Channel Note: Germaine II Rises from the Grimpen Mire

 

I set up a 2nd Disqus account to see if I can transition from Germaine to Germaine II. My first account was hacked and I lost all of my upvotes, about 22,000 at the time. On the Disqus platform, loss of upvotes means loss of reputation. In turn, that means loss of ability to comment on other sites unless a moderator adds the damaged user as a trusted user. Since most Mods on most sites won't whitelist me, that makes the entire Disqus platform basically useless outside of my own blog.

From what I can tell, this problem is at least 5 years old and apparently caused by hackers who don't like whoever they attack. I think I was attacked and lost my upvotes about 6 months ago. People including me have complained repeatedly to Disqus, asking for this problem to be fixed, e.g., here and here. Disqus refuses to say when the problem will be fixed, so this crippling defect is probably permanent.

What If Trump Wins?

The Washington Monthly explores the policy consequences of a second Trump term.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/april-may-june-2020/what-if-trump-wins/

For many people, the prospect of what might happen if Donald Trump wins a second term is too awful to contemplate. But, as we are witnessing with the coronavirus, not contemplating scenarios that have at least some chance of happening is a grave mistake. Indeed, it’s a mistake that helped elect Trump in the first place.

Ideally, the press corps would be hard at work exploring this question. Alas, it is not. In the thousands of presidential campaign stories that have been published this year, you will be hard pressed to find much reporting or informed speculation about what policies Trump might pursue if he’s reelected, or what the consequences might be if he were successful in enacting them. That’s not because such things aren’t knowable in advance. If that were the problem, political reporters wouldn’t have spent the last six months gaming out which candidates were, say, likely to win which primaries. The real reason campaign journalists don’t do this kind of work is that it’s not what they’re trained to do—and, perhaps, it’s not what most people want to read. 

We think our readers are different. So we gathered a distinguished group of area experts and beat reporters. We told them to imagine that, come November of 2020, Trump wins the Electoral College and the balance of power in Congress remains unchanged; Republicans hold the Senate and Democrats hold the House. Then, we asked them to think through the hitherto unthinkable: What will Trump aim to do, and what could he realistically get away with, if given another four years in power? —The Editors

Can The Liberal World Order Survive Another Four Years of Trump?

by Wesley K. Clark

Probably not. Here’s why.

What Would a Second Trump Term Do to the Federal Bureaucracy?

by Francis Fukuyama

An EPA stocked with climate change deniers. A Surgeon general sympathetic to anti-vaxxers. It could get grim.

How Trump Could Take Away Obamacare With a Second Term

by Julie Rovner

After packing the courts, the president’s use of executive authority will be more effective.

How Trump Would Gut the Social Safety Net With a Second Term

by Ryan LaRochelle and Luisa S. Deprez

There’s a backdoor tactic the administration would use to weaken programs that help the poor.

How Trump Could Dismantle Workers’ Rights with Another Four Years

by Rachel Cohen

In just his first term, he’s been a fairly effective union buster.

Trump’s Second Term Immigration Agenda

by Gaby Del Valle

Will anyone be allowed into America?

Can Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Survive a Second Trump Term?

by David Cole

It’s a proposition better left untested.

Why a Second Trump Term Will Not Be a Horror Movie

by Paul Glastris

Let’s hope it doesn’t happen. But if it does, we won’t be helpless.

The President's Awesome Track Record of Lies and Deceit

Disinformation: false information that is intended to mislead or deceive, especially propaganda issued by a government organization to a rival power or the media

The Washington Post fact checkers report that as of May 29, the president had made 19,127 false or misleading statements in public. WaPo writes: "As of May 29, his 1,226th day in office, Trump had made 19,127 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement he has uttered. That’s almost 16 claims a day over the course of his presidency. So far this year, he’s averaging just over 22 claims a day, similar to the pace he set in 2019."

At that rate, the president will be close to 25,000 false and misleading statements by the end of his first term.

In his love of the lie, the president has actually created a new category of lie that crosses into the realm of actual disinformation. The WaPo fact checkers call it the Bottomless Pinocchio. This 2½ minute video explains this ground-breaking rhetorical tactic (at least in modern times in America) and how it shows the president's utter contempt for inconvenient truth and people's intelligence.[1]





Footnote:
1. On the same day, the WaPo published an opinion piece about an attack lie that the president launched against the mayor of D.C. regarding handling of unrest in D.C. The president falsely claimed in another of his toxic Tweets that D.C. mayor Muriel E. Bowser refused to provide help to the Secret Service. WaPo writes of the Tweets:

"Praising the U.S. Secret Service for their handling of protests at the White House, Trump tweeted that Bowser “wouldn’t let the D.C. Police get involved,” quoted an unnamed person as saying it’s “Not their job,” and ended the tweet with a sarcastic “Nice!”  

Whether Trump’s unnamed person exists is unknown. What is clear, however, is that Trump’s accusation against Bowser and the police force was indisputably false. In fact, Trump’s lie was exposed the moment it left his mouth. 

Led by D.C. police Chief Peter Newsham, and with Bowser’s knowledge and consent, the city’s police had already joined with the Secret Service and other federal law enforcement authorities to deal with White House and public demonstrations — as have D.C. mayors and police chiefs in the past.  

In a news conference with Bowser, Newsham said he provided Secret Service officers with equipment they did not have, including riot helmets. “Wouldn’t let the D.C. Police get involved” Trump declared. The Secret Service issued a statement that said, “The Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Park Police were on the scene.” 

Why would Trump tell such a baldfaced lie?"

Presumably, the president would tell such a baldfaced lie because he believes the public is stupid. The president is so lazy and contemptuous of the public's intelligence that he does not even bother to Tweet lies that are harder to disprove or shrouded in secrecy. If that isn't evidence of the president's total contempt for the people's intelligence, then what is? How stupid does he believe we really are? Apparently, very very stupid.

Moral Courage in Politics

Context

Over time, the concept of moral courage has crystallized in my mind to mean an ability to try to see, and accept inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning or logic, collectively I call those things the “objective components of politics.” The objective components generally do not include facts, truths and reasoning or logic that already support or fit with existing political or tribe beliefs, self-identity, self-interest or other psychological or social factors. Accepting unpleasant reality and sound reasoning is what takes real courage. Standing up and pounding one's chest about the righteousness one's ideological beliefs and worldview isn’t a matter of moral courage per se. That kind of behavior tends to signal a mindset that denies, distorts or downplays what is inconvenient.

The following was originally posed on another blog in 2016 and reposted here in August of 2019. I repost it again to accompany the post on the science of morality post I did a few minutes ago.

Political Moral Courage

Most core concepts in politics are defined mostly by how people view them. Definitions may exist in dictionaries, but politically different people looking at the same thing often see different or even opposite things. Most (>95% ?) liberals and conservatives who are active in and/or ideological about their politics firmly believe that they stand on great or even sacred political principles or morals. They know that their ideological beliefs have survived the test of time and delivered great benefits to humanity. They know that their politics is firmly grounded in both unbiased truth and clear-headed reason. That mind set tends to see itself as standing in a valiant, patriotic defense of true reason and truth against an onslaught of evil, tyranny, self-deluded stupidity, cynical self-interest or things about like that. That mind set generally sees the political opposition as practicing politics firmly grounded in heavily biased truth and lies, rigid partisan ideology and addle-brained reason that borders on, or is, sheer nonsense.

It’s fair to say that most politically engaged people would sincerely characterize themselves and their efforts as being driven by true moral courage. A Wikipedia discussion about moral courage says this about the concept: Moral courage is the courage to take action for moral reasons despite the risk of adverse consequences. Courage is required to take action when one has doubts or fears about the consequences. Moral courage therefore involves deliberation or careful thought. Reflex action or dogmatic fanaticism do not involve moral courage because such impulsive actions are not based upon moral reasoning.

Given the common, opposing views that the left and the right have of each other as people mostly unable to deal honestly with truth, both sides would no doubt consider their own side to employ moral courage in their own politics. Many people on one side may see most people on the other side as having only some or no moral courage at all.

Does that thinking and belief by either side stand up to scrutiny? Not according to cognitive and social science. And not according to simple logic.

The science disconnect: Science finds that most or all people see political issues and think about them through a lens of intolerant, self-righteous personal morals or ideology. Facts and logic that undermines or contradicts those moral beliefs are usually either flatly rejected or rationalized away. One scientist, Johnathan Haidt, put it this way: “We do moral reasoning not to reconstruct why we ourselves came to a judgment; we reason to find the best possible reasons why somebody else ought to join us in our judgment. . . . . The rider (conscious reason) is skilled at fabricating post hoc explanations for whatever the elephant (unconscious moralistic thinking) has just done, and it is good at finding reasons to justify whatever the elephant wants to do next. . . . . We make our first judgments rapidly, and we are dreadful at seeking out evidence that might disconfirm those initial judgments.”

The logic disconnect: If it is true, as partisans on the left and right argue, that the opposition’s thinking and perceptions of reality is heavily distorted by a reality- and reason-distorting ideology or mind set (or other things such as self-interest), then neither side practices moral courage in politics. That’s an example of impulse actions that are not based upon moral reasoning. No authority says that both the left and right cannot be mostly correct in arguing that the other side acts on ideological impulse instead of deliberation or careful thought, i.e., not morally courageous.

The interesting thing about the pure logic argument is that it is supported by science. In that regard, the logic argument isn’t just a thought disconnected from everything else. It’s a hypothesis (theory?) supported by a great deal of research and evidence.

Is moral courage possible at all? 

Practicing perfect moral courage is impossible if it requires perfect knowledge. Perfection in anything is impossible, as argued here before. Nonetheless, it is possible to practice an imperfect but recognizable form of moral courage if one acknowledges one’s own cognitive nature and honestly tries to deal with it. How can that be done? Since existing political ideologies are known fact- and reason-distorters, adopting a political ideology that fosters reductions in ideologically-inspired distortions is a real step toward moral courage. One example of such an ideology has been described here. Obviously, other variants or articulations of that ideology are possible, but the point is to reduce unrestrained fact and reason distortion that underpins standard that underpins standard subjective politics.

Of course, accepting that requires the intestinal fortitude (moral courage) to try to see unbiased reality and unbiased, reasoned argument for what they are instead of accepting the false realities and reason that create the some liberal and many conservative worlds that most partisans now view the world through.


B&B orig: 9/22/16; DP 8/13/19; DP repost 5/31/20