Imagine all you have by which to judge a person is what they do and what they say. Pretend you can ignore everything said about them by anyone else and don't compare them to anyone in particular.
If all you had to go on was the twitter feed and statements of Donald Trump from his own mouth, unadulterated by any biased media, mainstream or conservative or liberal, what would you think of him? Would you trust him with money? Would you defer to his judgment with the best course of action for [a business, a country/state, right living, investing, real estate (based only on legal and business documentation)]. Remember, don't compare him to all the bad things democrats have done, just go on his record and your own understanding of the human condition, the general idea of people you trust and respect.
Ask yourself, would you trust him on his own terms? How would you defend his actual, observed (not reported) behavior, in tweets, on screen, in rallys? Not compared to Hillary but in his own merits as a person.
If you were in the military (which a many of my friends are), would you put him in charge of important decisions? Would you believe him when he reported his actions? Would you want him as your commanding officer? Would you trust him to be loyal to the Constitution over his own interests? Would you trust him to be loyal to the country over some influential person who did him a good turn?
If you were an investor, would you trust him to honestly handle your money without super-close supervision? Wou
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Comey is too honest
The evidence is clear. There was no right thing to do. If he had kept the investigation of Clinton's latest e-mails (back in October) quiet, he would have been fiercely accused of playing politics to help her win. If you're conservative, you know that's true. He erred on the side of transparency -- maybe being too honest and sided with the American people, if not the Constitution or the norms of his office. And so he was, perhaps justly, accused of influencing the election away from Clinton. (I'm not saying that it made an intentional or significant difference, just that he was accused of influencing the election).
But one thing is obvious. If there's one thing he's not, it's a liar.
On the other hand, the instigator of alternative facts, the person who elevates winning above all, who has even committed members of his own party unable to defend his claims and conservative pundits reminding people not to take what he says literally, if there's one thing Trump is, it's not honest.
There's also a PAC (which, if anything, are never honest whether conservative or liberal), trying to paint him as a show-boater. Are you going to be believe a political PAC ad about anything, ever? Not me.
So when it comes to who to believe, there's no question.
But one thing is obvious. If there's one thing he's not, it's a liar.
On the other hand, the instigator of alternative facts, the person who elevates winning above all, who has even committed members of his own party unable to defend his claims and conservative pundits reminding people not to take what he says literally, if there's one thing Trump is, it's not honest.
There's also a PAC (which, if anything, are never honest whether conservative or liberal), trying to paint him as a show-boater. Are you going to be believe a political PAC ad about anything, ever? Not me.
So when it comes to who to believe, there's no question.
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Ridiculous is the New Normal - Priorities
Watching commercials on American TV is a look into the leisure psyche corrupted to the highest degree so far. It's emasculating to imagine having so much time and money that someone gives a shit about a barely perceptible difference in the shade of blue they want to paint their nursery. I guarantee the baby doesn't give a shit. And, on round two, the elegance of your closet, with its back-lighting and opulence and scope of the closet, the impeccable spacing on the huge shoe rack. And the most troubling aspect is that it's not only seen as normal, but as a completely legitimate achievement worthy of working toward, a real sign of success.
Here's a list of things that are all better uses of our time and money than agonizing over color patterns for baby's room or expanding the sartorial and mahogany finish on the trim of your boudoir. Stop being so damned selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, short-sighted, parochial, sheep-like. If you have the disposable income that has you looking for such useless things to hiring a shopper to help you select between luxury vehicles, think a little about your legacy... (your obit) "His discerning tastes was clear having selected the Lincoln MKZ over the Cadillac XT1..." or "Was able to help several thousand low income students get advanced degrees in science and healthcare"
1. Creating art
2. Ensuring a comfortable hospice experience for members of your community
3. Providing time mentoring troubled teens at the local high school
4. Coordinating small business support for women in economically depressed demographics
5. Supporting an effort to remove historically racist monuments in Jim Crow hold-outs down south
6. Giving grants to support urban gardens
7. Fighting for basic science research funding
8. Electing officials who recognize income inequality is unhealthy for sustained economic strength
9. Giving time and money to further local investigative journalism which shines light on corruption, the poison of faith in government
10. Advocating for medical research for rare diseases which big pharma is happy to ignore because of the low expected ROI for treatment option
11. Developing scholarship programs for poor, talented students who aspire to vocations requiring advanced degrees
12. Work to incentivize doctors and nurses to reside in rural areas where medical care suffers
13. Send money to Doctors Without Borders
14. Fund independent documentary films that expose exploitative industries like sex trafficking and high energy collusion
15. Organize resistance to intolerant and bigoted institutions, corporations and other organizations
16. Illuminate the dark underbelly of hate groups
17. Petition the local school boards or fund their programs to provide opportunities to troubled students
18. Make high art available to minimum wage workers through sponsorship and ticket distribution
19. Host a political action group to research and discuss candidates for local and state offices
20. Entreat local cable companies to improve their programs to provide low-cost internet to low-income families
21. Take weekend road trips with your kids and visit and discuss blighted neighborhoods and gated communities
22. Join venture capitalists to support education apps.
23. Donate to Wikipedia
24. Rent out your extra room at low cost to students attending the local college
25. Institute a tech/engineering retraining to people in obsolete industries, like coal mining
26. Facilitate athletic and bodily-kinesthetic activities for senior housing facilities
Here's a list of things that are all better uses of our time and money than agonizing over color patterns for baby's room or expanding the sartorial and mahogany finish on the trim of your boudoir. Stop being so damned selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, short-sighted, parochial, sheep-like. If you have the disposable income that has you looking for such useless things to hiring a shopper to help you select between luxury vehicles, think a little about your legacy... (your obit) "His discerning tastes was clear having selected the Lincoln MKZ over the Cadillac XT1..." or "Was able to help several thousand low income students get advanced degrees in science and healthcare"
1. Creating art
2. Ensuring a comfortable hospice experience for members of your community
3. Providing time mentoring troubled teens at the local high school
4. Coordinating small business support for women in economically depressed demographics
5. Supporting an effort to remove historically racist monuments in Jim Crow hold-outs down south
6. Giving grants to support urban gardens
7. Fighting for basic science research funding
8. Electing officials who recognize income inequality is unhealthy for sustained economic strength
9. Giving time and money to further local investigative journalism which shines light on corruption, the poison of faith in government
10. Advocating for medical research for rare diseases which big pharma is happy to ignore because of the low expected ROI for treatment option
11. Developing scholarship programs for poor, talented students who aspire to vocations requiring advanced degrees
12. Work to incentivize doctors and nurses to reside in rural areas where medical care suffers
13. Send money to Doctors Without Borders
14. Fund independent documentary films that expose exploitative industries like sex trafficking and high energy collusion
15. Organize resistance to intolerant and bigoted institutions, corporations and other organizations
16. Illuminate the dark underbelly of hate groups
17. Petition the local school boards or fund their programs to provide opportunities to troubled students
18. Make high art available to minimum wage workers through sponsorship and ticket distribution
19. Host a political action group to research and discuss candidates for local and state offices
20. Entreat local cable companies to improve their programs to provide low-cost internet to low-income families
21. Take weekend road trips with your kids and visit and discuss blighted neighborhoods and gated communities
22. Join venture capitalists to support education apps.
23. Donate to Wikipedia
24. Rent out your extra room at low cost to students attending the local college
25. Institute a tech/engineering retraining to people in obsolete industries, like coal mining
26. Facilitate athletic and bodily-kinesthetic activities for senior housing facilities
Monday, May 22, 2017
False :Pride to Real Progress
Reading an article about Richard Spencer and the roots of his politics... It makes me wonder if or how we could exorcise that limited perspective on society (race-centric). Until we can treat our historical ills and come closer to curing our past misdeeds, transcending them and our* current zeitgeist is but a dream. Understanding the interplaying dynamics (among our psychology, history, education, economics, et al.) of today is an important start.
When a person has no tangible accomplishments to their name, nothing they have created, orchestrated, designed and built through their own devices, there's a tendency in most to glom on to something they're close to and feel they can be proud of. They name drop, they amplify lackluster achievements, they pretend they're something they're not. Out of this same low esteem comes racial identity. They have at least one characteristic with which they can claim as a source of pride -- the accomplishments of ancestors or racemates.
For an oppressed race, and there are many, being able to point to real contributions made by their race can be legitimate in countering oppression because it brings to mind and lays bare the reality that any individual of every race is worthy (and this can be important for both members and non-members of that race). For the dominant race, attaching to the accomplishments of racemates explicitly as the dominant race does the opposite -- highlights their history of oppression. Naturally the writers of history are going to recall and remember all their glorious past and forget or even coopt the accomplishments of history's underdogs.
A healthier approach for all, when we're eventually ready, would be to expand the identity beyond race, faction or country to its logical conclusion. Human. The one glaring benefit to this is it allows anyone from any race to take pride in furthering society for all (in whatever fashionable definition of furthering we might collectively choose). Those with pathological needs to be better than others (for all the reasons that disability might arise) will, of course, be unable to see the world at large in those more objective terms, and how we combat that shortcoming will have to be part of any bettering path forward.
This ethnocentric tendency may be the root attraction I have to scientific thinking. It has greater respect for repeatable, testable facts (reality) than any other school of thought we've yet designed. Adding to that a spiritual respect for the life and legitimacy of the individual, and we have a powerful secular basis for good living. One that does its best to use what we know so far (with the striving to add to our real understanding of all of nature) to serve the future of humanity in the most positive way we can, whatever our best vision of positive is that we can muster.
*"our" meaning that mentality in which it seems a healthy plurality of humanity lead their (mostly) unexamined and unchallenged lives.
When a person has no tangible accomplishments to their name, nothing they have created, orchestrated, designed and built through their own devices, there's a tendency in most to glom on to something they're close to and feel they can be proud of. They name drop, they amplify lackluster achievements, they pretend they're something they're not. Out of this same low esteem comes racial identity. They have at least one characteristic with which they can claim as a source of pride -- the accomplishments of ancestors or racemates.
For an oppressed race, and there are many, being able to point to real contributions made by their race can be legitimate in countering oppression because it brings to mind and lays bare the reality that any individual of every race is worthy (and this can be important for both members and non-members of that race). For the dominant race, attaching to the accomplishments of racemates explicitly as the dominant race does the opposite -- highlights their history of oppression. Naturally the writers of history are going to recall and remember all their glorious past and forget or even coopt the accomplishments of history's underdogs.
A healthier approach for all, when we're eventually ready, would be to expand the identity beyond race, faction or country to its logical conclusion. Human. The one glaring benefit to this is it allows anyone from any race to take pride in furthering society for all (in whatever fashionable definition of furthering we might collectively choose). Those with pathological needs to be better than others (for all the reasons that disability might arise) will, of course, be unable to see the world at large in those more objective terms, and how we combat that shortcoming will have to be part of any bettering path forward.
This ethnocentric tendency may be the root attraction I have to scientific thinking. It has greater respect for repeatable, testable facts (reality) than any other school of thought we've yet designed. Adding to that a spiritual respect for the life and legitimacy of the individual, and we have a powerful secular basis for good living. One that does its best to use what we know so far (with the striving to add to our real understanding of all of nature) to serve the future of humanity in the most positive way we can, whatever our best vision of positive is that we can muster.
*"our" meaning that mentality in which it seems a healthy plurality of humanity lead their (mostly) unexamined and unchallenged lives.
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
The Difference: Promote Multiplicity or Division
In a fundamental difference of thought, one group of people fights for the freedom of all people to be who they are without someone else imposing their will on others, providing we respect the rights of others to live their own peaceful life. The other group wishes to impose limitations on others because their belief means others need to live as they do to be legitimate enough.
The gray areas: when someone's freedom begins to encroach upon the right to safe and peaceful existence of others. When someone's idea of freedom harms helpless children or others not able to stand up for their own rights within their care.
But the bottom line: the oppressors need to be resisted, diminished, emasculated, and otherwise rendered impotent. America needs to defy and smash oppression, corruption, and exploitation.
The gray areas: when someone's freedom begins to encroach upon the right to safe and peaceful existence of others. When someone's idea of freedom harms helpless children or others not able to stand up for their own rights within their care.
But the bottom line: the oppressors need to be resisted, diminished, emasculated, and otherwise rendered impotent. America needs to defy and smash oppression, corruption, and exploitation.
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
If You're So Smart...
A white colleague is critical of Trump supporters. All of them, even though some their individual reasons for voting for Trump were very separate from him as an inept and generally bad person (in any way people want to judge others). Regardless of his policies and tenuous ties to the GOP, he thinks it should be apparent by voting for an obviously stupid, rudderless, petulant, and immature person as president is really poor judgment, and that people should see that.
Well, everybody doesn't see that. Not everybody has learned gobs of perspective at college. Not everybody has traveled to and spend significant time seeing a few cosmopolitan parts of the country, much less lived in another country entirely. Not everybody reads a lot of books and is able to understand other viewpoints and ways of living/behaving that may be different and still OK. Not everybody lives in a multi-cultural environment and sees the whole thing -- the good, the bad, and the ugly. Not everyone has had the benefit if seeing young immigrants struggle to learn English and succeed in America. Not everybody has been in their houses, seen their effort to survive and still make it. Not everyone has the benefit of friends and workmates of different persuasions, and has experienced, second hand, some of the things they've experienced.
OF COURSE, anyone who has had some or most of those experiences, and has been blessed with a critical, open or intelligent mind could never vote for someone who has shown such irresponsible behavior as a public figure. But clearly there are enough people without that level of discernment. The long term fix for that is to make it possible for way more people to have some of those experience, like college, overseas experience, and life in multi-cultural worlds (a eventuality that our changing demographics will help with). How to make them broad readers, curious, open minded? A tough task, but it's possible that public education could make that one of its priorities for real.
Well, everybody doesn't see that. Not everybody has learned gobs of perspective at college. Not everybody has traveled to and spend significant time seeing a few cosmopolitan parts of the country, much less lived in another country entirely. Not everybody reads a lot of books and is able to understand other viewpoints and ways of living/behaving that may be different and still OK. Not everybody lives in a multi-cultural environment and sees the whole thing -- the good, the bad, and the ugly. Not everyone has had the benefit if seeing young immigrants struggle to learn English and succeed in America. Not everybody has been in their houses, seen their effort to survive and still make it. Not everyone has the benefit of friends and workmates of different persuasions, and has experienced, second hand, some of the things they've experienced.
OF COURSE, anyone who has had some or most of those experiences, and has been blessed with a critical, open or intelligent mind could never vote for someone who has shown such irresponsible behavior as a public figure. But clearly there are enough people without that level of discernment. The long term fix for that is to make it possible for way more people to have some of those experience, like college, overseas experience, and life in multi-cultural worlds (a eventuality that our changing demographics will help with). How to make them broad readers, curious, open minded? A tough task, but it's possible that public education could make that one of its priorities for real.
Friday, November 4, 2016
You said "If [Trump] wins the election it will mean that America stands for what he stands for." There is a certain portion of voters -- I hope a small minority -- for whom that is true. There are many more voters who disagree with much of what he stands for but will still vote for him because they've come to hate Clinton with irrational zest (flaws, yes, but several orders of magnitude less than what most Republicans (and even non-Republicans) believe because of the relentless attack she's been under, all because Republicans have known since she was FLOTUS that she would be a legitimate contender for the White House). They've utterly convinced themselves and many others, through the sheer volume of vitriolic rhetoric, that she's Satan. [I think it's easy for them to go there because there is enough carelessness on her part to open that door a crack, and of course they exploit that doubt to the nth degree.] Anyway, there are also many voters who don't agree with him who will vote for him anyway for personal financial reasons, for political and SCOTUS reasons, and even just anti-Establishment motivations. And there are those voters who will vote for Clinton.
So in a very real sense, equating what he stands for (as evidenced by his actions and frequent unscripted blathering, not the teleprompter-Trump) to America at large is false. And in another real sense, as the President, he would be the face of America to the world, and would indeed represent what America stands for to many here and abroad.
And with all that said, I don't think I contradict you. Niels Bohr said "The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth."
So in a very real sense, equating what he stands for (as evidenced by his actions and frequent unscripted blathering, not the teleprompter-Trump) to America at large is false. And in another real sense, as the President, he would be the face of America to the world, and would indeed represent what America stands for to many here and abroad.
And with all that said, I don't think I contradict you. Niels Bohr said "The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth."
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