Sunk cost and treason

There's this thing called the sunk-cost fallacy -- that once a person has put a lot of time, money, effort, or emotional investment into something, they are unlikely admit that it didn't live up to its expectations.

This is the only thing I can come up with to explain why Republican leaders are still sticking with Donald Trump, even after credible allegations that not only did the Russians tamper with the election results, Trump encouraged them to do so.  Giving a foreign power access to our government for malign purposes is, I thought, the definition of treason.  Imagine, for example, if there were evidence that Barack Obama had allowed a foreign government to manipulate election results.  These same people who are giving Trump a pass on this, or ignoring it completely, would be calling for reinstating crucifixion.

To be fair, some Republicans are aghast at this.  Lindsey Graham has been outspoken in his call for an independent investigation of the allegations.  John McCain went even further, saying that if the claims are true, it could "destroy democracy" in the United States.  Even Mitch McConnell, who has been one of Trump's biggest supporters, has joined in the call.  Much as I hate to admit agreeing with Joe Walsh on anything, he hit the nail on the head a few days ago with this tweet:

Which is it exactly.  I would think that anyone, regardless of party affiliation, would be appalled at the idea that the Russians may have influenced a national election, and would want it investigated.

But astonishingly, that isn't what's happening.  Other than a few outspoken conservatives who want the issue looked at -- if for no other reason, to clear Trump's name and get rid of any taint of illegitimacy -- most Republicans are shrugging their shoulders and saying, "Meh.  No biggie."

Now wait just a moment.  These were the same people who were chanting "Lock her up!" because of allegations that Hillary Clinton mishandled some emails.  Instead, what has been the overall response?

An increase in the positive ratings of Vladimir Putin.

I'm not making this up.  In a poll conducted by The Economist, favorable ratings for Putin tripled in the past two years, most of the increase being in the last month.  In fact, Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California made the following astonishing statement: "There’s a lot of negative things about [Putin] that are accurate but there are a lot of negative things about him that have been said that are inaccurate.  At least the other other side of the coin is being heard now...  Finally there’s some refutation of some of the inaccurate criticisms finally being heard."

So instead of people being outraged that Putin and his cronies may have interfered in the election, they're saying, "Well, maybe Putin's not so bad after all."

I can't think of anything but sunk cost as an explanation for this.  These people have already overlooked so much in the way of Donald Trump's unethical behavior, evasions, and outright lies, not to mention his blatant lack of qualifications for the job, that to admit that this finally drives them over the edge would require a huge shift of perspective.  I've never seen a candidate that elicits such an enormous emotional response from ordinary citizens; huge investments of time and energy have been put into seeing him in the White House.  For the pro-Trump cadre to say "Okay, we were wrong about him" is apparently a bridge too far.  Easier to say, "Trump's got to be right, so we were wrong about Putin."

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, agrees.  He said, "The Republican base, particularly the Trump part of the Republican base, is going to regard anyone and anything that helped their great leader to win as a positive force, or at least a less negative force."

I hope that wise heads prevail and that the allegations are at least investigated.  And although I don't like Trump, I hope they turn out to be false, because the idea that the Russians (or any other country) are able to manipulate our government so boldly is profoundly terrifying.  But if they are true -- if the evidence supports the Russian hacks -- we have to act.  I'm no constitutional law scholar, but there has to be some provision for invalidating an election's results if the outcome was affected by a foreign power.

Especially if a cold, calculating villain like Vladimir Putin is responsible for it.

Buyer's remorse

What I'm about to say has very little to do with conservative ideals.  I have no quarrel with people over their vision of how to make our country run well, whether or not they agree with me.  Honestly, I don't even like discussing politics.  I find that most political discussions come down either to topics that are so unbelievably complex that there probably isn't a solution (like how to keep the economy strong) or ones that are so self-evident that I truly don't understand how anyone can argue about them (such as whether LGBT people should have the same rights that the rest of us have).  So I'm not here to discuss the pros and cons of the conservative platform.

I am, however, speaking to conservative voters.  Because you have just elected to the most powerful office in the country a xenophobic, misogynistic, petulant toddler of a man whose response to being challenged is to throw a tantrum.  I don't at this point care whether he calls himself a conservative or calls himself a liberal, because he is an inveterate liar who will do anything and say anything to prop up his overinflated ego.  If you take a look at what he's said, it's honestly impossible to tell where he stands, because all he truly cares about is achieving and retaining power.  At the same time, his own view is that he's always right -- about everything.  "I think apologizing’s a great thing, but you have to be wrong," he said in an interview with Jimmy Fallon.  "I will absolutely apologize, sometime in the hopefully distant future, if I’m ever wrong.”

The man you have just handed the nuclear codes, the man who will appoint the next justices of the Supreme Court and thus shape policy for years, is the single least qualified candidate I've seen in my 56 years on this planet.  He knows nothing about running a country, and yet because he played into your fears and your anger you gave him your vote.  He appealed to the worst and most divisive tendencies in our country, convinced you that the best way to solve our differences is to bluster and sputter, to blame those who are different and ridicule those who disagree with you, and you found that so appealing that you were willing to put him in the White House.

This, to you, is making America great again.

By and large, you call yourselves "values voters," so you voted for a man who said about himself "nobody respects women more than I do," and yet also said, "You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass."  Who said, "You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them.  It’s like a magnet.  Just kiss.  I don’t even wait.  And when you’re a star, they let you do it.  You can do anything.  Grab them by the pussy."

Bafflingly, the same man who cannot conceive that he is wrong about anything is the man who won the lion's share of the evangelical vote, despite making statements that run so counter to the Christian ideal of sinfulness and redemption that he comes off sounding more like Pontius Pilate than he does like Jesus. "I'm not sure I have ever asked God's forgiveness," he told the Family Leadership Conference earlier this year.  "I don't bring God into that picture... When I go to church and when I drink my little wine and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of forgiveness.  I do that as often as I can because I feel cleansed."

He told you what you wanted to hear -- that America is going down the tubes, that our economy is tanking, that unemployment and crime are up -- and you believed him without bothering to check to see if any of that is true.  At the same time, he convinced you that one of the biggest actual problems we currently face -- climate change -- is a "hoax invented by the Chinese."  And once again, you bought the spin, the distortions, the outright lies.

The man who has his hands on the biggest arsenal the world has ever seen is the same man who asked in an interview three times, "Why can't I use nuclear weapons?"  Who said that Vladimir Putin was "not going to go into the Ukraine" after he already had.  Who claims he's going to stop ISIS, push back the Chinese, restore jobs to the U.S.,  and prevent terrorist attacks despite having no actual plans for how he's going to accomplish any of that.  When Fox News's Greta van Susteren pressed him for details on how he planned to combat ISIS, for example, he said he wasn't going to tell her, but it would be a "method of defeating them quickly and effectively and having total victory."  And that, apparently, was enough for you.  What, doesn't it matter to you whether he actually understands foreign policy, all that matters is that he tells you "America is #1" and "We're gonna win?"  This is a government, not a fucking high school football game.

A dear friend of mine was in tears last night watching the results, not because the candidate she'd voted for lost, but because "this is going to result in innocent people dying.  This isn't right."  Having an explosive-tempered, erratic compulsive liar who shows every sign of being an egomaniacal sociopath in the most powerful position on Earth is profoundly terrifying.  And I would be saying that whether he was a Democrat or a Republican, whether he was liberal or conservative.  Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to lead.  He has gotten where he is by playing to our worst character traits, by enflaming our prejudices, fears, and bigotry.  It's no great surprise that he was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.  Most of his talking points come straight from their playbook.

I hold out hope that you will realize at some point what you have done, that when he actually starts to act, you'll have the same kind of buyer's remorse that the Brexit voters had when they saw the result of their vote and thought, "Holy shit, what have we done?"  The problem is that like with Brexit, by the time this happens, it will be too late.  Now all we can do is hold our breaths for the next four years and hope that whatever damage he does is reversible, that our comeuppance won't cost too many dollars, too many job, too many lives.  At the moment, however, I can't even begin to think about that.  I'm too busy being heartsick and afraid for my own country.

Non-prophet

It's a phenomenon I've comment upon before; the mystifying fact that self-styled prophets, who claim to have a direct pipeline to god, continue to have a following even when they're repeatedly wrong.

I mean, it'd make sense if once somebody proclaims "God told me such-and-so," and the opposite of "such-and-so" ends up happening, that people would say, "Oh.  I guess he was lying about speaking with the divine word."  But no.  Charismatic preachers like Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson, and Jimmy Swaggart have repeatedly made claims that are supposed to come directly from the heavenly throne -- most of which have to do with us unbelievers being smote (smitten?  smot? smoot?  I've never been entirely sure how to conjugate that verb) -- and none of them ever come true.  Their followers are, as far as I've seen, not discouraged by this.

The latest contender for the False Prophets Lifetime Achievement Award is Lance Wallnau, author, speaker, and "spiritual guide," who started out his losing streak by claiming that god told him that the Cleveland Indians were going to win the World Series because Cleveland was the host for the Republican National Convention while Chicago is President Obama's home town, and (of course) god approves of Republicans while the Democrats are naughty in his sight.

Of course, the problem is that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.  Wallnau was undaunted, however, and posted a new spin on the situation, saying that he "was initially concerned that a Chicago vs. Cleveland contest may be symbolic of the Republican convention (Cleveland) vs Democratic Obama machine (Chicago)... but flip this situation around and see that the underdog won on a progressive field. (The Cleveland field is owned by Progressive Insurance.)"

Which leaves only one question, which is: what?

I mean, I'm not really expecting Wallnau to make sense, but as an explanation for why he fucked up, it's pretty bizarre.  And because there's no ridiculous statement that you can't make more ridiculous if you just keep talking, Wallnau went ahead and made things worse by making a series of further claims:

• The Cubs winning the World Series is actually a positive message from god, because the last time the Cubs won was 1908, which was the same year as the Azusa Street Revival that founded the Pentecostal Movement.  (Which is made somewhat less impressive by the fact that Azusa Street happened in 1906, not 1908.)
• The Cubs' victory represents the breaking of the "Curse of the Bambino," which was the work of Satan himself.  (Whether it's Satanic in origin or not, the Curse of the Bambino has to do with the Red Sox, not the Cubs.)
• If Trump wins, he'll be 70 years old when he's inaugurated, which is significant because "70 is exactly the number of years since Israel became a nation."  Which is problematic from the standpoint that 2017 minus 1948 is 69, not 70.

But other than that, his prophecies are absolutely spot-on.

Despite all of this, Wallnau is enthusiastic.  His sources say that the "curse over America is breaking and a fresh wind is blowing," and that that the church’s “long-standing losing streak is coming to an end."  He says that 2016 is "going to be the year of God reversing the curse … God pouring out his spirit."

But based on his previous predictions, I wouldn't hold my breath about any of that.

So anyhow.  I guess we'll find out whether his prediction of Trump winning the presidency is correct within a few hours, assuming that there isn't some repeat of the 2000 election nightmare wherein we had to keep our sanity somehow while enduring interminable counts, recounts, suits, and countersuits.  It's bad enough that the elections here in this country start a full two years early; the idea that it could go on for months after the polls close today makes me want to move to Costa Rica.  In either case, though, I'll make a prediction of my own; whether or not Trump wins, Wallnau will continue claiming that he has direct access to the knowledge of god -- and his followers will continue to believe him.

Rigged thinking

Skepticism often requires maneuvering your way through equal and opposite pitfalls.  As I frequently say to my classes, gullibility and cynicism are both signs of mental laziness -- it is as much of a cognitive error to disbelieve everything you hear as it is to believe everything.

The same is true of reliance on authority.  It certainly is inadvisable to believe without question anything an authority says (or believe it simply because (s)he is an authority); but dismissing everything is also pretty ridiculous.  Stephen Hawking, for example, is a world-renowned authority on physics.  If I refused to believe what he has to say on (for example) black holes I would be foolish -- and very likely wrong.

So categorical thinking tends to get us into trouble.  It's an excuse to avoid the hard work of research and analysis.  It is also, unfortunately, extremely common.

Which brings us to "everything the government tells you is a lie."

Distrust of the government is in vogue these days.  "The government says..." is a fine way to start a sentence that you're expecting everyone to scoff at, especially if the piece of the government in question belongs to a different political party than you do.  That spokespeople for the government have lied on occasion -- that they have, sometimes, engaged in disinformation campaigns -- is hardly at issue.  But to decide that everything a government agency does or says is deliberately dishonest is sloppy thinking, not to mention simply untrue.

It also has another nasty side effect, though, which is to convince people that they are powerless.  If the Big Evil Government is going to do whatever they damn well please regardless of what voters want, it leads people to believe that they're being bamboozled every time they vote.  And powerless, angry, frustrated people tend to do stupid, violent things.

Which is why the whole "the election is rigged" bullshit that Donald Trump is trumpeting every chance he gets is so dangerous.  For fuck's sake, the election hasn't even happened yet; one very much gets the impression that this reaction is much like a toddler's temper tantrum when he doesn't get the piece of candy he wants.  Trump can't conceive of the fact that he could compete for something he wants and lose fair and square; so if he loses (and it very much looks like he's going to), the election must be rife with fraud.

Scariest of all was his suggestion in last night's presidential debate that he might not concede the election if Clinton wins.  As CNN senior political analyst David Gergen put it:

More importantly, many in the press, as well as others (I am among them) were horrified that Trump refused to say he would accept the verdict of voters on November 8.  No other candidate has ever taken the outrageous position that "if I win, that's legitimate but if I lose, the system must be rigged."  It is bad enough that Trump puts himself before party; now he is putting self before country.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

In fact, actual voter fraud in the United States is so rare as to be insignificant with respect to the outcome of elections.  A comprehensive study by Justin Levitt, a constitutional law scholar and professor of law at Loyola University, found 31 cases of credible voter fraud out of one billion ballots cast in the past sixteen years.  A separate study by Lorraine Minnite, professor of political science at Rutgers, came to the same conclusion.  Further, she found that irregularities in elections were almost always due to innocent human error rather than a deliberate attempt to throw the election.  Here are four examples Minnite cites:

• In the contested 2004 Washington state gubernatorial election, a Superior Court judge ruled invalid just 25 ballots, constituting 0.0009 percent of the 2,812,675 cast. Many were absentee ballots mailed as double votes or in the names of deceased people, but the judge did not find all were fraudulently cast. When King County prosecutors charged seven defendants, the lawyer for one 83-year old woman said his client “simply did not know what to do with the absentee ballot after her husband of 63 years, Earl, passed away” just before the election, so she signed his name and mailed the ballot. 
• A leaked report from the Milwaukee Police Department found that data entry errors, typographical errors, procedural missteps, misapplication of the rules, and the like accounted for almost all reported problems during the 2004 presidential election. 
• When the South Carolina State Election Commission investigated a list of 207 allegedly fraudulent votes in the 2010 election, it found simple human errors in 95 percent of the cases the state’s highest law enforcement official had reported as fraud. 
• A study by the Northeast Ohio Media Group of 625 reported voting irregularities in Ohio during the 2012 election found that nearly all cases forwarded to county prosecutors were caused by voter confusion or errors by poll workers.

It's easy to say "the system is designed to screw voters!" or "the election is rigged!"  It's not so easy to answer the questions, "What evidence do you have that this happens?" and "How would you actually go about rigging a national election if you wanted to?"  (If you want an excellent summary of the argument that the risk of hackers or other miscreants affecting the outcome of an election in the United States is extremely small, check out the CNN article on the subject that just came out yesterday.)

So what we have here is one more example of baseless partisan rhetoric, which has as the unsettling side effect making people on the losing side feel like they've been cheated.  Which, I think, is why we're seeing a serious uptick in threats of violence by people who don't like the way the election seems to be going -- from the woman at a Trump rally who cited "rampant voter fraud" and said, "For me personally, if Hillary Clinton gets in, I myself am ready for a revolution" to Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke who tweeted, "our institutions of gov, WH, Congress, DOJ, and big media are corrupt & all we do is bitch. Pitchforks and torches time."

To reiterate what I said at the beginning; it's not that I condone, agree with, or like everything government has done.  Nor do I think that government officials (or whole agencies) are above doing some pretty screwed up stuff.  But to say "government sucks" and forthwith stop thinking -- or, worse still, threaten violence because of that simplistic view of the world -- is not just wrong, it's dangerous.

Ugliness filters

What is it about elections that makes us treat each other so horribly?

This election has been a bad one -- divisive and petty, appealing to our basest impulses -- but really, it's hardly unique.  And we let the nastiness seep into everything, turning us against others simply because we disagree with them.

"Republitards."  "Damn-o-craps."  "Republican'ts."  "Libtards."  "Demoncrats."  Just a few of the ugly names I've seen bandied about in the last few days.  Calls for candidates to be "taken out" (and no one is in any doubt as to what that euphemism means).  Threats of violence -- more than likely against innocent civilians -- if their team doesn't win.

Have we really come to the place where we are so tribal, so fearful of the "other," that we will without hesitation demonize and threaten violence against close to half of our fellow Americans?  It reminds me of the wonderful quote from Kathryn Schulz: "This is a catastrophe.  This unwavering attachment to our sense of being right about everything keeps us from preventing mistakes when we absolutely have to, and causes us to treat each other terribly."

This all comes up because of a story that should be heartening -- a Democrat-led crowdfunding campaign that raised over $13,000 in 24 hours to help rebuild a GOP office in North Carolina that was firebombed.  Proof, I felt, of a contention I've long held; that the majority of humans are kind, compassionate, and just want what all of us want -- shelter, food, clean water, friends, family, security.  We may differ in our ideas about how to achieve those goals, but fundamentally, we're far more alike than different.

So this story was posted on Facebook, and a guy I don't even know -- a friend of a friend -- posted a snarky comment about how no way would Democrats do something this selfless, that it was clearly a hoax or a set-up.  And I did something I almost never do: started an argument on the internet with a stranger.

I said:  "You are really scared and angry enough that you can't conceive that people who disagree with you might be capable of something unselfish and compassionate?  If so, I truly feel sorry for you."  He responded with a dismissive, "I wasn't talking about the firebombing," (neither was I), and "no anger intended or inferred."

Which is kind of disingenuous, isn't it?

Note that I'm not talking here about what you think of the candidates and their positions.  You might be vehemently against the stance of one of them (or both!), and that's just fine.  What I'm talking about is how you speak about the people around you, because it's all too easy to fall into the trap of "I disagree with you, therefore you are unworthy of respect."  Unfortunately, during this election, that kind of behavior has become almost normal.  So I'm going to issue a statement and a plea, and I'd ask that you consider them carefully -- not as a liberal or a conservative, but simply as a human being.

Your political beliefs do not define who you are as a person.  There are kind, compassionate Democrats and kind, compassionate Republicans; there are some people of either stripe who are selfish, nasty, and unpleasant.  Neither party wants to "destroy America" or "take away people's rights" or "round up anyone who disagrees," regardless of what you'll hear from the extremely partisan talking-heads whose entire raison d'être is getting people stirred up so they'll tune in.  Most people in both parties are just ordinary folks who want what ordinary folks want.

So here's the plea: stop posting and forwarding ugly stereotypes that make the other team look like idiots or crazies at best and demons at worst.  All you have to do is look around you and you'll see that this isn't true.  There are both Democrats and Republicans (and Libertarians and Socialists and people who don't give a damn about politics at all) in your schools, churches, businesses, and clubs, and most of us get along pretty well.  None of us have horns, and damn few of us want to get rid of everyone who disagrees with us.  Maybe you can't change the beliefs of the extreme fringe who live to capitalize on such assumptions, but you can stop those ideas from spreading.  You can dedicate yourself not to being a Pollyanna who sees only the best in everyone, but a realist who understands that most of us, most of the time, are doing the best we can.

The election will be over in three weeks, but we'll be dealing for months with the results of the partisan rhetoric we've been exposed to, unless all of us -- right here, right now -- vow not to let such ugly invective rule our lives.  You don't have to agree with the people you meet, but you can speak about them with respect.  Most importantly, you can choose not to look at the world through lenses that filter out everything but the worst side of everyone.

Speak of the devil

Just because I keep hoisting the banner of rationalism here at Skeptophilia doesn't mean I don't get pretty freakin' discouraged at times.

I suppose it's an occupational hazard.  My spending hours daily seeking out the most bizarre examples of irrational behavior I can find, so I have something to write about, means that inevitably I'm going to come to the conclusion that humanity is pretty much screwed.  It's like people who become addicted to shows like CSI and Cops and Law and Order.  At some point, you're pretty certain to decide that the world is full of criminals who are trying to kill you and get away with it.

So it's an effort at times to remain optimistic.  Especially given stories like the one over at Fusion a couple of days ago describing a poll taken in North Carolina wherein 41% of Donald Trump supporters said that Hillary Clinton is literally the devil.

As I've said before, I'm not here to discuss whether or not you agree with Clinton's politics.  But the idea that 41% of Trump supporters think that his opponent is the incarnation of Satan on Earth is troubling, to say the least.

That, however, is not the strangest thing about the poll.  Apparently, of the currently undecided voters, 15% thought Clinton was the devil.  So I'm thinking: You believe one of the candidates is literally the Prince of Hell (or Princess, in this case), and you're undecided?  What are you planning to do, stand there in the voting booth and say, "Let's see: candidate who is Satan, candidate who is not Satan... how to choose, how to choose?"

The weirdest thing, though, is that on the poll there were three choices: (1) Clinton is the devil; (2) Clinton is not the devil; and (3) Not sure.  And of the people who say they're voting for Hillary Clinton, 6% of them said they were not sure if she was the devil or not.

Now, I realize that this may be because 6% of the respondents thought the question was funny enough that they decided to fuck around with the results.  Or, perhaps, that this represents the 6% of respondents who are actual practicing Satanists, who think that Clinton might be the devil and are happy about it.  But if you look at the results, you will find that 33% of undecided voters are also undecided about whether Clinton is Satan.

So there are people in North Carolina (a lot of them, apparently) who when asked, "Who are you voting for?" said, "I dunno," and when asked, "Is Hillary Clinton the devil?" said, "Um... I dunno about that either."

Some days I feel like I've side-slipped into a bizarro world where this kind of stuff is normal.  Because this isn't the only insane thing that's happened lately.  When a map came out showing that if only men voted, Donald Trump would win, his followers immediately started calling for repealing the 19th Amendment, with one woman saying she would "give up [her] right to vote to make this happen."  Then we had a completely surreal video of Alex Jones making the rounds, wherein he bursts into tears on air and says that not only is Clinton a demon, so is Obama, adding that if you vote for Clinton you're "electing President Linda Blair."

I dunno, President Linda Blair could probably get stuff done, don't you think?  If Mitch McConnell stonewalled President Linda Blair, she could just puke up some pea soup on him.  "Oh, you won't give my Supreme Court nominee a fair hearing?  Well, take this!"  *BARRRRRFFFFF*

At least it would make C-Span more interesting.

So I guess we rationalists have a way to go, and it's an uphill battle.  I'm not ready to give up any time soon, so if you are a loyal reader, no worries: I still have a few posts left in me.  But it'd be nice if we could make more headway in convincing people not to engage in insane magical thinking.

Although it would make it harder for me to find material.  So I suppose I should be glad, in a backhanded way, that these people are keeping me in business.

Winner by a nose

A lot of Trump supporters are frustrated that Their Boy didn't do so well in the debate Monday night.  I mean, it would take a serious pro-Donaldite to feel like his performance was anything but a blustering, sometimes baffling word salad.  It's unsurprising considering his penchant for extemporizing -- a strategy that may play well when you're at a rally composed of your loyal followers, but doesn't exactly work on the national stage while being watched by (allegedly) more people than tuned in to the last Superbowl.

But the problem is, when someone you're counting on doesn't come through, you start casting around for an explanation.  Because obviously it couldn't be your candidate's fault, right?

Of course right.

So first, we had Donald himself blaming his poor showing on a faulty microphone.  How that could have an effect I don't know, given that we could hear him just fine.  Maybe he thought that the mic was magically turning his eloquent words into incoherent babbling like his comments on cybersecurity:

I have a son.  He's 10 years old.  He has computers.  He is so good with these computers, it's unbelievable.  The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough.  And maybe it's hardly doable.  But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing.  But that's true throughout our whole governmental society.  We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester, and certainly cyber is one of them.

Yeah!  Okay!  What?

But Trump wasn't the only one to claim that there was fishy stuff going on.  There's a conspiracy theory making the rounds that the moderator, Lester Holt, was deliberately throwing the debate for Hillary Clinton.  And not only that; Clinton herself was signaling him by giving him threatening coded hand gestures by scratching her nose.

I'm not making this up.  According to the video, Clinton scratched her nose six times.  She apparently did this to let Holt know if he was asking questions to Trump that were too easy or ones to her that were too hard, to coerce him into sidestepping awkward topics, and allowing Clinton to (and I quote) "interrupt and score with a zinger."

Never mind that according to a PBS staff writer, Trump interrupted Clinton 51 times in two hours.  Never mind that Trump himself was sniffing constantly during the entire debate, and no one's claiming that he was secretly signaling someone, possibly his coke dealer.

I mean, seriously, folks.  If you don't like Hillary Clinton's politics, that's absolutely fine by me.  But the idea that she was communicating with Holt in code so he could skew the debate in her favor is...

... kind of stupid.

For one thing, Lester Holt is a registered Republican.  Why on earth a registered Republican (who has been a respected figure in journalism since the early 1980s) would throw a debate in favor of a  Democrat is beyond me.  I have a feeling it's beyond the people making the claim, too.  After all, these sorts of things aren't about rationalism and logic, they're about the world conforming to their own personal view of things.

Damn the evidence, full speed ahead.

But even so, I've seen this claim surface on social media more than once in the past couple of days, and mostly the comments have been on the order of "I knew it would be rigged" and a knowing nod.  And this strikes me as a dangerous trend.  It's the approach of the toddler, you know?  If you don't get your way, if your every wish isn't immediately met, it's the whole world's fault.  It couldn't be that you're interpreting things wrong, or (heaven forfend) you might not understand what's going on.

Nope.  Can't be that.  Has to be a conspiracy.

All the more reason for me to stay right the hell out of politics.  I'm always reminded of the quote by Dave Barry: "When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command.  Very often, that person is crazy."

The problem is, in order to get elected, the crazy person also has to have followers.  And they're often even crazier.

Cough analysis

So for today's Tempest in a Teapot, we have: Hillary Clinton's health.

A couple of days ago, Clinton collapsed at a 9/11 ceremony, and her doctor ascribed it to a combination of dehydration and pneumonia.  The internet has been buzzing lately regarding the "coughing fits" she's had at speeches, ascribing it to everything from pleurisy to lung cancer.  Because, of course, (1) it couldn't be that keeping a schedule that would kill most of us outright might have some health impacts, and (2) it's clear that she's the only prominent politician who has ever fallen ill.  The incident where President George H. W. Bush puked on Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa was just, um, a fluke.

Or something.

So naturally, over at the r/conspiracy subreddit 19 of the 25 top stories are about Hillary Clinton's health.  Several claimed that she actually died of a stroke (or, in other versions, was hospitalized), and that subsequent appearances were actually a "body double."  More than one site has said that the Democratic National Convention is "scrambling to replace her" and is "in total panic mode."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But no one is as far off the deep end as the YouTube user who goes by the handle "Styxhexenhammer666," which would be the odds-on favorite for winning first place in a "Most Self-Consciously Metal Pseudonym" contest.  "Styxhexenhammer" goes on at length about Clinton's health issues in a video entitled "The Cleveland Cough: Hillary Clinton has begun to Degrade in Health due to Our Magick" and which you all must watch.  Because it's just that wonderful.

What we find out from "Styxhexenhammer" is that he and "tens of thousands of others" have been putting spells of magick on Hillary Clinton.  (The "k" means that it's real, unlike the fake "magic" that people like David Copperfield do.)  And we find out that what "Styxhexenhammer" does is use music for his spells -- some of them are originals, but he can turn covers into magickal spells, too.  Like when he sings The Electric Light Orchestra's song "Evil Woman," it turns into a Spiritual Weapon of Great Force, not just a rehash of a cheesy 70s song that wasn't even that good when it was first released.

But apparently from all of the songs and other magick being launched Clinton's way, her health is in a serious tailspin.  I guess it's understandable, really.  After all, if someone sings "Copacabana" in my vicinity, I become physically ill.  It's hard to see what connection that has to the lyrics, however, unless you count the "punches flew and chairs smashed in two" part, just thinking about which could explain why I have a headache right now.

What strikes me about Styxhexenhammer's video, however, is how well-spoken and articulate he sounds, juxtaposed against what he's actually saying, which is seriously loony.  He goes into how you can shield yourself from such psychic attack, but very few know how to do so; and that a political campaign, being made of dozens or hundreds of power-hungry people, is even more vulnerable than "your typical sheep-like individual."

"It gives me great pleasure," he tells us, "that there are very many people who will never cast their vote for Hillary Clinton because of the actions of people like me."

Is it just me, or does this represent a nice blend of confirmation bias and megalomania?  "I've been singing hostile songs in Hillary Clinton's general direction, and now she's got a bad cough.  Yes -- that was me doing all of that."

Anyhow, the point of all of this is that people get sick.  Even presidential candidates get sick, sometimes.  This does not mean that they are dying (nor even that their aides think that they're dying), that they're so ill that they need a body double, nor most certainly that the whole thing is due to evil spells cast by someone who fancies himself a magickian (what would be the "practitioner of" form of this word?  If you pronounce "magickian" with a hard "k," which it certainly looks like you should, it sounds kind of silly).

So that's our dive in the deep end for today.  I'm hoping that no one takes this as incentive to sing at me.  Because it could be worse than "Copacabana."  It could be "The Piña Colada Song."  Or "Seasons in the Sun."  Or, heaven forfend, "Muskrat Love."

I don't even want to think about what the magickal outcome of those would be.

Close encounter of the weird kind

If there's one thing I've said over and over about this presidential election, it's, "This really can't get any weirder, can it?"  (Of course, I've also said "What the fuck?" more than once, but I suspect I'm not alone in that.)  Yesterday was the first day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Democratic National Convention is next week in Philadelphia.  I'm fully expecting to use both of those phrases several times over the next couple of weeks

Starting with the fact that Karl Rove was stopped while trying to board his plane to the RNC by none other than Alex Jones.  Jones is well known to those of us who like to keep our pulse on the lunatic fringe.  He runs the "news" outlet InfoWars, which mostly seems devoted to proving that President Obama is an America-hating Muslim, when it's not claiming that every damn thing that happens in the world is a "false flag."  ("False flags," you probably know, are government-staged riots and so on designed to distract us from the real news.  Given the recent spate of terrorist attacks and police shootings, we're distracted enough, okay?  You can lay the hell off.)

Rove, on the other hand, was one of President George W. Bush's chief strategists, and distinguished himself mostly on the basis of (1) looking like a huge mutant baby with an enormous forehead, and (2) somehow, inexplicably, meriting the nickname of "Turd Blossom" from the Commander in Chief himself.  Other than that, he mostly involved himself with smearing politicians he didn't like (such as his trash-talking the military service record of Georgia Senator Max Cleland, who is a triple amputee due to injuries in the line of duty).

So any meeting between these two would have to be epic.  Jones launched into some hard questions right away, such as asking if Rove was going to support Trump or if he was "siphoning money off of him to make sure Hillary wins."  Rove declined to answer, only saying that as he was now working for Fox News, he was not interested in appearing on the Alex Jones Show.

Need I mention that the whole time, one of Jones's operatives was filming the encounter?

So Rove started to get pissed off, with Jones crowing that this just proves his point.  Whatever "his point," actually was, something I've had a hard time identifying myself whenever my blood pressure is too low and I listen to his latest rant on InfoWars.  By this time Rove realized that arguing with Alex Jones is about as fruitful an occupation as discussing philosophy with a chicken, so he tried to get away to safety.  Jones, unsurprisingly, followed him, considering any kind of retreat a victory for his side.

Until, that is, it became apparent that Rove wasn't just trying to flee, he was going to a Customer Service desk to ask them to summon security.  Jones at that point decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and did what the Knights of the Round Table did when confronted with the Killer Rabbit of Caer Bannog.

I strongly encourage you to watch the entire thing, because it's hilarious in a scary sort of way.  You can watch the whole encounter on the link I posted above.

Anyhow, the next couple of weeks should be pretty interesting, if this incident is any indication.  Myself, I'm content to watch from a distance, and if I lived in Cleveland, I'd probably do whatever I could to make sure I was gone for the next week.  (Considering it's Cleveland, I'd probably do whatever I could to make sure I was gone permanently, but that's beside the point.)

So keep your eye on the news, especially given that at the RNC large numbers of the attendees are expected to be armed.  Because there's no way that that could end badly, right?

Of course right.

Drought of the imagination

The observation that politicians tend to lie is so obvious as to hardly need comment.  As far back as 2,400 years ago, Plato observed, "Those who are too smart and honest to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are stupid and dishonest."

It's disheartening how little has changed in two millennia.  We are still electing liars and crooks, which means that we ourselves are falling for the lies.  After all, we keep voting for them despite the fact that just about everyone knows full well that most politicians will say and do damn near anything to get elected.

Which brings me once again to Donald Trump.

I had told myself I wouldn't do another post on Trump, that I'd said what I had to say.  Honestly, I hate talking politics anyhow.  I'm pretty non-partisan in the sense that I don't vote any party line, and that I can support a wide range of candidates as long as they approach holding office from the position of respecting facts, being open-minded, and telling the truth.

Unfortunately, this narrows the field pretty severely right from the get-go.

But even from my admittedly cynical standpoint, Donald Trump raises dishonest bullshit to unprecedented heights.  He's not the stupidest person in politics; that dubious honor would go either to Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas (who asked if the Mars Pathfinder mission had seen the flag that Neil Armstrong had planted yet) or Republican Louie Gohmert, also of Texas (who said that cutting food stamps was a benefit to poor people because it would keep them from becoming obese).

Trump, however, may well be the biggest liar of the bunch.  And I don't think he lies because he's shooting from the hip; I think he lies with complete forethought and understanding of what he's saying and why.  He is a brilliant strategist -- and, I believe, entirely amoral.

Let's consider his statements last week to a rally in Fresno, California.  It's hard to give a political speech in California in the last couple of years without at least addressing the catastrophic drought they've been facing.  It's first and foremost on many people's minds, given the threat to drinking water and agriculture as the rivers run dry and the aquifers disappear.  And what did Trump say?  I'll give you the direct quote, because you won't believe me otherwise:

We’re going to solve your water problem. You have a water problem that is so insane. It is so ridiculous where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea.  They [the farmers] don’t understand — nobody understands it.  There is no drought. 

If I win, believe me, we’re going to start opening up the water so that you can have your farmers survive.

I beg your pardon?  There is no drought?  All Trump had to do, all along, is wave his hand and say, "The drought does not exist," and it would just acquiesce and move on to trouble another nation, possibly Mexico, assuming it can cross the wall he's planning to build?

And all we have to do, apparently, is to elect Trump, and he will "open up the water."  Environment be damned.  The water will do what Donald commands.  Otherwise, it will be fired.

To a lot of Trump's naysayers, these are just gaffes, slips of the tongue, speaking without thinking things through first.  I think it's more insidious than that.  Trump knows full well what he's doing, what sort of message plays well with the crowds he's attracting.  He's well-loved among people who distrust science, disbelieve that the climate is changing because of human activities, and think that our leader should be able to bully nature into doing whatever he wants. 

As such, he's wildly popular among the pro-fossil fuel contingent, and his talking points reflect that.  A couple of days ago, he promised that if he is elected, he would "cancel the Paris Climate Plan" that has made some motion toward addressing runaway fossil fuel use and anthropogenic carbon dioxide.   The move was no accident; it was calculated to win support (financial and otherwise) from the fossil fuel industry.  Don't believe me?  Consider his statement to a meeting of oil industry representatives in Bismarck, North Dakota three days ago:

Regulations that shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants and block the construction of new ones — how stupid is that?... We’re going to deal with real environmental challenges, not the phony ones we’ve been hearing about.

Which reminds me of another quote, this one by George Bernard Shaw: "A government with the policy of robbing Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul."

So it's no surprise that the petroleum industry loves the guy.  But what gets me most is the fact that Trump can lie outright to the crowds who attend his rallies, and they continue to cheer.  At least the other candidates are subtle about it; Trump, evidently, has the approach of "go big or go home:"

And you know I should say this, I’ve received many, many environmental rewards. You know, really.  Rewards and awards. I  have done really well environmentally and I’m all for it.  You know we want jobs.  We have to bring jobs back.  And if we can bring this part of the world water, that we have, that we have, but it’s true, I’ve gotten so many of the awards.

Do you know what "environmental rewards and awards" he's received?  I did some digging and I found...

... one.  In 2007, a golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, owned by Trump, received an award for "environmental stewardship through golf course maintenance, construction, education and research."  And that's it.  One golf course, apparently, constitutes "many, many environmental rewards... so many of the awards."

So Trump keeps bullshitting, and the people keep cheering.  More ironic still, many of the same people loudly complain about the dishonesty of the government -- while this man stands in front of them, uttering outright lies, and none of them bat an eye.

The whole thing is profoundly discouraging, not least because I'm not particularly enamored of the other option I'm likely to be offered in November.  I hate being put in a position of voting not to support a good candidate, but in an attempt to prevent a horrible candidate from winning.  That, however, appears to be what I'm going to have to do.  Unless I can simply wave my hand, unleash my Jedi mind tricks, and say, "These are not the candidates you're looking for," and have the whole lot of them go away.

The politics of rage

So Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for president.

I got in an argument with a couple of friends last year when Trump first began to ramp up his campaign.  "Never going to happen," I was told.  Trump will fizzle out.  People will realize what a clown he is, and he'll go down in flames.  Or, maybe, Trump isn't really serious, he's playing a great big practical joke on America and at some point will shout "Ha ha, fooled ya!" and drop out.

My response then was that I wished I could believe that.  Trump, I said, has been serious from the beginning.  He's a power-hungry megalomaniac who looks at the presidency as another thing his money and influence can buy, another notch on his gun, another trophy on his wall.  Once he sets his sights on something, he doesn't give up until either he's attained it or been denied.  No way will he concede or (worse) drop out.

Never have I been so sorry to be right.

My fear all along has been that Trump would be able to go the distance because he is tapping in on something deeply interwoven into the psyche of America -- the idea that we are threatened, that anyone different from us is dangerous, that if we're poor all it means is that we are (in Ronald Wright's trenchant words) "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."  And, furthermore, that there's a simple solution to all of it.  Build a wall.  Deport all Muslims.  Cut taxes.  Get Obama out of the White House.  Nuke ISIS.  Stop trading with China.  Keep jobs on US soil.

So Trump has appealed to a group of people who share a dangerous combination of traits: a lack of understanding of the complexity of the world, and a deep-seated, visceral anger that the face of the United States is changing.

The result is that we have a nominee who has not only said, but been applauded for saying, the following:

• I'm the worst thing that ever happened to ISIS.
• Donald J. Trump is calling for a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.
• No more 'Merry Christmas' at Starbucks.  No more.  Maybe we should boycott Starbucks.
• [About Carly Fiorina]  Look at that face.  Would anyone vote for that?  Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?  (When called on it, he said, "I think she's got a beautiful face.  And I think she's a beautiful woman."  And he still surged in the polls.)
• I think apologizing’s a great thing, but you have to be wrong. I will absolutely apologize, sometime in the hopefully distant future, if I’m ever wrong.
• [About GOP debate commentator Megyn Kelly]  You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes.  Blood coming out of her… wherever.
• [About John McCain]  He’s not a war hero.  He’s a war hero because he was captured.  I like people who weren’t captured.
• NBC News just called it ‘The Great Freeze’ — coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX?
• [About same-sex marriage]  It’s like in golf. A lot of people — I don’t want this to sound trivial — but a lot of people are switching to these really long putters, very unattractive.  It’s weird.  You see these great players with these really long putters, because they can’t sink three-footers anymore.  And, I hate it.  I am a traditionalist.  I have so many fabulous friends who happen to be gay, but I am a traditionalist.
• I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.
• You know, it really doesn’t matter what they write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.
• We’re losing a lot of people because of the Internet. We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people who really understand what’s happening and maybe, in some ways, closing that Internet up in some ways.

Each time, people like me have had a thought of, "Okay, that's it.  That's got to wake people up, get them to see who they're supporting for what he actually is -- a narcissistic, arrogant blowhard whose ideal of government is closer to a fascist dictatorship than it is to a democracy."  Instead, each time he's seen a spike in the polls, and comments like "He speaks his mind" and "He's saying what people are thinking."

I'm going to propose something radical -- that our president should be appealing to our highest ideals, not making utterances that sound like things my uncle said after his fourth can of Bud Lite.  (S)he should have a far better understanding of world policy than your average person does.  (S)he should help us to see reality, not reinforce the ugliest and most divisive of our preconceived notions.

But that hasn't happened here.  I keep being told by my optimistic friends that Trump may have won the nomination, but there's no way he can win the presidency.  That a match-up with either Clinton or Sanders, whichever wins the Democratic nomination, will result in a for-sure Democratic win.

I wish I believed that.  We've been hearing the same thing over and over during the last year, from Republicans and Democrats alike -- that the Trump candidacy was doomed.  Each time, the prognosticators have been blown back with surprise when he's surmounted challenge after challenge, seen nothing but growth in his support.

And now, a substantial fraction of Americans on both sides of the political aisle are looking at the election and thinking, "How in the hell did we get here?"  And lest you think that I'm exaggerating about the panic Trump is inducing in both parties, witness the op-ed piece written by David Ross Meyers, conservative writer and former staffer for George W. Bush, published yesterday over at Fox News Online.  In his scathing take-down of Trump's candidacy, he writes:

To begin with, Mr. Trump has autocratic tendencies, and openly admires tyrants such as Vladimir Putin.  In fact, his narcissism and cult of personality leadership style seem better suited to countries like North Korea and Uzbekistan than America.  Trump has repeatedly attacked core conservative principles such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and American leadership on the world stage.  He has incited the use of violence against his detractors, called on America to commit war crimes, and suggested the possibility of civil unrest if he is denied the GOP nomination. 

Mr. Trump proclaims that he’s going to make America great again, but can’t provide any realistic plans for doing so; instead, he frequently resorts to scapegoating outsiders, foreigners, and minorities.  The few policies that Trump has articulated would make America less safe, trample upon our most fundamental rights, and appeal to the basest instincts of the American people.

The simple explanation for how Trump has gotten this far is that political commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have for decades encouraged the politics of rage, fanned the fires of divisiveness and anger.  We should not be surprised that the result is a candidate who has ridden to the nomination on the heat of those flames.

But like many simple answers, it's probably not entirely correct.  The divisiveness and anger were already there -- else the hateful commentary from Limbaugh, Coulter, et al. would never have resonated as it did.  And in a lot of ways, people are right to be angry; years of skewed governmental policies have favored corporate profit over the needs and struggles of ordinary citizens, have fostered job loss and outsourcing and the defunding of public education and environmental degradation, irrespective of the cost to the citizenry.

So I do get where this sentiment, at least in part, comes from.  But what I know is that Trump is not the answer.  I mostly stay out of politics, so for someone like me to feel this strongly about a political race is unusual.  We can't let Trump win.  A man like him in an ordinary job is at worst a boor, a lout, a loudmouth, a grandstanding demagogue.

Running a country, he could be a Mussolini, a Hitler, a Kim Jong-Un, an Idi Amin.  Impossible?  No way would he wield that kind of power, even if he won?

This man has beaten all of the odds, confounded every single naysayer from the beginning.  Don't tell me what he can and can't do.

Focus on making sure he's defeated.

Jones vs. Beck vs. reality

It's always amusing when two conspiracy theorists go for each other rather than spending their time calling the rest of us sheeple.

This time it is Glenn Beck and the fortunately inimitable Alex Jones, who have come to verbal blows -- no physical ones yet, at least that I am aware of -- over the presidential race.

First, we had Beck throwing down the gauntlet when he reacted angrily to political commentator Matt Drudge photoshopping Marco Rubio to look like a midget.  "I don't know what the hell has happened to Matt Drudge," Beck said.  "Ever since he started hanging out with Alex Jones, he's gone to this weird conspiratorial place where you can't even trust the news coming from him any more."

Notwithstanding that Beck himself is a complete fruit loop who appeared in a Huffington Post article three years ago entitled "The Top 9 Glenn Beck Conspiracy Theories," which featured such gems as:

• Obama advisor Cass Sunstein is a Nazi who is going to create a "Second Bill of Rights," so we all need to buy guns right away.
• Don't use Google, because They are watching everything you do and you'll end up getting arrested.
• The Entertainment Industry Foundation -- presumably including honorary board member Rupert Murdoch -- are "Maoists" who are taking over all media to push a communist agenda.
• President Obama is going to release Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, currently in prison for his involvement in 9/11, as a way of appeasing his Muslim friends in Egypt.
• The Department of Education, through a secret protocol called "System X," is deploying sensors in chairs in public school classrooms -- and also portable MRI machines -- as a way of collecting information on students for thought control.

Have you noticed a commonality between all of these?  Besides the fact that in order to believe any of them, you'd have to have a quarter pound of Laffy Taffy where the rest of us have a brain?

That's right: none of them actually happened.

But Glenn Beck is too smart to let a little thing like a zero batting average discourage him.  So he has now accused Matt Drudge of taking his marching orders from Alex Jones to discredit Beck's favorite presidential candidates (Rubio and Cruz).

And far be it from Alex Jones to take that lying down.  Especially given that he thinks that Donald Trump represents the Second Coming of Christ at the very least.  So he responded with a diatribe that even by his standards is pretty extreme.  Here's an excerpt:

The cult leader, Glenn Beck, he is now an official religious cult leader.  He’s the false prophet and his messiah is Ted Cruz...  Beck is a cynical, twisted, weirdo who will end up destroying himself. He is an egomaniac, super-narcissist, probably psychotic, in my view, and he’s insane and wants to be a cult leader. 

Moses has returned, you didn’t know?  The two prophets of Revelation, it’s Ted Cruz and Glenn Beck, you didn’t know?  He says it’s a priesthood he’s starting.  Oh yeah?  Oh really?  The liberal, hardcore shock jock that was hired right before 9/11 and gotten ready to come out to be the synthetic Alex Jones?  I’ve been told that by the executives involved where they sat — and he’s an actor — and watched weeks of my videos and shows and said, "Take this and mix it with Oprah." That’s what I was told by the executives that used to run his operation.  He’s a mixture of Oprah Winfrey and Alex Jones, all in a big, weird doughboy’s body.  A cult leader.  A Nellie high priest.  Scared to death, by the way, dozens of security people.

So I guess that told Beck a thing or two.

Me, I find the whole thing hilarious, given that my contention is that they're both a few fries short of a Happy Meal.  After all, do the adjectives Jones used to describe Beck -- egocentric, super-narcissist, probably psychotic -- sound like anyone else you can think of?

Hello, Pot?  This is the kettle...

So anyway.  While the rest of us sit back with a bowl of popcorn to watch the hilarity, two of the conspiracy world's inadvertent comic geniuses do their best to tear each other limb from limb.  Like I said: fine with me.  The more time they spend doing that, the less time they'll have to try to convince anyone else.

Voting for the voice of god

Below I present to you a series of quotes.  You'll see a pattern pretty quickly.

• It’s the natural law of God. We have a theocracy right now.  You know, the only thing worse than not being elected president would be to be elected president without God’s blessing. I can’t think of a worse place in the world to be than in the Oval Office without God’s hand upon you.  -- Mike Huckabee
• It was as if there was a presence of the Holy Spirit in the room and we all were at awe and Ted, all that came out of his mouth, he said, ‘Here am I Lord, use me.  Here am I Lord, I surrender to whatever Your will for my life is.’  And it was at that time that he felt a peace about running for president of the United States. -- Rafael Cruz, speaking of his son, Senator Ted Cruz
• I feel fingers [of god]...  I finally said, ‘Lord if you truly want me to do this, you’ll have to open the doors, because I’m certainly not going to kick them down.  And if you open the doors I will walk through them.  And as long as you hold them open, I will walk through them...  I believe God will make it clear to me if that’s something I’m supposed to do.  I will run if God grabs me by the collar and asks me to run. -- Ben Carson
• Our goal is eternity.  The purpose of our life is to cooperate with God’s plan, and I believe that's what this [the presidential race] is about...  To those who much has been given, much is expected, and we will be asked to account for that, whether your treasures are stored up on earth or in heaven.  And to me, I try to allow that to influence me in everything that I do. -- Marco Rubio
• We have prayed a lot about this decision, and we believe with all our hearts that this [Santorum running for president] is what God wants. -- Rick Santorum
• My relationship with God drives every major decision in my life.  Our country is at a crossroads and we need a proven conservative leader who is not afraid to fight for what is right — even when it’s not politically expedient.  My decisions are guided by my relationship with God. -- Scott Walker
• He and his wife believe they are touched by God, and that this is his time.  It's like – they can't lose – that's the sense of it.  I don't know if he'll win the nomination, but I'm absolutely sure he'll be one of the last two Republicans standing. -- an anonymous supporter and financier, speaking of Governor Rick Perry

So what we have here is a host of presidential candidates who are all basically claiming that god told them personally that he wanted them to run.  Fortunately, one of them at least is aware that god can't simultaneously support everybody:

I think sometimes, while people say, “we’re praying about this, we’re asking God,” that’s fine, but it seems like the criteria that I’ve been told for selecting candidates seems very secular.  It’s about well, this person is polling well, this person has the cash.  And I’m thinking, you know if these guys were going up against Goliath they would’ve insisted that it was the big guy, with the king’s armor—they never would’ve allowed that shepherd boy with the five smooth stones, and with Gideon’s army, they would’ve run for cover when God got Gideon’s army down to 300. -- Mike Huckabee, speaking about his rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz

But of course, since he's implying that because of all of this, god's supporting him, I'm not sure we've gained any ground, here.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

And of course, the other problem is that the unifying theme between all of these guys is that none of them are going to get the Republican nomination.  (We could argue over whether Ted Cruz still has a shot, but I think that realistically, he's done for.)  So what's going on here?  Was god trolling all of them?  Or saying, basically, "Yes.  It's my will that you run" without adding, "... but you're all gonna lose."  Or just telling them what they wanted to hear, because the almighty didn't want to hurt their feelings?

The problem is exactly what Susan B. Anthony observed -- "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because it so often coincides with their own desires."

So anyway, it's all rather amusing to we non-religious types that one of the only Republican candidates who didn't claim to be anointed by god -- Donald Trump -- is looking like a shoo-in for the nomination.  Of course, the downside is that Donald Trump winning the nomination doesn't only mean that the God Squad didn't get it, but that, um, Donald Trump will have won the nomination.  So my laughter is ringing a little hollow at the moment.

Maybe god could tell Donald that he was destined to become president.  Given god's batting average so far, it'd pretty much assure that he'd lose.

Opting out of tribalism

Well, it's 2016, and given that this is an election year, seeing the turn of the calendar page makes me want to crawl in a hole and pull a blankie over my head until the second week of November.

It's not the political advertisements, nor the signs that spring up like fungus after a summer rain all along the roadside.  Those are bad enough, of course.  What I hate most of all about election years is the nasty vitriol a lot of people spew not only at candidates they don't like, but at the slice of the citizenry who support the opposite political views.

Let me give you an example, in the form of something a cousin of mine posted yesterday on Facebook:

Now, let me say right up front that my cousin posted this as a bad example, and followed it up with the following trenchant comment:

Almost all the people I know want mostly the same thing and care about the same things.  In fact, unless you asked, you wouldn't know what political party they belonged to. It's the stereotype that people are angry with, yet the individual people living their daily lives are very very rarely the stereotypical enemy we are told they are.

Which is it exactly.  Any time you paint your own tribe as the honorable and courageous and compassionate and rational ones, and the other tribe as the evil and devious and cowardly and two-faced ones, you are subscribing to a lie that would be shown up for what it is if you simply took the time to talk to a few of the people you're tarring with that brush.

But can't you find liberals who are this determined to foist beliefs on everyone?  Who, for example, are vegans and would like to ban all meat products?  Sure you can.  In fact, I know one.

One.  Out of all of the liberals I know, I know one who is so off the beam about the issue that she would like nothing better than to make sure no one ever eats meat.  And the conservatives I know?  I know one or two who are irrational, closed-minded xenophobes.  But by far, the majority of the people on both sides of the aisle just want what everyone wants -- a good job, a secure home, a safe place to raise children.  We may disagree on how to achieve those goals, but the number on either side who want to get there by shutting down all dissent by any means are (fortunately) few in number.

So I'm going to make a plea with all of you, whether you are conservative, liberal, or completely apolitical.  Stop posting blind rhetoric, because it is factually incorrect nearly 100% of the time.  Take the time to listen to people you disagree with.  Chances are, you'll find they're just as human as you are, even if you don't see eye to eye on the issues.  Stop demonizing people who belong to a different political party, ethnic group, or religion.  Those kind of blanket statements are not only unfair, they serve as a road block to thinking.  The kind of foolishness exemplified by the post from my cousin accomplishes nothing but dividing us, stopping dialogue and further fracturing the country along ideological lines.

I'd like to ask each of you to commit  for the next eleven months to backing off on the fist-shaking and saber-rattling, and (especially) think about what you post, forward, or "like" on social media.  Just remember what Oliver Wendell Holmes said: "No generalization is worth a damn.  Including this one."

An appeal to conservatives

Can I ask my readers who are conservative to stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and listen to what the leaders in the race for the Republican nomination for president are actually saying?

And I'm not talking about the usual issues over which Democrats and Republicans spar -- raising or lowering taxes, increasing or decreasing government spending, more or less involvement of the federal government in the day-to-day lives of American citizens.  Those issues we can talk about, even if we may not all end up agreeing.  I'm talking about stuff that is taking a relatively apolitical guy like myself and shaking me up to the point that I'm wondering if I should be making sure my passport is in order before next November.

Yes, I know, we're all sick unto death of hearing about Trump.  But each time the reasonable amongst us -- liberal and conservative -- have predicted that he'd crossed some kind of moral and ethical line, and that surely his campaign would flare out, his poll numbers have risen.  It's as if some sort of groundswell of lunatic xenophobia and paranoia had been there in the United States this whole time, waiting for its chosen messiah to arrive.

[image courtesy of photographer Michael Vadon and the Wikimedia Commons]

And in the latest salvo, he's saying that we should cut off access to the internet -- that too much freedom of speech is a bad thing.

I had to read this article twice, and listen to the video clip, to convince myself that this wasn't some kind of spoof from The Onion.  But no, he really did say the following:

We’re losing a lot of people because of the internet.  We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening.  We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some ways.   

Somebody will say, "Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’"

These are foolish people.

And the conservatives were concerned that Obama was going to flout the Constitution?

Oh, but that's just Trump, people are saying.  There's no way he'll win the nomination.

You know what?  There are two problems with this statement.  The first is that it's almost certainly wrong.  I think he has a damn good chance of winning enough delegates in the Republican primary to take the nomination -- unless the delegates, urged on by the Republican National Committee, try to create some kind of end run around the nomination process to block him, which will result in (at the very least) the GOP tearing itself apart from the inside out.

But the second problem is that the alternatives aren't much better.  Ted Cruz is in the news today, too, for... being unwilling to criticize Trump:

I do not believe that the world needs my voice added to the chorus of critics [of Trump].  And listen, I commend Donald Trump for standing up and focusing America’s attention on the need to secure our borders... I continue to like and respect Donald Trump.  While other candidates in this race have gone out of their way to throw rocks at him, to insult him, I have consistently declined to do so and I have no intention of changing that now.

It's easy enough to say that Cruz is saying this out of political expediency -- that he is still hoping to create an upsurge in support as the reasonable alternative to Trump, or (perhaps) make a case for his being a choice for vice president should Trump take the nomination.  Either way, it's disingenuous at best, and downright scary at worst.

Because you know what?  Everywhere Trump goes, he is met with crowds of supporters who are willing to sieg heil to what at least Lindsey Graham has the balls to say is a "race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot who doesn’t represent my party."  Here we have a guy who is basically trying to reintroduce the requirement that people of a certain religion be barred from entering the country even if they're US citizens, and go around wearing identification tags sewn onto their clothing, and there is a substantial fraction of Americans who are shouting, "Hell yes!"

Look, I am no apologist for Islam.  I think that it (1) is an incorrect view of the universe, (2) has encouraged misogyny, violence, and repression of basic human freedoms, and (3) is largely responsible for the morass of misery in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.  (I am in no way trying to minimize other contributors to the problems of the Middle East, least of all American meddling, but the contribution to the overall awfulness by Islam is not inconsequential.)

But to demonize 1.6 billion people -- 20% of the world's population -- as wanting to destroy our country is terrifyingly like the sort of anti-Jewish propaganda that was rife in Germany before World War II.

I have a lot of conservative friends, and a good many liberal ones as well, and despite our differences we pretty much get along.  My own attitude toward politics is usually one of vague bafflement; to me, most political questions boil down either to things that are blitheringly obvious (like whether climate change is happening, or if LGBT individuals should be allowed to marry) or else are such an intractable mess that there probably is no real solution (like how to balance the federal budget and fix the oversight of the American health care system).

But for cryin' in the sink, can we all just step back for a moment, and forget our favorite political labels, and look at what these people are saying?  Because it's leading our country down a very scary path, and one that's been trodden before.  Where it leads is, to put it simply, hell on earth.

And if the unthinkable happens, and a fascist ideologue like Donald Trump ends up being elected president, my wife and I are going to have to give some very serious thought about whether life as expats might actually be the best overall choice.

The rising stars of American politics

I'm sure that many of you are wondering what's going to happen in the 2016 presidential election, likely to be a race between either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders (for the Democrats) and whichever of the 2,781 people who have declared they're seeking the Republican nomination manages to come out ahead.  I can't get all that worked up about it, myself.  I've been through this process enough times that to me, most politics seems to boil down to "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."  And every time someone is elected and there are dire predictions by the opposition about what's going to result, what ends up happening is...

... pretty much what always happens in government.  Namely, bureaucratic gridlock.  For example, take all the hoopla about how Obama is going to repeal the Second Amendment and steal everyone's guns.  This has been a running theme of the anti-Obama cadre for what, seven years now?  And if you look around you, you'll find that everyone is as heavily armed as ever, and the Second Amendment is still firmly in place.

If Obama wants our guns, dude better get his ass in gear.  He's only got a little over a year left.

Now, I won't say that politics doesn't matter.  You can definitely see the situation in the Middle East having gone a different direction had the Bush administration not launched a war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein, for example.  Whether it would have been better or worse is a matter of contention, but I don't think anyone can argue that it made a difference.

But that's the thing, isn't it?  Whoever gets elected, we still have the chaotic nature of world events to deal with, and the inherent unpredictability of how everyone's going to respond.  Add that to the treacle-like speed of progress in the halls of government, and it's no wonder that politics, when viewed from above, looks like a giant, extremely slow-moving pinball game.

[image courtesy of photographer Tom Arthur and the Wikimedia Commons]

Of course, that doesn't stop people from being curious about where things are going.  And I'm here to tell you today that you can relax.  It's all settled.  We know who's going to win in 2016.

Because the psychics have weighed in.

Three psychics were interviewed in The Washington Post, and gave their prognostications about the outcome of the election.  And because at this point they've got as much chance of being right as anyone else, I present to you: the results of the 2016 American presidential election.

First, we have the wisdom of "Angel Eyedealism," who has pink hair and says that astrology is "pseudoscience based upon two exact sciences."  Which should give you confidence right there that she knows what she's talking about.  And Ms. Eyedealism says that she drew up "natal charts" for Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, and Donald Trump, and in her opinion, Clinton is a shoo-in.

"Hillary has Jupiter in the ninth house, the house of politics, now, and it is heading to conjunct her M.C. [medium coeli, or "middle of the sky"]," Eyedealism said. "I'm getting goosebumps."

Ooh, me too!  I always feel that way when I get conjuncted by Jupiter!

Clinton's looking good in other respects, too.  "Jupiter has already conjuncted Pluto, so she has luck and power behind her, and it will conjunct Saturn, so she's serious...  She has luck and a motherfucking plan."

So that's pretty unequivocal.

Bush, on the other hand, doesn't have much going for him except that he got conjuncted by an asteroid, or something, which sounds kind of painful.  And Uranus is in his Eighth House, which apparently means people will be giving him money.  But otherwise, he's not showing up very well, astrologically.  Trump, on the other hand has a "trine," which means three planets making an equilateral triangle.  This is good, for some reason, but she still thinks he won't win.

And what about all of the other people who were born in New York City on the same day as Trump? the interviewer asked.  Why aren't they all filthy rich, running for president, and sporting a hairstyle that looks like they're wearing a roadkill possum on their heads?

"Remember, not everyone lives out the potential of their chart," Eyedealism said.  "We have choices.  Some people who could have been Donald Trump made choices not to be."

Which certainly seems like a good choice to me.

Then, we turn to Angelia Johnson, a numerologist.  "I have been a psychic professional healer and adviser for over 25 years," Johnson told the reporter, "and have now graduated to psychic matchmaking."

So you can see right away that she's completely qualified to select the next president of the United States.

And Johnson's also going for Clinton, even though Jeb Bush's "number is a three."  "Because he's a three, he's connecting with people mind, body and spirit," Johnson said.  "His heart chakra is viving."

Which sounds like maybe he should see a doctor.  

Chris Christie, on the other hand, has a third-eye chakra, and his number is a four.  Don't ask me why that's important, but Johnson would like to see a Clinton/Christie combo, not that that's likely.

Last, the reporter spoke with a Tarot card reader, Angela Lucy, who not only reads cards but is guided by the Archangel Michael.  "He's a big truth-sayer," Lucy says.  "No B.S. from Archangel Michael."

So right away, we're off to an authoritative start.  She did the Republican hopefuls first, or at least the top few, and found out that Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, and Donald Trump were "contenders," that Ben Carson was going to do "okay," and that there's something going on with Scott Walker's wife.  She didn't say what.  As far as the Democrats, she said that Clinton was in for some kind of emotional upset, and Sanders doesn't have the cojones (direct quote) to win.

So let's cut to the chase... who will win?  Lucy drew the "Wheel of Fortune" card, upside down.  Which means, "I get only a 10 percent chance and this card came upside down ... it means turning in reverse."

Whatever the fuck that means.

So in the end, we had two votes for Clinton, and one for things being up in the air.  I think we can all agree that this is a pretty definitive result, especially given that we cross-checked our results using not just one but two other methodologies.  That's how the scientific method works, right?

Me, I'm longing for the days when Pat Paulsen used to run for president.  Anyone my age will probably remember Paulsen, a comedian who threw his hat into the ring every presidential election between 1968 and 1996, and actually got votes every time from people whose attitude was "I'll vote for anyone but the clowns who are actually running."  We need someone with Paulsen's commitment to the process.  Someone with cojones.  Someone whose heart chakra is viving.  Someone who has trines in all of their asteroid conjunctions.

Someone who has a vision, who is clear-minded, and who knows exactly how to give us four more years of the same bureaucratic gridlock that has made America great since its founding.