Neo-fascism
From yesterday:
The results of this travesty of democracy have been a complete loss of confidence for the American people in the political system. Lacking confidence that the system will support them, they vote for the candidates who promise to “Make America Great Again.” They don’t care about democracy and the protection of human rights as much as they care about government that works.
To continue:
What part of government does the destabilized American still trust? Social Security and Medicare. The average American in his or her sixties takes Social Security as an earned right, not a favor; a part of one’s life savings built up over years of working and paying taxes.
A new factor brought into the analysis: a long post in VOX [a political website? orientation uncertain]
Feldman developed what has since become widely accepted as the definitive measurement of authoritarianism: four simple questions that appear to ask about parenting but are in fact designed to reveal how highly the respondent values hierarchy, order, and conformity over other values.
- Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: independence or respect for elders?
- Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: obedience or self-reliance?
- Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: to be considerate or to be well-behaved?
- Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: curiosity or good manners?
Feldman’s test proved to be very reliable. There was now a way to identify people who fit the authoritarian profile, by prizing order and conformity, for example, and desiring the imposition of those values.
The first was Hetherington and Weiler’s insight into partisan polarization. In the 1960s, the Republican Party had reinvented itself as the party of law, order, and traditional values…
The second [insight] was Stenner’s theory of “activation.” In an influential 2005 book called The Authoritarian Dynamic, Stenner argued that many authoritarians might be latent — that they might not necessarily support authoritarian leaders or policies until their authoritarianism had been “activated.”…
The third insight came from Hetherington and American University professor Elizabeth Suhay, who found that when non-authoritarians feel sufficiently scared, they also start to behave, politically, like authoritarians.
The VOX article points out that, with the survey questions quoted, it is possible to reliably measure the number of people with “authoritarian” attitudes without having the measurement contaminated by political issues because the questions are frankly nonpolitical.
The article points out three insights that explain, in part, the rise of Republican ideologies recently. The first is the Republican painting itself as being on the side of law and order in the late 1960’s, the police union, traditional moral values, and the status quo in general (while in fact they are not in favor of laws that restrict them from plundering and defrauding ordinary citizens, or moral values that include charity and benevolence.)
The second insight involves the activation, over the last twenty years, of a number of people with authoritarian personality types that have been latent up until now. Activation occurs when a latent authoritarian feels threatened by social changes. The third insight is closely related to the second: people with non-authoritarian basic personalities, when they are sufficiently frightened, act out in authoritarian ways. There is a distinction between physical threats, such as terror attacks, and psychological threats, such as social changes. The non-authoritarian types are not changed by psychological threats, but they become authoritarian in practice when they are sufficiently frightened by physical threats.
The authors used the questions above as part of a survey study shortly after Trump was in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary and scored a victory. The results were shocking, but not surprising. Fully 44 percent of the nationwide white respondents came out as “authoritarian” or very much so, and 19 percent were highly authoritarian. These findings lined up well with those of other studies of authoritarian tendencies. More than 65 percent of those who scored high or very high as authoritarians were signed on as Republicans; more than 55 percent of Republicans scored high or very high in authoritarian thinking. On the opposite side of the spectrum, almost 75 percent of those who scored as most non-authoritarian were Democrats.
It hasn’t always been that way. In the 1960’s, the Republican Party made a shift in policy to attract disaffected Democrats who opposed the civil rights bills pushed by President Johnson (who was committed to follow President Kennedy’s path.) Republican party officials positioned themselves as pro-law and order and against social change, that is, against integration. The Republicans backed those who opposed the changes demanded by African-Americans for social justice and placed themselves as in favor of “law and order” against the disruptions promised by “uppity niggers.” The Democrats became associated with social change, disruption of the established order, and elevation of African-Americans to positions of responsibility. This distinction between the two parties did not begin until after Eisenhower’s presidency; the fight between Kennedy and Nixon marked the onset of this right/left demarcation and the Johnson/Goldwater fight in 1964 made the line between left and right clear.
The work of Johnson to pass Kennedy’s civil rights bill and to inaugurate “the Great Society” threatened some poor whites as well as Ku Klux Klan supporters and incited a fierce rear guard reaction.
During the early 1960’s, radical changes were taking place, partly due to the US government’s efforts. First, NASA was working to send a man to the moon. Second, the Army, Navy, and Air Force were committed to overpowering the Viet Cong and the “North Vietnamese” after the French military had been beaten by the same Vietnamese patriotic force. NASA was successful; the American military was not.
Johnson gave up the fight against Vietnam in March 1968 as a result of great personal distress from the losses; at almost the same time, McNamara quit the fight when he saw a protester setting himself on fire in front of the Pentagon. After this realization by American leaders, the secret strategy of the US was simply to get out of Vietnam as quietly as possible. Nixon’s bombing of North Vietnam was purely a cover to force the North into a truce during the American withdrawal.
The election between Nixon and Humphrey was decided at the Democratic Convention; the demonstrations were a partial factor in this debacle. The Democratic Party was in a shambles after the convention, making it relatively easy for Nixon to beat Humphrey in the general election. Ever since Nixon consolidated his control of the Republican Party, it has been one dirty trick after another, beginning with the identification of the Republican Party with the status quo and traditional morality as well as fiscal prudence, reduced taxes and reduced spending. Whether any of those identifications were true or not was a matter of debate.
Democratic presidents have in fact been associated with greater economic growth and prosperity than Republican presidents, and only one presidency is associated with a reduction to zero of our yearly deficit: Clinton. Republican presidents have tended to reduce taxes on wealthy people and increase the yearly deficit, while Democratic presidents have reduced the yearly deficit, including President Obama, who has reduced the deficit every year from over a trillion dollars to less than five hundred million dollars.
The greater and greater infusion of money into elections has reduced voter’s perception of their influence on who is voted into office and led to a more authoritarian mindset. This is the basic influence that has created the popularity of Trump and Trumpism. There is an acute danger that Trump will be elected president on the basis of American’s feeling that they have lost control over their elected representatives.
Donald Drumpf says “There is no drought.”
No kidding. He really said it, right here in Fresno. I was so shocked I was speechless for a week.
Drumpf claims that the State of California is sending water out to sea to save “a three inch fish” (the critically endangered smelt)… well, yes, we are not sucking the Sacramento River dry because there is this problem with the environment. It seems that we cannot both irrigate large tracts of salty land in the Central Valley of California and still have a flow of water in the Sacramento River sufficient to sustain river life.
A hundred and fifty years ago there was a huge run of salmon down the Sacramento River every year. Then farmers started diverting the river water to irrigate their farms in the Central Valley. After years of greater and greater diversions, the river has nearly dried up and there are no more salmon runs. The desert land that was irrigated has become salty due to over-irrigation and in many places won’t support productive crops any more (this is true mainly of the west side of the Central Valley, where hundreds of thousands of acres has become too salty and has had to be taken out of production.)
Fortunately, the East Side has been sustainably irrigated and is still highly productive. Water drawn from the underground aquifers is too high in mineral content to be used exclusively for irrigation, but surface water from the rivers is “soft”, that is, low in minerals and is effective for irrigation. Rain water is very low in minerals and is preferable for agriculture, but the average rainfall in the Central Valley is about ten inches a year, too little to support year-round crop growth. Snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains melts into the rivers that supply the Central Valley with relatively soft water: the Sacramento River, the San Joaquin River, the American River, and so on. It is the water in these rivers that Californians fight over.
Environmental laws require that at least half of the water that normally flowed out to sea at the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta continue to flow to preserve the habitat of the smelt, but that still isn’t enough to rescue them. Taking any more of the water, as Drumpf demands, would reduce water quality as well as destroying the habitat. Dealing with the drought requires more dams, more sensible use of the irrigation water available, and more careful human use of water.
Large quantities of water are diverted from Mono Lake in the Sierras to flow down aqueducts into Los Angeles. Water that used to flow in the Los Angeles River is diverted far upstream, so that the river is dry long before it reaches the city. There is indeed an ongoing drought; this past winter has seen adequate rainfall but not enough to make up for four years of record drought. Unless El Nino persists for at least another year, the drought will not be broken.
Here’s a Grist article on the real story of the smelt, a needed corrective for Drumpf’s lies. Another post from Wired explains that there are complex water laws unrelated to the smelt that restrict water delivery because the delta needs the pressure of fresh water coming down the river to prevent salt intrusion. Taking too much water will destroy the ecology of the the delta.
It’s too late to save the Delta Smelt. Let’s hope it’s not too late for the human race.
Driver
Fascism
Over the past twenty years or so, a number of countries have fallen under the control of “strong men” governments that in some respects resemble the fascist and imperialist governments of the 1930’s. For example, Vladimir Putin, a former executive in the Soviet Union’s Secret Service (an essential part of any fascist government for spying on and controlling its people) took charge of Russia and prevented its evolution into a democratic state. Recep Erdogan has taken over Turkey and turned it from a secular, majority Muslim state into a proto-fascist semi-secular Muslim state. Xi Jinping has taken power in China and prevented it from evolving from a Communist-totalitarian state.
From a NYT article on Donald Trump and the other countries in the world that have fascist-leaning governments:
The debate about terminology may ignore the seriousness of the conditions that gave rise to Mr. Trump and his European counterparts. The New York real estate developer has tapped into a deep discontent in a country where many feel left behind while Wall Street banks get bailouts, newcomers take jobs, terrorists threaten innocents and China rises economically at America’s expense.
“It seems to me in developed and semideveloped countries there is emerging a new kind of politics for which maybe the best taxonomic category would be right-wing populist nationalism,” said Stanley Payne, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We are seeing a new kind of phenomenon which is different from what you had” in the 20th century.
Roger Eatwell, a professor at the University of Bath, in England, calls it “illiberal democracy,” a form of government that keeps the trappings of democracy without the reality.
“Elections are seen as important to legitimizing regimes,” he said, but instead of imposing one-party rule, as in the past, today’s authoritarians “use a variety of devices to control and/or manipulate the media, intimidate opponents” and so on.
Either way, it has found pockets of support on both sides of the Atlantic. Lilia Shevtsova, a political analyst in Moscow, said neo-fascism in liberal societies in the West stems from crisis or dysfunction while in illiberal countries like Russia and Turkey it reflects an attempt to fill the void left by the failure of Western notions to catch on.
The problem, she added, is that “the Western political leadership at the moment is too weak to fight the tide.”
The root of the problem in the US is weakness of the federal government. Since the election of 2000, there has been a widespread sense of disillusionment with American government. If you recall, the election was a three-way race, between George W. Bush, Ralph Nader, and Al Gore. Ralph Nader won 2.7% of the vote, enough to deny Al Gore a victory and throw the election to George W. Bush. The popular vote totals showed Al Gore with 50,999,897 (103 less than 51 million) or 48.38%, George W. Bush with 50,456,002 or 47.87%, and Ralph Nader with 2,882,955.
The conclusion from the overall voting is that a majority of American voters preferred Al Gore or someone “more liberal” like Ralph Nader of the Association of State Green Parties (on the ballot in only 43 states.) Allowing for the increased percentage of voters actually going to the polls and the likelihood that those who cannot vote for whatever reason are oriented more to the left than those who can and do vote, the majority of the American people in 2000 were in favor of more left-wing or liberal policies than those of George W. Bush. Yet Bush was inaugurated and proceeded to take America far to the right with a side order of economic chaos.
The invasion of Iraq and the destabilization of the economy were the legacies of this fake “democratic” election. Poor economic growth led to poor job growth and an increase in personal debt to unsustainable levels. Personal bankruptcies increased despite the tightened bankruptcy laws passed by a confused Congress. The crisis in 2007-8 led to a collapse in the net worth of many middle-class people who lost their jobs and the equity in their homes.
Congress acted to save the economy from collapse by shoring up the big banks; the number of banks has decreased from 32 to four. Congress did not act to save the middle class consumer from the loss of equity in homes and as a result, many people have lost all their “savings” (their borrowing ability) as well as their jobs. This action to save the banks and bankers but not the mortgagees became very public as a sign that Congress is in the hands of those who can afford to pay for their services, not those who have voted them into power.
The results of this travesty of democracy have been a complete loss of confidence for the American people in the political system. Lacking confidence that the system will support them, they vote for the candidates who promise to “Make America Great Again.” They don’t care about democracy and the protection of human rights as much as they care about government that works.
Here’s a link to an insightful cartoon that explains a great deal of what is now scientifically figured out about how people become conservative or liberal, hippies or preppies. This is based on the work of Jonathon Haidt in the book “The Righteous Mind”, that is on his interpretation of recent scientific studies about human (and animal) development. Here’s a link to Haidt’s website. He’s got a lot of interesting essays on line in addition to his book. The cartoon was originally done in Brazil, so it is translated to English.
The original refers to a split in the student society of a university into two groups: “hippies” and “preppies” ( to loosely translate the original terms ) who display disparate personal and social characteristics somewhat typical of the nicknames given and who live in separate groups. The original university, was, I think, in Brazil, and it was a large state university. It is interesting and important for those of us in the US to be aware that there are huge areas of cultural ferment in other countries (such as Brazil.)
I took a look at the website that the book’s author maintains. Jonathon Haidt doesn’t like the new phenomenon of “trigger warnings” in university classes. These warnings are posted when “scary” material is going to be discussed, things that might upset certain people. He calls it “vindictive protectiveness.” I think it’s a little silly but relatively harmless to point out to people who are unaware that certain awful things are going to come up. It kind of puts everything out in the open so that everyone knows that there’s going to be some action. On the other hand, it might seem to some that people are being coddled when this sort of thing is said. I don’t know.
There’s a lot more controversy there. There is an issue where some people claim their own frailty and demand that it be “respected” or else “coddled.” This is what he calls the “victimhood culture.” There is also an issue that some call “microaggressions” that is, little things that people do or assume that are disrespectful of others who are sensitive to their own victimhood. This gets even more silly to me, but I don’t mind. Let the controversies roll. It sounds like Jonathon Haidt has been made into a conservative. Not me.
A new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicts, on the basis of known relationships of abundance and diversity, that there are approximately 10 to the 12th power (a trillion) species existing on Earth, give or take an order of magnitude. The conclusion is based on combining all the surveys of plant, animal, and microbial species numbers that have been done in the last forty years. The surveys of microbes done recently determine the number of species in a sample by the number of different DNA strands found.
Prochlorococcus marinus, first identified in 1986, turns out to be the most abundant organism in the ocean. P. marinus is very small, roughly 0.6 micrometer in size, with a small genome. There are roughly 2000 genes or less on the circular genome; many less important genes have been stripped away, and many genes that might be needed for flexibility are missing as well. Recall from my previous post that the minimal organism needs about 400-500 genes just to function. P. marinus has even combined some enzymes into a single all-purpose protein: a single enzyme does the work of four enzymes used by more bulky organisms.
To compare, eukaryotic algae that are photosynthetic have about 10,000 genes, and humans have roughly 25,000. The small genome and small size means these organisms are abundant: there can be 100,000 cells of P. marinus in a milliliter of water. There are two main types of P. marinus, one that lives in the upper, brightly lit ocean above 100 meters depth, and a second that lives in deeper regions of 80 to 200 meters depth. The lower light form is more efficient at absorbing blue light, which penetrates deeper into the water.
P. marinus is important because it is the most efficient fixer of carbon dioxide in the ocean: it takes carbon from the air, fixes it into proteins, and releases oxygen. This process is powered by the absorption of light from the sun and is the foundation of the oxygen-rich atmosphere that we enjoy. This organism is joined by an almost equally abundant and similar organism called Synechococcus, which uses a different form of chlorophyll.
Synechococcus is larger than P. marinus. There are at least five types of Synechococcus, differing in size, chlorophyll types, sensitivity to salt, motility, and so on. These larger organisms also abundantly inhabit fresh water, whereas P. marinus is solely found in marine waters. They also use urea as well as ammonia as a nitrogen source, and prefer nutrient-rich waters, where their larger genome allows more flexibility in growth.
The information about these organisms was extracted from Wikipedia and another “wiki” called microbewiki, where you can see micrographs and genetic information as well as a graph of the enzymatic pathways that P. marinus uses.
There has been speculation that seeding the ocean with iron will stimulate the growth of P. marinus so much that all the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be removed. This idea has been studied extensively, but there has not been any conclusion, nor, more importantly, any large-scale attempts to prove that this process might work. There is (or was) a company called Climos that was founded by Dan Whaley, a “veteran Silicon Valley entrepeneur” who founded GetThere in 1994. He and others put together a consortium called ISIS (in situ iron studies) that has a website, but like Climos, everything on the site is more than five years old. I suspect that they have hit a wall.
Comment of the Day
Rosemary
new jersey
It’s pretty simple…she has been beaten up by the GOP since the 90’s. That’s over 25 years of Repuglicans trying to find something, something, anything to pin on her and her husband to discredit them. She hasn’t helped herself with the email disaster and the speaking fees. However, nothing she has done has warranted this kind of hatred. Part of it is that she’s a woman and there are still lots of people who don’t like strong women. I know, I’m one of them and we have to fight every day to be as recognized as men with the same or even lesser capabilities. Part of the problem is her “stiffness”; she really doesn’t project warmth or sincerity. She is stoic, she is strong, she is driven, so what? Isn’t that what we want in a President? President Obama is extremely likable. One could imagine meeting him and feeling very at ease and trusting. But every good President isn’t the same. As long as there is confidence, a decent moral compass and acuity for the job, I’ll take her. What we don’t want is a shill who’s main focus is himself, who really could care less about the average American. What we need is someone who is less about closing a deal and more about creating an accepting, open country, someone who will be respected by foreign leaders and whose temperament will allow for clear headed decisions. True, I’d Rather meet and do fun things with Barack in a heartbeat. But do I think she is capable of running the country…yes I do. So let’s get this done people…remember SCOTUS!
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This comment is attached to a NYT article about Hillary Clinton’s “unpopularity” ratings, which are said to be as high as Donald Drumpf’s ratings. How stupid can the American people be? Are Americans really so gullible that they will accept as a politician a narcissistic, infantile billionaire? Discuss.
The United Nations has a very convenient set of graphs showing its predictions for the population of the world and all its regions through the year 2100 (approximately the next 80 years): the web site is here. The current population of this section of the world, as of, say, 2020, is a little over a billion on the graph. By the year 2100, the center of the projection is for about 3.25 billion people, an increase of triple. So in the next eighty years, the population of the least-developed part of the world will triple, more or less.
The low end of the projection (a 95% probability) is for a little over 2.5 billion; the high end is 4 billion.
At the same time, the population of the world as a whole will not increase nearly as much: from a current population approaching eight billion, the whole world will probably only reach eleven billion. The uncertainties are significant, however, from less than ten billion to more than thirteen billion, at a 95% probability. The reason the population of the world doesn’t increase that much is that the highly developed parts of the world will stop growing entirely. The current population of the most developed part of the world is currently about 1.25 billion and will never reach 1.3 billion, even by 2100.
The UN has isolated a group of countries that will not grow at all in the next eighty years, and another group that will triple in population in the same time. These countries differ by level of development in terms of dollars: the highest gross domestic product per person results in the lowest birthrate. Development reduces birthrate partly by increasing opportunity for contraception but also by improving a sense of security which reduces the perception of a need for a large family. Improved security in old age reduces the need for offspring to care for the aged. The bottom line is development, meaning technology and money. Spreading the wealth requires stimulating trade and industry as well as infrastructure development. All these things require a competent, wealthy government.
The United States would be in a good position to stimulate development in the rest of the world if it had an activist government that worked at projects overseas. By the same token, stimulation of other economies will result in positive feedback to our country and increase our GDP.
Disclaimer
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed here belong only to the author(s) and do not reflect the views of any organization. Any medical discussion on this page is intended to be of a general nature only. This page is not designed to give specific medical advice. If you have a medical problem you should consult your own physician for advice specific to your own situation.
[adapted from PLOS blog “Obesity Panacea”]
“He’s an ignorant, amoral, dishonest and manipulative, misogynistic, philandering, hyper-litigious, isolationist, protectionist blowhard,” one donor said. The New York Times reports that only nine of forty traditional super-PAC donors would commit themselves to supporting Donald Trump as they have other Republican candidates. Some supporters say they would only consider backing him if he dramatically dialed back on his inflammatory statements.
One of the most notorious Republican big money donors is Sheldon Adelson, and he supports Donald Trump; this contribution alone could amount to 20 to 100 million dollars. A billion dollars is needed altogether for the entire Presidential campaign, win or lose. Some potential donors have even said that based on Trump’s own statements, he should be able to fund his campaign from his own resources.
The truth is probably that Mr. Trump’s cash worth is nowhere near what he claims it to be. He is probably unable to raise a billion dollars in cash between now and election day, even if his net worth including all his properties is over a billion dollars, even if it is ten billion dollars. Most of his assets are probably in highly illiquid properties or objects that he would have some difficulty raising cash from to support a political campaign.
In the last Presidential election, Obama raised more money than his Republican opponent, despite his net worth; this demonstrates the difference between net worth and cash flow. There is also the possibility that the big money realized that Obama was likely to win and didn’t waste their money supporting a losing candidate. Whether the big money demonstrates that type of foresight or not, it is likely that Mrs. Clinton will raise more money than Mr. Trump, and by a large margin.
If this look at the future of the fundraising situation holds the same over the next few weeks, we can be reassured that Clinton will outpace Drumpf in fundraising and votes, with a final margin of victory that will resemble the loss of Goldwater to Johnson in 1964.
Conrad Theodore Seitz 