. The U.S. is also the world’s #1 plastic waste contributor, and a chief contributor to the 50 million tons of electronic waste dumped every year worldwide.

“This isn’t personal; it’s business,” goes the saying. People can afford to be moral or immoral. Money is amoral. And survival of for-profits, non-profits, governments and economies depends on money.

Environmentalists have made the moral case, showing human impacts on polar bears and other animal s. But they have failed to get the monetary impacts incorporated into business and government balance sheets (via GASB and GAAP). They have come close with Ecosystem Service Valuation (ESV) – incorporating ES monetary values in nature restoration projects, and with Transfers of Development Rights (TDR) – land swaps between suburban and exurban landowners. The exurb retains a pastoral landscape by selling development rights to parties who add development density in other urban or suburban locations.

But the specialization inherent in capitalist economies challenges environmentalists. It has unwittingly separated end users, intermediaries and producers from the environment that provides the resources for their products and their survival on Earth.

One way to help reduce that separation is to extend private property rights to their end point: any material mined or produced on private property remains the property of the mining or producing company. Thus, any transfer through monetary exchange to intermediaries and end users would make possession of that property a limited-term lease, so the originator and/or its assigns would be responsible for the material’s ultimate disposition. This would internalize costs, and stop the transferring of disposal responsibility to others. But the opposite occurs.

Externalizing environmental costs has changed the planet’s weather patterns, as well as the migration and growth patterns of marine and land animals and plants. Rare bomb cyclones, heat domes, atmospheric rivers, thermal inversions, and wildfire seasons are now becoming common. The resulting destruction and dislocation costs are astronomical. But the U.S. economy regards payments for fire-fighting, damage recovery and resettlement, medical care, increased use of fuels and electric power for mitigation of heat waves (air conditioning) and cold snaps (heating), and even increased insurance premiums – as credits, not debits on the U.S. GDP. Our accounting systems are obviously flawed.

Thus, human commerce and exploration have unwittingly spread invasive species and diseases worldwide. Europeans since 1634 have brought smallpox, Yellow Fever, cholera, scarlet fever, and Spanish flu to the Americas. Also, polio, Asian flu, HIV-AIDS, SARS, Swine Flu, ZIKA, Ebola, H1N1, Norovirus, MERS and COVID. Likely next epidemics: monkeypox and avian flu. They have proliferated plant diseases, too: blights that killed the American chestnut, corn species, boxwood and other flora; fungus infections that killed oaks and larches; rusts and borer insects that are killing madronas, birches and other trees. All these diseases have generated widespread deaths, massive impacts to world economies, and profitable activities for chemical, pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies.

We eat unwittingly – more meat per capita today than in 1970, even as global bovine flatulence (methane) from the livestock and dairy industries adds more greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere than cars, aircraft, trains, ships and all other modes of transport. Meanwhile, U.S. factory farming of beef, pork and poultry generate more waste than local disposal systems can manage.

We drink and irrigate unwittingly. The U.S. Forest Service reports that half of our 204 freshwater basins cannot keep up with demand, and within the next 50 years, many parts of the U.S. could see their freshwater supplies shrink by two-thirds. Consumption-encouraging water agreements and government policies ignored potential extreme weather impacts, and the time, snow pack and rainfall required to replenish water supplies. Americans are boosting GDP in their search for more drinking and irrigation water – digging more wells, and building energy-intensive desalination plants, which deliver filtered water at about twice the price of fresh, but at 99.4% less than the cost of bottled. About 80% of their power comes from fossil fuels, 11% from renewables, and 9% from deadly-waste nuclear.

And we live unwittingly. Environmentalists assert that urban areas are the most ecological places to live. Today, nearly half of the world lives in them. But they present downsides: heat island effect, income inequity, economic and governance challenges, traffic congestion, poor air and water quality, aging infrastructure, supply chain issues, elimination of green spaces, commercially delivered invasive species, high living costs, increased homelessness and slum growth, drinking water and waste-disposal challenges, high energy consumption, high resident and worker stress, faster disease spreads, shorter lifespans.

Meanwhile, a population the size of Florida – about 21.5 million, is roaming the planet as “climate refugees” (U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)). By 2050, a population the size of China – 1.5 billion, may be out there. The wrong perspectives here are (a) expecting humans will adjust to climate changes, and (b) viewing refugees as potential customers for housing, clothing, food and entertainment.

Environmentalists have succeeded since Earth Day 1970 in passing laws and creating agencies that have made significant progress in both addressing environmental problems, and improving human product efficiencies. But politics trumps the environment. Right-wing U.S. politicians and conservative justices, financed by the U.S. commercial, fossil fuel and agribusiness industries are now working through the North American administrative, judicial and legislative systems now to dismantle those agencies and laws.

All of this reminds me of a scene from the television series Battlestar Galactica (Episode #206), where the Cylon Symbiant whispers into her partner’s ear, “There’s one thing we know about human beings with certainty: they are masters of self-destruction.”

Art imitates life. In Sapiens, Yuval Harari notes that, “The moment the first hunter-gatherer set foot on an Australian beach (from Africa) was the moment that Homo Sapiens climbed to the top rung of the food chain on a particular landmass and therefore became the deadliest species in the annals of planet Earth.”

Most ironically, homo sapiens is the last of five hominid species that once walked the Earth. But its record of driving animal and plant species to extinction is second only to the meteor that hit Earth 66 million years ago and wiped out 97% of all life. While humans consider themselves uniquely intelligent, all Earth’s plant and animal species display intelligence – from basic instinct to near-human reasoning. Yet humans rarely recognize or communicate with those intelligences, and instead have asserted their own primacy, and exploited “lesser species” for their protein, ritual value and other assets. Often, groups of humans do not recognize the intelligence of other humans, or communicate with them if their belief systems or color differ from their own.

Humans should have long ago mastered the challenge of “Saving the Earth.” But polarized politics, stymied governments, patterns of commerce, land development, travel and conflict show that humans have little interest in or political will to change their habits.

The economy is providing well for them, and all welfare and progress depend on healthy economies. So the environmental movement will fail, but we’ll all make money on it — until the environment fails us.

Why the environmental movement will fail, and how you can make money on it

Since Earth Day in 1971, if you had paid $10 a year to join the Sierra Club and Greenpeace instead of shelling out thousands a year to financial gurus for the “best” stock picks, you’d be rich now. Why? Because those groups’ “environmental villains” list included most of the fossil fuel, pharmaceutical, commercial and agribusiness “bad actors” that underlie the S&P 500. So basically, the environmental movement would have picked a winning portfolio for you at a bargain price.

More than 60 years after Rachel Carson alerted us to the dangers of DDT, it’s still the pesticide of choice for eradicating mosquitoes where mosquito-borne illnesses are prevalent. More than 120 years since Teddy Roosevelt declared, “I’ve been poisoned!” after reading Sinclair Lewis’ meat packing industry expose, The Jungle, meat consumption and land devoted to cattle ranching in the U.S. have increased. Between those bovines and dairy cows, cattle flatulence is now counted as a major contributor to global climate change.

While energy efficiency in all human inventions and buildings has improved, and the EPA was created and laws passed and enforced to reduce pollution in air, water and land, no government has yet valued the environment in monetary terms. Even though its benefits and savings (“ecosystem services”) were valued in the early 1990s at more than $33 trillion a year (about $54 trillion in 2022 dollars — Robert Costanza et al.), no government or enterprise in North America has assessed or accounts for those values in their budgets or financial statements. The only land value they recognize is real estate appraisal. Owners of private timber lands make more money selling their land for subdivisions than by harvesting the trees on it. So residential and commercial land development has continued unabated, millions of acres of trees have been cut, habitats erased and ecosystem services lost.

The “green lifestyle” (living in dense residential areas, taking public transit everywhere, bearing few children, eating organic and vegetarian, etc.), hasn’t become mainstream, despite more than 50 years of marketing, promotion, experimentation and discussion since the first Earth Day. Organic food products cost 2-4 times more than standard products; “ecological” construction and commercial products are also cost significantly more. Many enterprises now practice “sustainable business,” but most of those on the Sierra Club-Greenpeace bad actor list don’t. There are 18.7 billion Google entries under “Going green,” and 1.8 billion under “books on green practice,” yet this massive self-help area has relatively few practitioners.

Recyclable and compostable materials are mixed in most restaurants and commercial enterprises, and end up in landfills. Industries rarely control their end-user waste, or much of their own production waste. Plastic collects in rivers, and in sea and ocean hot spots and gyres; lethal radioactive waste generated by the energy, military and medical establishments since the 1930s has yet to find a re-use or permanent disposal site. The freighters and tankers that carry the world’s globalized fuels and products burn a gallon of sulfurous oil per 150 feet they travel across our oceans. A Los Angeles study found that ocean-going ships berthed at Long Beach docks produce more aggregate air pollution than all five million cars on the LA freeways.

Every country in the world uses some fossil fuel to power its economy, from coal-fired power plants to leaf blowers to weapons systems. When the price of fossil fuels goes up, the economy goes down. Humans keep mindlessly boosting their carbon output, blanketing the earth in dust and greenhouse gases, and ignoring that egregious carbon producer, war. Most of it does not get mitigated in carbon offsets.

Let’s also add the long-term effects of toxins that have been released into the environment over the centuries – from early millennia lead and mercury to current DDT, PCBs and methane. None are being fully addressed or mitigated. Chemical flame retardants (PBDE’s) for example, harm human nervous systems, hormonal functions and reproductive organs, and cause cancers. They vaporize when heated, or simply rub off of products where they’ve been applied, and rise into the air as dust that can travel great distances. They take decades to break down. Many countries in the world, but not the U.S., have outlawed them. Manufacturers have replaced them with other flame retardants, and these chemicals are also sparsely regulated in the U.S.

Diseases have also been globalized since the Spanish flu and cholera epidemics appeared around 1918. Following on, we have seen polio, Asian flu, HIV-AIDS, SARS, Swine Flu, ZIKA, Ebola, H1N1, MERS and COVID, with more to likely appear. COVID has been the deadliest virus in the U.S. since Spanish flu.

As humans produce harmful products, lurch from crisis to crisis, dig themselves out of wars, natural disasters and vast man-made catastrophes at fabulous costs in lives, resources and treasure, I’m reminded of a scene on the tv series Battlestar Galactica, where the alien symbiont whispers into her partner’s ear: “One thing we know about humans: they are masters of self-destruction.”

We created this mess. How do we dig ourselves out of it and save the Earth? The question seems ridiculous, since this is the only place in the universe where we can survive. Of course humans would mobilize to save themselves. Yet, they don’t. Between polarized politics and stoking the economy with purchases of goods and services, commercial and residential development on former forest and farm lands, travel, uses of non-recyclable and non compostable materials that are simply investments in long term landfill development, and driving billions of fossil-fueled miles in millions of vehicles, they exhibit no interest in or political will to change their habits. The economy is providing well for them.

All welfare and progress depend on a healthy economy, and sustainable business is a more expensive and less economical proposition than standard practice. People have bigger things to think about than the environment – jobs, homes, families, prestige, entertainment, politics. So the environmental movement is failing, but we’re all making money on it.

Martin Westerman,(4/1/2022)

What Biden could have said:

My fellow Americans, 90 years ago a madman in Europe threatened to destroy the world if Europe did not give him a piece of Czechoslovakia. So Europe capitulated, and gave Adolf Hitler that piece of Czechoslovakia. But then he wanted all of Czechoslovakia, as well as Austria and Poland. After that, he wanted the rest of Europe. The United States and allies around the world went to war to stop that madman, and decades of peace and prosperity have followed.

A great historian once said, if we don’t learn the lessons of history, we are doomed to repeat them. Today, another madman is threatening to destroy the world if he doesn’t get a piece of Ukraine. The world gave him Crimea in eastern Ukraine, but now Vladimir Putin wants all of Ukraine. And then he will want Latvia, Estonia and Albania, and Yugoslavia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and half of Germany. He seems to think that he can recreate the Soviet Union, or Russia of the czars. He cannot. Time has moved on. And if he doesn’t move with it, history will leave him and Russia behind.

But Mr. Putin has not gotten the message of history yet. Instead, he has activated his nuclear arsenal and threatens a global catastrophe if he doesn’t get his way. If the world does not give him Ukraine, he says he will destroy us all.

So we will now be clear. First, the United States does not abide authoritarian government here at home, and it does not abide authoritarian governments attacking sovereign states abroad.

We went to war 90 years ago to prevent a madman from imposing his violent, authoritarian rule over Europe. The United States supports the will of people in every country to choose the government they want. Putin is not giving Ukraine that choice.

This unprovoked attack on Ukraine is partly the fault of the previous American administration. It gave Mr. Putin the impression that the United States is weak and that it will not act to prevent naked aggression against a peaceful, sovereign state. Nothing could be further from the truth. The United States economy is the strongest in the world, and we are using it to support the people of Ukraine, so they can determine their own future. It is up to them, not Russia, to choose their future.

The United States military is unequaled in the world. We choose when and where to engage for the greatest possible effect. We and our European allies warn Mr. Putin that he does not want to invite our combined military force into the Eastern European theatre to act on Ukraine’s behalf. The leader of Russia may also have forgotten that no state has ever acted on a nuclear threat, thanks to the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Russia’s nuclear arsenal is one third the size of the United States. So what the Russian leader is telling us is that he is willing to risk nuclear warfare, and to sacrifice all of Russia to get Ukraine. That kind of thinking is illogical, and it can only make sense to a madman.

In the card game of poker, a player without the winning cards may pretend that he has them anyway. We call that a bluff. We are confident that Mr. Putin is bluffing, and he does not hold the winning cards.

So I now urge all world leaders who support self-determination for every country, to warn the Russian leader that he must cease his country’s aggressive actions, and pull all Russian and Russian proxy forces out of Ukraine. Otherwise, he and his country will face immediate and severe, global diplomatic and economic consequences.

The Russian leader has said that economic sanctions against Russia are an act of war. This is almost humorous coming from a man who is waging unprovoked war against a peaceful neighboring state.

Next, the United States will continue its diplomatic and economic sanctions against the aggressor until its war operations cease and it removes its forces from Ukraine. In addition to those actions, I am ordering US forces Europe to DEFCON 2, and I am authorizing US commanders, and requesting NATO commanders to alert their Russian counterparts that US and NATO air forces will begin enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine at 1200 hours local time February 6, 2022. I am also authorizing US forces to respond appropriately to aggressive behavior by Russian military ships and planes at sea and in the air. Until now, US naval and air forces have exercised enormous restraint and grace in the face of provocative and unwarranted acts by their Russian counterparts. Our naval and air forces no longer need to exercise that restraint.

Likewise, the United States and its Allies and supporters have exercised enormous restraint in the face of this Ukraine aggression. We have reached our limit. It is time for the Russian state to cease its aggression, and act as a modern partner with its neighbor nations. It cannot turn back the clock. It cannot rebuild the Soviet Union. It cannot recreate the Russia of the czars. It cannot reverse the tide of history. Any attempt to do those things is not just folly.

Fox News (simple) and all advertisers on that media.

Cancel culture for everybody!

Cancel culture is becoming the new Godwin’s Law. Godwin (1990) said as any online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler becomes more likely. Today, the same applies to “cancel culture.” Reductio ad Hitlerum is now an overblown Reductio ad cancelum.

Cancel culture has been the human norm since the dawn of history. It only appears new today because the phrase was re-invented in 2017 to describe “cancelling” the reputation and accomplishments of someone prominent (like Harvey Weinstein) who had behaved or spoken egregiously. But since then, it has come to include “cancelling” groups (Confederacy sympathizers), monuments and site names (named abusers, criminals and slaveholders), turns of phrase (anything non-PC), and finally, whole culture (white people).

The Neanderthal, Denisovans, Homo Naledi and other homo erectus species have disappeared, some (like Neanderthals) apparently canceled by us homo sapiens, some wipoed out by environmental disasters. Today, we are the last of the homo erectus species (unless Yeti and Sasquatch still walk the Earth).

Sapiens ended up here by overrunning, absorbing and/or killing off the world’s other tribes, cultures and species. The Neanderthal, Denisovans, and Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Nabateans, Babylonians, Spartans, Phoenecians, Visigoths, Sassanids, Çatalhöyük, Cahokia, Angkor, Harappan, Maya, Anasazi, Clovis, and so many more are just memories now. All were actually cancelled.

Generally, current humans stand on the bones and rubble of canceled predecessor cultures, get excited about their pasts, and use past names for present sites, enterprises and sports teams. Why? Would today’s folk really want to recreate those past cultures as places for themselves to live? That seems to be the goal of “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) supporters. Homo sapiens’ success rests on its ability to see what isn’t and imagine what could be. Imagination is the realm of fantasy, belief and creativity; it comes before truth and facts. While most of us grow out of the fantastical world of children as we mature, many of us don’t.

In this country, where the norm is peaceful transitions of government, the mostly white MAGA people and the politicians who represent them oppose it. Transition is progress, and they fear progress will cancel their way of life. They want to recreate some form of imaginary past America, where whites were not just in the majority, they were the most visible color of human everywhere – in business, government and media. The MAGAs don’t want to see any non-white colors. To them, having to share power means getting their culture eliminated.

That’s ironic. American Indians fought the railroads and the killing of buffalo, because it actually was canceling their way of life. Southern plantation owners fought elimination of slavery, because it cancelled their Antebellum culture. They were right. At the turn of the 20th century, whites who were 2nd or earlier generation immigrants themselves, fought new immigrants whom they feared would take their jobs and cancel their “true American” culture. They were wrong. From the 1860s to today, Blacks have fought embedded racism because it canceled their African culture and is still cancelling their lives.

More ironic are Southern plantation whites in a new insurrectionist form (proof enough to believe in reincarnation?), attacking the U.S. Congress, as it affirmed the peaceful transfer of government power January 6, 2021. They claim Congress was trying to cancel their culture. To any observer, it is clear they don’t know what it means to “cancel” a culture, they haven’t read the U.S. Constitution – even though nearly 150 of the Congresspeople who represent them took an oath to protect and defend it, and they don’t know what America stands for, even though they grew up here.

They don’t balance their fantasies with facts and truth. Besides thinking they’ll “save America” by attacking its Congress and courts, they imagine that COVID is a hoax, science can’t be trusted, Trump won the presidency in 2020, and the U.S. faked the moon landing. They run to “free” women and “save babies” from Planned Parenthood clinics that rarely (< 3%) perform abortions, and attack a pizza parlor that serves pizzas but was rumored to abuse children. The goal is always to intimidate, threaten and kill opponents so they can retain power. And they have formed groups for 150 years to cancel non-white cultures: the Ku Klux Klan, the Know Nothing Party, the American Nazi Party, John Birch Society, QAnon, Proud Boys and white nationalists. These fantastical American “saviors” act mostly like foot-stamping, breath-holding children. William Golding laid out the worst-case scenario of this in his book, Lord of the Flies. It ended with abuse, injuries and death – and the child characters crying out for rescue by adults. Nearly a third of Americans are magical MAGA thinkers, and so are about 25% of the U.S. Congresspeople who represent them – as well as large minorities of leaders in more than 20 U.S. states. While none of these groups is in the majority, most hold power anyway thanks to the electoral privileges of gerrymandering, and control of voting structures. They also use police forces, the levers of government, and denial of access to voting, to public spaces, free speech, public meetings and services, and redress of grievances to intimidate and disempower opponents. Much of this is unconstitutional and illegal. Rep. Devin Nunes, (R-CA), for example, enlisted the U.S. Dept. of Justice (DOJ) under Attorney General Bill Barr, to aid him in trying to shut down the Twitter account of a “cow” that posted critical comments about him, and sue the unknown person who created the cow. When the DOJ activity was publicized, the assistant state’s attorney Michael Friedman, who in effect served as Nunes’ personal attorney, refused to comment. Like parenting, corralling and shutting down bullies takes work – especially on a national scale. It requires standing up to them – nationally and in every state, embarrassing them, prosecuting their actions, laughing at them, and educating them. An Nunes-DOJ investigation is underway; a move is afoot to disbar Bill Barr; the Biden DOJ is going after the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrectionists; lawsuits have been filed in every state against Republican legislatures attempting to suppress and restrict voting, as voting rights advocates continue registering voters and supplying them with the means to get mailed ballots and reach the polls despite new state restrictions. And President Biden and Congressional Democrats and Independents are mostly standing up to obstructionist Republicans, and forcing approval of needed legislation that helps block and reverse the bullies’ agendas. American culture is hard at work, and most everyone is participating. It doesn’t look to me as if anything or anyone is getting canceled.

Bernie Madoff and Trumps’ Big Lie
4/16/21

Trump Madoff With More Than Our Money.

Bill Kaufman

Thoughts of the Madoff scandal seems a world away, only to come back to us now on his lonely death in jail. There are so many parallels with our Trump saga, that do apply to this moment.
Fakery is not an innocent sin, lies about important stuff could break your bank and make you sick.

Madoff, like Trump, was a phenomenal faker. Madoff created a sub-reality that continued to comfort and assure his numerous investors (not unlike Trump followers) with the belief that they needed his “miraculous” skills. None of it was true.

The financial “returns” were faked, as interest or dividends were compounded, merely on paper, for some investors, while some lucky few were paid out monthly to investors who chose not to “re-invest”.

But these dividends and interest did not flow from real investments. They were paid out from funds supplied by new investors. The original investments were quickly gone, in financing the Madoff life style, office expenses, and in attracting new investors, to continue the scam.

You might ask, how can “investors” be so naïve? And surprisingly, his roster included some very wealthy, thought to be sophisticated investors, and their accountants and attorneys who signed off on their ’ investments.

So how could have Madoff attracted and fooled so many smart and successful people? and was Trumps’ success (short though it was) a direct parallel?

Three critical red flags stand out:

1.Madoff paid interest or dividends somewhat above what was readily available in the then current investment market, but not quite high enough to be terribly abnormal. Trumps’ equivalent, reward cronies with posh jobs, acolytes who could possibly (albeit with a generous mental stretch) be considered qualified and therefore “normal”.

2.Recruit select and prestigious investors (such as known personalities) to act as “attractors,” that is, as informal salesmen, “model” believers and promoters, who could persuade others to invest, due to their standing in the public eye. Trumps’ version, give the biggest tax breaks to rich folk voters, to create supporters (or new investors, as it were). And use the concept of “social proof.” That is like Trump saying “look at all the prestigious and famous folks who want to serve under me, who support me, and who will vote for me.” It’s easy to note how Trumps’ very wealthy supporters were vocal and strategic. It is unreasonable to imagine they would have been so, absent the enormous tax benefits that they were rewarded.

3.Get rid of auditors, supervisors, and managers that are not totally compliant to your wishes and who would not be willing to overlook obfuscations and lies. Replace them with believers and cronies.

Let us look at #3 first. Mutual funds, hedge funds, exchange traded funds, money managed funds, all have one thing in common. They all use a professional custodial service. This is typically a trust bank, like the DTC (Deposit Trust Company). Many large banks also offer this service. This involves the trust company taking delivery of the security, such as stock shares, bonds and notes, that are purchased and verifying their “good order”.
Effectively, they serve as objective monitors or overseers. It is a big and important job, and just one of those companies, for example, the DTC (Depository Trust Company), holds 54 trillion dollars worth of securities for the benefit of investors.
Not having a custodian is akin to not having an overseer like a Walter Shaub, past head of the U.S. Government Ethics Office, who described the Trump White House as setting a tone that “ethics does not matter”. Prior to his resignation, Shaub was concerned that the United States would be seen as a kleptocracy. Trump couldn’t wait to get rid of anyone who was a designated overseer, replacing them with a crony.

Interesting to note, not having an outside custodian, which Madoff also declined, is not illegal.

Now #2. Rich people are respected, often thought smarter than most. They are attractive perspective investment endorsers because they are influencers. How did Madoff attract them? How did Trump attract them? Simple, give them what they desire. Just give them more money. How? Give them invented dividends and interest on their money, more than they could otherwise earn in traditional safe investments, such as bonds and certificates of deposit.

Similar to Madoff, Trump was enabled to “give” the richest Americans money by simply lowering their taxes. The national debt (falling on rich and poor together) created was of no concern, not coming due until long after the Trump era. Like Trump, Madoffs’ only concern was keeping the ponzi scheme going. Obviously, Madoff was creating an ugly future for his investors. But unlike the Madoff investors, the majority of Americans were pulled into the disastrous Trump “investment” program even after voting against him.

Now #1. One of the first principals of investing is that higher returns inevitably involve higher risk. Great money managers often trade risk for higher returns, though in a very measured and educated way. One of the key measures for a money manager is their “risk adjusted return.” This is simply a measure of the fluctuations of their portfolio compared to the return it generates. Even a high return portfolio in the longer term, could be considered inferior to one with a lower return. Put simply, if the high return portfolio fluctuates markedly, it will have a diminished risk adjusted return. Thus, a lower return portfolio, could often be considered superior, if it has less fluctuations.
Consequently, Madoff invented and credited dividends that were too high, and too stable, in light of what “normal” investment portfolio assets might generate.

Effectively, the “return” generated in his portfolio would have been a remarkable achievement since unaccompanied by greater portfolio fluctuations (implying greater risk). The credited dividends were too stable and regular. They were abnormal. It appeared that Madoffs’ program was defying gravity. And those dividends were Madoffs’ largest selling point.

Indeed, if it was just plain old dumb luck, why would anyone bet on that? Many people actually believed Madoff was a genius.

Simply combining that notion with the known reality that there was no custodian, no outside objective due diligence, no accountant public audits, it was really the simplest of calls.

It was a bad intentioned “emperor” who really was naked situation. Who couldn’t see it coming? One really does have to question the common sense of Trump’s endorsers and voters, so similar to Madorf enablers, investors and promoters.

The giant difference, we were all forced to invest with Trump, and we very predictably lost.

Beyond Stupid (The one mental misconception of Trumps’ Republican minions)

Bill Kaufman & Martin Westerman.

Why would anyone choose to live in a society among other people? Well, protection comes to mind. When you are asleep, someone else might be awake to alert you to imminent danger. In simple terms, the group can better protect the individuals, than can the individuals protect themselves.

Lately, some of the Republican senators (in particular the “libertarians”) keep stalling on an adequate stimulus bill, by bringing up deficits. And Trump and his collaborators did need this contingent to support him. And this mentality does pervade the whole Republican Party. Like Trump, money going to others, and not to themselves, is not ok. Trump simply needed the higher financial aid figure to firm up his support. After all, it’s not “his money” being given away. The libertarians, on the other hand, can claim to be clinging to “principles”. Now that Trump is gone, the deficit issue still exists.

It is true, our currency is backed by nothing but a promise. And a promise only makes sense as it relates to some future event. Basically, money is valuable only to the extent that it is accepted as a unit of exchange for acquiring goods or services, in place of a direct trade for such.

And frankly, if our dollar did fail (no longer being accepted by other nations, for example) private citizens and businesses would simply go ahead and devise a new currency. Bitcoin comes to mind, not the biggest deal really.
•
Direct trading once made sense in small communities, but as the geographical range and variety of goods and services in commerce became more complex there was too often a mismatch between those who had something you needed, and what service or goods that you could offer to trade.

Absent actual currency, procurement would be a ridiculous and laborious endeavor. So societies were compelled (necessarily) to all agree on an asset that could be accepted by all members. Thus, currency became one of the universal concepts of modern society. It is so basic an “invention” like cooking, writing, and housing, that no one can conceive of life absent such a concept.

Face Forward: Now think of life three hundred years ago. Without cars, computers, vaccines, printing presses, toilets, plumbing, modern farming, etc., etc.. Suppose all that stuff could have been acquired through a government that, to do so, created “official” currency? Indeed, a government that printed currency. Let us examine the harm created. Do we really need to? One thing, that government would be able to buy or invest in things that everyone needed. (Like an army to protect its inhabitants from foreign invaders, for example). But such a scheme would have one basic requirement, it would, of course, need to have recognized integrity. A country of laws, a constitutional government.

Much of the stuff created by deficits are actually assets, some quite necessary for modern life, these assets, many really tools, have greatly enhanced that life. Things that sustained, facilitated, and nurtured human life (think Medicare and Medicaid for example, and even the internet itself, not to even mention roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, etc.). And what about the space program, without which GPS technology (and so many other inventions) would not have occurred. And in return, of course, citizens would “pay a fee” otherwise called a tax, for the myriad services provided to them. And this fee would address the deficits and the cost of providing the myriad services that are provided to citizens. One might think of it like group buying in volume, and thus, at a discount.

Aren’t our very lives really assets in themselves? To whom? To others. Our children eventually grow up to look after us, as we looked after them. So many lives pave a path that make life better for everyone and those that follow. Think Jonas Salk, Newton, Einstein, the list goes on and on, and will continue to grow throughout human existence.

Today, you hold in your pocket, your phone, which is more powerful than the computers that cost a million dollars barely 20 years ago. And that same phone has access to super computers that are equivalent to thousands or millions of those earlier computers. How can you measure that wealth, when compared to the deficits extant in modern societies? It is on a whole different scale.

We talk about deficits creating inflation (an idea that seems to appeal to “common sense.”) Not true if we invest two cents and get a thousand dollars of value. That is actually dis-inflation.

We need to be measuring value, and not cost. Indeed, we are so wealthy, how can we even entertain the notion that we cannot afford the money to address the crisis caused by the coronavirus? Helping making lives better, sustaining the life, health and well-being of our planetary population is an investment, and not a cost, an investment that ensures the success of that population and their descendants, to the end of time. Can one say what is more important?

What really has more value?

TO BE CONTINUED……

We can’t help noticing the huge crowds at Trump rallies. People obviously travel for miles around to be there. Meaning that they are not all representative of local populations. Surely some are just curiosity seekers.

Most are extreme partisans who are stuck in a psychological conundrum. Should they pay any attention to the obvious Trump failures and lies? or go with the premise that their original decision to back Trump couldn’t be wrong now? Heavens forbid, were they wrong?

I remember, reading as a financial advisor, when investors were defrauded by a Ponzi scheme, their initial impulse was to deny the existence of the scheme altogether. No one wants to believe or admit to being suckered.

I bet many Trump attendees go around to more than one rally. Reminds one of the recent super spreader motor cycle rally event.

But the key is this, as far as I can tell: for Trump, the rally’s are not about the attendees, they are about getting views of the crowds on TV. Social proof, one of Trumps timeworn tactics. Basically implying “look at all the folks crazy about loving Trump, shouldn’t you join them? “

so it is not about the actual rally, that mere thousands attend, it’s about getting shots showing the “huge” crowds on TV, so that “everyone can see”.

Which is millions. Smart tactic, basically borrowed from Hitler and even more effective due the wide embrace of modern media, such as TV and internet, which generously gives Trump millions of dollars worth of free publicity.

We didn’t understand the tactic at first, and now, in the final days, the light came on for us.
Trump surely knows that his rallies are superspreaders. He could care less. He hates the idea of packing and moving. And he grasped at the easiest, Most effortless non-solution for the epidemic, herd immunity. We know that it isn’t being well thought out. Hundreds of thousands of caronvirus cases will be created, and he hasn’t even mentioned expanding hospital capacity. If he wins the coming election, the real nightmare begins.

The End Of Trump, Martin Westerman 10/28/20

2020: The End Of Trump & The Administration Full Of People Who Just Don’t Get It
By Martin Westerman / Oct 2020

America’s wealthy class today feel not just entitled but anointed. The Wilbur Rosses and Betsy DeVos’s and Eric Princes and Louis DeJoys and Donald Trumps and Jeff Bezos’s and Larry Ellisons and Billy Grahams and megachurch pastors, and so many more multi-millionaires and billionaires think it’s God’s will that they’ve arrived at wealth. They take literally the Protestant interpretation of the Torah’s (aka The Old Testament) Deuteronomy 8:18: “…remember the Lord thy God who gives you power to get wealth.” They believe that God has not only favored them above all other creatures on Earth; He has given them license to do as they please. At the top of the white racial heap, they embody George Herbert’s 1640 “Outlandish Proverb” – “Living well is the best revenge” – on everyone not like them. And by a sort of Divine Right, they work to bend others and the environment to their wills.

The U.S. Administration’s current crop of annointeds ignores Herbert’s dictum: “Every one is a master and servant.” And they ignore the second half of 8:18: God gives us power for wealth “to establish the covenant He swore unto your fathers…” In other words, says Josie Silver of Kehila News, those who attain wealth must be both masters and servants, and become examples of valor and virtue beyond their economic might. As Victory Life Ministries International says (Oct 7, 2019); “You need to know the purpose for wealth, so that when God takes you to that level .. you will be able to appropriate it well.”

All those named above (except Hebert) are staunch Republicans. In Impostors, Steve Bannon describes how contemporary Republicans have quit governing and become a “post-policy party.” At war with expertise, evidence and data, they only focus on pursuing and maintaining power. They’ve basically embraced nihilism, gaslighting, and bait-and-switch scams to fool people into voting for them. In office, they work to benefit their wealthy supporters, transfer public money into private pockets, pack federal courts with creationist-theocratic, anti-woman, pro-corporate judges, and inject Christian theocracy into military and civilian affairs.

Acting only as masters, never as (public) servants, DeVos bends the Dept. of Education toward eliminating public schools and privatizing what’s left; Ross bends the Dept. of Commerce toward opening the world for plunder; DeJoy bends the USPS to shrink public postal delivery and expand private delivery by firms he’s invested in. The Grahams (& many U.S. Senators, Representatives, and some Supreme Court Justices) work to convert America into a Christian nation, under Puritan (aka sharia) law, as Prince supplies private armies for billionaires and despots to create a modern version of Middle Ages monarchies. And Trump wants to be king of one, if not all of them.

The wealthy struggle with empathy. Higher social class and higher income are associated with higher mental performance, but these people struggle to understand emotional cues and empathize with others. It may be because they operate more independently than “lower-class individuals,” who have greater levels of cultural inter-dependence, and unlike higher-class individuals, appraise others as more relevant to their goals and well-being. Study authors Dietze and Knowles note that their conclusion runs against the conventional wisdom that “lower class” people show neurocognitive deficits. As George Packer observed in The Atlantic (June 2020), “The only way for a poor person to find out whether he-she has Corona is to sneeze in a rich person’s face.”

Another study, in the July 2019 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, shows how being wealthy can lead to harmful psychological behaviors and personal habits. Its authors found that individuals from affluent backgrounds would often deny their class privilege by “increasing their claims of personal hardships and hard work, to cover [their] privilege in a veneer of meritocracy.” Evidence of privilege “threatens recipients’ self-regard by calling into question whether they deserve their successes,” the authors wrote. “Evidence of class privilege demonstrates that many life outcomes are determined by factors not attributable to individuals’ efforts alone, but are caused in part by systemic inequities that privilege some over others.” As Herbert says: “The Rich knows not who is his friend.”

In the June 2019 Nature Communications, another study argued that consumption patterns of the affluent are so egregiously unsustainable that only a concerted effort by the wealthy to consume less can prevent catastrophes like global warming, pollution and biodiversity loss. The world’s top 10% of income earners cause between 25% and 43% of environmental impact, while the world’s bottom 10% of income earners exert around 3% to 5%. By inciting “consumption expansion and the structural imperative for growth in competitive markets,” wealthy societies, economies and cultures “inhibit necessary societal change.” The authors advocate “a global and rapid decoupling of detrimental impacts from economic activity.”

Human brains seem to be full of iron filings that get magnetized by powerful and rich people. The masses follow, pay obeisance, even heap adulation on the wealthy and powerful – until they become disgusted, demagnetize, and go in search of new attractors. While they are magnetized, humans allow the wealthy and powerful to think their money and its power can perpetually protect them from accountability. When demagnetized, however, humans can explode into revolutions and civil wars – the worst ways to hold leaders accountable. So we’re begging two questions here: how to manage money, and how to manage change without revolution.

What is money? It’s not the root of all evil. It isn’t moral or immoral. It’s amoral. And we know that the more that money gets spread around, the less evil gets done.

Money is a medium of exchange. It flows through our dynamic society as we exchange it for goods and services, pay bills and save for “rainy days” and retirement. It provides the power to get food, clothing and shelter; to buy land for hunting and growing food; the power to isolate and hire private security to protect yourself and those you favor from those you don’t. It’s bestows power to protect from environmental, legal and political harm; to buy materiel and invest in enterprises; and to pay or force people to do your bidding.

We know money has no intrinsic value. It can’t be eaten, drunk or planted, fashioned into clothing or shelter, or used to make babies. It can’t express non-monetary values, such as health, family, community, education, leisure or faith. And its buying power changes with supply and demand, and levels of enterprise.

But where we spend money tells us what’s important to us. The world’s economic systems have helped smooth out the distribution of world resources and opportunities, so food, water, shelter, health care and mobility have never been more widely accessible. But we funnel too much to the top of the wealth and power heaps, too much to the military, and waste too much. The distribution of resources and money is still inequitable. The power elite controlling those systems are mostly unaccountable. And it has ever been this way, though we thought America and Western democracies would be exceptions. We’ve let them suck the money out of America, so our infrastructure and institutions are crumbling. Throughout history, unaccountable and ruthless leaders have brought empires down – from Persia and Rome to Spain, the Ottomans and maybe now, the USA.

How would the world look without money? It could be made up of hunter-gatherer societies. They’re self-sufficient, independent, and environmentally sound. But that only works for small bands of humans on a wide-open planet. And it requires huge amounts of time and labor to secure food, make clothing and shelter, raise young, tend domestic animals and migrate. And humanity today has leapt far away from there:

(1) Trading has evolved beyond the local tribe, into regional and transcontinental commerce – between kingdoms, city states and empires. We had to create new means of pricing and trading, where a product or service couldn’t be offered for barter. So we invented “money” to represent the values of all the quantities of items we trade — from livestock and artifacts, to precious stones and metals.
(2) We’re perennially unwilling to part with money, even as all our religions and charities ask us to give it away for the common good. But we’re driven by fears of scarcity.
(3) We’ve made it possible to make money on money, through “debt instruments” (e.g., mortgages, stocks, bonds), creating new mediums of exchange (e.g., platinum, taxes, carbon credits), and serving as transfer agents for money, goods and services. This ability has enabled money manipulators to repeatedly torpedo world economies,
(4) Amassing exchange mediums can make us comfortable and even powerful. It has spawned monumental deceits and mayhem, and prodigious catastrophes for societies and ecosystems. It has also spawned endless legal and taxation efforts to reign in hoarders and manipulators, and re-distribute their wealth.

So, how can we manage change without civil war or revolution?

If today’s “golden rule” is, “Those with the gold make the rules,” we must install as our leaders those with gold, or those immune to its attraction, who live by the master & servant mentality. Then urge or force them to create smarter structures for holding leaders accountable, and managing the flow of money. We got ourselves into this mess, we can get ourselves out of it.

There are basics:
• Enforce and create structures to hold the wealthy and powerful accountable
• Redistribute wealth, so infrastructure and basic services can be funded, and opportunities created for all Americans
• Stop calling money “speech.” It’s an exchange medium. In politics, its flow must be equitably managed
• Stop calling corporations “people.” They’re business entities. If they don’t live up to the principles in their charters, chartering authorities must dissolve them
• Amend laws governing lending, education and living spaces so they apply equitably to all Americans
• Account for the value of our environment on our economies’ books. Nature produces more than $55 trillion in benefits and savings for us every year. Take note.

COVID-19 has helped speed our society toward running cashless. Can we go money-less? Can we create a national barter and exchange system, rather like carbon credit trading, using current financial and accounting frameworks? Could we manage it through national syndicates or utilities, so resources, goods and services would be consumed, offered and traded first locally, then regionally, nationally, and internationally? The system would boost local self-reliance, and free us to innovate and create opportunities, without agonizing over what we could afford. It would change the natures of “fortunes”, “wealth” and “riches,” but we’d all stay well-fed and healthy. And we’d judge each based on our contributions, not our money.

Naw, that wouldn’t work. Accomplishing the basics list above will be enough of a shock to our systems. Maybe once things settle out from that, we can re-imagine ways to structure money and commercial exchange.

So keep the faith. The rich and powerful, and those less so can ascribe their successes to a Deity or any other factors. It’s important to know there’s something bigger than us in the world. But the Constitution’s First Amendment says no matter how rich or powerful you are, you can’t impose your faith on or through the U.S. government. “Church” and state must stay separate.

And as the 2020 sun appears to set on partisan and disastrous local, state and national Republican administrations, we can take heart from the prescient George Herbert: “He that trusts in a lie, shall perish in truth.” Let’s get ready to live in reality, as the new era dawns.

10/01/20
The one great strength Trump has is narcissistic personality disorder. The one great weakness Trump has is narcissistic personality disorder. Trump thinks, of course, that he is smarter than everybody else, which is an intrinsic symptom. And of coarse he is not. But the belief empowers him.

Since the majority of us don’t have this affliction, we don’t normally assume it in another person we interact with. Often, we can see the representative behavior as that of a person who might be smarter than us, or have better insight than us, upon which his opinions are based. And, of course, that isn’t true. The tactics that he learned, like using the technique of “social proof”, nicknaming, impugning his “enemies” by applying the term “they got caught” (which is a use of the timeworn persuasion technique of casting presuppositions in a way they are casually, if unconsciously, accepted by a listeners brain), of course no one really “got caught” and finally by nurturing a small core of disaffected “supporters” (and there will always be some core of such folks), capturing enough of them in his act, to actually game the system to “win” presidency.

Trump is cunning enough to exploit this narcissistic personality disorder to his advantage.

But every front has a back. And the bigger the front, the bigger the back. Since Trump thinks most others are dumb, it really isn’t surprising that he will eventually, in time, himself be be “caught”, when his affliction leads him into overplaying his hand. like now. Yes, most human beings are not as dump as Trump thought. Everyone can now (or almost everyone) can see his true Achilles heel.

The American people are finally seeing him, as transparently weak. Like the emperor with no clothes. Naked. But still unabashed. That is the nature of his persistent disease. And the more we see, the more ridiculous he appears.

You know, something breaks in your home and out comes the crazy glue. You try to fix it, but the problem is things seem to break apart at a critical juncture, areas that are normally under the most stress, where you perhaps put the glue on last time.

What are your choices? More glue, and maybe more, in the hope that you can hold things together a bit longer.

Trump has broken a lot of things, some of which put the planet at even greater risk of more breakage.

The crazy glue (Trumps’ equivalence: lies) can only last for limited time spans, especially as unglued breakage causes stress on what remains. Until it all falls apart.

This is what the philosopher, Hegel, referred to as the “anti-thesis”- the falling entirely apart. And this is where we are now. Where are we headed?

The problem is really this: not enough of us are looking far enough into the future. Glues dry out quickly while stress remains. Victory is not permanent, though it often seems so. The real spoils of battle soon themselves spoil.

The Republicans and Trump (and so many of us) are not looking far enough into the future. Glue dries out quickly, while stress remains. Victory only seems so until the spoils of war themselves spoil.

Sad, very sad. They may have a victory, which will only insure a more brutal future defeat. A tortured world eventually affects all inhabitants, themselves included. Such is the law of the universe.

The world that Trump is trying to build is UNSUSTAINABLE. It lacks the most critical quality of human interaction: AGREEMENT.

P.S. Think for a moment that you are a Trump collaborator and Trump loses the election. You strongly wish to avoid that outcome, perhaps at any cost. Terrible idea to ponder. It’s a long elevator ride to the bottom. For you, it’s not a matter of ethics and right, it is a matter of survival. It is no longer a matter of America first, it is about protecting yourself. That is why the coming days are fraught with risk.

What if Trump won the election and shortly thereafter proof that the election and/or vote count, was rigged or falsified in Trumps’ favor emerged. What will happen than?

With so many points of observation (such as the  reality of mail sorting machine removal,, potential widespread intimidation at at polling sites, delayed vote counting, in short, the experience of vote manipulation), what would have happened then??

We know, from all the books already published, about Trump, that his schemes only remain closeted for measurably short time frames. We all need to be grateful that we still live in an open society, where potential “observation points” are as numerous as the American population. Secrets and obfuscations can only exist for so long before they are analyzed and revealed for all to see.

Thus the real question becomes the aftermath. How will the general population of the United States respond, having the knowledge that their election was provably and undeniably rigged in Trumps’ favor?

We know that Trump is a “short termer.” He does not measure potential results with a very long rod. He is interested in making another dollar and another victory for the next day or (maybe week). Being a narcissist, who thinks he can outsmart everyone,  but he is merely an able tactician, and not a strategist.
And we think that Trump and his collaborators never really considered that. How many books and articles will be published in the aftermath, with titles like “Trump, The Illegitimate And Fake President of the United States.”

Does anyone really think that Trump and his collaborators were considering the backlash that the than clear majority of citizens of the United States were likely to demonstrate? The havoc created will have not favored the Trumpers in the longer run. The citizenry of America most likely was not ready for a full off dictatorship. It is highly doubtful that Trump and his cohorts were skillful enough to tame a full on revolt of half the citizens of America. Couldn’t they see that far?

Those folks are dumber than I thought. They are not smart enough to prevail. They can barely see beyond their nose.

Mark Meadows went on with Jake Tapper and was reminded that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Meadows didn’t disagree with that statement, but he retorted:
“there is no evidence that there is not either.”

Let’s play with some logical analogies to comprehend the absurdity of this response. Let’s say the following: There is no evidence that person “A” is a criminal. but there is no evidence that person A is not a criminal. And since there is no evidence that he is not a criminal, we need to treat him as if he were a criminal (just to be sure, one supposes). In other words, even if we have found no evidence that person A is a criminal, we have to collect evidence that he is not a criminal. Question: what evidence would be satisfactory? How does one collect evidence of non-criminal behavior? We are not talking about “motive” here, we are talking about everyday behavior. Of course, anyone can see the absurdity of this.

In science, guided by logical principles, we can make assertions about phenomena that has happened, we can witness it, document it, effectively prove its existence by repeated observations of it.

So no one has observed widespread voter fraud. Surely, if it were widespread, it would have, to that extent, been widely observed.

You obviously can’t observe a non-occurrence. And, unfortunately, Mark Meadows is an idiot, who has mastered the technique of speaking, dressing and looking like a chief of staff for a failed president.

The question really is simple, what can be expected of another Trump term?
> If there are solid hints of voter suppression, post office issues, irregular counts, strong evidence of fraud, (all quite likely actually) we are in for true chaos in the US.

> We can expect extreme suppression of widespread citizen demonstrations, extreme executive orders, painful boycotts, widespread arrests, instigation of protestors to defy control strategies, there is going to be backlash, really just chaos.
> All the while absent a firm and effective coronavirus strategy.

> Trump will promote his win as a complete endorsement to do whatever he pleases, mostly by executive order. This is not, what Biden says, “a battle for Americas’ soul”, it is really a battle for Americas’ life.

> Trumps’ total lack of empathy really does extend tragically to the very concept and well being of 330 million citizens, all of us.

> I really wouldn’t be concerned if all the dictators in world history were successfully thwarted before creating death and destruction, but it is simply not so.

Most of us can clearly see corruption in a persons’ actions, but corruption can be found in what a person fails to do. Trump pardoning Roger Stone is quite visible, of course. Even before spending a day in jail for his crimes. But what about the many hundreds in prison who really deserve a pardon? How many has Trump pardoned in this group? And why not?

The message, of course, is if you support and protect Trump, he will shelter you from the law. He will take care of you.

No matter if you break the law. If you want to understand Trumps’ behavior, simply rewatch the Godfather.

The speech (probably written by Stephen Miller):

“….We will never allow an angry mob to tear down our statues, erase our history, indoctrinate our children or trample our freedoms…we will teach our children to cherish and adore our country so that they can build its future together, we will fight for the American dream”…..

Now think for a moment about these phrases. How do you “teach” your children to cherish and adore their country (and not the people in it)? Does Trump mean “properly” indoctrinating them, as done in communist China, or was done in Nazi Germany? And Trump non-supporters that “trample on our freedom” (like wearing a mask so as not to spread the virus to others?), or indulge in a legal protest?

And “fighting for the American dream.” What does that really mean? Big great sounding but meaningless words really.

One doesn’t “fight” for his/her dream. One strategizes, plans, invests, labors and visualizes their dream. And indeed, what is that dream really?

The most important thing is to define it in order to realize it. Otherwise it is just a fancy word Trump might have used at a Trump University workshop. Indeed, heaven forbid Trump defining and revealing his dream. This is yet another Stephen Miller vacuous speech and Ivanka probably helped him.

6/28/20

Trump Staff Removed Social-Distance Stickers at Tulsa Rally

Once upon a time there was a kid standing on a street corner holding the strings to a bunch of helium balloons, and selling them to passersby. A policeman came along and said, “Kid, do you have a permit to sell those balloons?” And the kid opened his hand and said, “What balloons?”

In Steve Bennen’s new book Impostors, he describes how contemporary Republicans have quit governing and become a “post-policy party.” They may present themselves as officials who are ready to take problem solving seriously, but they only focus on pursuing and maintaining power. At war with expertise, evidence and data, they’ve basically embraced nihilism, gaslighting, and bait-and-switch scams to fool people into voting for them. In office, they avoid relying on anyone who knows about policy or can hold them accountable, work to pack federal courts with creationist-theocratic, anti-woman, pro-corporate judges, inject Christian theocracy into military and civilian affairs, make deals to benefit their wealthy supporters, and transfer public money into private pockets.

Let’s look at two examples.

Cutting the federal payroll tax to stimulate the COVID-depressed economy. Independent Media Institute reports that as COVID continues unabated, Trump & Rs’ are proposing to replace Social Security’s dedicated revenue with deficit-funded general revenue. It looks like a gift – middle-class tax relief, but instead undermines a dependable source of retirement income for working Americans. It’s “fiscal stimulus” bait with an insecurity switch, a stealth attack on Social Security. One should only give up something good to get something better. This isn’t the case here.

Tax cuts don’t solve coronavirus problems, robust public health responses do. The Trump administration isn’t providing those, but it’s gaslighting America by pretending it is. Better options to stimulate a COVID-depressed economy: provide paid sick leave, free coronavirus testing, and treatment for all. Make a one-time, progressively-structured direct payment; restore and expand the Making Work Pay Tax Credit, expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and/or provide greater economic stimulus – all more targeted and equitable, and none placing administrative burdens on employers.

Big winners in this proposal: large corporations and employers, CEOs, U.S. Senators & Representatives, and members of the Trump administration. Big losers: salary and wage earners. As wages go down, so do benefits. State and local employees who do not participate in Social Security also get nothing. By law, Federal Insurance Contributions Act payments (payroll taxes) can only be used to pay Social Security insurance benefits. Social Security has no borrowing authority, and it does not and cannot add even a penny to the deficit. As the late President Ronald Reagan eloquently explained, in his words, “Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit.”

Re-opening the economy: As Ayoka Karis Warren wrote on Facebook in April 2020, forcing the Georgia economy to re-open is a very calculated move by GA Governor Brian Kemp. He mandates that restaurants reopen, whether they do or not. “I file for business interruption insurance, it does not go through since I am “allowed” to operate at full capacity. My landlord can demand all his money, since I am now allowed to fully operate. Furloughed staff that is collecting unemployment insurance has to come back to work or I have to let them go. Their unemployment insurance then goes on my tab, and if things blow up again, they are still on my tab, not the state’s, since they are no longer employed. This is about screwing the working class and small business, not about helping them.”

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, the job of Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Galaxy, was to divert attention from the people who really ran the galaxy. Trump may see that as his Presidential role; as a reality show host, he is adept at it. And anybody who runs for President must be long on ego. But they must also appear to be personable, at which Trump is not adept. Any successful President must also play with interest groups and voting blocks, but with a sense of their effects on individuals. To succeed, they rely on advisors with their fingers on the pulses of people and events, so they can make the most equitable possible big decisions – about domestic & international economics, social, infrastructural, strategic and defense policies.

When we say we’re in a war for the survival of America’s institutions in 2020, we mean for the structure of what makes America a successful country: recognizable and dependable policies, supported by good research and experience. In 2016, America elected a clone of Loki, God of Chaos, as President. Chaos doesn’t work for governing 350 million Americans. Good policy does. Not un-policy.

The Psychopath in Chief 6/10/20

I spent hundreds of hours with Donald Trump to ghost-write ‘The Art of the Deal.’ I now see a deeper meaning behind his behavior.
Tony Schwartz
Tony Schwartz
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May 28 · 12 min read

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
“Imagine — if you can — not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken … You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences, will most likely remain undiscovered. How will you live your life? What will you do with your huge and secret advantage?”
— Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
Among the accomplishments Donald Trump parades most proudly is that he has won 18 golf club championships. Like so many of his claims, this one is pure fiction. When the sportswriter Rick Reilly investigated for his book Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, he found that 16 of the claims were transparently false, and no evidence existed to support the other two. In one instance, Trump said he had won a championship at the Bedminster, New Jersey, club he owns, even though he was in Philadelphia on the day the event was held.
When Trump does play, Reilly reported, he takes “mulligans” (extra strokes that aren’t counted in one’s score ), throws opponent’s balls off the greens and into the bunkers, and kicks his own errant shots back onto the fairway so often that one of his caddies nicknamed him Pele, after the soccer star. “Trump doesn’t just cheat at golf,” Reilly concluded. “He cheats like a three-card Monty dealer. He throws it, boots it and moves it. He lies about his lies. He fudges and foozles and fluffs.”
How do we deal with a person whose core impulse in every part of his life is to deny, deceive, deflect, disparage, and double-down every time he is challenged? And what precisely is the danger such a person poses if he also happens to be the leader of the free world, during a crisis in which thousands of people are dying every day, with no letup in sight?
The first answer is that we must understand exactly who we’re dealing with, and we have not, because what motivates Trump’s behavior is so far from our own inner experience that it leaves us feeling forever flummoxed.
The trait that most distinguishes psychopaths is the utter absence of conscience — the capacity to lie, cheat, steal, and inflict pain to achieve their ends without a scintilla of guilt or shame, as Trump so demonstrably does.
In July 2016, shortly before Trump became the Republican nominee for president, I was interviewed by Jane Mayer for an article in The New Yorker that was eventually titled “Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All.” Mayer described my experience with Trump over the 18 months it took me to write The Art of the Deal. During that time, I spent hundreds of hours with him.
Like many other Trump critics, I believed that he was driven by an insatiable narcissistic hunger to be loved, accepted, admired, and praised. That remains prima facie true, but it deflects attention from what drives Trump more deeply: the need to dominate. His primary goal is to win at any cost and the end always justifies the means. Ultimately, he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks or feels. For Trump, the choice between dominating and being loved — saving himself or saving others — is no contest.
The catalyst for my shift came after a friend sent me a long paper written by Vince Greenwood, a Washington, D.C.-based psychologist. Greenwood makes a detailed clinical case that Trump is a psychopath, a term that is now used nearly interchangeably with sociopath. Psychologists continue to debate whether it’s legitimate to diagnose anyone from a distance without the benefit of a clinical interview. In Trump’s case, his life history is so well documented that a thorough assessment does seem possible. As I once did up close, we can observe every day which psychopathic traits Trump manifests in his behavior. The highly regarded Hare Psychopathy Checklist enumerates 20 of them. By my count Trump clearly demonstrates 16 of the traits and his overall score is far higher than the average prison inmate.
The trait that most distinguishes psychopaths is the utter absence of conscience — the capacity to lie, cheat, steal, and inflict pain to achieve their ends without a scintilla of guilt or shame, as Trump so demonstrably does. What Trump’s words and behavior make clear is that he feels no more guilt about hurting others than a lion does about killing a giraffe.
“Let’s face it,” actor and Trump supporter James Woods tweeted recently, “Donald Trump is a rough individual. He is vain, insensitive, and raw,” to which Trump blithely responded: “I think that’s a wonderful compliment. Thanks James.” Absence of conscience gives Trump the license to invent his own rules, define his own reality, declare victory in any competition, and insist on his superior expertise on subjects about which he knows almost nothing.
What makes Trump’s behavior challenging to fathom is that our minds are not wired to understand human beings who live far outside the norms, rules, laws, and values that the vast majority of us take for granted. Conscience, empathy, and concern for the welfare of others are all essential to the social contract. Conscience itself reflects an inner sense of obligation to behave with honesty, fairness, and care for others, along with a willingness to express contrition if we fall short of those ideals, and especially when we harm others.
Repentance for one’s sins is a basic tenet of every major religion, but Trump adamantly resists seeking forgiveness from anyone for anything he’s done. “I have a very great relationship with God,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper during the 2016 presidential campaign. “I like to be good. I don’t like to ask for forgiveness. And I am good. I don’t do a lot of things that are bad. I try to do nothing that is bad.”
So long as we seek to understand Trump’s motivations and behaviors through our own lens, we will feel forever at sea. Viewing Trump through his lens helps clarify that his behavior is completely predictable, and why it has become more extreme during each year of his presidency. “When somebody’s president,” Trump declared on April 13, “the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be. It’s total. It’s total.” When it became clear to Trump that total authority also meant personal responsibility, he backed off that claim. But Trump is akin to a battering ram. He just keeps coming at you. The only limitation on his behavior is whether he believes he can get away with whatever it is he’s trying to do.
“People with a strong sense of conscience speak truth to power,” Greenwood explains. “Trump speaks power to truth.” Since his election in 2016, Trump has told more than 18,000 lies without acknowledging or apologizing for any of them. The frequency of his lies has risen from five per day in the first year of his presidency, to more than 23 a day during 2020. For Trump, lying is second nature. Facts are simply are obstacles to be batted away when they contradict his preferred fictions.
It is a fact, for example, that Trump has been a defendant in nearly 1,500 lawsuits over the past three decades — by government agencies seeking to collect unpaid taxes on his properties, contractors trying to get paid for services rendered to him and his companies, and women charging him with sexual assault. As far back as 1973, Trump and his father Fred were sued by the U.S. government for refusing to rent to African Americans in Trump Village, a housing project built by his father Fred. The two Trumps fought the charges for two years but eventually signed a consent order that included agreeing to take a series of actions to end their discrimination.
In 2015, Trump settled two class-action lawsuits charging him with defrauding students at Trump University by paying $25 million in penalties, and agreeing to close down the business. In 2018, in response to a lawsuit filed by the New York attorney general against Trump and his three oldest children alleging “persistently illegal conduct,” the Trumps agreed to shut the phony foundation, and to allow its remaining assets to be directed to charities chosen by the court.
The second quality that sets Trump apart is his lack of empathy. In the face of a crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic, we expect leaders to feel our pain, and to respond with expressions of compassion and comfort. Not Trump. In 13 hours of comments he made over a recent three-week period, The Washington Post reported that he spent a total of two hours attacking others, including the media, 45 minutes praising himself and his administration, and a total of just 4.5 minutes expressing rote condolences for Covid-19 victims and front line workers.
Trump doesn’t appear to make heartfelt connections with anyone, nor to value relationships beyond the extent to which they serve his immediate self-interest. Turnover in his administration — 85% in the first 32 months — dwarfs that of his five most recent predecessors for their entire first terms. Trump treats even his relationships with family members as transactional. Consider the way he describes his relationship with his father, arguably the most important influence in his life. “I was never intimidated by my father, the way other people were,” he explained to me for The Art of the Deal. “I stood up to him and he respected that. We had a relationship that was almost businesslike. I sometimes wonder if we’d have gotten along so well if I hadn’t been as business oriented as I am.”
Trump rarely speaks with affection about Melania, his third wife, or any of his children — with the exception of Ivanka — or his grandchildren. “I know friends who leave their businesses so they can spend more time with their children, and I say “Gimme a break,” Trump once explained. “My children couldn’t love me more if I spent 15 times more time with them.” But his children have sometimes described a different experience of their father. In 2004, Donald Jr. told a reporter that “My father is a very hardworking guy, and that’s his focus in life, so I got a lot of the paternal attention that a boy wants and needs from my grandfather.” In 2006, Trump’s younger son Eric mused that he was largely raised by his older brother. “My father, I love and appreciate,” he said, “but he always worked 24 hours a day.”
Ivanka is the one child Trump has often praised, including for being “voluptuous and having the best body.” When she was 26, Trump told hosts of The View that “If Ivanka wasn’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” Trump’s most emphatic declaration of love during the past four years has been directed at North Korea’s Kim Jung Un, one of the most ruthless dictators in the world. “I was being really tough and so was he,” Trump said in 2018. “And we would go back and forth and then we fell in love. He wrote me beautiful letters. They were great letters, and then we fell in love.” What Trump especially admires in authoritarian leaders, among them Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, and Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro — all of whom he has lavishly praised — is their ability to exercise absolute power. “I wouldn’t mind a little bow,” Trump once said. “In Japan they bow. I love it. Only thing I love about Japan.”
Trump expects and demands loyalty, but it only goes in one direction. His mentor, Roy Cohn, served dutifully as his attorney for many years. “Roy was brutal, but he was a very loyal guy,” Trump told biographer Tim O’Brien. “He brutalized for you.” For The Art of the Deal, Trump described Cohn to me as “the sort of guy who’d be there at your hospital bed… literally standing by you to the death, long after everyone else had bailed out”
As for Cohn, he referred to Trump not just as his client, but also as one of his closest friends. Still, when Cohn was diagnosed with AIDS in 1984, Trump effectively ended the relationship. “Donald found out about it and dropped him like a hot potato,” explained Cohn’s longtime secretary, Susan Bell. “It was like night and day.” According to Bell, Cohn wasn’t surprised. “Donald pisses ice water,” he told her ruefully.
The third trait that most characterizes Trump is his need for dominance, and the evident pleasure he takes in exercising it. “I love getting even when I get screwed by someone,” he explains in his book Think Big and Kick Ass. “Always get even. When you are in business you need to get even with people who screw you. You need to screw them back 15 times harder.” In the absence of a conscience to shape and limit his behavior, Trump defaults to a more primitive and predatory impulse. Life for him is a zero-sum game. He either wins or he loses, dominates or submits. This explains why Trump felt no compunction about lashing out this week at a frequent critic, Joe Scarborough, by falsely accusing him of murder, even in the absence of a shred of evidence to support his claim. Cruelty is second nature to Trump.
Perhaps nowhere is Trump’s need for dominance more evident than in his relationship with women, captured most vividly in his comments to Billy Bush on the Access Hollywood tape. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women]. I just start kissing them,” he bragged. “It’s like a magnet. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy.” More than 20 women have now publicly accused Trump of sexual assault.
Another tactic that Trump employs to assert his authority is declaring his unique expertise on virtually any subject. He instinctively disdains and dismisses the knowledge of experts, including scientists, and instead casts himself as the leading expert on anything and everything. Topics that Trump has claimed to “know more about than anyone” include ISIS, drones, social media, campaign finance, technology, polls, courts, lawsuits, politicians, trade, renewable energy, infrastructure, construction, environmental impact statements, nuclear weapons, banks, tax laws, income, money, and the economy. In fact, because he can never focus his attention for long, his knowledge about any subject tends to be superficial and severely limited. Trump has even felt free to contradict the health care professionals on his own team during the Covid-19 crisis, most notably in describing the potential healing power of injecting disinfectants into the body. “Every one of these doctors said, “How do you know so much about this?” he explained. “Maybe I have a natural ability.”
In order to protect our democracy and our shared humanity, it’s critical to push back, calmly and persistently
So what does all this tell us about how we can expect Trump to behave going forward? The simple answer is worse. His obsession with domination and power have prompted Trump to tell lies more promiscuously than ever since he became president, and to engage in ever more unfounded and aggressive responses aimed at anyone he perceives stands in his way.
In the end, Trump does what he does because he is who he is, immutably. The research now strongly suggests that the absence of conscience has a strong hereditary basis, even as it may also be activated by adverse childhood experiences. The genetic abnormality itself manifests in the limbic system, the set of brain structures involved in the processing of emotions. People without a conscience, it turns out, often have an undersized or under-active amygdala and less gray matter in the limbic area of the brain.
For four years, along with millions of other Trump critics, I have wrestled with the best way to respond to a president who is incapable of shame or empathy and cares only about his self-interest. There is no effective treatment for a person with these traits, and Trump wouldn’t seek one if there was, because he genuinely doesn’t believe there is anything wrong with him. The horrifying truth is that it’s precisely what he’s missing that gives him a permanent advantage over the vast majority of us who are guided by a conscience and concern for others.
Trump revels in attention, domination, and cruelty. “The sociopath wants to manipulate and control you,” explains Martha Stout, “and so you are rewarding and encouraging him each and every time you allow him to see your anger, confusion or your hurt.” Even so, in order to protect our democracy and our shared humanity, it’s critical to push back, calmly and persistently, against every single lie Trump tells, and every legal and moral boundary he violates. We must resist what Hanna Arendt has called “the banality of evil” — the numbness and normalizing that so easily sets in when unconscionable acts become commonplace. “Under conditions of terror, most people will comply,” Arendt has written, “but some people will not.”
Understanding what we’re truly up against — the reign of terror that Trump will almost surely wage the moment he believes he can completely prevail — makes the upcoming presidential election a true Armageddon.
Vote as if your life depends on it, because it does.

Marty blog contribution to Kaufman: Betrayal Trumps Trump #2

Following my last post – here’s more on how to create 2020 Democratic wins. The basics are to erode the Trump-Republican base, and attract independent middle and moderate right voters. Also:
• Arouse disgust w/independent & moderate voters vs. Trump & his radical Republicans,
• Push back against vote suppressors, and
• Turn red states purple – by using deep listening from Polics Is Power

The Trump-Republican minority is estimated at 30%-40% of the electorate, and shrinking. The elderly fear dying of COVID-19, and the military is offended by him violating their conventions.

Challenges facing Democrats include:
• Big money: most wealthy folk back the Republican party. They get most of their proposals enacted into law and regulation. Tom Steier, Andrew Yang, George Soros and their breed are outliers. The rich may personally despise Trump, but his Republican tax breaks have made them richer. And since March 28, billionaires are up another 15%, thanks in part to the “Zillionaire Giveaway,” a fine print addition to the 880-page March CARE package that handed $135 billion to wealthy real estate developers. The “Modification of Limitation on Losses for Taxpayers Other Than Corporations” has nothing to do with Covid-19, and offers retroactive tax breaks from before Corona arrived, says the Institute For Policy Studies. And another fortunate 16 Americans have become billionaires this year.
• Most large business groups, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, fossil fuel corporations, agribusiness, banks and financial companies, and health conglomerates appreciate the tax breaks and give-aways, and respond with hefty contributions to Republican candidates and causes.
• Thanks to Trump fronting for Republican Senate confirmations of two corporatist, anti-regulation, anti-abortion Supreme Court Justices (Gorsuch, Kavanagh), there’s doubt now that SCOTUS will render impartial decisions on these matters
• Knowing they can’t win if everyone votes, Republicans have turned to suppressing the vote as their only option for winning – falsely claiming that voting by mail invites fraud, creating obstacles to getting ballots, forcing voters to stand together and spread COVID-19 infection, and working to undermine the mail-in voting vehicle, the U.S. Postal Service.

So the 2020 elections are not about the candidates. The election is about Trump & Co., and reversing the American march toward authoritarianism. In her 2011 online op-ed in The Washington Post, Harvard political scientist Pippa Norris noted that 44% of Americans without college degrees approved of having a strong leader who “doesn’t have to bother with congress or elections.” She wrote that, for two decades, populist authoritarian leaders—appealing to nationalism and tradition, preaching hostility toward outsiders and elites—had attracted swelling support across Europe and the Americas, winning legislative seats and ministerial offices, gaining government power. Trump & Co. are part of the wave.

Our 2020 job is to throw them out, and basically, save The Union from authoritarian government. How do we tackle that list of challenges, regain power, and start reversing the damage? Take bold action.

Several Democrats suggest that after he finishes being sworn in as President, Joe Biden should display his first Executive Order, reversing all Trump executive orders. After that, he makes his acceptance speech.

We know negative advertising works – unfortunately. People react to both fear and love. So every Democratic and Independent candidate must hammer Trump’s broken promises and failures. What could be more repulsive than:
o over 100,000 U.S. virus deaths in three months, refrigerated trailer morgues, and
o no federal leadership to help get us out of this mess?

Next, to peel away the loyal base, add the promises Trump made at his inauguration and failed to keep:
o “…total allegiance to the United States of America,” and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.”
o To eradicate ISIS
o To give struggling families much to celebrate, and “make every decision on trade, taxes, immigration and foreign affairs benefit American workers and American families,”
o To stop enriching foreign industry at the expense of American industry, and protect America “from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs,”
o To repair America’s decaying infrastructure.

And there’s more! Our Democratic presidential candidate – likely Joe Biden – must:
o keep a running tally of Trump lies – now nearly 100,000 (“That’s lie number 18,233, Mr. President”)
o name each of the government and private sector sycophants and cronies who enable him, and have used their power positions for profit from the government,
o remind voters that Trump’s swamp people, cozying with Russian hackers, and conservative judges Mitch McConnell helped install, are depriving us of the America we hold dear.

And we know the best way to counter money in politics and voter suppression are through
(1) grassroots organizing (we still change our government through the vote!)
(2) requiring that independent commissions set demography-based voting districts, and where that
can’t be done, bringing lawsuits to get it done.
(3) fight fire with fire, and bring money to campaigns to counter Republican money

So move off the couch, break free of treating politics as a hobby, and act however you can to help Democrats and Independents win the Presidency, control of the Senate and House, and offices in all states. There’s a plethora of possibilities to choose from. Here’s a menu of your options:
o Go to Changing the Conversation Together (CTC) – it offers training in “deep conversations, persuasive exchanges,” to build a national corps of deep canvassers who bridge political divides and help elect Democrats to take us forward.
o Change the Electoral College’s impact, and move the U.S. closer to deciding Presidential elections by national popular vote. We don’t need to abolish the Electoral College to do it. Contribute to changing the Read Politics Is For Power by Eitan Hersh – then take action
o Write postcards, and give all the business you can to the U.S. Postal Service! Join a writing campaign, such as Postcards To People,
o Contribute to the Congressional Progressive Caucus – working to pass The People’s Budget and The Green New Deal, hold our leaders accountable, and create an equitable U.S.A.
o Help voting rights organizations that fight gerrymandering, promote one person-one vote, and protect that vote from election tampering. They include Indivisible, Brand New Congress, Fair Fight, Supermajority, National Democratic Redistricting Committee, and others that fight and voter suppression, and work at the national and state levels to guarantee the vote as a Constitutional right that’s as hard to take away as a gun
o Help regain control of the media messages — from social media to radio and television, including flooding conservative and right wing databases with progressive messages
o Contact your state and national legislators – write, call, visit! – to set up social media security, in partnership with Google, Facebook, Amazon and others, so elections can’t be hacked, fake news can be debunked and erased,

According to our statistics watcher Tom Koch, the numbers look good for Democrats at this point. Biden will win all of Hilary Clinton’s states (232 electoral votes), and likely PA and MI, totaling 268. He will need one more state or both Maine (2) and Nebraska (2) to get the win. He is outperforming Hillary with white voters. She lost them by 20%, and Biden is down by about 9%; Hillary lost white women, Joe leads among them. The difference between Biden’s polling numbers and Clinton’s results shows that moderate whites make the difference.

In the final analysis, the 2020 election is about Trump. We’re in a war for the survival of America’s institutions – to keep them viable and independent, re-design them if necessary, and strengthen the three branches so they can check and balance each other, and make every citizen’s vote legitimately count.

Martin Westerman 5/21/20

The white Christian men in charge of our governments and corporations have failed the white Christian men who voted for them and bought their products. Now, those voters and buyers are angry with – people who aren’t Christians, and aren’t white Christians.

They’re proud to not connect cause and effect. Kelly Ann Conway introduced the world to “alternative facts” on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” January 22, 2017, when she defended Sean Spicer’s lie about the crowd size at Trump’s inauguration. Whether they’re in the Trump inner circle, Administration or Congressional sycophants and hangers-on, or MAGA hat wearers, they assert: “Trump didn’t say that. And if he did, he didn’t mean it. And if he did, he was just being sarcastic. And if you thought he was serious, you didn’t understand. And if you did, it’s no big deal. And if it is, others have said worse.”

“Trump’s tendency to deny his past statements has become more glaring during the coronavirus” reported CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger and Christina Wilkie on May 1, 2020.
“Everything is an act for him,” tweeted Leah McElrath March 11, after Trump’s COVID address. “He has no sense of the gravity of the situation because he lacks the capacity for empathy.” He only seems able to mimic what is socially appropriate. Trump complains that he can’t lead rallies during COVID. “…apparently it hasn’t occurred to him that his cultists would be endangered if they were crammed into an arena shouting at the top of their lungs, and expressing micro-droplets all over each other in the process.” (Joshua Holland, Alternet, May 20, 2020)

Feb. 6, 2020, journalist Eric Black wrote he was horrified that “selective perception” and “confirmation bias” have replaced objectivity in official pronouncements and news reporting. “There’s a part of human nature that, rather than wanting to know what’s accurate and true, wants to believe certain things, whether true or not.” Black considers Donald Trump a genius “in understanding that feature (or bug) of human nature.”

From the moment Trump won the Republican nomination July 19, 2016, researchers have been analyzing conservative and Trump supporter brains and behaviors. They echo studies done all the way back to the end of World War II, about how “normal” people could have supported fascist and Nazi governments, let alone gone to war for them. All authoritarian governments since, including Trump’s have been morally- and ethically-challenged. But it’s not about politics or logic, it’s about values.

Trump’s base “recognizes his legitimacy and follow him not because of who he is or what he does, but because of what they think he believes — and what they think that says about them,” wrote Derek Newton (Feb. 11, 2018, NBC’s THINK). Studies show this attitude dates all the way back to the rise of fascists and Nazis in the 1930s.

Trump supporters are like members of religious and fraternal organizations, says Andrew Gray, emeritus professor of Public Sector Management, Univ. of Durham (UK). They operate in the “communion mode,” where people recognize legitimate authority “based on an appeal to common values and creeds, and shared frames of reference.” They only consider actions “legitimate” if they’re consistent with communal values.

In contrast, the “contractual mode” is based on an agreement that sets out obligations and rewards; the “command mode” is based on a rule of law “emanating from a sovereign body, and delivered through a scalar chain of superior and subordinate authority.”

Communion governance relies on regular in-person meetings, call and response rituals (like Trump rally “Lock her up!” and “Drain the swamp!” chants) and shared experiences. Their members tend to associate and bond only with people similar to them, and view outsiders with suspicion and hostility. Their group bonds are stronger than those between followers and a leader because, where politics are transitional, values are long-lasting.

That makes persecution a key unifier (e.g., “the war on Christmas,” attacks by the “deep state” or “fake news media”). When members face opposition, or see an attack on their leader, they take it personally, as an attack on themselves and their values, and on their values leader – whether it’s on Trump, or the pastor holding religious services vs. virus lockdown. Any threat or assault by larger, stronger forces on the group increases their commitment to both group and leader. When reporters ask, “Do you still support Trump?” they hear, “Do you still support your own values?”

How to break the communion cycle? Betrayal. When the group feels betrayed, they turn on the betrayers. Newton wrote that inroads to Trump’s base are more likely to succeed if they avoid the supporters’ values or symbols, and find ways to target Trump for betraying them. The Lincoln Project Republicans are taking this tack.

Gray notes that followers who no longer see their values reflected by a communion leader become receptive to finding a new one. So it’s pivotal to demonstrate that Trump no longer does (or never did) share his followers’ values.

Unfortunately, other leaders who emerge to pull supporters away from Trump’s base may have to reflect shared values more passionately, by showing that Trump isn’t tough enough on immigrants, or terrorists and/or trade. And any values-based replacements for Trump must come from within the structure, not outside of it, given the group’s insularity and resistance to outside criticism. Followers must believe that the leader believes in the shared values more than Trump.

Fortunately, even if the new leader(s) emerge, it’s unlikely that the replacement(s) could take over the Trump base as much as fragment it.

5/6/20: (Bill Kaufman)

Trump is facing a massive recession/depression. Of course his real estate holdings, hotels, golf courses will do horribly. This will achieve a high point as we close in on the November election time. Not good for him, and he knows that.

While he has attempted to blame others for numerous blunders in managing the crisis, such as providing for adequate testing, needed equipment, personal protective gear, etc., he has, even worse, failed to unify the country, a critically needed preamble for success.

So now he knows that he is either on the losing side of the coming election or he pulls a rabbit out of his MAGA cap.

So he gambles. He feels he has no choice if he has any chance of getting what he wants, re-election. This reminds one of the Stormy Daniels saga. Recall that Ms Daniels said that Trump (married at the time) didn’t wear a condom. That was taking one big risk considering that Ms. Daniels was a porn star, and it was during the AIDS epidemic.

But Trump is a big gambler. In the past he has been lucky enough to avoid terminal disaster for himself. Trump has been enabled to gamble bigger than ever, and with other peoples money. Ours. Heads I win, tails, you lose.

For a narcissist, when you want something bad enough, or fear failing altogether, why not take a Hugh risk. Consider the downside, which for him is failing to be re-elected. For millions of Americans, they die. That’s not a bad bet for a narcissist.

Shame on us. We gave him all the chips for free.

5/5/20

https://apple.news/AaxC30n61T86eMjQ6uHkBog

5/5/20

As the federal government doles out trillions of dollars in its CARES Act Stimulus Program – mostly to American corporations, leastly to deserving citizens, we might ask, “What kind of ‘economy’ is this?”

Like a tide going out and coming in, money has melted away – in a 10,000 point stock market drop, and returned – led by the U.S. Treasury, creating a 5,000 point stock market rise. Stock market observers have seen this epidemic effect before, and think it’s worrisome. Basically, the U.S. Treasury is borrowing against future U.S. tax revenues and paying itself interest on the loan, exploding our national debt, to print money for Americans who will owe nearly $70,000 per person to the U.S. Treasury.

Economists agree it’s a problem. David Wessel, Director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal & Monetary Policy explained, “No one really knows at what level a government’s debt begins to hurt an economy.” If interest rates stay low, the government can handle a heavier debt load than anyone thought possible. But federal debt “cannot grow faster than the economy indefinitely.” Eventually, federal borrowing will crowd out private borrowing, and “Something has to give.”

A current Internet meme describes CARES like this:
“It is a slow day in the small Iowa town of Pumphandle, and streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit. A tourist visiting the area drives through town, stops at the motel, and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs to pick one for the night. As soon as he walks upstairs,
. the motel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.
. the butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.
. the pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill to his supplier, the Co-op.
. the guy at the Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her “services” on credit.
. the hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.
. the hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the traveller will not suspect anything.
At that moment, the traveller comes down the stairs, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up the $100 bill and leaves. No one produced anything. No one earned anything… However, the whole town is now out of debt and looks to the future with a lot more optimism.”

The Pumphandle story says our economy is built on the movement of capital. But what if each person in Pumphandle owes more than $100? Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck – money flows in, money flows out, and an unexpected expense can bankrupt them. Like the airlines and airplane manufacturers: they can’t make expenses because air travel has nosedived. American petroleum and tar sands companies are going bankrupt because the Saudi Arabia-Russia oil price war has created an oil glut and tanked per barrel income. Food suppliers, farmers and ranchers are dumping produce and killing livestock because restaurants, foodservice, hotel and cruise ship patronage has dropped to a trickle. Wen should create a new bankruptcy category: Chapter 19.

At this point, we might long for the good old days, when there was no such thing as money. Bands of our hunter-gatherer ancestors followed seasonal game and food plants, and even when they settled down 10,000-odd years ago to grow food and tame livestock, they still didn’t need money. They traded and bartered with other settlers and nomads. Labor predates capital by a million years.

But the Ag-Rev fed people, populations and tribal areas grew into territories, more people produced more goods and services, more trading occurred and more market centers appeared. People invented bookkeeping and accounting to keep track of transactions, and markers – money, to represent value and promises to pay. If you didn’t want a cow in trade for 30 clay urns, you could take an agreed weight in silver or gold to represent the value, then trade your silver for food or wood.

Governments appeared and grew; chieftains and warriors evolved into kings and armies; administrators appeared to manage growing realms and empires. Less and less money circulated amongst mid- and low-level tradespeople, farmers, ranchers and service providers; more and more flowed to the king’s coffers and the military – much like today.

Credit – loaning money to finance ventures – came mostly from the king and those connected to him. But expanding trade routes and more available wares to buy and sell encouraged commercial ventures, and helped entrepreneurs make fortunes. Commercial bankers arose to hold money securely. They lent it to finance regents’ adventures, finance new industries and research, and to make money on money. From the 1600s Enlightenment onward, the power of capital began to eclipse the power of monarchs.

Fast forward to today: We may love watching TV programs about hardy homesteaders and off-the-grid survivalists, but they’re just acting out nostalgic hunter-gatherer, or apocalyptic fantasies. With more than seven billion people on a planet running an $80 trillion globalized economy, they need this economy to finance their fantasies.

So, “What kind of economy is this?” All the world’s religions say it should be guided by a Golden Rule: “Treat others as you would treat yourself.” But most every empire has lived by another version: “Whoever’s got the gold makes the rules.” That approach “can weaken even the firmest ethical backbone,” wrote Eduardo Porter. And every empire has fallen, as greed for wealth has financed absolute power, and “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” (Lord John Dalberg-Acton, 1887).

Greed is really the source of all evil, not money. Food, shelter, security, love, and community appear in Maslow’s hierarchy; money doesn’t. Chief Sealth, surrendering his tribal lands to white settlers founding Seattle warned, “You may divide and sell all our land, but what will you do when you have nothing left to eat but your money?” Money is not political, religious or ethnic; nor moral or immoral. It’s amoral; a tool of commerce, a lifeblood of modern society. It’s like condensed energy, able to finance good and evil.

U. Mass. Boston economics professor Julie Nelson asserts that ethics must be a part of economics. “We undermine the ability of the economy to do its job — to provide for the sustaining and flourishing of life” if we imagine economics as “an ethics-free and care-free sphere.”

Labor may predate capital, but Oxford economics professor Bob Smith says they’re partners now – “complementary factors of production.” “In an industrial and post-industrial economy, you literally can’t produce (create, manufacture, distribute) without capital.”

The COVID economic jolt provides a good time for us to reimagine our economy as more than just the flow of money. Money is an agreement about the trading value of goods and services. Its value rises with optimism, falls with pessimism, spikes with euphoria, plunges with panic. If the U.S. Treasury can print money and call it valuable, then we can re-imagine the role of that money for supporting Americans’ aspirations. We should be looking at money in terms of what we could do if money were no object.

During the Great Depression, American infrastructure got built while America supported its artists and culture. We can do that today, too. When someone says we can or can’t “afford that,” it’s usually a statement of political expediency or lack of imagination.

For three years now, the Trump Administration has shown us how not to run a government. Meanwhile new, more cooperative form of financial and political systems have taken shape. While political leaders have locked their borders during COVID, scientists have opened theirs. While the current administration says it’s every man for himself, experts say being part of a cohesive community is the best way to survive disaster. On the business side, buying from or being part of a member-owned cooperative, like Darigold, Tillamook, R.E.I., Costco & credit unions, is more sustainable than with a standard structure business. In the U.S., cooperatives generate $652 billion in annual sales, and employ more than two million people. Worldwide, Certified B Corporations like Patagonia, Seventh Generation, and 3000 other companies are transparently verifying their business, social and environmental performance, working globally to build a sustainable and inclusive economy, and sharing the wealth to encourage more of it.

The models are there. It’s time we demand that our federal governments use them to run a better kind of economy now, and for our future.

April 1, 2020

We are at a turning point in american history. Indeed world history. To the extent that we enter in a life or death purchasing and resource competition with other peoples around the world, even the risk of world war has increased. Our approach must be experienced as fair for all parties. It already is not.
But we have a president who disavows the United Nations. America First sets the table for a disgusting meal.

We are at a turning point in american, indeed, world history. The planetary survivors of this crisis will completely refocus our vantage points. Assume you were reading about our historical moment 50 or 100 years from now. (By that time our experience will be highly documented for (hopefully) all future historians).

It was just a matter of time before Trump would meet a challenge that proved his utter unfitness. His lack of empathy (which, try as he can, can’t be faked) his need to be lauded or worshiped, his smallness, his lack of intellect, compounded by Trumps’ actual stupidity, would all factor into turning a critical crisis into a catastrophe. And here it is.

It is critical that the American public is frequently reminded of Trumps’ unfitness, lest he somehow wins another ruinous term. There is a tendency to not allocate blame, to avoid conflict, and even to not get on Trumps’ “bad side” for fear of retribution. Such has already been hinted at by Trumps’ castigation of two governors, and imposing a fear that they will not get a needed share of federal government resources if they “are not appreciative”. As if these resources belonged to Trump, and not all of Americas’ tax payers.

Footnote: A CNN Politics recently published, “Analysis: Donald Trump can’t face the stubborn reality: He was wrong about coronavirus”

President Trump made his first public comments about the coronavirus on Jan. 22, in a television interview from Davos with CNBC’s Joe Kernen. The first American case had been announced the day before, and Kernen asked Trump, “Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?”
The president responded: “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
By this point, the seriousness of the virus was becoming clearer. It had spread from China to four other countries. China was starting to take drastic measures and was on the verge of closing off the city of Wuhan.
In the weeks that followed, Trump faced a series of choices. He could have taken aggressive measures to slow the spread of the virus. He could have insisted that the United States ramp up efforts to produce test kits. He could have emphasized the risks that the virus presented and urged Americans to take precautions if they had reason to believe they were sick. He could have used the powers of the presidency to reduce the number of people who would ultimately get sick.
ed all of his public statements and actions on coronavirus over the last two months, and they show a president who put almost no priority on public health. Trump’s priorities were different: Making the virus sound like a minor nuisance. Exaggerating his administration’s response. Blaming foreigners and, anachronistically, the Obama administration. Claiming incorrectly that the situation was improving. Trying to cheer up stock market investors. (It was fitting that his first public comments were from Davos and on CNBC.)
Now that the severity of the virus is undeniable, Trump is already trying to present an alternate history of the last two months. Below are the facts — a timeline of what the president was saying, alongside statements from public-health experts as well as data on the virus.
Late January
On the same day that Trump was dismissing the risks on CNBC, Tom Frieden, who ran the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for eight years, wrote an op-ed for the health care publication Stat. In it, Frieden warned that the virus would continue spreading. “We need to learn — and fast — about how it spreads,” he wrote.
It was one of many such warnings from prominent experts in late January. Many focused on the need to expand the capacity to test for the virus. In a Wall Street Journal article titled, “Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic,” Luciana Borio and Scott Gottlieb — both former Trump administration officials — wrote:
If public-health authorities don’t interrupt the spread soon, the virus could infect many thousands more around the globe, disrupt air travel, overwhelm health care systems, and, worst of all, claim more lives. The good news: There’s still an opening to prevent a grim outcome. … But authorities can’t act quickly without a test that can diagnose the condition rapidly.
Trump, however, repeatedly told Americans that there was no reason to worry. On Jan. 24, he tweeted, “It will all work out well.” On Jan. 28, he retweeted a headline from One America News, an outlet with a history of spreading false conspiracy theories: “Johnson & Johnson to create coronavirus vaccine.” On Jan. 30, during a speech in Michigan, he said: “We have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. And those people are all recuperating successfully.”
That same day, the World Health Organization declared coronavirus to be a “public-health emergency of international concern.” It announced 7,818 confirmed cases around the world.
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The Manhattan Private School That Tore Itself Apart

Jan. 31
Trump took his only early, aggressive action against the virus on Jan. 31: He barred most foreigners who had recently visited China from entering the United States. It was a good move.
But it was only one modest move, not the sweeping solution that Trump portrayed it to be. It didn’t apply to Americans who had been traveling in China, for example. And while it generated some criticism from Democrats, it wasn’t nearly as unpopular as Trump has since suggested. Two days after announcing the policy, Trump went on Fox News and exaggerated the impact in an interview with Sean Hannity.
“Coronavirus,” Hannity said. “How concerned are you?”
Trump replied: “Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China. We have a tremendous relationship with China, which is a very positive thing. Getting along with China, getting along with Russia, getting along with these countries.”
By the time of that interview, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases around the world had surged to 14,557, a near doubling over the previous three days.
Early February
On Feb. 5, the C.D.C. began shipping coronavirus test kits to laboratories around the country. But the tests suffered from a technical flaw and didn’t produce reliable results, labs discovered.
The technical problems were understandable: Creating a new virus test is not easy. What’s less understandable, experts say, is why the Trump administration officials were so lax about finding a work-around, even as other countries were creating reliable tests.
The Trump administration could have begun to use a functioning test from the World Health Organization, but didn’t. It could have removed regulations that prevented private hospitals and labs from quickly developing their own tests, but didn’t. The inaction meant that the United States fell behind South Korea, Singapore and China in fighting the virus. “We just twiddled our thumbs as the coronavirus waltzed in,” William Hanage, a Harvard epidemiologist, wrote.

Trump, for his part, spent these first weeks of February telling Americans that the problem was going away. On Feb. 10, he repeatedly said — in a speech to governors, at a campaign rally and in an interview with Trish Regan of Fox Business — that warm spring weather could kill the virus. “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away,” he told the rally.
On Feb. 19, he told a Phoenix television station, “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along.” Four days later, he pronounced the situation “very much under control,” and added: “We had 12, at one point. And now they’ve gotten very much better. Many of them are fully recovered.”
His message was clear: Coronavirus is a small problem, and it is getting smaller. In truth, the shortage of testing meant that the country didn’t know how bad the problem was. All of the available indicators suggested it was getting worse, rapidly.
On Feb. 23, the World Health Organization announced that the virus was in 30 countries, with 78,811 confirmed cases, a more than fivefold increase over the previous three weeks.
Late February
Trump seemed largely uninterested in the global virus statistics during this period, but there were other indicators — stock-market indexes — that mattered a lot to him. And by the last week of February, those market indexes were falling.
The president reacted by adding a new element to his public remarks. He began blaming others.
He criticized CNN and MSNBC for “panicking markets.” He said at a South Carolina rally — falsely — that “the Democrat policy of open borders” had brought the virus into the country. He lashed out at “Do Nothing Democrat comrades.” He tweeted about “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer,” mocking Schumer for arguing that Trump should be more aggressive in fighting the virus. The next week, Trump would blame an Obama administration regulation for slowing the production of test kits. There was no truth to the charge.
Throughout late February, Trump also continued to claim the situation was improving. On Feb. 26, he said: “We’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.” On Feb. 27, he predicted: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” On Feb. 29, he said a vaccine would be available “very quickly” and “very rapidly” and praised his administration’s actions as “the most aggressive taken by any country.” None of these claims were true.

By the end of February, there were 85,403 confirmed cases, in 55 countries around the world.
Early March
Almost two decades ago, during George W. Bush’s presidency, the federal government developed guidelines for communicating during a public-health crisis. Among the core principles are “be first,” “be right,” “be credible,” “show respect” and “promote action.”
But the Trump administration’s response to coronavirus, as a Washington Post news story put it, is “breaking almost every rule in the book.”
The inconsistent and sometimes outright incorrect information coming from the White House has left Americans unsure of what, if anything, to do. By early March, experts already were arguing for aggressive measures to slow the virus’s spread and avoid overwhelming the medical system. The presidential bully pulpit could have focused people on the need to change their behavior in a way that no private citizen could have. Trump could have specifically encouraged older people — at most risk from the virus — to be careful. Once again, he chose not to take action.
Instead, he suggested on multiple occasions that the virus was less serious than the flu. “We’re talking about a much smaller range” of deaths than from the flu, he said on March 2. “It’s very mild,” he told Hannity on March 4. On March 7, he said, “I’m not concerned at all.” On March 10, he promised: “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”
The first part of March was also when more people began to understand that the United States had fallen behind on testing, and Trump administration officials responded with untruths.
Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, told ABC, “There is no testing kit shortage, nor has there ever been.” Trump, while touring the C.D.C. on March 6, said, “Anybody that wants a test can get a test.”
That C.D.C. tour was a microcosm of Trump’s entire approach to the crisis. While speaking on camera, he made statements that were outright wrong, like the testing claim. He brought up issues that had nothing to do with the virus, like his impeachment. He made clear that he cared more about his image than about people’s well-being, by explaining that he favored leaving infected passengers on a cruise ship so they wouldn’t increase the official number of American cases. He also suggested that he knew as much as any scientist:
I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.
On March 10, the World Health Organization reported 113,702 cases of the virus in more than 100 countries.

Mid-March and beyond
On the night of March 11, Trump gave an Oval Office address meant to convey seriousness. It included some valuable advice, like the importance of hand-washing. But it also continued many of the old patterns of self-congratulation, blame-shifting and misinformation. Afterward, Trump aides corrected three different misstatements.
This pattern has continued in the days since the Oval Office address. Trump now seems to understand that coronavirus isn’t going away anytime soon. But he also seems to view it mostly as a public-relations emergency for himself rather than a public-health emergency for the country. On Sunday, he used his Twitter feed to lash out at Schumer and Joe Biden and to praise Michael Flynn, the former Trump aide who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I.
Around the world, the official virus count has climbed above 142,000. In the United States, scientists expect that between tens of millions and 215 million Americans will ultimately be infected, and the death toll could range from the tens of thousands to 1.7 million.
At every point, experts have emphasized that the country could reduce those terrible numbers by taking action. And at almost every point, the president has ignored their advice and insisted, “It’s going to be just fine.”
Susan Beachy and Ian Prasad Philbrick contributed research

Martin Westerman 2/13/20

Democratic President Candidates 5: How to hold Trump-Repub accountable

On Feb. 6, 2020, House & Senate Republicans decided America doesn’t need co-equal branches of government anymore.  They’ve been working to marry the administrative, judicial and legislative branches since the 1971 Powell Memorandum urged them to fight radical & liberal ideas.  The U.S. Constitution, radical in 1789, looks conservative to them today.  So they happily regressed with their hypocritical acquittal of DJT.

Dumping Trump in 2020 isn’t just about (a) voting him and his swamp people out (thanks here to Kristen Gillibrand:  “My first act as President will be to Clorox the Oval Office”).  It’s also about (b) holding the Trumpsters and his ilk accountable, and (c) reclaiming America’s radical, Constitutional form of government.

Evangelicals won’t hold non-Christian, anti-love/Jesus DJT accountable: his administration is delivering for right-to-lifers.  Republican legislators won’t; he’s helping them pack conservative (“strict Constituionalist”) judges on benches.  Also, they’re scared of his vengeance and MAGA trolls.  And MAGAs won’t, because, well, they’re MAGAs.  These folk could have followed Romney’s lead and made this a short game, but they’re self-serving, sociopathic, and/or cowardly.  So we must play the long game.

Some rules going forward:

            1.  Politics is about keeping your cronies in power, period.  That thread runs from slaveholders getting the U.S. Constitution to count slaves as 3/5 human, to 1812 Boston Gerrymandering, to the Mason-Dixon Line/Missouri Compromise between free & slave states and antebellum voter suppression, to the Senate’s vote to kill DJT’s impeachment.

            2.  Politics attracts unrepentant actors.  Politicians are more likely than people in the general population to be sociopaths.  Psychologist Dr. Martha Stout says this small minority of leaders without conscience “has always been a bitter pill for society to swallow,” but it explains “shamelessly deceitful political behavior.”

            A minority may be sociopaths or psychopaths, but a juggernaut of them now controls the Republican Administration and Party.  To define terms:

                        . Psychopaths tend to be calm, even thrive in highly stressful situations (“resilience to chaos”).  They also lack empathy, tend to be callous, dishonest, glib, grandiose, manipulative, promiscuous, impulsive, and/or unable to recognize social cues.  They also think their behaviors will always be rewarded, and any punishments are undeserved, so they find targets to blame for their failures.

                        .  Sociopaths share most psychopathic qualities: but unlike psychopaths, they crack under stress, with angry outbursts and abusive language.  They switch between extreme charm and threats, prioritize power above all else, seek to dominate people and situations, enjoy the suffering of others, and look for weak spots and vulnerabilities to exploit in others.  Does this look like familiar behavior?

            3.   All politics is about getting your way – it’s all visceral.

            In the age of “wars” on women, people of color, and immigrants; foreign election meddling, white supremacists and mass shootings; threats to the social safety net, unaffordable housing, dysfunctional government, post-truth/fake news, and no leadership accountability, people have lost patience with and faith in the system. 

            The Pew Research Center (Partisanship and Political Animosity in 2016) found views of opposing political party members are the most negative in 25 years.  Sizable shares of Democrats and Republicans say the other party stirs feelings of not just frustration, but of fear and anger:

                                                Ds view of  Rs             Rs views of Ds

            Afraid                          55-70%                       49-62%

            Angry                          47-58%                       46-58%

            Frustrated                    58-60%                       57-58%

            Emotional rating         31 our of 100              29 out of 100

            The visceral reactions are resistance to change – from Ds’ “don’t cut my Social Security and Medicare,” to Rs’ “don’t impose your will on me.”

            Will holding psychopathic and sociopathic politicians accountable actually help heal these divisions, and restore trust in our system?

            A study in Lancet Psychiatry shows that psychopaths are not impervious to any sort of punishment.  Rather, they process rewards and punishments differently from most people, and their decision-making skills are markedly atypical.  Since  they’re able to interact within society, understand aspects of social situations, and know how to behave when they want rewards, they can clearly choose whether to play by rules, or break them for personal gain.  And that’s a person who can and should be held accountable.

            In Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths, and How We Can Stop, Bill Eddy introduces the dangerous, deceptive, high-conflict politician (HCP). These narcissistic, sociopathic people use a Fantasy Crisis Triad (“there’s a terrible crisis caused by an evil villain that requires a super hero to solve – me!”) to incite “emotional warfare,” and seduce, attack, divide and dominate communities and nations.  Helping the HCP rise are:

                 (a) voters who tend to split into four warring groups – Loving Loyalists, Riled-Up Resisters, Mild Moderates and Disenchanted Dropouts, and

                 (b) high-emotion media that attracts HCPs from the fringes of society, “and multiplies their emotional warfare thousands of times to reach millions of people.”  

            To stop HCPs, Eddy advises:

                 (a) building relationships among groups that have been divided,

                 (b) educating political parties on HCPs’ patterns, so their leadership, campaigners and voters can reject choosing them,

                 (c) exposing the Fantasy Crisis Triad,

                 (d) countering HCPs with aggressively assertive messages, presented factually and repetitively, with positive emotions, and

                 (e) pressing news outlets to analyze fake HCP news, and counter emotional warfare-fantasy crises with useful information about real problems and real solutions.

            In Think Progress, Zack Beauchamp advocates for using political democracy – the media – to hold politicians and their staffs accountable for their actions.  Psychopaths “very much do care about being able to hold on to their positions of power.  A system that actually holds people accountable to the broader conscience of society may be one of the best ways to keep conscienceless people in check.”

Constitutional lawyer John Whitehead, writing in Huffpost, warns that if the ballot box “becomes our only means of pushing back against the police state, the battle is already lost.  Resistance will require a citizenry willing to be active at the local level… “The Founders understood that our freedoms do not flow from the government,” he wries.  “They are inherently ours. In the same way, the government’s appointed purpose is not to threaten or undermine our freedoms, but to safeguard them.”

Here we must take the lesson from the Powell Memo ideologues, who created think tanks, put candidates up for appointment and election to everything from school boards to courts, state and federal government.

We energize the “sane” electorate — Democrats, Independents, moderate Republicans & everyone in the middle.  We:

• support the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and every such organization at the state level. 
• support efforts of Indivisible, Brand New Congress, Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight, Cecile Richards’ Supermajority, Planned Parenthood, and more. 
• encourage our state attorneys general to file lawsuits against gerrymandering; hammer those at state levels who resist one person, one vote, and move to protect that vote from election tampering
• regain control of the media messages — from television to all forms of social media, including flooding conservative and right wing databases with progressive messages
• control social media security — in partnership with Google, Facebook, Amazon and others, so elections can’t be hacked, fake news can be debunked and erased,

If we use every resource at our disposal now to hold our leaders accountable – local actions, the vote, muscular media – we can win in 2020

——- ———- ——— ——- ——– ——-

SOURCES

(Daily Beast, 04-14-17, “Why You Can’t Punish a Psychopath, According to Science,” by Elizabeth Picciuto; study in The Lancet Psychiatry, Feb. 2015).  // CUNY cognitive science professor Jesse Prinz & Sheilagh Hodgins, Professor of Psychiatry at Université de Montréal

Bill Eddy, LCSW JD, Psyhology Today blog, Mar 15, 2018,  “How to Spot a Sociopath in 3 Steps”

John W. Whitehead, Huffpost, “From Democracy to Pathocracy: The Rise of the Political Psychopath” 04-01-2017

Writing for ThinkProgress, Zack Beauchamp

Lindsay Dodgson  Nov 26, 2018, Insider,” The one trait that separates psychopaths from sociopaths”

Democratic President Candidates 6: Hammer Trump Failures, Create the Ideal USA – Martin Westerman, 2/13/20

In her Feb. 1, 2020, NY Times column, Maureen Dowd bemoaned two decades of watching Democrats try to play fair as Republicans ruthlessly played to win – from the misogynist Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, 2000 Bush vs. Gore recount and Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld lies to Iraq war, to the Merrick Garland Senate pantomime and Feb. 6, 2020, DJT impeachment hypocrisy.  Democrats may warn Republicans that history will judge them harshly, but “history is written by the winners,” wrote Dowd.

My first question is, Where are the ruthless Democrats and Independents?

We must paint the Whiner In Chief (“The (fake) news media-women-immigrants-Democrats-people of color treat me terribly”) into the Loser In Chief.  President DJT may think he’s the Winner In Chief, but winners don’t whine – unless they’re sore losers.  Hey – there are two new slogans for our presidential candidates!

Let’s compare promises DJT made in his 2017 inauguration speech with results in 2020:

                        .  I take an oath of allegiance to all Americans – no, loyalty oath only to DJT and his family and cronies, or no place for you in federal government; and invitations to Russia, China, Ukraine, etc. to hack U.S. elections and spy on DJT rivals, and use of federal agencies to attack political rivals,

                        .  At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice – no (Hitler-style salute) allegiance to the U.S.A., no loyalty to each other discovery, and plenty of room for prejudice,

                        .  eradicate ISIS – no (cue snorting laughter)

                        .  stop the “American carnage” – no, if increased mass shootings and U.S. border violence against families are any indication… otherwise, a meaningless phrase

                        .  give struggling families much to celebrate – unaffordable housing prices, losses of living wage jobs, closures of factories, choking of new U.S. industries, removal of environmental protections, etc.

                        .  make every decision on trade, taxes, immigration and foreign affairs benefit American workers and American families – no, trade war that has left agriculture in depression, industry, trucking & shipping in mild recession, deficit at $1.1 trillion

                        .  stop enriching foreign industry at the expense of American industry – no, foreign industry is doing just fine, at the expense of American

                        .  repair America’s decaying infrastructure – no

                        .  protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs – no.

Every 2020 presidential candidate needs to:

  (a)  hammer DJT’s failures,

  (b)  repeat:  winners don’t whine, losers do,

  (c) hang a name — “Mister empty promises” or “Donald Danger” around his neck,

  (d)  keep a running tally of lies Trump has told to excuse his failures – 16,361 as of Feb.

12, 2020.  (CNN reports that the rate of DJT’s dishonesty increases with his time in office.  In 2017, he made 1,999 false or misleading claims; in 2017 – 5,689; in 2018 – 7,688; and in 2019 – 8,155)

  (e)  remind voters of what promises he has kept, and the dangers they pose for the U.S.A.:

            i.   to make U.S. money laundering easier for oligarchs, dictators and criminals,

            ii.  to give Russia free rein in Middle East, central and western Europe affairs, and carte blanche in the Oval Office

            iii. to invite Russia, China and other countries, with blessings of Moscow Mitch & Leningrad Lindsey (& Lamar), to meddle in U.S. elections for DJT’s and Republicans’ benefits

            iv. to encourage white supremacist thugs, domestic terrorists and Nazi-wanna be’s

            v.  to favor Christianity over other religions for theocrats like Minister Mike (Pence) and his Evangelicals, violating the U.S. Constitution

            vi.  to approve paying protection money and bribes for favors, and to punish those who resist, testify to the truth, and/or blow the whistle anywhere in the DJT administration – military, intelligence and diplomatic communities, justice department, etc.

            vii.  to encourage enemies of truth (freedom of the press), justice (Bill Barr vs. accountability), and the American Way (governing norms).  All are welcome in DJT’s house,

            viii.  to approve white patriarchy, that abhors independent women, and people of color,

            ix.   to benefit American oligarchs, treating corporations as people, money as speech, and monopolies as preferable to business competition.

There’s more, but you get the picture.  And any 2020 candidate who doesn’t repeatedly remind constituents of these facts and dangers is either out of touch, forgetful or incompetent.

Humans and political dynamics haven’t much changed since 400 B.C.E., when Plato said the best leaders were those who do not want to lead.  They would understand that they don’t know everything.  They would seek to know the truth of what is fine and good, just and unjust.  Through education, they’d develop virtue, be humble, noble, honest, sincere, gentle, dignified, live with integrity, and not desire honors.  That kind of person “would be elected or selected (drafted or compelled, if need be) by the people themselves to be their leader.” 

In 1884, General William Tecumseh Sherman refused the Republicans’ draft to run for U.S. President (Rs were that period’s Ds), saying, “I will not accept if nominated, and will not serve if elected.”  But Plato said one incentive would force the virtuous man to serve as leader:  to avoid being governed by someone worse in office.  He could help create an ideal city, governed by “people who are awake rather than dreaming,” not by “people who fight over shadows and struggle against one another in order to rule.”  The virtuous man would only lead if compelled, and avoid the shame of taking office willingly. 

Sure, it’s important to talk bread and butter issues.  But 2020 is about beating the DJT Republicans.  From Plato’s perspective, they don’t qualify for leadership on the Plato Scale.  And we cannot create the ideal country if they remain.

2/12/20 Martin Westerman

On Feb. 6, 2020, House & Senate Republicans decided America doesn’t need co-equal branches of government anymore.  They’ve been working to marry the administrative, judicial and legislative branches since the 1971 Powell Memorandum urged them to fight radical & liberal ideas.  The U.S. Constitution, radical in 1789, looks conservative to them today.  So they happily regressed with their hypocritical acquittal of DJT.

Dumping Trump in 2020 isn’t just about (a) voting him and his swamp people out (thanks here to Kristen Gillibrand:  “My first act as President will be to Clorox the Oval Office”).  It’s also about (b) holding the Trumpsters and his ilk accountable, and (c) reclaiming America’s radical, Constitutional form of government.

Evangelicals won’t hold non-Christian, anti-love/Jesus DJT accountable: his administration is delivering for right-to-lifers.  Republican legislators won’t; he’s helping them pack conservative (“strict Constituionalist”) judges on benches.  Also, they’re scared of his vengeance and MAGA trolls.  And MAGAs won’t, because, well, they’re MAGAs.  These folk could have followed Romney’s lead and made this a short game, but they’re self-serving, sociopathic, and/or cowardly.  So we must play the long game.

Some rules going forward:

            1.  Politics is about keeping your cronies in power, period.  That thread runs from slaveholders getting the U.S. Constitution to count slaves as 3/5 human, to 1812 Boston Gerrymandering, to the Mason-Dixon Line/Missouri Compromise between free & slave states and antebellum voter suppression, to the Senate’s vote to kill DJT’s impeachment.

            2.  Politics attracts unrepentant actors.  Politicians are more likely than people in the general population to be sociopaths.  Psychologist Dr. Martha Stout says this small minority of leaders without conscience “has always been a bitter pill for society to swallow,” but it explains “shamelessly deceitful political behavior.”

            A minority may be sociopaths or psychopaths, but a juggernaut of them now controls the Republican Administration and Party.  To define terms:

                        . Psychopaths tend to be calm, even thrive in highly stressful situations (“resilience to chaos”).  They also lack empathy, tend to be callous, dishonest, glib, grandiose, manipulative, promiscuous, impulsive, and/or unable to recognize social cues.  They also think their behaviors will always be rewarded, and any punishments are undeserved, so they find targets to blame for their failures.

                        .  Sociopaths share most psychopathic qualities: but unlike psychopaths, they crack under stress, with angry outbursts and abusive language.  They switch between extreme charm and threats, prioritize power above all else, seek to dominate people and situations, enjoy the suffering of others, and look for weak spots and vulnerabilities to exploit in others.  Does this look like familiar behavior?

            3.   All politics is about getting your way – it’s all visceral.

            In the age of “wars” on women, people of color, and immigrants; foreign election meddling, white supremacists and mass shootings; threats to the social safety net, unaffordable housing, dysfunctional government, post-truth/fake news, and no leadership accountability, people have lost patience with and faith in the system. 

            The Pew Research Center (Partisanship and Political Animosity in 2016) found views of opposing political party members are the most negative in 25 years.  Sizable shares of Democrats and Republicans say the other party stirs feelings of not just frustration, but of fear and anger:

                                                Ds view of  Rs             Rs views of Ds

            Afraid                          55-70%                       49-62%

            Angry                          47-58%                       46-58%

            Frustrated                    58-60%                       57-58%

            Emotional rating         31 our of 100              29 out of 100

            The visceral reactions are resistance to change – from Ds’ “don’t cut my Social Security and Medicare,” to Rs’ “don’t impose your will on me.”

            Will holding psychopathic and sociopathic politicians accountable actually help heal these divisions, and restore trust in our system?

            A study in Lancet Psychiatry shows that psychopaths are not impervious to any sort of punishment.  Rather, they process rewards and punishments differently from most people, and their decision-making skills are markedly atypical.  Since  they’re able to interact within society, understand aspects of social situations, and know how to behave when they want rewards, they can clearly choose whether to play by rules, or break them for personal gain.  And that’s a person who can and should be held accountable.

            In Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths, and How We Can Stop, Bill Eddy introduces the dangerous, deceptive, high-conflict politician (HCP). These narcissistic, sociopathic people use a Fantasy Crisis Triad (“there’s a terrible crisis caused by an evil villain that requires a super hero to solve – me!”) to incite “emotional warfare,” and seduce, attack, divide and dominate communities and nations.  Helping the HCP rise are:

                 (a) voters who tend to split into four warring groups – Loving Loyalists, Riled-Up Resisters, Mild Moderates and Disenchanted Dropouts, and

                 (b) high-emotion media that attracts HCPs from the fringes of society, “and multiplies their emotional warfare thousands of times to reach millions of people.”  

            To stop HCPs, Eddy advises:

                 (a) building relationships among groups that have been divided,

                 (b) educating political parties on HCPs’ patterns, so their leadership, campaigners and voters can reject choosing them,

                 (c) exposing the Fantasy Crisis Triad,

                 (d) countering HCPs with aggressively assertive messages, presented factually and repetitively, with positive emotions, and

                 (e) pressing news outlets to analyze fake HCP news, and counter emotional warfare-fantasy crises with useful information about real problems and real solutions.

            In Think Progress, Zack Beauchamp advocates for using political democracy – the media – to hold politicians and their staffs accountable for their actions.  Psychopaths “very much do care about being able to hold on to their positions of power.  A system that actually holds people accountable to the broader conscience of society may be one of the best ways to keep conscienceless people in check.”

Constitutional lawyer John Whitehead, writing in Huffpost, warns that if the ballot box “becomes our only means of pushing back against the police state, the battle is already lost.  Resistance will require a citizenry willing to be active at the local level… “The Founders understood that our freedoms do not flow from the government,” he wries.  “They are inherently ours. In the same way, the government’s appointed purpose is not to threaten or undermine our freedoms, but to safeguard them.”

If we use every resource at our disposal now to hold our leaders accountable – local actions, the vote, muscular media – we can win in 2020

——- ———- ——— ——- ——– ——-

SOURCES

(Daily Beast, 04-14-17, “Why You Can’t Punish a Psychopath, According to Science,” by Elizabeth Picciuto; study in The Lancet Psychiatry, Feb. 2015).  // CUNY cognitive science professor Jesse Prinz & Sheilagh Hodgins, Professor of Psychiatry at Université de Montréal

Bill Eddy, LCSW JD, Psyhology Today blog, Mar 15, 2018,  “How to Spot a Sociopath in 3 Steps”

John W. Whitehead, Huffpost, “From Democracy to Pathocracy: The Rise of the Political Psychopath” 04-01-2017

Writing for ThinkProgress, Zack Beauchamp

Lindsay Dodgson  Nov 26, 2018, Insider,” The one trait that separates psychopaths from sociopaths”

Martin Westerman 2/5/20

So, Republican leaders have chosen a fascist monarchy government over what the Founding Fathers designed – an anti-monarchial government of, by and for the people –To clarify:  in fascism, a business elite married to religion runs the government.  In monarchy (or feudalism) a religiously anointed elite runs commerce and government.  Both feature a unitary executive – a dictator or king. 

Now what can the Democrat do?  How about something counter-intuitive?  Make friends with business.

Arguably since the U.S. was founded, a wealthy elite (landowners) has run America as a benevolent monarchy.  It has been more benevolent towards most whites, more malevolent toward people of color (PoC) and women.  (After Trump’s election, a Native American commented, “You think this is bad?  Try being Indian.”  But I digress).

In 1790, when 3.89 million people lived in the 13 colonies, our Founders occupied the top 10%, and controlled more than 38% of the country’s income.  The top 20% of Americans controlled 56.2% of it.  The next 40% controlled 34.3%; and the bottom 40% – 9.4%.  Nearly 18% of the residents (694,280) were slaves.  (Lindert & Williamson, American Incomes 1774-1860). 

If that looks familiar, it’s because it’s so similar to today’s America – minus the slaves.  Those at the top today still set policy and run things; those in the middle and bottom only influence policies through focused force of numbers.  So the Founders’ dream to build a nation of, by and for the people is still mostly a dream.

America has made great progress:  it has embraced immigrants, ended slavery, enshrined labor rights, enfranchised women and PoC, created national parks, generated legendary wealth, created a vast middle class, and produced inventions and leadership that changed and improved life throughout the world.

But as Joe Biden says, “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”  Since 1790, U.S. budgets have also valued genocide, slavery, land theft, environmental destruction and endless war.  Our economy has boomed and busted nearly 60 times, through investment bubbles, panics, recessions and depressions.   And Ralph Nader, alleged spoiler of the Bush-Gore election, supports putting corporate executives in prison for defrauding the consumer with shoddy merchandise and unsafe products that will maim or kill the buyer, destroying the economy, and poisoning our food, air, land and water.

Those at the top have turned more malevolent since the 1970s, and set about tearing up America’s social contract.  BTW, Democrats helped do that.

To clarify “social contract”: Elizabeth Warrens, August 2011: “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own…”  Every business moved goods to market on roads the public paid for, hired workers the public paid to educate, were safe in in their businesses because of police-forces and fire-forces the public paid for.  Part of the underlying social contract is, after businesses take their profit, “pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Roots of that malevolence appeared in the Vietnam War era (1954-74), when a U.S. anti-Communist government used the military-industrial complex to prosecute a losing war.  Frustrated anti-war activists finally called to  “smash the state,” and fearful corporatists acted on the 1971 Lewis Powell Memorandum, which said, the time is long overdue “for the wisdom, ingenuity and resources of American business to be marshalled (sic) against those who would destroy it.”  From this sprang right-wing think tanks, monitoring of news media and textbooks, placements of college faculty, “corporations are people” and “money is speech” lawsuits, and erosion of labor rights.

Since Democrats helped create this mess, can they help get us out of it?  That is their 2020 challenge:  present a clear picture of America’s future that’s forward-looking, and consistent with the Founders’ vision.  They must call for renewing the private-public social contract, but not be branded as socialists or communists.

Today’s Americans think life is so unfair, they elected a “Whiner In Chief” president who constantly complains that life is unfair to him? (NYT, Frank Bruni, 01/21/2020)   And Democratic presidential candidates are parroting him, each complaining that the economy is skewed for the rich, it polarizes incomes; it hollows out the middle class; people of color are disenfranchised, women are victims; America is racist, homophobic & xenophobic; infrastructure is crumbling; climate change will destroy us; and immigrants and/or automation and/or artificial intelligence are taking our jobs.  What is American politics now – a giant game of “Beat My Bummer”?

Democrats must inspire us to stop complaining, and start getting up and doing again.

First task:  create partnerships with business.  The authors of WEconomy, Holly Branson, Marc & Craig Kielburger assert that the greatest engine ever invented for change is business.  By marrying purpose to profit, WEconomy programs are helping business partner with volunteer and public sector organizations to improve lives around the world. 

Knowing the history of abuse by railroads, mining and timber companies, and federal contractors in public-private partnerships, sadder and wiser Democrats must step into these with open eyes.  Because they know they’ve got the potential to create innovations and policies that produce great social, research and technological advances.

Second task:  find inspiration.  Democrats can look to the Rocky Mountain Institute’s economic models for sustainability (e.g., Winning The Oil Endgame):  feebates where lower gas mileage cars help subsidize sales of higher m.p.g. ones; retrofits for buildings (such as the Empire State Building) whose energy savings pay for the work in years less than expected; and fossil fuel taxes paying for transition to renewable energy.

On the design side, William McDonnough and Michael Braungart outline in Cradle To Cradle, how we have already mostly withdrawn from the Earth’s crust nearly all the minerals we’ll ever need to build, recycle and rebuild everything we have ever made.  But we are dumping most of it in landfills, never to be recovered.  Likewise, the U.N. has found we produce enough foodstuffs to feed 10 billion people, but globally, 30–40% of it all is wasted.  Inefficiency, say McDonnough & Braungart, just shows a human failure of design.  They propose re-designing everything to fit into either a technical cycle (for inorganic materials), or an organic cycle to replenish agriculture.

Third task:  don’t just ask big donors for contributions.  Ask for partnerships – to build U.S. infrastructure, address climate change, expand voting rights, improve social and economic equity.  Democrats must constantly hammer the partnership angle.  Republican donors answer to money, and want to privatize all government functions, even when they work better than private ones (e.g., Medicare, Social Security the V.A.).

Fourth task:  Highlight partnerships across the country that are already building a new American future.  As James Fallows reported in The Atlantic (May 2018), what really makes America great are our inclusiveness, expansiveness, opportunity, mobility, and the “open-ended struggle to make the nation a better version of itself.”  Polls (Aspen Institute & others) show that, despite our bad national mood, Americans have rising faith in local governance.

Democrats can capitalize on these examples:

• The Welcoming Tennessee group founded in 2006 to celebrate how important immigrants and refugees were to Nashville’s economy has expanded into Welcoming America, that supports immigrant and refugee settlement in more than 50 cities.
• Technology start-ups and businesses are dispersing across the country, to small and medium-sized towns that are working with entrepreneurs and centers of learning, and improving manufacturing, agriculture, medicine and more.
• Libraries are becoming learning and gathering hubs, as new centers of civic life.
• The federal government’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a modern counterpart to agricultural-extension programs, has now worked with more than 1,000 successful manufacturing start-ups around the country.
• Downtowns are being reinvented and revitalized.
• Conservation is alive – states, localities, and private donors are setting aside land for conservation at an impressive pace.
• Governors of 16 states, Puerto Rico, and nearly 400 mayors have committed to achieving Paris Climate Agreement goals.  They represent more than half of U.S. economic output, and nearly 2/3 of U.S. population

Culminating task:  Democrats!  Tell the inspiring story of America.  And OK – a benevolent monarchy isn’t that bad (Monaco; a parliamentary-style democracy is better (England – as AOC says, in one of those, she and Biden would be in different parties – but in this on, they aren’t).  So the task is to find the overarching visions that inspire us all to work together.

Then ask for the sale!

Martin Westerman 1/30/20

When did Democrats lose their optimism?  The “New Deal,” “Happy Days Are Here Again,” “Great Society,” “Can-Do” slogans for the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam &‘60s upheavals.  Sure, times are grim.  The government seems to be run by clowns directed by monkeys (to paraphrase that Boeing 737 MAX e-mail).  Especially now, we need encouraging messages; visions of a future we can look forward to once we win the victory.  And it’s got to be better than “Democrats:  We Can Fix This.”

In 2015, I watched a young African American man explain he’d joined the Republican Party because :  Democrats always harped on what’s wrong; Republicans on what’s right.  He chose the optimists.  (Since 2016, he’s probably moved back to the pessimists, or to the Bernie Independents).

What can Democrats emphasize that unites us in optimism?  The NY Times reported from Iowa (01/25/2020) that the Democratic tent is becoming so unwieldy, voters can’t agree on a candidate (Too lefty!  Too progressive! Too moderate!) to run for President.

I suggest starting with the U.S. Congress’ words from 1782:  E pluribus unum, Latin for “Out of many, one.”  It’s on the banner in the eagle’s beak on the Great Seal of the United States.  Sure, the anti-Communist 1956 Congress added “In God We Trust,” but that motto of fraught:  whose God do we trust?  Mike Pence & The Evangelicals (how’s that for a rock group name?) say the Christian god – which contradicts e plurubus unum.  The Democrats could make a deal with DC Comics to use the ever-so-timely “Truth, Justice and The American Way.”  But that’s fraught, too.

Most slogans call for what is missing.  The “Quality Is Job 1” motto was designed to restore faith in low-quality Ford vehicles.  “You Don’t Have To Be Jewish To Love Levy’s” helped shift perception that Levy’s rye and other breads were solely for the Jewish-ethnic market.  “This Is Wells Fargo” reintroduces the criminally convicted and heavily fined bank as a place you can trust with your money.  “Make America Great Again” speaks to failures by U.S. businesses and governments to tout American successes, and provide the foundations we need to achieve the American Dream. 

And what’s missing today?  Unity (as of January 25, 2020).  And common purpose.  We all complain about Republicans being in lockstep.  But lack of unity among Democrats will lose them the 2020 presidential election.  A basic step toward conflict resolution is to hold the goal above the controversy.  In the War Room of the Democratic presidential candidate, the writing on the wall should say, “It’s The Unity, Stupid.”  How do we get the unity?  Common purpose.

We all contribute to American greatness and exceptionalism.  The Democrats need to know that beyond money, most Americans want purpose in their lives.  This election cycle, the Democrats must become the party that channels that longing into results. 

In the Sapiens trilogy Yuval Noah Harari observes that the world is changing fast:

            (a) artificial intelligence algorithms and bioengineering, created by businesses, are creeping into our minds and bodies, through everything from voice texting, robot customer service and industrial technologies, to Facebook and Google Maps, to election interference and government surveillance, to Amazon choosing your products and Netflix your movies, to medicine drug-altering your moods and replacing your body parts,

            (b) the governmental tortoise cannot keep up with the technological hare.  For example, by the time cumbersome governments have begun to address cyber regulation, the Internet has morphed ten times,

            (c) our slow-moving institutions can be poisoned by bad actors who get embedded in them, and harm everyone inside and outside the institutions,

            (d) malevolent social media and cyber hackers, and religious and nationalistic zealots are attacking the very concepts of neoliberal democracy – individual autonomy, informed decision-making and free & open information and commerce.  They peddle nostalgia and fantasies from previous centuries, that

            (e) choke our institutions, impede our free flows of information and commerce, and keep us from focusing on the urgent challenges of the 21st Century (a, b, c, & d).

Harari adds the pace of technological development and the speed and volume of the data flow are overwhelming democratic and authoritarian regimes alike.  Never in history have governments been able to gain so much knowledge about the world, and yet be so unable to act wisely on it.

It’s urgent that Democrats wake up to these realities, this election.  They must figure out how to solidify partnerships with labor, whom they’ve sorely and ignorantly neglected.  They must forge new, transparently accountable partnerships with businesses, dump what doesn’t work (e.g., privatized prisons and corporate giveaways), enlist business support for government, which will serve as an engine of research for progress, a leader and partner for change, and a partner in national and global development.

So what’s the slogan?  E plurubus unum too retro for you?  Annuit cœptis (“He approves the things undertaken”) could appear in the Democrats’ War Room, too.  But Novus ordo seclorum (“New order of the ages”) could be a slogan.  Or borrowing from “Hamilton” and playing on E plurubus unum, “Democrats:  We Get Things Done.”  Or “The Right Way Forward,” which could co-opt the Republican message, but surely offend lefties).   America is great because from many, it has the capacity to melt all together into one strong nation.  That’s America’s promise.  And that’s as optimistic as it gets.

1/15/20: Every Democratic presidential candidate should stop trying to explain anything, unless he/she can do it in two sentences and a Tweet.  Take Mary Poppins’ retort at Mr. Banks:  “I would like to make one thing quite clear.  I never explain anything.”

Trump groupies, acolytes, sycophants, MAGA cult members, religious fanatics always feel insecure.  They follow the leader.  He (these leaders are always male) is strong, speaks to their insecurities, helps them feel safe, protected, and “in” with the group (there’s strength in numbers).  They say what he says, re-Tweet what he Tweets, chant for him, defend him from perceived danger, or attack.  They see (Democrat) explainers and negotiators and compromisers and apologizers as weak.

So rule #1 for the  Democrat:  Don’t explain anything.  Attack with strength to keep the bully at bay, or on the defensive.  And/or Divert attention (Hey Mr. President, you’re shoe’s untied!).  Then explain if warranted.  If only the Democrats would react first with fire (and humor) to fight Trump & Republican fire, America would probably view them more positively.

Rule #2:  POTUS 45 has taught us that theatrics sell.  The best way to counter the bluster, the stonewall, the answering of a question with a question (e.g., Kavanaugh’s “Doesn’t everyone like beer?”), is to call it out and hammer it.

Rule #3:  Go for the kill.  Congressional Democrats in committee hearings offer the best lesson in how not to do that.  They must instead become a party of stark statements, clear choices, and few apologies.  Not a Republican “You’re either for us or against us” party, but an if this-then that party:  Truman’s “If you want to live like a Republican, vote for the Democrats.” FDR’s “I welcome their (Republicans’) hatred.”  Many consultants have addressed this difference between how Republicans vs. Democrats speak; heed them!

In committee hearings, on media or in public, that means a start with, “You are not answering the question,” and a move to, “When you say this, it means this” statements.  Examples:

• We’re not hear to listen to you bluster and stonewall, (judge, Mme. Secretary, etc.).  You are under oath here, and you’re just telling us that you’re hiding the truth.   Let the record show the (judge, nominee, etc.) refuses to tell the truth,
• All of us here are under pressure, Judge Kavanagh.  And we’ve all got sad family stories.  But your daughter is not the nominee, you are.  And you’re being interviewed for a job as Supreme Court Justice, not Father Of The Year.”

Lindsey Graham’s outburst should have won him these comments from Democrats:

• Well Senator, that was an Academy Award performance.  Except we’re not in Hollywood.  We’re in Washington, D.C., in the United States Senate.
• Let’s set this record straight.  Senator McConnell made this a sham three years ago.  For the first time in American history, he kept the Senate from holding hearings on a judicial nominee.  Now he’s blocking the Senate from doing its job – to advise consent on nominees.  So enough with this phony offense.
• In the hearing confrontation between former DHS Secretary Nielsen and committee Democrats, Rep. Gutierrez should have stayed put, and called Nielsen out:  “Is this the best you can do — reduce this to a schoolyard fight?  You are under oath.  Your department is failing to do its job.  You are the head of that department.  You are lying to cover up your department’s failures.  And we are holding you accountable.”

The Democrats have a sorry recent history of playing offense.  During the 2016 presidential debates, Hillary didn’t turn on lurking-over-her-shoulder DJ Trump and snap, “Back off!” We lost trust she could stand up to any bully, domestic or foreign.  When Obama wouldn’t stand up for collective bargaining and unions, honor his Syria “red line,” or defend Merritt Garland vs. Mitch McConnell, he lost national trust.  When war hero John Kerry couldn’t defend himself against the 2004 Swiftboaters, people lost trust that Kerry could defend America.

The Democrats need to reverse that trend:

            . They need to keep a running tally of Trump lies (now nearing 16,000).  If Trump ever shows up for a Presidential debate, his Democratic opponent must keep track of the lie count: “Oh, that’s lie number 15,876, Mr. President,  And that’s 877.”  Twitter snap:  “Will Prez 45 EVER tell the truth?”

            . When Trump calls Warren “Pocahontas,” snap, “So what?  You come from German immigrants, your wife’s a Slovenian immigrant, you used chain immigration to get her family here.  When did you start hating immigrants?  And you hate American Indianss, too?”  The Tweet back at DJT:  “Hates immigrants.  Hates himself.  So sad.”

            .  When Trump denies climate change, Democrats snap, “You’ve got a cellphone.  That’s science – physics, math, chemistry, engineering, biology.  If you don’t believe in science, don’t use your cellphone.  Or your car.  Or your TV.”  The Tweet:  “Trump says Earth is flat, wants to live in horse and wagon days.  Trump For President, 1492.”

            . When Trump talks great economy, Democrats must snap,  “Great for rich people like you.  Not for anybody else.  But how would Trump know?  He spends more time golfing than working.”  The Twitter snap:  “So rich, so clueless, and so bad at golf.”

Answer this question:  Which is the party of backbone that stands up to bullies, makes clear statements about its visions and intentions, and follows through on them?  Don’t you wish you could answer, “The Democrats!”?

Submitted by Martin Westerman (1/15/2020)

Who is the Democrats’ “It” candidate for 2020? – the one who can beat the R’s “It,” DJ Trump?  “It” is charisma, and if you’ve got “It,” said author Elinor Glyn in 1927, “you win all men if you are a woman and all women if you are a man.”  “It” combines physical, mental, and personal attraction, and something more, and they say you’ve either you’ve got itor you don’t.

But wait:  research says you can learn It.  Humans unconsciously gravitate toward a leader they can trust to represent their hopes and dreams, where membership in his or her group helps them feel safe and protected.  Author David Aberbach lays it out in Charisma in Politics, Religion and the Media.  Once in the group, people tend to hold back their emotions, to show deference and acknowledge the leader’s superior status.  Cambridge University’s Jochen Menges calls this the “awestruck effect.”  It’s tribal.  It’s safe as long as you pledge allegiance to the group; dangerous if you don’t, or if you’re outside of It.  In TrumpWorld, outsiders include minority groups, immigrants, opposing politicians, the news media, and “liberals.”

But a candidate can learn and use the elements of charisma, says Univ. of Lausanne professor John Antonakis. (“The Anatomy of Charisma,” Nautilus, Feb. 16, 2017).  He calls them Charismatic Leadership Tactics (CLTs), and says they’ve helped decide eight of the last 10 presidential elections.  Charisma isn’t a divine, supernatural, superhuman, or exceptional power.  “The more individuals use charismatic leadership tactics – metaphors, storytelling, open posture, animated gestures – the more others see them as leader-like.”

Appearance is important.  Princeton psychologist Alexander Todorov showed side by side photos of competing congressional candidates to individuals, and asked them to rate candidate competence based on their appearance.  Based on their snap judgments, the interviewees predicted the winning candidate almost 70% of the time.  (“Inferences of Competence from Faces Predict Election Outcomes,” Science, June 10, 2005)

Our snap judgments are emotional, connected to fight-or-flight responses in the brain’s amygdala.. Even without meeting a person, we appear hard-wired to quickly decide if a person has likeability and competence traits that we feel are important, Todorov said.

But Nobel Prize psychologist Daniel Kahneman found the brain has two parallel decision circuits – the fast intuitive (in the amygdala), and the slower rational (in the prefrontal cortex).  The rational system can override the intuitive, when we analyze our snap judgments. 

So looks are important, charisma grabs us emotionally, we need to trust our leaders will speak and act for us, and protect and keep us safe.  We can rationally overcome our snap judgments and subconscious fears.  And we can learn from our mistakes. 

There’s the roadmap for every political campaign.  Now, who is the D’s “It” candidate?

Contributed by: Martin Westerman 11/18/19

Marty’s Trump-prolonging nightmare scenarios:

At the danger of making these self-fulfilling prophesies, I’m sharing several nightmare scenarios that I fear could prolong our tenure in Trumpville beyond 2020. 

First  — 45 overstays his welcome by declaring a national emergency and postponing the November 2020 elections, as catastrophes consume America:  disastrous Midwestern fracking earthquakes and water poisoning, or raging Western forest fires, or overwhelming Category 4-5 East and Gulf Coast hurricanes; or thousands or millions of Americans becoming homeless refugees.  And/or a war or the Yellowstone Caldera could erupt, or a meteor could strike Earth.  Part of the emergency will be the administration’s inability to handle an emergency.

Second – key blocks of citizens don’t get to vote against 45.  Power is a drug, Republicans have become addicts, and a fix is offered every election cycle by disenfranchising voters, gerrymandering districts, undermining faith in U.S. institutions to create voter apathy, and winning less populous “red” state elections to skew Electoral College votes that outweigh the U.S. popular vote (e.g., Bush v. Gore, Clinton v. Trump).  And then, the “Bernie or Nobody” crowd could pass on voting for any Democrat and throw the election to 45.

Or Third – Republicans and 45 capitalize on the docile herd animals called “humans,” who believe in fantasy like it’s reality, take breaks to chase novelties and shiny objects, and are drawn to leaders who threaten or cajole them into mythical love or submission.  These leaders are called “Alpha-animals.”  Our U.S. President is an Alpha-pretending, fantasy spinning, idiot savant of distraction (gaslighting, Tweetstorm, ridiculous public statement, & 14 lies-a-day master).  We pay attention because he’s the power player – POTUS.  We want to ignore him, but horrified fascination keeps us looking. 

            Historically, human society and activity can be described by a simple pyramid, whether it’s organized religion, empire, monarchy, corporation, drug cartel or authoritarian government:

                                                /              \

                                               /    Tribal     \

                                             /  Patriarchal   \

                                           /    Dictatorial     \

                                         /     Hierarchical     \

                                       /        Theocratic         \

                                     /___________________\

In America, that has meant a society dominated and designed by White, Male, Alpha-directed, Top-down organized, Christian-Capitalists.  The other tribes – people of color, immigrants, non-Christians, etc. have been marginalized or shut out of control positions in society.

So Fourth – 45 could be re-elected by playing on White people’s fear of non-white others.  Every authoritarian government in human history has (sadly) affirmed that humans respond more to fear than love.  You don’t need the Nazis, or Lederer’s A Nation of Sheep, or Harari’s Sapiens trilogy. to tell you love is powerful until the loving person gets threatened or killed.  Then survivors fear for their safety and lives.  Ideologues, marauders, conquerors and religious zealots always use violence on “non-believers” when they can’t persuade with words or deeds

Studies show that despots and authoritarian rulers win popular support and retain legitimacy using notions and beliefs that “bolster willing obedience.” Also, they keep a monopoly over use of force; control of economic and infrastructural resources; and a strong and sustainable administrative apparatus.  It enables powerful minorities to control population majorities.

Humans also tend to not think ahead or self-reflect – unless we’re pregnant females (and perhaps their partners).  Thinking ahead generally invites (a) arguments about which plan is best, and (b) delays to study the plan and make excuses about why it’s too challenging and/or expensive to do.  

Self-reflection is a thicket, too.  As Harari observes in 21 Lesson For The 21^st Century, do Christians ask themselves how a religion based on love begot the Crusades, Inquisition, witch hunts, the 30 Years’ War and anti-Semitism?  Do Marxists ask how Marx’s teachings led to Stalin, the gulags and the Cultural Revolution? Or scientists ask how the scientific project has led to destabilizing the global ecosystem? Or geneticists ask how that helped Nazis hijack Darwinist theories?  Do capitalists ask how the “free market” created slave plantations, the Great Depression, today’s homeless crisis, and Facebook destabilizing Western democracy?  No.

So back to my nightmares about how Trump & Co. stay in office past 2020:

            1.  Monopolizing force by:

                        a.  Calling out the U.S. Army to “guard” polling places and scare away voters

                        b.  Calling on his “fine people” (Charlottesville, white supremacist & neo-Nazi gangs) to battle opponents.  Will militias drilling in American forests, and in 2016 occupied the Malheur national refuge in Oregon – take sides, and if so, whose?  Will U.S. Armed Forces (and/or National Guard and/or local police) crush the gangs or do 45’s bidding?  What will 2^nd Amendment advocates do – support or fight the President and the gangs?

            2.  Not playing by the rules:  Jennifer Senior asked why R’s don’t, and Democrats and Independents do play by the rules (Oct. 2019 NY Times op-ed).  In today’s income polarized America, corporations are “persons” (SCOTUS Santa Clara 1886), money is “speech” (Citizens United 2010), and Senate and House R’s now block all legislative progress at the federal level, as they and 45 continue to run circles around hapless Democrats who “play by the rules.”

            3.  Attacking the impeachment process, (a) by declaring it unconstitutional, (b) calling all Congressional subpoenas for witnesses invalid, (c) calling the process a “Deep State” attempt to pull off a coup against His Unitary Executive-ship, or an attempt to undo the 2016 election.

            4.  Challenging Congress and the Supreme Court to unseat him.  Both the Supreme Court, and the Senate that would try Prez 45 are in sympathetic Republican hands (that’s another issue – how to eliminate politics from judicial nominations & appointments?)

            5. Delegitimizing the 2020 election, by indoctrinating Trump Herd supporters, with Fox News help, to view any close or contested 2020 election as an excuse to ignore the results (see Second above), so the D.C Police or U.S. Army would have to drag him out of the White House (Raw Story 10/13/2019) (see 1.b. above),

            6.  Declaring widespread voter fraud (see Second above) so he can remain in the White House post-election until a fraud investigation has finished.

            7.  Democrats give 2020 Senate and Presidential elections away to Trump and R’s, by continued in-fighting, and failure to agree on and strongly support a good presidential candidate.

Activist Aditi Juneja asks all 2020 candidates what they’ll do to prevent another president like Trump, assure that federal checks and balances will work, and that elections will be free, fair and accessible?” (Talking Points Memo Oct. 14, 2019.  U.S. democracy is not guaranteed, she says.  “It’s an idea that each generation has to renew and redefine.”

All of our American ancestors are immigrants who came here to escape persecution or famine, or/and to find safe haven and new opportunities IN America.  Now we, their heirs may have to think about where in the world we can go to find places that are safe FROM America.  Having to start that search is my worst nightmare.

• Oct 23, 2019

According to this Mike Pence had known about the quid-pro-quo all along, and thus, in his compliance, has been totally corrupted. Once a person is corrupted, the condition becomes unalterable. It sticks to him/her forever, compromising the “immune system”, and continues to spread, having created yet another carrier.

Once a person “misdeeds” it becomes almost inevitable for more misdeeds to follow as each misdeed is further self rationalized. It finally, mercifully, becomes like a “house of cards.” This is how dictatorships are formed, out of a sort of epidemic phenomena, with people infecting each other.

This is the ultimate sin of Trump, having nurtured and spread a disease, and now affecting the souls of many, somewhat like Aids affects an afflicted human body. (this also means that impeachment would have to reach down to Pence and below)

Like any fast spreading virus, it is all too easy to see this becoming a planetary phenomena. There are already too many signs.

Trump voters and followers are infected. They believed him, voted for him, and continue to support him. One of the psychological effects of such a disease, cognitive dissonance, induces denial in the afflicted. No one likes to admit to illness and being sickly. They will continue to deny even what their own eyes see, and look away, and deflect, as they too have been infected.

This is really a Code 1 alert! When will the fever break? Or will our world be the next Atlantis?

D. DRUMPF: CATALYST FOR OUR TIME

9/15/19

Martin Westerman

Our nearly four years with the unprecedented candidate-President Drumpf-tRump-45, bring three movies to mind for me – The Producers, Sneakers (the original hacker movie) and Galaxy Quest (the Star Trek spoof J.J. Abrams loves).  You can get the day-by-day Presidency count from Brian Williams every night on his 11^th Hour MSNBC show – as of September 1, 2019, it’s 954 (excruciating) days.

The scene that provides my umbrella for this odyssey comes near the end of The Producers.  Zero Mostel’s character, producer Max Bialashtok, sits in the rubble of his theatre, looking skyward and asking, “I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?” 

Trump was the wrong candidate and is the wrong President for so many reasons:  misogyny & gaslighting; rich-boy entitlement, narcissism & white privilege; support for white supremacy, fascism; divisiveness & propagandizing; vengefulness, immigrant- and race-baiting; faux-patriotism & aiding America’s enemies; failed businesses & trade wars; climate change denial; personal and institutional disloyalty (bordering on treason); dismissal of facts, opposing research & truth; epic dishonesty, religious indifference, and hatred of pet dogs. 

With all these negatives, he has become a catalyst for our time. Thanks to the dynamics of 45, he and his supporters, for all the wrong reasons, have confronted us with all the “right” things the majority of Americans (the other 65-70% of us) must now address:

• #metoo, the roles of women in society & embedded misogyny;
• #blacklivesmatter, embedded U.S. racism (from today’s local neighborhoods back to the 1789 U.S. Constitution), police bias & responses to white supremacist riots;
• immigrants’ rights, the asylum process vs. “homeland security,” & U.S. Latin American policy (and international relations);
• news media false equivalencies: “balanced coverage” that makes chronic liars look equal to research, data and facts; #fakenews; & social media hacking;
• nepotism, emoluments, corrupt practices & accountability for public servants;
• undermining U.S. institutions, including courts, intelligence, investigative and policing services; and support and regulation agencies
• the dependably re-elected, legacy beneficiaries of political gerrymandering;
• money in politics, income disparities (& favoritism for the rich), and failures to apply federal anti-trust and state corporate charter regulatory laws, and
• governmental balance of powers, and the structure of the U.S. Constitution – including the continued efficacy of the Electoral College vs. popular votes, 2^nd Amendment, embedded racism, and whether or not the U.S. President and any other high-ranking official is governed by the law.

As much as I’d prefer Hilary, If  she had become President, it’s unlikely the Democrats would have re-taken the U.S. House, nor won so many state and local offices, nor would so many Republican lawmakers now be resigning.  It’s unlikely that national revulsion at 45 would have brought all these “right” issues to a head.  Hilary would have been dogged by Republican hounds gnawing at her heels, yapping at & blocking her every move.  McConnell would not be known as Moscow Mitch, nor Graham as Leningrad Lindsey.

Looking ahead, I keep in mind the old warnings from Sneakers (1992) and Galaxy Quest (1999), for our future elections:

• Beware computer hacking – warns the villain Cosmo (Ben Kingsley) to the hero Martin (Robert Redford):  “The world isn’t run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money, it’s run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It’s all just electrons. … And it’s not about who’s got the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information.”
• Mind your history:  Guy (Sam Rockwell) snatches Gwen (Sigourny Weaver) back from walking into a trap, and barks:  “Don’t you watch the show?!”

Let’s appreciate how interesting are the times we live in.  And make sure we do the right things – for all the right, and/or for all the wrong reasons.

WESTERMAN 09-01-19 GUN MANAGEMENT: Trump Universe  BLOG POST

I’m fresh from another Facebook exchange with 2^nd Amendment “defenders.” Their standard litany: “Gun regulations: will crooks comply?” and “There is NO WAY to keep criminals from obtaining guns! Therefore gun control measures serve only to DISARM the LAW-ABIDING!” 

The gun control litany is, owners of deadly weapons should get trained AND licensed.  I prefer to say “gun management,” not control.  With 393 million guns in America (incl. 15 million assault rifles), we’re not going to control them now.  We have to manage their owners.

Nearly 65% of Americans, and more than 75% of gun owners support universal background checks, & sometimes more (red flag, safe storage, etc.).  If we subtract 75% of gun owners from 100%, that leaves 25% or fewer gun owners who radically defend the 2^nd Amendment. 

So, why does our 65% gun management majority act like a shivering elephant cornered by a screaming, <25% pro-gun mouse?  Who is that elephant, anyway?  It’s the insurance, medical, healthcare, property management, hospitality, retail, entertainment, construction, and funeral industries, plus law enforcement, governments, and faith based organizations.  That’s a lot of industries harmed by guns.  It’s time the elephant pulled itself together and squashed the mouse.

As unruly children need structure, so do unruly adults – and markets.  Regulated markets operate equitably, unregulated markets don’t.  The gun industry and its supporters are barely regulated, and they’re protected from lawsuits and liability.  Unregulated market participants are basically pirates.  The gun pirates are depriving us of our Constitutionally-granted rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Let’s transform these unruly folk into law-abiding citizens.

Since our government is slow to act, and our faith communities have only moral-ethical, not regulatory authority, we must turn to businesses.  They act faster, and this is a business issue. 

Example: the 2017 Las Vegas concert shooting (what happened in Vegas didn’t stay there):

• insurers paid for everything from wrongful death, injury & health care claims (some still running), to repairing the Mandalay Bay and concert venue,
• concert organizers had to refund ticket fees, and increase security spending,
• all Las Vegas hotels and LV Strip tourist attractions lost business,
• Nevada state paid L&I claims; tourist agencies (funded by NV businesses) paid crisis, emergency & image management costs to mitigate damages,
• The City of Las Vegas spent massive amounts on medical response, law enforcement and coroners, and have had to increase those expenditures
• local hospitals incurred massive emergency & long term medical costs,
• the funeral industry mopped up.

That’s a lot of business “firepower” vs. the ≤ 25%-ers.  Let’s work backwards from the murdered:

• The funeral industry could say gun victims aren’t the dead they want to handle.  It’s blood money.  What will the NRA say? “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you!”?
• The news media:  they already condemn gun violence, and some international news organizations have declared the U.S. a virtual war zone for their staffs.
• Insurers:  do they want to continue paying massive claims?  And it’s more likely for a gun accident to occur in a gun-owning home than in a non-gun one.  Why are the low-risk gun-less people paying higher premiums?  Higher risk gun owners should pay more.
• The medical establishment is already on board calling for broader gun regulation, and for treating gun violence a national, public health crisis.
• Entertainment, hospitality, travel & tourism, property management: demand regulation to keep ticket buyers, show attendees, tourists, shoppers, visitors and residents confident they’ll be safe in their own homes, cities and country.
• Retailers:  like Walmart, restrict buyer ages, & limit firearm types & ammo for purchase.

Consider:  the NRA is anti-economical.  When it discounts school shootings – killing youngsters who’ll grow up to pay into pension, healthcare and retirement systems that will keep the NRA’s members comfortable in their old ages – it’s helping kill the geese who’ll lay their golden eggs.

And governments:  at least fly flags at half-mast nationwide for 30 days after a mass shooting, to honor the dead and remind America these are national tragedies.  Then, work to assign costs of gun mayhem to manufacturers & perpetrators, and to eliminate liability protections.  And when≤ 25%-ers occupy federal lands, stop cowering and go arrest them.  That’s your federal job.

It’s fine to support the 2nd Amendment; keep guns for hunting, target shooting, collecting, and for personal defense (although statistics say your less safe packing than running and hiding).  If the ≤ 25%-ers & NRA were smart in the face of gun-caused carnage, they’d quit screaming “hands off my guns!-no regulations-thoughts & prayers-the killer was crazy!”  Because that’s what makes the 65% want to regulate guns, and keep everybody from ever buying or owning one.

Submitted by Martin Westerman

https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnyti.ms%2F2UVJsez&data=02%7C01%7C%7C255cd07724de47df17a508d7394a14f5%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637040862646142667&sdata=VgEIlvs4HRqWVVYF3AXQ1Rb99MC5InvObOwz2er3rYs%3D&reserved
>
> This idea means that if you buy a treasury bill, you will have less money at the end of its term than you started with. You will literally pay a fee just to own an investment that has a guaranteed loss built in! Keep in mind that we can’t lower formerly created liabilities, that is previously issued government bonds, because interest rates cannot be legally lowered on Treasury bonds.
> Now since we finance our Hugh budget shortfall and redeeming of our previously issued maturing bonds, each year (billions of dollars), by borrowing more(that is, issuing new bonds) , and rational investors (as most treasury bill investors are) will not hand over good money buying bonds that guarantee a loss, the policy will need to be quickly reversed or we will just have to print the dollars not provided by investors (causing an inflation the likes of which have never been seen in the US.)

And this brings us to another dilemma, not one that Trump can easily solve, and may greatly work against his re-election (assuming the dems bring it up). That is, the sorry plight of older retirees, looking for positive returns on their life savings. Many of them, looking for very low risk investments, such as bank certificates, that yield enough interest to match their expenses, will have no where to turn.

And what about workers’ pensions? Pensions have been drastically affected by low interest rates. Recent reports about General Electric, for example, highlight the problem. In an earlier post, we highlighted how Mitch McConnells’ clearly unqualified brother-in-law (Gordon Hartogensis), somehow got to head up the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. It is this agency that monitors and bails out underfunded and/or failed corporate pension plans. These pension plans have been devastated by low interest rates (because the companies that fund them are compelled to make higher (often impossibly high) contributions when interest rates decline, in order to meet pension funding requirements. Of course, no one realized that the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation would require some real expertise when its former, highly qualified head, was fired to make room for Hartogensis.

General Electrics’ pension plan (along with others) threatens to drive that company into bankruptcy due to the persistence of low interest rates over the last several years. Consequently, retiring and/or terminating employees will suffer greatly, and all the more as Trump tries to engineer continued lower interest rates.

Will they connect their plight to Trump? A person with the mental capacity of a thirteen year old. A person who cannot see forward to likely and unlikely outcomes to his brash actions. A mentally deficient person. A dangerously mentally deficient person, because his field of “vision” restricts itself solely to what he thinks may benefit him most and most immediately. Long range vision? We often talk about great people of vision. Trump has none.

Hopefully the Dems will help all the harmed persons see that it was Trump and his cohorts that inflicted that harm on them.

> As Rex Tillerson has said, prior to leaving office, Trump is a moron.

9/2/19 Post contributed by: Marty Westerman- a friend of our blog.

Our nearly four years with the unprecedented candidate-President Drumpf-tRump-45, bring three movies to mind for me – The Producers, Sneakers (the original hacker movie) and Galaxy Quest (the Star Trek spoof J.J. Abrams loves).  You can get the day-by-day Presidency count from Brian Williams every night on his 11^th Hour MSNBC show – as of September 1, 2019, it’s 954 (excruciating) days.

The scene that provides my umbrella for this odyssey comes near the end of The Producers.  Zero Mostel’s character, producer Max Bialashtok, sits in the rubble of his theatre, looking skyward and asking, “I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?” 

Trump was the wrong candidate and is the wrong President for so many reasons:  misogyny & gaslighting; rich-boy entitlement, narcissism & white privilege; support for white supremacy, fascism; divisiveness & propagandizing; vengefulness, immigrant- and race-baiting; faux-patriotism & aiding America’s enemies; failed businesses & trade wars; climate change denial; personal and institutional disloyalty; dismissal of facts, opposing research & truth; epic dishonesty, religious indifference, and hatred of pet dogs. 

With all these negatives, he has become a catalyst for our time. Thanks to the dynamics of 45 he and his supporters, for all the wrong reasons, they have confronted us with all the “right” things the majority of Americans (the other 65-70% of us) must now address:

• #metoo, the roles of women in society & embedded misogyny;
• #blacklivesmatter, embedded U.S. racism (from today’s local neighborhoods back to the 1789 U.S. Constitution), police bias & responses to white supremacist riots;
• immigrants’ rights, the asylum process vs. “homeland security,” & U.S. Latin American policy (and international relations);
• news media false equivalencies: “balanced coverage” that makes chronic liars look equal to research, data and facts; #fakenews; & social media hacking;
• nepotism, emoluments, corrupt practices & accountability for public servants;
• undermining U.S. institutions, including courts, intelligence, investigative and policing services; and support and regulation agencies
• the dependably re-elected, legacy beneficiaries of political gerrymandering;
• money in politics, income disparities (& favoritism for the rich), and failures to apply federal anti-trust and state corporate charter regulatory laws, and
• governmental balance of powers, and the structure of the U.S. Constitution – including the continued efficacy of the Electoral College vs. popular votes, 2^nd Amendment, embedded racism, and whether or not the U.S. President and any other high-ranking official is governed by the law.

As much as I’d prefer Hilary, if she had become President, it’s unlikely the Democrats would have re-taken the U.S. House, nor won so many state and local offices, nor would so many Republican lawmakers now be resigning.  It’s unlikely that national revulsion at 45 would have brought all these “right” issues to a head.  Hilary would have been dogged by Republican hounds gnawing at her heels, yapping at & blocking her every move.  McConnell would not be known as Moscow Mitch, nor Graham as Leningrad Lindsey.

Looking ahead, I keep in mind the old warnings from Sneakers (1992) and Galaxy Quest (1999), for our future elections:

• Beware computer hacking – warns the villain Cosmo (Ben Kingsley) to the hero Martin (Robert Redford):  “The world isn’t run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money, it’s run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It’s all just electrons. … And it’s not about who’s got the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information.”
• Mind your history:  Guy (Sam Rockwell) snatches Gwen (Sigourny Weaver) back from walking into a trap, and barks:  “Don’t you watch the show?!”

Let’s appreciate how interesting are the times we live in.  And make sure we do the right things – for all the right (and/or even if for all the wrong) reasons

Protestor? Beat the crap out of him!

This is Trump talk at one of his rallies:

“Shoot migrants”, yells a trump rally attendee, and Trump actually responds:

“That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that stuff” (that is shooting migrants).

Analyze that to get a fuller picture of Trumps ‘ hidden brain process. Isn’t Trump saying, its ok to shoot a migrant, so long as you do it in the panhandle where you can, presumably, “get away with it”? (an area where Trump received 80% of the vote (ie-Trump country).

We have a president who believes it is also ok to do anything he likes, so long as it is marked with a single criteria: he can “get away with it.” And he thinks he can get away with anything, so long as he has his brown shirt supporters and politician backups on board. https://crooksandliars.com/2019/08/el-paso-shooters-manifesto-uses-trump-and

6/30/19:

Outward signs of intellectual decline are quite pronounced now in Trump, as the devolution of our culture continues. We have pointed to Trumps’ long term use of finisteride, and its devastating impact on brain health (see earlier post), which combined with the”know-it-all” trait found in narcissistic personality disorder, puts us all at code level red risk.

Donald Trump Stumped By Terms ‘Busing’ And Western ‘Liberalism’ At News Conference https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-busing-liberalism-g20-press-conference_n_5d17df7de4b082e5536a499d DOWNLOAD_HUFFPOST

5/15/19

Everyone can easily recall how President Bushs’ war on terror, and his aggressive response against Iraq (whether you believe it was wise at that time or not) practically guaranteed his re-election. Indeed, for as long as written history, oligarchs and dictators have taken advantage of war mongering to reinforce their political strength and advantages.

Is it possible that Trump sees his bullying strategies of statesmanship as a “no lose” tactic? That is, if other nations, such as Iran or China yield to his demands, he wins. And if it gets us into a war, he sees an increase in the odds of winning re-election?

Nicole Goodkind is a political reporter at Newsweek

” Attorney General William Barr exonerated President Donald Trump of all wrong-doing in the Russia investigation last month, and now he wants to take things a step further. In a Senate hearing Wednesday, Barr suggested that the U.S. government had spied on Trump during his campaign and said that he would open another inquiry into the origins of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Barr told senators. “I think spying did occur, yes,” because of a probable “failure among a group of leaders in the upper echelon” of the FBI. Mueller delivered a nearly 400-page report last month with evidence that Russia had worked to influence the results of the 2016 election and that President Trump may have obstructed justice. Just days later, Barr released a four-page memo absolving the president of wrongdoing. But yesterday Barr indicated that he not only wanted to exculpate Trump of wrongdoing, he wanted to avenge him as well. It’s an odd statement to make because the origins of Mueller’s probe are already well-known. The FBI launched an investigation into the president’s campaign after their warnings of possible interference by Russia went ignored. The Department of Justice eventually started looking into some former Trump campaign staffers who had suspicious contacts with Russian agents. Multiple judges signed off on those investigations. There is no evidence that government agents were illegally spying on the Trump campaign. The “spying by the government” line is a conspiracy theory that has been touted by the right and by President Trump’s own camp. In 2017, Kellyanne Conway suggested that former President Barack Obama had used microwaves to spy on Trump. Still, the comments will most certainly please Barr’s boss, who has repeatedly called the Mueller investigation a Democrat-driven witch hunt. “Barr knows how counterintel investigations work. He knows there was ample evidence of Russian attempts to infiltrate the Trump campaign and that the FBI took lawful action to stop it,” Democratic Senator Mark Warner, ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, tweeted Wednesday. “Giving a wink and a nod to this long-debunked ‘spying’ conspiracy theory is irresponsible.” House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff questioned Barr’s fitness to serve at the Department of Justice. “I had deep concerns about him given how he got the job, but this is far worse than I would have imagined,” he told Politico. Almost as soon as Barr made the comments, he attempted to walk them back. “I have no specific evidence that I would cite right now,” about spying Barr said during the hearing. “I do have questions about it.” Barr said he had not set up a team to investigate and that “I am not saying that improper surveillance occurred. I am saying I am concerned about it and looking into it. I believe there is a basis for my concern. But I’m not going to discuss the basis.” (Hey, why not state your basis? Why should anyone accept the statement “I am not going to discuss the basis”? “I have no specific evidence that I would cite right now,” about spying Barr said during the hearing. “I do have questions about it.” Barr said he had not set up a team to investigate and that “I am not saying that improper surveillance occurred. I am saying I am concerned about it and looking into it. I believe there is a basis for my concern. But I’m not going to discuss the basis.” Nicole Goodkind is a political reporter at Newsweek. You can reach her on Twitter @NicoleGoodkind or by email, N.Goodkind@newsweek.com. This article, which quotes from Barr, reveals Barr’s principal transparent and outrageous communication technique which he uses to obfuscate reality. He thinks it is fine to state some- thing, as if it is true, and that he is “concerned about it”, and “take it back” the next moment, as if he didn’t really mean to say that it was actually true, thus not taking responsibility for saying it. Obviously Barr thinks it is a clever technique. It really is akin to some Trumpian tactics we have written about. And in the end, when the only answer he can give defies credulity, he simply says “I am not going to discuss that now”. And finally, what is this “protecting the reputations of “peripheral third parties”. So when we the see the blacked out pages containing references to Donald Trump, and children, you can be sure Barrs’ retort will be something like “I informed you that I would protect the reputations of peripheral persons, remember?” This was, after all an investigation into Russian interference, and an uncharged persons’ reputation, who can thus be deemed a “peripheral person” should not be sullied. (We honestly hope this isn’t the case, but we wouldn’t be surprised.) We believe that these tactics will expose Barr for who he really is, an insufferable hack, but a very powerful one. But he has, at least twice, outsmarted himself. He is just another emperor with no clothes on. A man, like Trump himself, who doesn’t understand the outrage people have when you treat them like stupid fools, thinking they will not grasp these kindergarten tactics, is an even greater fool..

Suppose that Muller’s report is not made public. Half the country is curious enough about it to want to either see it, or have people they trust to be allowed to see it, with them being able to report it out (leaving Trumps’ only recourse to be calling it “fake news,” or not).

If the public release is blocked, there is guaranteed to be leaks about it. It is just too “hot” an issue now. Remember how Trump talked about it as a waste of taxpayer funds? Well shouldn’t citizens be able to see the benefit from their paying of taxes? And one benefit would be seeing the report that Trump thinks they paid too much for, right? By saying that it was a “waste of tax-payer funds” he shot himself in the foot, as he always does.

Remember, Trump is not a strategist, he is a tactition, though a master at it.https://trumpuniverse.net/they-are-not-just-bad-they-are-incompetent-and-bad/tactition (though a master at it).

Will Trump ever admit that he boxed himself in on this? He will of course call the leaks (and leak it will), “fake news” and/or do something similar as witnessed in the Cavanaugh hearing, that is discredit victims and/or witnesses, and of course Muller. He has his bag of tricks.

Some tricks (tactics) that we recently saw in the latest Trump interview were worth sharing. Trump often says: “when you look at……..” and thus points the listener or reader to focus on his made up claim of “validity”, which is nothing but Trumps’ purposefully reframed and distorted version of a real event.

Trump knows that the “eyes don’t lie”, or “seeing is believing” is an almost ancient homo-sapien canard, which can thus be easily exploited by this tactic. Thus one of his go-to phrases is “when you look at…” That phrasing subtly traps his listeners’ mind to to see it in the way Trump wants it to be seen.

The dilemma is what happens when Trump runs out of tricks? Imagine him to be the “emperor” who finds himself really naked in public, completely discredited, humiliated, shamed, and possibly threatened with imprisonment and/or financial ruin. So many of his followers realizing that they were suckered. Will he go gracefully into the night? What are the odds?

At any rate, Trump would pointedly not say that he would be comfortable with the results being released publicly. He said: “I don’t know” “It depends. I have no idea what it is going to say.” Is that the same as saying that if only it is good for Trump, will Trump allow the release? And now, with the apparent full support of his new attorney general, William Barr.

What could the report possibly say that would be sufficient to block the citizenry from seeing it? Would the new Attorney General agree with that conclusion? How about any yet remaining republican senator with a conscience? Wouldn’t they want their constituents (whos’ tax money helped pay for it) have the right to see it? Only need a few.

2/25/19

The minute cost of the Muller report, attacked as a “waste of money” by Trump, is as an astonishing bargain for Trump, if it establishes the innocence of family Trump (and collaborators). Trump is not even burdened to spend a penny of his own money to defend his own behavior. Think not only of his relief (plus that of the rest of the Republican Party and Trump family). Wouldn’t that result also create much better odds of them winning future elections? Holding on and even expanding their current base and power?

This proves that future obstruction to its public release would almost certainly be due to an intent to conceal information detrimental to their future election chances, and/or Trumps’ self interests.

Further, if released, there should/will be a focus on redactions. Are they an attempt at concealment, and if so, is that legitimate or not? What is the rationale behind each redaction. These will be heavily scrutinized. History takes a very long view.

With nothing to lose, that is, if the report is exculpatory for “their group”, one could rationally expect a quick release of the Muller Report.

Delays of the report, critical redacted portions of it, underlying evidence, caused by Trump administration interference, will be the beginning of the end for America as we knew it. You can’t go back. History students will be studying these moments centuries from now.

We don’t wish to worry our readers, but we do have to follow the story and make rational deductions.

3/26/19

Expect that this will be a repeat of the “good guy, bad guy” routine, with Trump often “urging” the full public release of the Muller Report, with Barr insisting, for one reason or another, why it can’t be released.

Since we at least know one thing for sure, the report was not exculpatory as to the crime of obstruction of justice. Even though all that was in plain sight, Trump never sat for an interview with Muller, which may have established motive, a necessary component of an obstruction crime. Thus the evidence, in itself, never rose to the necessary certainty that a crime was actually committed, even though it clearly looked like an obstruction crime. It may have been. Thus the report doesn’t say Trump was innocent, but, critically it doesn’t clear him either.

Did Trump have a pre-existing understanding with Barr?

If Bill Barr was able to thoroughly read and mark up the report in the short time he had, you would think it would be simple to prepare it for public release, since he is so remarkably efficient. We hope to be wrong about this, but we don’t think that the Muller Report will see the light of day for many years.

Anyone would logically think that if the report is benign for Trump, it would be timely released. But we worry about the setup, the “good guy, bad guy” routine aforementioned. Let all the blame for failing to release it fall on Barr. Its the oldest trick in the book. And surely, if it is not released, its likely not benign.

Scott Turow just published an article in Vanity Fair, where he credibly found reason to say that Barr had used a fallacious argument to reach his conclusion, , and that “impugns his integrity and his reputation as a lawyer”. Strong words indeed.

Our worry is that there may have been a conspiracy between Barr and Trump. We don’t think that Barr would make central logical mistakes, such as appear in his short “summary,” without some unseemly motive.

We sincerely hope that we are wrong. But to be realistic see below:

The end of our democracy may be at hand now. We wonder how hard that is for everyone to see?

1/26/2019 Read the full story

Trump asks why “republicans sometimes break apart.” The answer is so obvious, why would anyone even question it?

““Why are they always so loyal?” Trump asked in one staff meeting, complaining that Democrats so often stick together while Republicans sometimes break apart, according to attendees”

Republicans break apart because some of them have a conscience, and/or they crave re-election which has become threatened by their affiliation with a failed president.

Obviously trump is delusional and has awful judgement as he can’t comprehend something so very simple. But we have already established that (see Trump- The Finisteride President in this blog).

Link above

“DISGRACE”: Trump likes to use this term to deride his detractors and anyone else interfering with his dominance. The latest, of course, applying to those “interfering” with the Kavanaugh appointment is an example, he calls them a disgrace. Trump said that these interferers are “harming” Kavanaugh’s family, and its not fair and a disgrace. One wonders how he would describe the situation of children being forcefully separated from their parents, and kept in the desert? The pain being suffered by these families is truly biblical and permanent.

The truth is that there are plenty of Supreme Court possible candidates that would nothave been burdened by Kavanaugh’s “baggage”. (We are sure that Trump agrees with Kavanaugh’s idea that a sitting president can’t be indicted for a crime.)

Moving on to the latest NY Times article revealing Trump family tax avoidance secrets. This article is really worth a careful read. Some of the tax avoidance schemes, such as minimizing taxable gift values of substantial assets, are fairly commonplace among wealthy families. And there are industry accepted methods to accomplish these ends. The Trump family stretched the rules in ways that were malfeasant, if not illegal.

And there were clearly some straight out illegalities too. Actually, Fraud. For example, using an affilitated Trump company, set up at inception, with the stock shares gifted to Donald and siblings (All County Building Supply & Maintenance Company), which was a purchasing agent for Trumps’ buildings. This gift, of a company which had no revenue at the time of the gift, was thus subject to little if any gift taxes.

All County dramatically marked up supplies, and services, purchased for minor sums, goods and services that were than used in the Trump buildings, which were than billed to each building as expenses. Actually marked up by millions of dollars.

As expenses, phony though they were, they created large, unjustified tax deductions for Fred Trump. True, All County had more reportable taxable revenue, but income taxes on revenue going to Donald and siblings was offset by deductible expenses  created by the ploy. And it is important to note that gift and estate tax rates were much much higher than income tax rates.

Thus, this money was effectively a further gift to “new” owners of All County, Fred Trumps’ children, though avoiding gift and estate taxes.

But worse, the marked up items, with these “trumped” up expenses, were than used to justify rent increases. Thus a double whammy, injuring both the US government and these low to middle income tenants.

By doing so, Fred Trump was able to skirt New York state rent control laws. It is OK to raise rents by legitimate maintenance and building expenses, which these were not. This was clearly and truly illegal.

New York State will undoubtedly litigate this, and easily prevail. It may take some years, and those renters might never recover the additional rents that they were forced to pay.

Our point is this. If the President and family could violate the law, and clearly harm their customers (renters), what harm are they doing to the United States?

Most Americans pay their taxes on the witholding system. That is how most Trump supporters pay too. They don’t have the luxury of using these Trump schemes. As citizens, we all have to worry that our tax system is fair to all of us. A loss of confidence in its fairness would be devastating to our country. That the president and his family is taking advantage (illegal advantage) of our tax system can lead to widespread extreme cynicism among our citizens.

who knows what the Donald absorbed of his dads’ tax tricks? What is he hiding in his tax returns anyway?

We often think about the harm that Trump is bringing to our country. Well this is another awful example. We are crying for America.

Newest development, chickens coming home to roost: https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Famericas%2Fdonald-trump-sued-brooklyn-new-york-tenants-b1766794.html&data=04%7C01%7C%7C73dfbfe459554f23988608d89955b3cb%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637427940644588739%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=0jtgpBquG4qLi6iXXhvyCNczAldhSad3YKRNr1LZcrI%3D&reserved=0

An anti-science president endangers us and our planet. At this point, it is already too late to prevent many of the harmful effects of global warming. Losing two or three years of efforts to mitigate global warming, in view of its’ logarithmic progression, is in itself a tragedy, but exactly what do the deniers actually deny?

Is it that human civilization is not the central cause of the phenomena? And therefore, global warming is of no human concern?

Or is it that global warming is not actually happening, that the climate is not actually changing, but weather patterns are simply in fluctuation?

In the first case, humans not being the cause, does that mean that the phenomena of global warming is not still a planetary emergency? Why wouldn’t that need to be addressed as soon as possible? Shouldn’t we be building dykes, addressing building codes, fortifying at risk structures, or at least talking about these things?

Or worse, does Trump (and his sycophants) actually think that global warming and climate change is not happening at all? That it is merely a “hoax,” even as it is in plain view?

This is a kind of delusion that blocks action to prepare and build infrastructure resilience. In either case, our nations leaders are failing us and endangering our grand and great grandchildren. What kind of world are we leaving to them?

In an earlier article, we wrote about how one negative number in a multiplication series (out of thousands) will always turn a result negative, no matter how many positive numbers preceeded or followed it. Thus, only a few publicly visible incidents were required to judge Trumps’ “inner heart”; like Charlottesville or his statement about “helping all the working men” at a rally by “”getting rid” of the “death tax”” which had no application to them, while Trump was tricking them to think it was a favor for them.

This applies to the records that the Republicans deemed “unavailable” in the Kavanaugh hearings, some, or even one, of which may have exposed him as unfit for the job.

Instead the Republicans just treated it as a bunch more writings and records, so many that there was no reason (and time) for a review (since there was already a plethora of pages that were released-though that release was at the very last minute). As if this information, which will effect the forever American future, was just a bunch of paper with script on it.

Well the same principal applies in the Kavanaugh situation that applied in the Trump election, that is, there was these noteworthy clues to Trumps’ unfitness. The Republicans failed and continue to fail to “read the fine print”, to grasp these clues, or worse, maybe not to care about them. Or perhaps the Republicans simply think they found someone, in Trump, whose ignorance and nastiness could be exploited?

This was no way to conduct a proper due diligence, and the Republicans absolutely knew this.

We are crying for our country.

P.S. Of course, all of this will come out at the further end, but by than, very grave damage to America may have occured. Past errant behavior like this eventually will become a stationary target. It is hard to believe that the Republican leadership isn’t aware of this. But beware, it may be a long road before this happens. In fact, when you think about it, Trump and his sycophants, aren’t really thinking about the future, as evidenced by their non-concern about deficits and global warming. They seem, like Trump, to be focused on stealing as much as possible from the present and immediate future.

Sept 19: As Trump sycophants argue that Kavanaughs’ alledged behavior occurred so long ago when he was just a boy, it is of no consequence in any case. However, what is undeniably, presently true is that Kavanaugh has denied it with the astute defense of saying “I have no recollection of this.” Come on folks, is that a really good enough response to win a lifetime job. The fault in character is in the denial.

Sept 26: Yesterday, Judge Kavanaugh released his old calendar showing entries for the summer of 1982, the year Blasey Ford claimed she was molested. Because there were no entries in the calendar, his team will argue that there is no corroboration for Fords’ claim.

There are perhaps a hundred pieces of evidence that may have corroborated Fords’ claim, which may have been discovered if the FBI did a thorough investigation, but to take this diary, which really proves nothing, and highlight it, is extremely misleading, to say the least. It proves nothing. (Accept it is something to make Trump supporters feel relief). How do we know if this small party wasn’t called at the last moment, for example? Of course we don’t. This was a calendar book and not a diary!

Concentrate your mind on the fact that Kavanaughs’ real appeal to Trump, was expressed in one of his Kavanaughs’ writings, which made the argument that a sitting president could not be indicted for a crime, in light of which it is not so odd, with all the Supreme Court potential picks, Kavanaugh rose to the top of the list. And now Kavanaugh has to be defended by a president who has already made so many awful cabinet and staff selections (many who already left in disgrace).

It must be very hard for our narcissist president to think of an immigrant as a potential asset versus a liability. Surely an immigrant, any immigrant, couldn’t be as smart, resourceful, inventive, productive, compassionate, than he, right? (Are we setting a too high bar here?)

The anti-immigrational view rests on the absurd notion that human life is a zero sum game. That is, an immigrant generally, over the arc of his/her life, “takes” more than “gives”, surely not giving a drop over his takings. And this presumably because he/she comes from another place on the planet? The absurdity is obvious.

Of course this isn’t true, else how could any human innovation be explained? Indeed, most inhabitants of planet earth give more than they take, or else, human civilization would have disappeared long ago.

Indeed, how could have homo-sapiens in general evolved their culture and technology to this point? Some of these smart homo-sapiens invented toilets and cooking pots, and earlier figured out how to light and maintain fire, etc., right?. They obviously weren’t all US citizens. Some of the early pioneers might have easily come from “shit hole” countries too, or who knows what other places on our planet.

Why would a human being, just because he is an “immigrant” be so fundamentally different than other genus homo-sapiens?

That established, the truth is, if homo-sapiens’ evolutionary success depended on at least some genus members “giving more than taking,” that is, innovating and inventing, than some number of that Trump ”immigrant” group, so feared and even defiled by Trump, will “give” more, vastly and wildly more, than they can possibly take. They too are, after all, homo-sapiens.

Examples abound in long and short term human history, of extraordinary contributors to human history, culture, science, and technology, and they are way to numerous to list here, but we know that they and/or their parents weren’t born in the US!

And this is the point. Simply consider new immigrants (sometime to be citizens) as potential assets. Among that group will be, even if only a few, creative, inventive, genius innovators that improve life for all other genus homo sapiens and who help our planetary civilization thrive.

Even if the rest of planetary citizens give not an iota of more than what they take, or even, those fewer, like our president, who take far more than they give, these perhaps fewer extraordinary homo-sapiens will more than compensate in the longer run, even if they happen to be “exports” from one place and “imports” to another.

And this is the irony, called the “law of large numbers”. That is, the more homo-sapiens, thus effectively, the more immigrants, to our shores, the greater the likelihood that some outlier few genius innovators will be among them, helping America to continue to thrive. Perhaps some genus homo-sapiens like Edison, Steve jobs, Charles flint, Bill Gates, Charles Pierce, Copernicus, Galileo, DaVinci, Einstein, Jonas Salk, Aristotle, Jesus, (the list goes on and on), might wind up on our shores. Any single one of them can have an impact positively affecting literally millions or billions of other homo-sapiens.

We really need them, and I know that we are not smart enough to filter them in or out either. Most of us simply don’t know all that we don’t know, otherwise we would have already had, before they walked the earth, their contributions and knowledge. They are pioneers that we can’t foresee ahead of time. An Anti-immigration bias dooms America to slow decay and certain mediocrity and even worse.