Tales from The Asylum -- August 29

(Organ music)

Watch your step, my friend, as we slowly descend these stone stairs leading to the sub-basements of The Asylum. It was Republican National Convention week, and here in the sub-basements, the party never stopped. 

Be very careful to not slip on these steps; the slime tends to build up the deeper you go. Slime can be slippery, but if you know where it is and what it looks like, there's nothing to fear. No one riots in the sub-basements. No one loots. So there is no need for fear.

That stench? Oh, just hold your nose. The smell is coming from the big pit.  Don't get close to the edge and don't look down. Slide your way around the perimeter. That's it; back to the wall, scoot sideways, like a crab. Don't fall. Most of us have been partying down here so long that we don't even notice the smell.

This week in The Asylum has been particularly fun. Abby Johnson, a second day speaker at the RNC, said she stands by her advocacy for one vote per household. And if people disagree, the man gets his say, as God intended. 

I know what you're thinking -- those evangelicals are anti-woman. Nothing could be further from the truth. While Abby Johnson approves of everyone in a household sharing one vote, God approves of everyone in the Jerry Falwell Jr. household, plus a pool boy, sharing one bed. Nothing anti-woman about Becki Falwell opting for pool boy versus her old man. According to the pool boy, Jerry Junior at least got to watch. And you just know there'll be DVDs for sale soon with a holy purpose. Gotta love a triune-a'-trois God.

Speaking of which, thank the Almighty that we're down here in the sub-basement. Up above, in The Asylum proper, you have looting and rioting and all kinds of socialist decadence. Down here, just optimism and glee. 

For example, last week we sent out word that convalescent plasma was a game changer. But it didn't take long before those scientists and epidemiologists threw a wet blanket over the proclamation. We had a cure, and then we didn't. Bummer. Next, we gave the order that all of that Covid-19 testing of asymptomatics could be halted. Sure enough, three days later, those darn scientists upstairs shot down our optimism once again. Don't they understand? Saying makes it so! That's how we ended up in The Asylum, and thank our triune-a'-trois God that we did.

Meanwhile, preseason number one Alabama has racked up, uh, wait a minute. Oh, that's not 1,200 points in the coaches' poll? It's 1,200 students with Covid-19? Huh. Well, number one is still number one. Hard to be the pinnacle of anything, so kudos to Alabama for the double achievement. Still doesn't top the Falwells, though.

The great thing about these sub-basements -- you're sealed off from the nutcases in the rest of The Asylum. Down here, nobody interrupts whatever you rant, unless it's with applause. Nobody fact checks everything you say. Nobody steps on whatever you prefer to believe. No meds (unless it's HCQ). No Keds (outspoken athletes get stopped at the sub-basement door). And no peds (Q-Anon makes sure of that). Down here, it's all the best version of everything. The Trumps are like the von Trapps, if the von Trapps were Nazis, of course, and couldn't sing. And didn't ever want to leave the stage during their performance.

What's that? You're still having trouble with the smell? It's not that bad, my friend. You can't dump 185,000 corpses in a pit without a little bit of stench. Don't worry, though. By Christmas, we'll have dug another pit. Just for the evangelicals. They requested it.

Join us next week (cue organ music) as we somehow get out of the sub-basement and back onto the grounds of The Asylum, where there's looting and rioting. Did I mention the pillaging?

Bob Dietz

August 30, 2020

Black Tips on White Spears

I'm not one to spend much time watching either party's convention. But I have been trying to figure out why mainstream media hasn't debunked some of the GOP convention speakers for the best, most obvious reasons.

Life is about probability. Why do news networks ignore this reality? Instead, we get personal stories and anecdotes and other gibberish that tells you absolutely nothing about what has happened on a large scale and what will happen. Instead, we get a parade of freak show, end-of-the-bell-curve personal outcomes that engage emotions but lack any descriptive or predictive utility. The anecdotal sample is too small to represent anything. The stories, in fact, have usually been chosen for their freakishness, their public pop, their very non-representative elements. They aren't much value in painting any kind of full reality picture or predicting general cause-and-effect.

On Monday, the GOP trotted out Tim Scott, the sole black Republican senator. Scott explained that, since his family had gone from cotton fields to Congress in one generation, the best way forward for those interested in fulfilling their potential was via the GOP and President Trump.

Without numbers, Scott's message is hollow and useless. No numbers about black income. No numbers about black Covid-19 issues. No numbers about vertical mobility in America. No numbers about black health care in general. No numbers about black educational scores. No talk of blacks in Congress other than himself. No numbers at all.

What we received was a speech about an individual that offered no real evidence of anything and therefore meant almost nothing. The GOP may as well have lined up some lottery winners to praise the economic miracles of Republican leadership. Bootstrap-hoisting stories are sweet parables, but they are no substitute for facts or numbers. Planning based on parables is no substitute for social policy based on numbers.

When Consumer Reports publishes its automotive issue, it's isn't a bestseller because a handful of car owners give enthusiastic speeches for particular models. It's the most popular issue because an enormous amount of survey information from across the country has been collated and put in a readable format.

Placing successful blacks as political speakers, while referencing no numbers regarding black demographics, health care, or economics, is no different than hiring Michael Jordan to sell sneakers. It's about people holding up personal accomplishments as a reason to buy (or buy into) something. Some people pitch shoes. Some people pitch a political party. It's about trying to sell a white crow as an example of all crows.

Bring on the lottery winners to sell economic policy, the octogenarians to praise American health care, and a Republican who survived a lightning strike to verify that the GOP is both blessed by miracles from a Christian god and has Thor on its side as well. The lottery winners, the octogenarians, and the folks who survived lightning can all be completely sincere. It's not their fault, at least not completely, that they see the world from their narrative stance and ignore all of the numbers. That is, after all, what children do. And America is full of arrested development.

Political parties and voters in democracies should know better than to believe that most crows are white because they're presented with a few examples.

Herschel Walker

Herschel Walker also gave a brief speech in support of President Trump. Trump, buying the USFL New Jersey Generals from J. Walter Duncan in 1983, took over Walker's personal services contract, which was designed to circumvent the fledgling league's salary cap. The contract made Walker the highest paid player in professional football, although technically it was not solely a football contract. In his RNC speech, Walker vouched for Trump as not being racist.

Why would President Trump ever have displayed one iota of racism around Herschel Walker? I'm not sure about this theory of assembling black people to vouch for a white guy's non-racism. Wouldn't you be better served asking white dudes who hung out with the white person suspected of racism? Just a thought, but a pretty obvious one. The Walker speech was almost a "Hey, I have a black friend; I can't be a racist" moment.

Summary 

Biographies are not proof for policies. Why doesn't every news organization state this before launching into personality pieces or analyses of autobiographical speeches? If you trot out people instead of numbers to make your points, it's a sign you have no proof for your policies. 

 

Bob Dietz

August 28, 2020

Curious Lines

Occasionally, a high profile line in print or from a speech has, when viewed from a somewhat oblique perspective, more import than would suspect. A tip-off of sorts, like cultural Nazca Lines that appear part of the landscape from ground level but that provide surprising meanings when viewed from a height. These "Curious Lines" entries are devoted to overlooked clues implicit in snippets of text or speech.

My initial offering has to do with South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott and his closing speech Day One of the 2020 Republican National Convention. First, a brief synopsis of how my attention was drawn to a line in this speech.

I am not an avid fan of American politics. As such, I admit to never watching much of any convention by either party. I never watched Bill Clinton or Bush or Obama. I've probably seen a total of 30 minutes live convention broadcasting in the last 30 years. Basically, I figure that it's more efficient (time being valuable) to spend 10 or 15 minutes reading summaries than spending a couple of hours watching these things.

In any case, Scott's speech had gotten high marks from both conservative and progressive pundits, but one talking head read a few highlight quotes, and I heard:

"Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want a cultural revolution. A fundamentally different America. If we let them, they will turn our country into a socialist utopia."

I thought I must have heard this incorrectly. The last line could not be right. So I looked up a transcript of the speech. The transcript read exactly the same. Well, I still wasn't convinced. Perhaps the transcriber had made a simple error. I pulled up a video of the Scott speech. I was surprised. What Scott said was exactly the same as the transcript.

Now, if Noam Chomsky sees this, he'll have a field day with it, but allow me some simple observations. Here's where I'm going with this.

Utopia is a noun. The word utopia means (quoting Merriam-Webster), "A place of ideal perfection, especially in laws, government, and social conditions." My question thus becomes, "How could turning America into a utopia be a bad thing in Senator Scott's mind?" 

Evidently, the adjective "socialist" is some kind of deal breaker. And what that implies is most interesting. Scott (or his speechwriters) see "socialist utopia" as a kind of oxymoron. He must believe, given his words, that utopia is not a desirable thing if it incorporates aspects of socialism. Scott views "socialist utopia" as inimical to his preferences, although the very definition of utopia describes ideal laws, government, and social conditions. Taking Scott's perspective to its logical conclusion, Scott therefore does not really see "ideal lives for all" as something towards which society should strive. Given the GOP's comfort with current socioeconomic inequities in the United States, I suppose this should not be surprising. What's surprising is what these few lines expose about utopia being a GOP anathema.

Lifelong struggle and inequality are the noble, American-approved status quo. These are to be maintained as they are preferable to any kind of utopia, because utopias by definition have some kind of leveling socialist features. 

Sometimes a line here and an implication there reveal more subtext than the author, speaker, or speechwriter intended. People say things out loud that really belong in whispers. I think, in this case, what these lines reveal is that striving for utopia and the increasingly Social Darwinist GOP worldview do not blend. American life should be, evidently, about struggle and stratification.

My closing thoughts regarding Scott's curious lines are that, first, this speech was undoubtedly vetted by multiple GOP'ers. So everyone was on board with framing a utopia as a bad outcome since it contains socialist elements. Considering how many people in the United States were a paycheck away from broke before the pandemic, and how things have gotten worse, this is quite a speech-writing commitment to the one-percent. 

Second, and more importantly, the import of defining utopia as a bad thing is truly extraordinary. The people striving for utopia are "the other." They are alien, they are outsiders, they are the opposition. Americans don't strive for "socialist utopia." They are supposed to strive for something else, presumably the status quo en route to record inequality.

Third, and most unsettling, when people write lines into speeches like this, the speeches aren't really being written for the population of a democracy. They are being written for the leadership and constituents of a plutocracy that is quite comfortable with being a plutocracy.

Bob Dietz

August 26, 2020

They Want to Believe

About a week ago, President Trump added Dr. Scott Atlas to the Coronavirus Task Force. Dr. Atlas is not an epidemiologist or public health expert. His main qualification, far as I can tell, is that he was a Fox News fixture who agreed with the president regarding almost everything Covid-related.

As the months of the Trump presidency pass, what strikes me most vividly is the imperviousness of the man and his base to any kind of disconfirmation. He and his base absolutely refuse to acknowledge when he's been wrong, even when it's startlingly, absurdly clear. Dr. Atlas has been carefully vetted. He will not be telling the president that he is wrong. 

I'm a sports handicapper. I am, in a good year, correct 58 to 60 percent of the time. That means 40 percent of the time I am dead wrong, provably incorrect. In the most overpowering, magical years of my life, I have been publicly wrong a third of the time. And, on rare but real occasions, I've had seasons where I was wrong more often than I was right. There's no escaping my wrongness. My partners know when I'm wrong. They and I have email records. The public usually has known when I'm wrong, either through public contests or published records with monitors. The sports books I use have permanent records of the results. I can't just invent a different reality. I have been forced to confront my numerous mistakes and bad judgements every day of every season for 40 professional years and 10 years preceding that. 

What must it be like, I wonder, to go through life pretending to be an expert in all things, and to be able to ignore or jettison all disconfirming evidence? Eventually, one might come to believe in one's omniscience. Living life in the service of propping up one's omniscience would be an adventure. That kind of modus operandi would require periodic wholesale roster changes in both the public and private personnel surrounding you. People who became aware of your errors would have to be discarded. Disconfirming voices would have to be shifted out of one's auditory range. 

I mention all of this because the Republican National Convention has begun. Who will the Republicans trot before the cameras? A parade of B-list sycophants and Trump family members doesn't really impress. Sycophants rarely do. Realistically, the roster for an average Celebrity Apprentice season would have higher Q ratings than whoever the GOP sends to the podiums. More high profile, successful Republicans spoke at the Democratic convention than will speak at the Republican. What will the GOP do for ratings? Recruit a bunch of Fox News celebrities?

Hammering home the idea that Covid-19 is on the run and all is well in America should make for a very curious and tone deaf Republican presentation, sort of like broadcasting a cruise on a Scientology sea org. Out of touch with the outside world because that's become both the mission and the means to stay in charge.

With the announcement that President Trump will more or less be hosting all four days of the convention, things have gotten increasingly curious. It suggests at least three distinct things. First, the roster of GOP standard bearers is a bit thin. Second, Trump doesn't really trust anyone else to keep the backbone of the themes intact for multiple nights. He doesn't trust anyone else's salesmanship. Third, one of the probable reasons for the thin Republican speaking roster is that people don't want to tie themselves to the president. They are willing to cede the limelight to the Trump family because if the convention is perceived as an absurd bust, it's largely on the Trumps.

Thus, the president is going to put in multiple shifts. How can someone who was so absolutely wrong about something of crucial importance step onto a stage night after night and fake that he did a good job? How can you say (as Trump did on February 26),"You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero" or (on February 28), "It's going to disappear," and then say, with a straight face, that everything is going according to plan? How do you do that? A hundred years from now, improv troupes will be training with the scene, "You were president, and you said the virus would disappear. Now it's six months later, and 180,000 are dead. Go with it!"

If the GOP had any honor, we'd see a seppuku convention finale. Instead, we'll get a political party on roller skates flailing as they try to put lipstick on flying pigs. Sixty million Americans will be duly impressed. 

Loyalty to a party is one thing. Loyalty to a circus is another. All that clown makeup, those safety net pardons, the brutal stench from piles of pachyderm excrement; it's all a bit much. Living under the orange big top is for those either too blind to find their way out or those paid extremely well to follow the elephants with a shovel.

Bob Dietz

August 24, 2020

For Whom the Bell Never Tolls

 ". . . any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." John Donne (1572-1631)

"Over the last week, the Democrats held the darkest and angriest and gloomiest convention in American history."  President Donald Trump (August 21, 2020)

Today, August 22, we will officially pass 178,000 American deaths due to Covid-19. This number, in fact, is demonstrably low, as demographers and epidemiologists will establish after the pandemic. More than 1,000 Americans are dying every day from the virus. The most rosy projections predict 300,000 dead by December 1. The U.S. pandemic results have, thus far, been horrific. 

Are there reasons for gloom? For anger? Can the president not understand that gloom and anger are reasonable responses? If not, what exactly would be rational reasons for gloom and anger? Ah, but I ask a rhetorical question, because as long as the stock market maintains, as long as one and two percenters thrive, the president can't acknowledge the propriety and even the necessity for anger and for gloom. If you are simply and truly deaf to the bells for 178,000 deaths, many avoidable, then indeed all is well within your world.

As the days pass, my questions about President Trump become more complex. I have never aspired to play psycho-historian or historical psychoanalyst or whatever the titles of those journals. Seems one small step above pure speculation. But questions must be asked.

Does Trump not understand that 178,000 people have actually died? And that these people had families and friends who mourn? Does he also not understand that we are on track to lose another thousand a day for the next three months?

What makes the president's quoted response even more curious is that his younger brother, Robert, died last week. How did that play into the president's criticism of gloom and darkness, if at all?

I suppose that there are two theories here. Either the president is playing cheerleader for the nation (again), and his brother's death has sensitized him, so he refuses to dwell (or even acknowledge) the country's cumulative loss and pain. Or conversely, the president is simply deaf to the tolling of any bell. He cannot process it, so he ignores it, deflects it, and assumes others share his anesthetized sensibilities. His niece's book, Too Much and Never Enough, describes his avoidance of his older brother's death. Does the president lack the ability to emotionally feel others' pain, to get inside "the other's" head, to empathize?

If a man cannot hear a single bell toll up close, then it should not be surprising if he remains unaffected when tens of thousands chime together from a distance. I make no judgements regarding the value of empathy or the public projection of empathy. That seems a subjective debate for people much more versed in politics and civics than me. As I've said previously, I have no problem attending a lecture by Count Dracula. The hair on the back of my neck rises, however, in those moments when I scan the lecture room and realize that most of the audience has bite marks in their necks. 

A man without empathy leading the way doesn't, by itself, bother me. What chills me to my core is the realization that he's the champion of my compatriots in the room. And none of them hear the tolling of the bells. 

Bob Dietz

August 22, 2020

Articles of Note -- August 21

My first recommendation is "Why Americans Are Allergic to the Truth" by Drew Magary at GEN. That August 4 piece is a reaction to an (updated) August 4 article by Ed Yong at The Atlantic, "How the Pandemic Defeated America." Both of these are cogent no-nonsense summaries.

Next is Christiano Lima's August 19 Politico piece, "Report: 'Superspreaders' of bogus health news racked up billions of views on Facebook." The frightening, quantified gist is that people click on the questionable and crazy far more often that they click on guidance from actual credentialed experts or professional organizations.

Finally is an August 20 CNN report by Christina Maxouris, Eric Levenson, and Nicole Chavez, "US coronavirus: Georgia, Texas, and Florida lead the country in cases per capita." The title says it all, as the late closings and early re-openings of these three states have come home to roost. And what, the governors were expecting different outcomes? Based on what? As I said many months ago, these politicians were at odds with the science. Either they were going to be correct, or the science was going to be correct. Unfortunately for me, there were no available betting odds.

These four pieces are each a must read.

Bob Dietz

August 21, 2020

Tales from The Asylum -- August 19

Welcome, once again, to the shadows of The Asylum. Ignore those moans, those howls, those screams of torment. That's just the poor sane bastards visiting their American relatives. We have a very special tour for you this week. From Tobacco Road to the elegant address of One University Drive, we will curl your toes and free your mind. Rationality, after all, has no place in The Asylum (cue organ music).

Some colleges started in-person fall semester last week. Shortly thereafter, hundreds of students tested positive for Covid-19. North Carolina immediately shut down and shipped its students home. I recall Penthouse magazine titling my letter to them "Unmatriculated." That about covers it. The UNC students and their families (and the subjects of that letter, by the way) are all screwed. With hundreds testing positive, it's likely thousands may be infected, and they get to go home and spread it to parents and grandparents. David Perry, a historian at the University of Minnesota, reported to CNN that he was appalled when UNC Provost Robert Blouin said, "I don't apologize for trying." Perhaps Blouin could instead apologize for being a complete dumb-ass who has put lives on the line. 

North Carolina, East Carolina, Oklahoma State, and Notre Dame all felt the pandemic bug last week. Just wait until the majority of universities open for business next week, like ETSU in my backyard. We should be in for some comical administrative excuses and verbal contortions that will make both Yogi Berra and The Asylum proud.

From the east boundary of The Asylum to the west boundary, we seem to have university personnel in need of electric shock. John Eastman, Professor of Law at Chapman University in California, opined in Newsweek that Kamala Harris isn't qualified for the vice presidency. Something about running while black, which is the same as driving while black but without the vehicle searches.

Meanwhile, President Trump's new plan for a second term, leaked by White House Team Trumpers, is to create such an electoral mess that the election gets tossed into the House, with each state getting one vote in the process. I will pay good money to see the bastion of democracy that is The Asylum assign the same clout to Wyoming as to California. Only the President of The Asylum could come up with this, except maybe for that balding guy in Russia. See, this is why I was reincarnated as a white man. If you can't kill 'em, cheat 'em. Then kill 'em. Yeah, let's have half a million pretty-much-all-white folks count the same as 40 million not-so-white folks. Should be a helluva ride.

In The Asylum wing devoted to stable-or-otherwise geniuses, the president's friend from My Pillow made the rounds touting a Covid-19 cure. Gotta love American expertise. Design a pillow, cure a pandemic. Like Leonardo da Vinci, only with a better quality of sleep.

And finally, this uplifting note from the recreational wing of The Asylum. John Focke, broadcaster for the Charlotte Hornets, was suspended indefinitely after referring to the Denver Nuggets as the Denver N*gg*** in a tweet. He claimed it was a spelling error. Somewhere, maybe in the militia-filled wilds of Michigan or Pulaski (TN), there's a judge's chair reserved for next year's spelling bee with Focke's name on it, hopefully spelled correctly.

Join us again (cue organ music) next week as we descend into the sub-basements of The Asylum. It's Republican National Convention time. Can you spell H-Y-D-R-O-X-Y-C-H-L-O-R-O-Q-U-I-N-E?

Bob Dietz

August 19, 2020