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

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