American Insanity -- A Russian's View

How did the United States get here, with literally half of a major political party clinically deluded? And what comes next? My next column recommendation is a January 12, 2021 piece by Garry Kasparov, the famed Russian chess champion.

I'm not usually a huge fan of Kasparov's columns, as I feel that he's often guilty of a kind of Margaret-Mead-in-Samoa naivete and self-presumed expertise when it comes to U.S. culture. What I find refreshing about Kasparov's writing, however, is that he doesn't treat the U.S. as if it has some Kryptonian invulnerability to fascism and idiocy. He sees America as any other country-in-a-mess.

Kasparov's blunt warnings certainly carry more heft after the January 6 insurrection. I'm going to quote a paragraph here that I think hits everything on the head. "Garry Kasparov: What Happens Next" was published by CNN on January 12.

"Hemingway wrote in 'For Whom the Bell Tolls': 'There are many who do not know they are fascists, but will find it out when the time comes.' The time has come, and we are finding them out. Fortuitously, they are inclined to boast of their transgressions on Instagram and from the Senate floor, which makes them easy to find."

In his column, Kasparov mentions a couple of recent surveys that I'll address in a future "Popular Delusions and Madness of Crowds" entry. Based on these new surveys, Americans are more deluded than I give them credit for. As I like to chant before nodding off to sleep:

There are no solutions for popular delusions.

Bob Dietz

January 15, 2021

Framing the American Insanity

How did we get here, to the point where a full quarter of the American electorate is clinically delusional? In the months ahead, I'll make the case (as I have in the past) that American culture predisposes its citizenry to bouts of clinical insanity. In the next few columns, I'll reference others' columns rather than my own predictable blather as a way to frame some of the issues.

I spent many of the previous hundred columns describing how Trumpism and Trump support is primarily a religion. I was initially hesitant to define Trumpism as such, mainly because labeling it as religious is such an easy, blase, and cliched thing to do. Sometimes, though, the easy observation is also the correct or most useful observation. I think that's the case with Trump's infamous base. Trumpism checks all the religious boxes, and Trump's base supporters certainly qualify as zealots.

I've argued these points for more than a year. Today I'd like to present another voice, the author of a brief CNN opinion piece. Peniel E. Joseph's "What the Church of Trump is costing America" was published October 7, 2020. Joseph is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. I'm going to quote the opening two paragraphs for their timeliness in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot. I recommend reading the piece in its entirety. Bear in mind that this was published in October.

"How did the President of the United States become one of the nation's largest threats to public health and safety? When one man became head of "church" and state: the Church of Trump, that is.

For many of his most ardent supporters, Donald Trump has indeed become a church -- defined as a gathering place or grouping point for like-minded individuals to learn, express and amplify a set of beliefs that they collectively define and refine over time. While unable to articulate any meaningful religious experience, biblical knowledge or deep belief system, the President has become, for many, the embodiment of a peculiar definition of American exceptionalism."

As I've said many, many times, it didn't take Mensa-level reasoning to anticipate where 2020 Trumpism would lead. And here we are.

Bob Dietz

January 15, 2021

American Delusions

As the American media shifts its focus to Trump's second impeachment, they leave behind the question that was a focal point for the last week -- how did we get here? The answers are obvious if complex. When you literally have a quarter of an electorate clinically delusional, bad things figure to be on the menu. I'm not being hyperbolic here. I've given my take on the situation in many past columns, most explicitly in the two listed below. I recommend readers interested in balancing themselves in our present-day American context revisit those columns.

1) Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (May 25, 2020)

2) The Sanity Test of 2020 (December 27, 2020)

There exists no easy out, no quick fix, when half or more of one political party is so mentally damaged as to be unable to process evidence in a rational manner. I'm sure there are many subtle threads that contributed to our current spider-on-LSD cultural tapestry, but there are also threads that have been flashing neon orange as well. Internet echo chambers have largely replaced small newspapers as trusted sources of both information and psychological equilibrium. The fact that Americans now move every five years means that personal internet gestalts feature more continuity than physical interpersonal gestalts in the real world. Getting unanchored in reality has never been easier, the Middle Ages excepted. As in the Middle Ages, many Americans now tend to be cloistered, and the conspiracists bury their heads in the minutia of folios rather than actually observing the world. Science is anathema to them.

So while the media is mesmerized by the politics of impeachment and the logistics of Trumpian insurrection, I'll turn my attention in 2021 to the delusional nature of large swaths of the American public. 

I'm not a political writer; never have been. I was able to see pandemic reality and GOP irrationality, and call them out, because I have a knack for evaluating public evidence quickly and understanding when other people cannot. That's the province of the professional sports gambler. It'll be a useful ability in the months ahead.

My next column will be a shout out to a couple of CNN pieces that set the stage for what rational Americans are going to face in the months ahead. 

Buckle up. There's no quick solutions for popular delusions. 

Bob Dietz

January 13, 2021

Tales from The Asylum -- Insurrection Edition

For the last year, I've done "Tales from The Asylum" stories as a way to highlight how truly irrational U.S. leadership decisions have been and how unhinged large chunks of the Republican electorate have become. If you like, check out:

August 3 -- Last Week in The Asylum

August 10 -- Tales from The Asylum

August 19 -- Tales from The Asylum

August 29 -- Tales from The Asylum

October 24 -- Tales from The Asylum

The August 19 column received some good reviews.

Now, after a Trump-fueled mob attacked the Capitol yesterday, people suddenly realize that irrationality runs rampant in Trumpworld. After four years of inoculation from reality, snowballing these last 12 months with pandemic lie after pandemic lie, how could the cult of Trump have been conditioned for anything but irrationality?

Suddenly GOP asses were on the line yesterday and guns were drawn and people died, and the GOP is shocked, shocked they say, that it came to this. LOL. Sounds like a bunch of lawyers. Voluntary blindness when convenient; backbones like Gumby.

So Trump is nuts, and the GOP couldn't figure it out until yesterday. If that's true, Republicans are the dumbest, most imperceptive political party on the planet. 

I had my popcorn ready yesterday, as I anticipated the events. Two things surprised me. First, I was shocked at the non-response of law enforcement and how easily rioters flooded the Capitol. Second, I was surprised that Congress reconvened in the same location last night. Because many of the rioters were wearing large backpacks, I thought sweeping the entire Capitol for bombs would take until morning. Evidently, bomb sweeping tech is well beyond my expectations.

The unfortunate aspect of all this -- the Capitol goes sane in two weeks and rampant insanity, for the most part, will be outside the walls of Congress or the White House. It will be in the streets and homes of American towns and cities. And it will be more dangerous than what we saw January 6.

Bob Dietz

January 7, 2021

In the Footsteps of Captain Renault

Now that injuries have accrued and at least one life has been lost amid 30,000 Trumpian zombies attacking the Capitol, I roll my eyes cynically at the idea that today was a tipping point that magically enabled some in the GOP to focus their eyeballs on reality. Yeah, they had a real epiphany today. What, were they complete morons up to this point, unable to anticipate the most obvious of causes and effects?

I can just hear Ted Cruz, whose slimeball minister act is such a caricature as to be B-movie worthy, saying:

"I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that 30,000 delusional anarchists with a history of white nationalism, conspiracy paranoia, threat-making, and ownership of automatic weapons would violently break into the Capitol."

Bob Dietz

January 6, 2021

January 6 -- MAGA Terrorism

"You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." 

George W. Bush

I find it amusing (horrific but amusing) that President Donald Trump has always sought to live by this famous Bush quote. The fact that it's a George W. quote makes me feel as if The Donald was paying attention to how the Bush family did things and decided to dial that style to 11 for his Trumpian base.

Well, today many of those people who have been fooled all of the time for the last four years assembled in the nation's capital city. Once assembled, they attacked the Capitol building. Who didn't see this coming?

I certainly did. I scheduled nothing so I could watch the potential firestorm.

If there hadn't been bloodshed and injuries, today would have been comical. I give Putin credit for however heavy his thumb has been on the U.S. political scale. Trump has done as much damage to the United States as humanly possible. The Giuliani, Don Junior, and Prez speeches today lit the fire for the Capitol assault.

This fooling some of the people all of the time started with the Trumpian predictions regarding COVID-19. When scientists said one thing and Trump continually proclaimed something else, the Trumpians bought into the Trump narrative. We went from "It's 15, soon to be zero" to hydroxy touting to continual estimates of covid deaths that were off by factors of 10 or more.  

The Trumpsters bought it all. As 2020 unfolded, we were treated to Q-Anon conspiracies, Fauci conspiracies, Bill Gates conspiracies. Wild stuff, with any believer qualifying for a psych ward. The Trumpsters bought it. Eventually, we got to an election that Trump, despite losing by more than seven million votes, sold to his troops as rigged. After losing quickly in 60 courtrooms, the election conspiracists retreated to the word "allegation" as a motivation and psychological fixation.

Now, as has been mentioned by the national media, had 30,000 blacks or Muslims descended on D.C. today and behaved like the Trumpsters, the responses and language used today would have been very, very different. 

Once people commit to nonsense over objective reality, once they buy into what they prefer to believe rather than factual evidence, they can be steered anywhere. We're looking at 50 million Americans on mental and emotional leashes. Today in D.C. was not the culmination, but the beginning. I strongly suspect this gets worse before it gets better. Maybe tomorrow.

What do I recommend? Well, the only way to rid a nation of 50 million lemmings with automatic weapons is to find a really big cliff.

Bob Dietz

January 6, 2021

Defending Dabo Swinney's Buckeye Ranking

I figured I'd get this posted prior to the Clemson/Ohio State game kicking off, otherwise I'd risk being overtly self-serving.

Swinney, Clemson's head coach, took all kinds of heat for ranking Ohio State eleventh in the final Coaches Poll. Swinney defended his decision logically and concisely in an interview with Sam Cooper for Yahoo Sports. Basically, Swinney said that he couldn't put Ohio State in the top 10 because they simply hadn't played enough games.

Rather than criticizing Swinney, I'm going to argue here that Swinney probably OVER-rated Ohio State. Unless you consider the 2020 Ohio State team as a clone of the 2019 team, which evidently the "committee" does, there is absolutely zero reason to place the 2020 Ohio State squad in the top 10, much less the college football playoff. This Ohio State team has demonstrated nothing against a pitiful schedule. The 2020 Buckeye defense is very ordinary. Without their quarterback, they are a .500 team in the SEC or Big 12. With their quarterback, well, I'm not sure.

In 2011, Ohio State president Gordon Gee claimed Ohio State deserved title game consideration because the Buckeyes, unlike TCU and Boise State, didn't play "the Little Sisters of the Poor." Well, looking at Ohio State's 2020 schedule, the Buckeyes have faced the blind orphaned children of the Little Sisters of the Poor. 

I love the way Northwestern plays, and I actually had them at 200-1 to win the Big 10. But realistically, Northwestern may have been the best team Ohio State played, and that isn't saying a whole lot. The Buckeyes didn't face Iowa or Wisconsin. They played a really lousy slate of opponents. No computer using 2020 numbers could put Ohio State in the top six or seven teams.

Ohio State going to the playoff is all brand name and television ratings. It's just another example of monopolization and venality, of networks putting heavy thumbs on the decision-making scales because they pay the bills. It's crony monopoly capitalism at its most venal. But Howard Cosell isn't on the broadcast teams, so that probably won't get a mention.

Swinney was, I think, overly generous in his evaluation of Ohio State. The Buckeyes' schedule merited a spot in the Liberty Bowl  or thereabouts. Three of the four playoff teams, Clemson included, have jury-rigged silo-scheduling resumes. That, however, is a tale for another day. For now, I'll just say that Swinney got the Ohio State ranking correct, and he should be saluted.

Bob Dietz

January 1, 2021