The Always Right

And I thought the Religious Right was a problem. 

I've felt from the beginning, since that day Trump adolescently bullied Jeb Bush during a debate and the crowd approved, that support for Trump was, for many, a neophyte religion. It was always as the president said in January, 2016 -- he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his supporters would still be supporters.

The religious nature of Trump support seems to both highlight and explain the dichotomy between Trumpism and science. Trumpism, like communism and other belief systems, cannot really be disconfirmed. If you ask Trump supporters what Trump behavior or piece of evidence would cause them to reject Trump as leader, you'll get a long, long pause. 

Any belief system that immediately diverts disconfirming information into categories of "fake news" or conspiracies is basically impervious to evidence from outside the belief system and extremely intolerant of modification from within. Trumpism serves as a religion, with Donald Trump the only arbiter of truth and what's best for all. Trump's rallies take place in a sacred space. Much of his energy during those rallies is devoted to drawing the inside/outside distinction. Inside the rally is sacred space. Outside is profane corruption. Trump himself occupies a sacred position. Criticism from profane outside forces simply misses the mark because, by definition, a sacred leader cannot be evaluated by profane means or profane outsiders. 

Trump and Trumpism have demonstrated a complete inability or unwillingness to self-correct. Self-correction is viewed as a weakness and, more importantly, as unnecessary because sacred leadership does not require self-correction. Trumpian leadership is both gnostic in nature and divinely inspired. Outsiders simply have no access to the gnosis or the content of the divine inspiration. The profane outsiders are always viewed as trying to decipher and bring down something they not only don't understand, but are unqualified to judge. The devil, whether fake news or the deep state, lacks the pureness to critique the sacred.

Trumpism as Antithetical to Science

During my lifetime (I'm 63), acknowledgement in the political arena of having been wrong or changing one's mind has evolved from evidence of increased information and debate to a complete and utter sin. The evolution has been fast and unidirectional. Policy positions have taken on a religious veneer in that they are almost a kind of permanent commitment requiring a future evasion of rethinking and a radical avoidance of disconfirmation.

In a sense, political positions have been evolving into religious positions requiring fealty and an absolute lack of positional compromise. Trumpism as a religion is a natural outcome of this ongoing American political evolution.

Science, meanwhile, is anathema both to religion and the direction of American politics precisely because science is self-correcting. Self-correction is an indelibly permanent feature of science. Unfortunately for policy-making, this means that self-correcting scientists are viewed as something less, and science is seen by Trumpsters as unstructured and unmoored because it subordinates policy decisions to ongoing analyses of data.

The self-corrective nature of the scientific endeavor places science directly in the cross-hairs of political religiosity. Since self-correction has become so stigmatized in Trumpworld, respect for science literally has no place in it. Fealty to data is not fealty to the sacred. Science finds itself defined as a kind of natural enemy of the Trump religion.

None of this is terribly startling, as policy guided by personalities is always going to generate friction against policy directed by data. In 2020, this friction has become a veritable firestorm. Although lip service is tangentially being paid to data, as when Rand Paul cobbles together some oblique, far-fetched information and tries to jam it into a coherent argument, the fact is that you can almost feel the underlying disdain for appealing to logic or numbers or establishing cause-and-effect. The Trump religion is straining at the bit to just suspend the entire logic charade and impose what they want with minimal concern regarding whether suspension of disbelief becomes a requirement.

The sidestepping, ignoring, and outright lying regarding data during this pandemic has led Scientific American, after 175 years of political neutrality, to endorse Joe Biden for president.

Perhaps the 2020 electoral battle should be framed with somewhat different language. It's not so much red versus blue as it is theocracy versus democracy. And the theocracy has a very human, very Un-Christian leader. 

Bob Dietz

September 25, 2020

Politically Incorrect: The Evangelicals

Superficially, one of the great conundrums of the Trump era appears to be how purported Christian evangelicals can overwhelmingly support a man whose personal history and self presentation have been so, to put it charitably, Un-Christian.

Literally dozens of sexual assault allegations, three marriages sprinkled amidst a lifetime of "grabbing them by the pussy," four thousand lawsuits to squeeze every dollar out of every transaction. The man has suggested the main thing he and his daughter have in common is sex, and he strongly suggested Howard Stern would enjoy dating his daughter. He's built a wall so the meek don't inherit the United States. Not exactly a Matthew 19:14 proponent, he locked up children at the border. 

Yet, of white evangelicals who voted in 2016, 81% voted for Donald Trump. And the projections are in the same ballpark this time around. How can one reconcile the evangelical support for Trump with Trump's lifelong behaviors? The man doesn't really go to church. During his infamous church poseur moment, he looked as familiar with a bible as he might look holding a SAT exam.

From whence the white Christian support for this president? The man, after all, is known both for being in the eye of the storm and in the thighs of a Stormy. And forget about getting a camel through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19: 24). How could this guy possibly get into heaven? It seems superficially preposterous that American white evangelicals would get their mental knickers all twisted trying to support Donald Trump.

But I disagree with those who find evangelical support for the president mysterious. White evangelicals, I argue, are uniquely suited to be ardent Trump supporters.

First off, let's not forget the adjective "white" in front of that "81% white evangelical" phrase. White goes a long way in the United States. It's my reason for choosing to be reincarnated as a U.S. white dude.

Second, let's face it. Christianity is not the most logical, scientific, or humane belief system on the planet. If you spend most of your waking hours swearing fealty to a belief system featuring virgin births, various people coming back from the dead, angels of death slaughtering first borns, fiery tongues entering people, floods wiping out everything except what's on a big boat, and oh yeah, everlasting life...well, I hate to break it to them, but the entire Christian cultural/psychological milieu is a big lie. You're basically living life with a delusion as, at the least, a backdrop that you rarely question. At worst, you're making real world decisions while incorporating fairy tales as rationales for those decisions. And much of the arguments for doing so are "God said this" or "Jesus said that." Authoritarianism to the extreme.

Skip forward a thousand years from the Middle Ages, and here we are. If you can compartmentalize all the Christian lies and nonsense and still function, you're not going to have much of a problem finding ways to compartmentalize everything distasteful or ridiculous about Donald Trump. As a Christian, you've accepted conflicting stories (heck, the gospels have at least two very different storylines), you have been trained for obeisance to canon, and you've learned to keep science off in its corner for huge chunks of your conscious life. It's great training for Trumpism.

An evangelical gung-ho white Christian is primed to be an ardent Trump supporter. All the science-avoiding and logic-evading muscles have been honed. You've swallowed so much evangelical grape Kool-Aid that Trump's lies taste no stronger than plain seltzer. 

As far as resisting disconfirmation, evangelical Christians are notoriously good at it. I mean, when was the last time somebody rose from the dead? It's a couple billion humans ago, if the New Testament or Osiris are to be believed. Not much in the way of fiery tongues or angels of death, either. Yet Christian faith hangs in there.

Given the far out claims of Christianity, it's really impressive that fervent Christians have few issues maintaining their faith. A tad nuts, but impressive nonetheless. Compared to the challenges of Christian belief, it's probably a mere bagatelle for the evangelicals to maintain loyalty to the president. Loyalty is a toned-down version of faith, not requiring as much mental contortionism. All things considered, white evangelical Christians are perfect vessels for the Trump Kool Aid. "Onward Q-Anon Soldiers, Marching Off to War" has a historical ring to it.

When irrational belief systems form the backbone of a culture's mores, then rationality or consistency or meaningful results are not required to hijack the reins of power. You just have to mimic the belief systems. In a sense, you get bonus points for being authoritarian, for being irrational, for requiring faith.

Trump as egg-laying cuckoo in Christianity's nest was an obvious possibility. As long as no Christians asked "Who would Jesus vote for?" the nest was his for the taking.

Bob Dietz

September 16, 2020 

If I Were Woodward

The last two weeks, a handful of people have asked me what I thought of Bob Woodward's Trump tapes. They know I was originally a journalism major at Penn State, and I was hard core on journalistic ethics. You always tell the truth in print, you never give up your sources unless lives are directly and immediately at risk, and so on. In my mind, Spider-Man's classic mantra applies, "With great power comes great responsibility."

I feel that if I had been Woodward, the longest I could have sat on the tapes was the end of March. Too much was at stake. Too many lives in the balance. I would have had too much power to potentially do good in my hands. I'd have felt an overwhelming obligation to tell the American public loudly and clearly that President Trump privately did not believe what he was saying publicly. I would have visited every available media outlet and warned about transmission through the air and the lethality of Covid-19 as at least five times that of a normal flu.

I would have said these things publicly as long and as loud as I could. Book be damned. Election timing be damned. The American public had a right to know so people could protect themselves and plan their lives with maximum information.

That's what I would have done, and it would have been, to me, the only and obvious decision. I could not have even considered delaying for months. The argument can be made that the timing of the tapes' release will have a maximum effect on the election itself. I think that manner of thinking is speculative and besides the point. Saving lives, I believe, takes precedence over maximally influencing the election. 

Further, my suspicion is that Carl Bernstein knew what was on those tapes. In most of his CNN appearances these last months, Bernstein's tone has been declarative regarding Trump, and there's been an underlying ominousness. The declarative nature of Bernstein's proclamations, made without reference to new specific evidence, makes me think that his tone originated in part from knowledge he had in his back pocket. If I'm correct and Bernstein knew the Trump interviews' contents, then again I would have considered myself ethically obligated to go public had I been in Bernstein's shoes, even though the tapes were Woodward's private and intellectual property. Saving lives trumps loyalty to Woodward, and we're talking many, many lives.

The Transactional United States

One angle concerning what Woodward did not do is the overarching transactional theme that permeates the United States' failed Covid-19 responses. The president did what he perceived was best for him and his deluded dream of a monarchical multi-generational Trumpfest-in-charge. The GOP, meanwhile, en masse subordinated the public good and saving lives to the calculus of their individual ambitions. Again, framing the pandemic in a transactional manner.

The cloud regarding the Woodward delay is that holding back the tapes in service of the book has the appearance of putting personal cost/benefit analysis ahead of saving lives. So Woodward's delay risks falling under the aegis of transactionalism. I'm sure this seems, to the rest of the world, as another blatant example of the U.S.'s obsession with individuals' material resources (money) and non-material resources (fame, prestige) at the expense of civics (remember that word?) and public goals. "Civics" has become some extinct freakish idea, relegated to the Smithsonian along with The Fonz's leather jacket and stuffed dodos. Something our grandparents knew about in the 50's.

"The Woodward Delay," as I think journalists a hundred years hence will call it, will be remembered as another inexplicable capital-obsessed selfishness during the era of Trump. Exposing the arch-villain only after he's killed everyone is not the best example of "With great power comes great responsibility." Unless your only responsibility is to yourself.

Bob Dietz

September 16, 2020

Articles of Note -- September 5

Here are some very important articles of note. Please take a look at them.

First is a mention of the www.respectfulinsolence.com blog site that annihilates the recent arguments for hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19. He has four pertinent entries debunking the HCQ push:

July 24  "Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch defends hydroxychloroquine in Newsweek -- badly"

July 29  "Hydroxychloroquine:  The Black Knight of treatments for COVID-19"

August 17  "The astroturf effort promoting hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19                  continues apace"

August 31  "The 'only 6%' gambit: The latest viral COVID-19 disinformation"

These four pieces by "Orac" absolutely clear up any misconceptions and annihilate the pro HCQ disinformation.

Second, I recommend reviewing both the initial reports by Penn State's Dr. Wayne Sebastianelli and the follow-up "clarification" reported on by Timothy Rapp in the September 3 Bleacher Report. Of course Dr. Sebastianelli is walking on eggs here. The Big 10 reportedly is trying to walk back its postponement of football until the spring. Evidently they want a crack at that playoff money.

Finally, Thomas Smith of Elemental contributed "A Supercomputer Analyzed Covid-19 -- and an Interesting New Theory Has Emerged." This piece is also available through Medium.com.

These are great, critical articles to keep abreast of the pandemic. I especially appreciated the August 17 Orac blog entry because it addressed some of the content of my "Analyzing Louie Gohmert" entries in this blog. Gohmert repeatedly mentioned the numbers debunked in the August 17 piece.

Stay safe.

Bob Dietz

September 5, 2020