Seeing is not necessarily believing… or is it?

(Long read but I hope you give it a chance.  You might enjoy it!  Switching gears to something lite-r and kind of scienc-y.  I know science is welcomed here on this blog also.  So, here goes…)

Optical illusions are strange phenomena, as we all know.  Stare at the center of the following image for a few seconds.  It doesn’t move.  

Now look away from the center.  It moves again.

Optical illusions can make you believe something is true (“true”… that’s an interesting concept 😉) when maybe it isn’t.  I.e., our eye-brain coordination can be (let’s call it) “faulty” like that.  Here’s another good one:

Okay, all that was to just get you into the right mood/frame of mind.  Now for the kicker.  If you really want to get deep into it, everything you see is just a figment of your imagination, a result of faulty eye-brain coordination, an optical illusion.  

Yes, it gets worse.  Much worse.  I’m talking about the Mother of All Optical Illusions.  I’m talking about existence itself. 😮

In “reality,” it’s all just a bunch of particles and forces, wafting through space, coming together to form “visible images” and “solid matter.”  Let’s take a closer look (really close!):

“Questions, comments, war stories,” as one of my professors used to say?

* * *

Actually, I have a question for all our brainiacs here, and we have plenty.  We know who you are and you know who you are, so don’t try to hide yourself or feign humility. We're onto you. 😉

I want to know:

Q: Why do these fundamental particles and forces come together to form particular macroscopic objects?  IOW, why do we have individual entities in our reality?  That’s a burning question for me. Shouldn't it be for all of us??

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  We have, for example, chairs because carpenters (or machines) build chairs.  That’s not what I’m talking about.  You’re “too far up” the entities chain with that.  Back up. Why do some particles form seeds, that form into trees, that form into wood, that we then form into chairs… that Carpenter Jack built)?  (Okay, a little comedy relief).  But back to my point…

So, to rephrase, I want to know what causes atoms and forces to form into particular macroscopic things (like wood, flowers, clouds, hair strands, what have you?)[1]  Is it chemically induced/dictated (my suspicion)?  Help!

(by PrimalSoup)

Important Footnote: 

1. I’m not talking about things replicating (procreating) themselves; in particular organic things.  I’m also not talking about things evolving into other things.  That’s already way too far up the “process” chain.  I’m talking about the original/fundamental “coming together” process to form a particular individual thing/entity.  Particles and forces forming things, and what causes that.

The MSM reflects on the Hur report and itself: Regrets are surfacing

In a WaPo opinion (here not behind paywall) this morning Jennifer Rubin writes, citing, among other things, the Just Security analysis of the Hur report that I posted about yesterday:

Hur’s political hatchet job. Garland’s blunder. Media complicity.

Special counsel Robert K. Hur had a single task: Determine if President Biden illegally retained sensitive documents after his vice presidency. The answer should not have taken nearly 13 months or a more than 300-page report. Hur also should have avoided trashing “the fundamental ethos of a prosecutor to avoid gratuitous smears,” as former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen told me.

It was Hur’s gratuitous smear about Biden’s age and memory — most egregiously, his far-fetched allegation that Biden could not recall the date of his son Beau’s death — that transformed a snide report into a political screed. Speculating about how a jury might have perceived the president years after the incidents took place was entirely irrelevant because the lack of evidence meant there would be no case.   

Finally, the media — which made a spectacle of itself hollering at and interrupting Biden in his news conference after the report was released — certainly amplified the GOP talking point. Many outlets failed to explain that there was insufficient evidence of willfulness. For days, headlines focused on the memory smear rather than on Biden’s exoneration. Worse, Sunday news shows misreported the report.

Rubin also rips Merrick Garland for gross incompetence in allowing Hur to smear Biden.

Other MSM sources are now starting to voice similar regrets about how they mishandled the Hur report and allowed him to smear Biden.

Michael Tomasky writing for The New Republic makes important points about the MSM and propaganda that are not raised enough:

The Only Mental Acuity I’m Questioning These Days 

Is the Mainstream Media’s

We’re at a fateful crossroads here. On one road, the Avenue of Responsible Sobriety traveled by the Times and the Post and most of the mainstream media, lies legitimate and necessary dialogue about whether any octogenarian, and this one specifically, is fit to be president. But the other road, the Mad Max Hellscape Expressway, has been taken over by the right-wing media, whose interest is not legitimate dialogue but the utter destruction of the octogenarian in question.

This is not a level playing field, folks. Where these roads meet, the souped-up Hummers of the Hellscape Expressway will overrun the dainty Priuses of Responsibility Avenue.

What’s the greater potential for havoc and destruction of our way of life—the things Biden forgets, or the things Trump remembers? 

I have written what I’m about to write here probably 20 times in the last couple years, and I’ll write it 20 more or 200 more until I see people starting to get the point. In terms of how the American political media works, we have recently crossed a dark Rubicon. We now live in a world, which I believe we entered after January 6, 2021, in which the right-wing media sets the national agenda. The mainstream media follows.

Going way back in time, we had only a mainstream media—the Times and the Post and the Associated Press and the major networks. In the 1970s, after the famous Powell Memo, wealthy conservatives began funding their own media. For most of the last 50 years, even as the right-wing media grew, it remained clear that the mainstream media set the agenda—that is, it determined what we all talked about every day.

But recently, that flipped. This transformation has been in process for several years, but I date it to January 6 for two reasons. First, before that, the right-wing media didn’t have all-consuming power when it came to crunch time. They could not, for example, elect Donald Trump. There was still enough of a shred of news-gathering honesty at Fox News that it called Arizona for Joe Biden. Second, January 6 was a moment of choosing for the American right. Conservative politicians and the right-wing media could have woken up on January 7 and decided that enough was enough, and they were captaining their MAGA-ized spaceship back down to planet Earth.

But we’ve seen how both of those matters sorted themselves out. Fox forced out the two people who made that Arizona call. You think this November Fox will be in the vanguard—it was the first network to give Arizona to Biden—of calling a purple state for the Democrat? It’s inconceivable. And on the second matter, with a few notable exceptions, virtually the whole party now embraces the January 6 “uprising” (or is too cowardly to say otherwise).

The right-wing media has followed suit, giving us a sprawling and enormously powerful messaging apparatus—Fox, Newsmax, One America, all those Sinclair radio and TV stations, Christian radio, most newspapers out there around the country, the majority of prominent opinion journals, most of largest social media personalities, and more—that now sings from the same hymnal. They did before, but January 6 provided that extra kick; the grain alcohol in the punch. It gave these outlets a sense of mission that wasn’t quite so fully and recognizably there before.

Again we see that the DFS (dark free speech) Hummers of the Hellscape Expressway is central to the rise and radicalization of American radical right authoritarianism. Its power and deadly influence are simply undeniable. The weakness of the MSM armed with facts, truths and sound reasoning is just as clear.

If conservative politicians and the right-wing media had woke up on January 7 and decided to pilot their MAGA-ized DFS spaceship back down to planet Earth, I guarantee our democracy, civil liberties and rule of law would not be in such grave danger.

But here we are. Like it or not, DFS is more powerful than facts and truth. The onus is on the truth speakers to do a lot better job than they have been with the constraints they operate under. That should have included not letting the morally rotted authoritarian liar Hur smear Biden.

A retraction: A professional legal analysis of the Hur report

Mea cupla - I screwed up

On Feb. 9, I posted about the Robert Hur report on the classified documents Biden had in his possession. Hur ripped Biden for having a poor memory and willfully possessing classified documents, but shied away from recommending prosecution. 

I regret and fully retract that post. I’ll will leave my screw-up posted for posterity. It was a big mistake. I relied on reporting by four different mainstream sources, quoting two of them, WaPo and AP. I now believe that all those sources were mostly wrong in how they characterized the way the Hur report treated the evidence. That reporting convinced me the Hur narrative was mostly correct. My mistakes were (1) believing the sloppy, maybe corrupt MSM, and (2) giving one shred of credibility to a bad faith Republican operative from the morally rotted Trump administration. Cold comfort, but to me this analysis indirectly reinforces my long-standing criticisms of Merrick Garland. 

Lessons learned.

A solid, professional legal analysis

Yesterday, Just Security published a detailed legal analysis of the Hur report by Andrew Weissman and Ryan Goodman, entitled The Real “Robert Hur Report” (Versus What You Read in the News): How the Special Counsel report has been misinterpreted. It is very long and very detailed. The bottom line conclusion: 

The Special Counsel Robert Hur report has been grossly mischaracterized by the press. The report finds that the evidence of a knowing, willful violation of the criminal laws is wanting. Indeed, the report, on page 6, notes that there are “innocent explanations” that Hur “cannot refute.” That is but one of myriad examples we outline in great detail below of the report repeatedly finding a lack of proof. And those findings mean, in DOJ-speak, there is simply no case. Unrefuted innocent explanations is the sine qua non [something absolutely necessary] of not just a case that does not meet the standard for criminal prosecution – it means innocence. Or as former Attorney General Bill Barr and his former boss would have put it, a total vindication (but here, for real).

A couple of points:

• Recall how Bill Barr released a deceptive, allegedly Trump-exonerating “summary” of the Mueller report in 2019. Barr refused to release the full report for a full month. That allowed time for Barr’s lies to spread, be repeated dozens of times and sink in with people. Then, after the redacted Mueller Report was released, Trump supporters rejected it and a lot of the rest of the public did not know what to think. Robert Hur pulled the same stunt here, using the same lies tactics to achieve the same end result, namely a deceived or at least confused public. 

• An example of Hur’s mendacity: Hur started his liar summary like this: “Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” However buried in the report, it actually it explicitly says there is insufficient evidence of criminality, innocent explanations for the conduct, and affirmative evidence that Biden did not willfully withhold classified documents. For example, at page 6 Hur writes: “In addition to this shortage of evidence, there are other innocent explanations for the documents that we cannot refute.”

• Another example -- two sentences superbly deceptive: At pages 9-10 Hur wrote: “Mr. Biden should have known that by reading his unfiltered notes about classified meetings in the Situation Room, he risked sharing classified information with his ghostwriter. But the evidence does not show that when Mr. Biden shared the specific passages with his ghostwriter, Mr. Biden knew the passages were classified and intended to share classified information.” The analysis describes this sleight of hand deceit like this: “this articulation is so reminiscent of James Comey’s embroidering of the facts: the bottom line is in the second sentence; the first sentence is irrelevant and serves no prosecutorial purpose, which leaves one to rightly wonder why it is included.” Obviously the first sentence was included to deflect from and soften the impact of the second sentence. 

• Merrick Garland had the chance to edit Hur’s liar summary, but he chose not to do so. He was afraid it would look partisan and he would be criticized for it by the authoritarian radical right. Unfortunately, by not editing Hur’s lies, Garland was being highly pro-Trump and anti-Biden partisan. Politico commented about the some push back against this criticism: “Mr. Hur’s report had to be released unedited lest the attorney general were to be accused of protecting President Biden,” former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi said. Some responses by Democrats on this point are frankly incoherent. Too many Dems are ignorant and/or just plain irrational. 

Regarding Garland, Esquire writes:

I have come to the sad conclusion that [] Attorney General Merrick Garland just wasn’t made for these times, and, like Tom Hagen, he’s just not a wartime consigliere. I hung in there longer than most people I know. But, this week, the case against him got overwhelming. The man needs to be thanked for his service and then shown the door.

He is not equipped to use all the tools god gave the Department of Justice to thwart the genuine threat to the Republic that is El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago, and the dangerous political climate he has created. The former president should have been charged federally with insurrection literally years ago. (Hell, during Thursday’s oral arguments in the Supreme Court concerning the former president’s eligibility under the 14th Amendment, even Justice Brett Kavanaugh wondered why he hadn’t been so charged, and Kavanaugh used to work for Ken Starr, if we’re talking about using all the DOJ’s tools at your disposal.) The DOJ should have gone hammer-and-tongs after all the members of Congress who had the slightest connection with the insurrection. Somebody higher than the bear spray crowd should have been arrested and held until trial. Some of the expensive loafers should have been confiscated during the booking process rather than all those duckboots.

As diligent as Jack Smith has been, and god save the good work, he shouldn’t have been necessary. This business didn’t need a special counsel. It needed the Attorney General and the FBI right from jump.

Thursday was the end for me. Appointing a Republican hack like Robert Hur to “investigate” the non-crimes of the president was bad enough, but then to allow Hur to pile on a political hit piece about the president’s memory, thereby normalizing one of the former president’s attack lines on DOJ stationery, is not admirably fair-minded, it’s constitutionally suicidal. God save us from the fair-minded. They’ll kill the country and wonder how they did it. 

The new GOP and the power flow that created it

This WaPo opinion by EJ Dionne is spot on (whole opinion not paywalled off):

Let’s just say it: The Republican problem is metastasizing

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein shook up Washington with their argument that the U.S. government wasn’t working because of what had happened to the Republican Party.

They made their case in a 2012 book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” and in a powerful Post op-ed titled “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”

“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics,” they wrote. “It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.”  

Events of the past week not only ratify what they wrote but suggest that matters are, to borrow from them, even worse now.

Power in the GOP has moved away from elected officials and toward those right-wing “commentators” on television, radio, podcasts and online. The creation of ideological media bubbles enhances their power. Republicans in large numbers rely on partisan outlets that lied freely about what Lankford’s [border bill] compromise did and didn’t do, rather than on straight news reports.

The party’s hostile vibe can also be traced back to a habit in the Bush years to distinguish between “real America” (the places that vote Republican) and what is presumably unreal America. Declaring a large swath of the population to be less than American means they’re not worth dealing with and, increasingly, easy to hold in contempt.

In the 2020 book, Political Science for Dummies, the first sentence of the first chapter reads: 

Political science is the study of politics and more precisely power 

Mann and Ornstein were among the first of prominent observers I am aware of to point out in 2012 that the GOP had degenerated. In my view the degeneration was moral rot, because by then, I had adopted pragmatic rationalism as the most moral way to do politics in a democracy.[1] With fidelity to facts and true truths as core moral values, the sheer mendacity and alt-facts the GOP had come to accept and help normalize made the GOP party leadership look morally rotten and authoritarian. 

The question what about the rank and file became more urgent after DJT came on the scene. Nowadays I have an opinion about that, but will keep it to myself.

The point of this post is to just remind people to keep an eye on where power flows and who wins and who loses from power flow, no matter what the power seekers tell you. They are usually lying.

Footnote:

1. With authoritarianism, morals are mostly irrelevant. Authoritarian systems operate on the basis of power and how much the usually kleptocratic dictators, plutocrats and theocrats can get away with before they cause a major rebellion. For authoritarians, facts, true truths, sound reasoning and service to the public interest are all ignored, downplayed, denied or deflected when inconvenient for the power party line. Demagoguery, lies, slandering and crackpottery are dominant. Hybrid authoritarian-democratic systems are some mix of those things.