Came across this study published in Science on December 20: the lede:
There’s an apparent paradox in modern life: Society as a whole is getting smarter, yet we aren’t any closer to figuring out how to all get along. “How is it possible that we have just as many, if not more, conflicts as before?” asks social psychologist Igor Grossmann at the University of Waterloo in Canada.
The answer is that raw intelligence doesn’t reduce conflict, he asserts. Wisdom does. Such wisdom—in effect, the ability to take the perspectives of others into account and aim for compromise—comes much more naturally to those who grow up poor or working class, according to a new study by Grossman and colleagues.
This comment was posted in response to a New York Times article informing us that Don the Con is disbanding the voter fraud inquiry and transferring its “duties” to the Department of Homeland Security:
thomas briggs
longmont co 12 hours ago
This is not good news. The myth of voter fraud persists on the right. This commission notionally was bi-partisan. Trump now turns this “investigation,” actually a front for voter suppression, over to the Department of Homeland Security. That ought to be chilling to those of us who value civil rights, including the right to vote. Republican voter suppression is not over. It merely moved to a new venue.
This suggests some sinister possibilities, such as “homeland security related” investigations of every voter in the country for possible malfeasance, such as, ? In addition, it could provide an excuse for them to issue mandatory “voter” ID cards to every person in the country… at a fee. The secret vote is a recent innovation; perhaps that can be suspended so that the government can see whether you’ve been voting for the wrong candidates. I’m just suggesting.
I may have greatly exaggerated my estimation of Don the Con’s staying power, as this quote from today’s Guardian makes clear. Steve Bannon is quoted as giving the following estimation of Don’s chances:
Bannon gave Trump a probability of a third that he might limp to the finish line because of Democratic incompetence; a third that he would be pushed from office under the 25th amendment on grounds of mental incapability; and a third that he would be impeached.
The situation for Don may be deteriorating rapidly as the Wolff book is released early in response to a threatened cease-and-desist lawsuit from the Trump Organization. Chances of a lawsuit preventing publication of such a book are slim given the American Constitution’s generally accepted interpretation as preventing prior censorship of material not potentially dangerous to national security or irreparably defamatory (that is, causing irreparable damage to a person’s reputation; unfortunately, Don’s reputation is at an all-time low and there is little that could further damage that. Even public allegations relating to an old case in which Don was said to have committed child sexual battery and false imprisonment in a (dismissed, but refiled) civil suit were allowed.)
This was published in the Guardian after Don the Con won the Republican nomination, as spoken by Ted Cruz, who is a practiced liar himself:
“This man is a pathological liar,” he told reporters. “He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying.”
That was before he called Trump “a narcissist” and “utterly amoral”. Oh yeah, and chronically insecure.
“Every one of us knew bullies in elementary school,” Cruz continued. “Bullies don’t come from strength, bullies come from weakness. Bullies come from a deep, yawning cavern of insecurity. There is a reason Donald builds giant buildings and puts his name on them everywhere he goes.”
Do I repeat myself? Or was I just late in noticing this chillingly honest evaluation of a candidate by an actual politician? In any case, this statement should have given the people a clue as to what they were really voting for. The fact that it didn’t strongly suggests that the election was manipulated in some way, by control of or malign influence on the news media or nefarious means.
Hold the Bus– A Dozen Congressmen/Senators Briefed on Don’s “Dangerousness”– Annie Karn via Politico
I could be very wrong on that prediction of Don the Con staying until 2020– read this article about the growing concerns over Don’s “dangerousness.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/03/trump-25th-amendment-mental-health-322625
Before we begin, some definitions of terms: a government is an entity with a legitimate monopoly on the use of force. A company is a semi-voluntary association of individual people that is designed to make money, and under capitalist theory, compete with other companies for dominance of the market. The use of force by a company is illegitimate (this assertion may be contested by some reactionaries.)
Modern history has seen the rise of the international conglomeration, an extension of the original company, to the extent that such entities rival the power of national governments. The federal government of the US has been fighting a losing battle against such “cartels” since many of them survived World War Two, partly by supplying armaments to both sides. This behavior would be treason under the limited US definition of the term, but the companies have gotten away with it because of corrupt deals made at the highest levels of government. Government has sown the seeds of its own destruction.
The United States federal government, the most powerful national government in the world since 1945, is under threat. (The federal government is also known to people like Steve Bannon as “the deep state.” The secret desire of every modern Republican is to “shrink it until you can drown it in a bathtub.” Lincoln is spinning in his grave.)
Here is the predicted sequence of events: national disgust will gradually continue to build as the full extent of the conspiracy between Don the Con and Vlad “the Impaler” becomes widely known. In November 2018, the by-elections will turn ferociously Democratic, even in such states as Alabama. Movements such as that in Florida, to amend the constitution to re-enfranchise people of color convicted of minor felonies who have served their paroles, will tilt the electorate towards a more accurate representation of the complexion of our country.
If (and that’s a big if) the by-election returns a majority of Democratic members to Congress, in January 2019, Don the Con will be impeached. Conviction is almost assured (see below on the public details of his conspiratorial acts) in the Senate because of the enormity of his deed.
This means that Don the Con will serve out most of his Presidential term in office. However, if Moral Mike Pence can be toppled at the same time (for his complicity with Mike the Spike Flynn) then, with a majority in the lower House of Congress, the Democratic Speaker of the House will become President. Let’s go out on a limb and predict that will happen sometime early in 2020. That means that the next Presidential election will be held on a background of fierce Republican resistance, which will appall voters and assure an Electoral College majority for the Democratic Presidential candidate and possibly majorities in both Houses of Congress.
Here’s another prediction, and an easy one: with the retirement of Orrin Hatch, Mitt Romney will become a Senator from Utah. Romney is, at least, an ally of the deep state, so this is a positive development despite Mitt the Mutt’s treatment of his dog (the incident in which the dog travelled on the roof of Mitt the Mutt’s car for hundreds of highway miles has been attested to by witnesses and confirmed by Mike’s statement (and I quote, out of context!) “… my dog loves fresh air.”)
New York magazine has published an excerpt from Michael Wolff’s new book about Don the Con and his “administration” and it seems that most people in Don’s campaign thought he was going to lose the election and didn’t think he should be President anyway. His wife was in tears when she learned of Don’s projected victory on election night, and the two were fighting on Inauguration Day. Read all about it here: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/michael-wolff-fire-and-fury-book-donald-trump.html
This comment appeared on a New York Times article about the pre-election investigation of Trump’s campaign by the FBI, an investigation that was kept secret for fear of influencing the election:
John M
Portland ME 1 hour ago
The chilling bottom line here is that the 2016 presidential election was a tainted fraud. If this election had been a jury trial, based on all of the new information that has come out, a mistrial would have been declared by now and the verdict would have been thrown out by the judge.
As the article notes, critical, disqualifying information about Donald Trump and his campaign’s illegal contacts with Russia was deliberately withheld from the American people by the FBI and CIA. As voters, we were not given all the relevant information we needed to make an informed decision.
While we were provided every scintilla of negative information about Hillary Clinton, large chunks of critical information about Trump were covered up or withheld. We didn’t even get to see his tax returns!
The quadrennial presidential election is the crown jewel of American democracy. Every action and every decision of every person and agency in government should defer to the sacredness of the American voter in exercising his or her right to vote and being provided with all relevant information.
If we can’t preserve the integrity of our national elections, everything else about our democracy is hollow and meaningless. The tragic story of the 2016 election is that the institutions that should have been protecting our democracy, such as the FBI and the news media, chose to put their own institutional needs ahead of those of the voting public.
Some democracy!
From an opinion piece in the Guardian, a liberal website and newspaper based in the United Kingdom:
So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.
Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.
Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.
We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.
Neoliberalism appears to be a repudiation of much of traditional liberalism and an excuse for a beggar-thy-neighbor attitude.
This web site points out that, during Obama’s presidency, the unemployment rate went from 10 percent to below 5 percent; the stock market went up 250 per cent. Of course, since January 20, the stock market has continued to rise. The point, however, is that the economy did well during Obama’s reign, starting from a serious recession (the worst in nearly a hundred years) to a consistently and significantly rising market.
At the same time, the yearly deficit in federal receipts went down dramatically, from a trillion a year to 400 billion. That is as it should be; according to simple Keynesian principles, government should run at a significant deficit during bad times and at a surplus during good times. Unfortunately, the Republican tax cut bill makes a $1.5 trillion plus hole in that principle, returning us to severe deficits at a time when we should be raking in surpluses to stock up for the next recession. It is George W. Bush’s tax cut all over again– creating a huge deficit at a time when the economy was rising, which caused severe discomfort when the economy tanked in 2008. Why do the Republicans hate economics?
Conrad Theodore Seitz 