My Moral Duty: Step into the Belly of the Enraged Beast

The president presents an urgent and deadly threat to democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, civil society and honest governance.[1] I've felt that way for over two years, but since his election, a lot of other people have come to about the same conclusion. Some people saw the danger immediately. Masha Gessen, a Russian who witnessed Putin crush democracy and the rule of law in Russia, wrote this a couple of days after the 2016 election in an article, Autocracy: Rules for Survival:

“Thank you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you. We have lost. We have lost, and this is the last day of my political career, so I will say what must be said. We are standing at the edge of the abyss. Our political system, our society, our country itself are in greater danger than at any time in the last century and a half. The president-elect has made his intentions clear, and it would be immoral to pretend otherwise. We must band together right now to defend the laws, the institutions, and the ideals on which our country is based.”

That, or something like that, is what Hillary Clinton should have said [in her concession speech] on Wednesday.

  Given that, I started spending some time every couple of days at big, hard core radical right political sites. The goal is not trolling. The goal is engagement based on facts and sound reasoning as best I can articulate it. I've been at it for just a few days. What it is like at the three sites I'm visiting is pretty ugly. Most of the articles and reader comments are based on lies, misinformation, irrational emotional manipulation and flawed reasoning due to partisan bias (motivated reasoning and logic fallacies). Those sites present a vast cornucopia of unrestrained dark free speech.

Crippling inconvenient voices 

I wanted to start with The Federalist, Breitbart, Town Hall and Daily Caller. Since I last visited, The Federalist has shut down its comments section, so that one is out. Town Hall blocks comments with links in them, which greatly undermines my ability to engage with evidence. This morning, Daily Caller blocked one of my comments with links in it by holding it in moderation. I do  not expect the comment to be OKed. Daily Caller does not allow images to be uploaded, so those are out there.

In response, I will change tactics and provide a phrase of about 5-7 words that people can search to find the material I wanted to link to.

So far, my general impression is that these big radical conservative sites are trying to limit dissident voices as much as possible. That helps to protect the tribe from cognitive dissonance, inconvenient facts and so forth. In turn, that further radicalizes people who stay in echo chambers like that.

I am beginning to believe that Disqus itself could be involved in limiting dissenting voices by allowing downvotes to damage a commenter's reputation. I am also checking to see if my new Germaine II account gets hacked and my upvotes drained away. If that happens, that I will no longer be able to freely comment without an administrator owner acting to allow make me a trusted user. In my experience, that has not happened with my old Germaine account at any conservative site.

The experience so far

The experience is what I expected. Most of it is irrational and disrespectful. So far, one person has been respectful, rational and evidence-based. We parted on good terms. Here is one approximate (not exact) example of the kind of engagement I am experiencing:

Initial comment: Fauci has been incorrect on everything.

Germaine II: No, he has been mostly (~95% ?) correct. And, since COVID-19 is new, there was significant uncertainty in the early months. There still is uncertainty about important aspects of how the virus spreads and its pathology. Fauci's statements have been couched in terms of probabilities, not certainties. That is being honest and professional. (the comments are here: http://disq.us/p/2ax83tg )

Lots of lies and fake conspiracy theories have been spread about him, but that's just radical right politics these days.
Attacker 1 (Gunny something): Hey Liberal (and that's a filthy word where I come from), Quack Fauxi ain't never been RIGHT but then again, you're a Leftist so facts are to YOU as a crucifix is to Drac.

You should write-in The Hildabeast for POTUS! hahahahaahahahahahahahahah

Germaine II: Hey Gunny. I'm not a liberal (or a conservative or centrist). I'm a pragmatic rationalist.

Fauci is as right as he can be in view of the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19, which is caused by a new virus. You are grossly misinformed about Fauci.

Attacker 2: YOUR A PIMPLE ON SOCIETY,S REAR, CHIT4BRAINS !!

Germaine II: When I see ad hominem attacks, I know the insulter is shooting blanks.

Attacker 3: Go gaslight your pals over at Media Matters... or whatever leftard craphole you came from...

Attacker 2: WHAT TRUTH, YOURS IS JUST ANOTHER OPINION FROM THE DARK SDE, CHIT4BRAINS !!


Anyway, you can see what it is like trying to deal respectfully with many of the radical right folks at dark echo chambers. But in view of the danger that Trump represents, I should try to do something, even if it is just a little and even if it doesn't work. Maybe I'll be able to sow a few seeds of doubt in a couple of minds.

My expectation

I expect the sites I'm visiting to ban or shadow ban me. It probably won't be long. This is deeply concerning because it would show an increasing unwillingness to even allow dissenting but respectful voices to be heard at all. That is socially damaging and frightening.


Question: Am I wasting my time, or should a person try to do what they can as best they can?


Footnote:
1. Even if Trump is re-elected, he may not be able to establish some sort of a plutocratic dictatorship based on demagoguery. Nonetheless, it is possible he can get close or even succeed. Since there is time to try to oppose the president, it seems reasonable to at least try.

The Awesome Power of Plausible Deniability

Context

One of the president's few core competencies is knowing how to operate under cover of plausible deniability. Plausible deniability (PD) can cover both legal and illegal activities. It is usually employed to cover embarrassing legal activities and illegal activities. However, PD can also be used to protect trade secrets and other forms of intellectual property, which is legal. Talent at creating strong PD shields is common and widespread among high level businessmen, crooks, tyrants and politicians. It is a way of life.

PD works very well most of the time because it is devilishly hard to dislodge. PD veils truth. Good practitioners of PD know not to leave any more of a tangible evidence trail than is absolutely necessary. The good practitioners do not take and keep written notes. The do not leave voice mail messages or ever send sensitive letters or emails. The good ones do all of their PD work in person whenever possible. They almost always shield tangible evidence they cannot avoid leaving behind using secrecy agreements.

In the case of the president, he speakes in code when it is time for dirty work that needs to be done. Even if someone had recorded him telling his employees to do something embarrassing or illegal, the president could deny that literal words were intended to get anyone to do any of it. For example, a Miami Herald article, Trump never told Cohen to lie — but suggested it by talking in code, Cohen says, focused on testimony by Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer, now a convicted felon. The MH wrote:

"Michael Cohen said in testimony to Congress on Wednesday that President Donald Trump never directly ordered him to lie, but instead made his wishes clear by speaking in “code” understood by anyone who works with him. 

“He doesn’t give you questions, he doesn’t give you orders, he speaks in a code. And I understand the code, because I’ve been around him for a decade,” testified Cohen, Trump’s former longtime personal attorney. 

For example, Cohen said Trump would frequently remark that he had no business ties in Russia. Cohen said he understood Trump to mean that he should deny any such connections."

One other thing that PD requires when people are asking uncomfortable questions is lying. If the holder of the PD shield is asked questions and has to answer, the only way to leave the shield intact usually requires the shield holder to lie. The typical lie comes out as something like "I don't recall", "I'll look that up and get back to you", "I am not familiar with that", "We would never do such a thing", "I don't understand the details of that", "I don't know what you mean", and so forth. Most of the time, that is mostly or completely lies.

Plausible deniability professionals in action

An article published today in the New York Times, Grilled by Lawmakers, Big Tech Turns Up the Gaslight, describes in detail how the chief executives of Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google wield their PD shields to try to keep congress from pursuing antitrust legislation. This is well worth being aware of. The NYT writes:

"When Mark Zuckerberg appeared in front of Congress two years ago, the Facebook chief executive’s memorable retort to a clueless questioner was “Senator, we run ads.” After Wednesday’s marathon appearance by Mr. Zuckerberg and three other tech titans at a House hearing on competition in the tech industry, a more fitting quote might be “Congresswoman, I’m not sure what you would mean by ‘threaten.’”

That was Mr. Zuckerberg’s evasive answer to a question asked by Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, about whether Facebook had ever threatened to squash smaller competitors by copying their products if they wouldn’t let Facebook acquire them.

It was a good question with a clear-cut answer. Facebook’s copy-and-crush approach has been well documented for years, and Ms. Jayapal brought even more receipts — previously undisclosed messages in which Mr. Zuckerberg issued thinly veiled threats to Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Instagram, about what would happen to his company if he refused to sell. 

An honest Mr. Zuckerberg might have replied, “Yes, Congresswoman, like most successful tech companies, we acquire potential competitors all the time, and copy the ones we can’t buy. That’s how we’ve avoided going extinct like MySpace or Friendster, and we’re about to do it again with Instagram Reels, our new TikTok clone.” That would have been an illuminating answer, and one that could have let lawmakers in on the kill-or-be-killed ethos of Silicon Valley. Instead, he dodged and weaved, trying to explain away the emails without admitting the obvious.

He did the same thing when Representative Hank Johnson, Democrat of Georgia, pressed him for answers about Facebook Research — an app that was used to snoop on users’ smartphone usage and give Facebook detailed data about its competitors. Mr. Zuckerberg initially said he wasn’t familiar with the app, even though Apple’s decision to bar it from its App Store nearly caused a meltdown at his company last year. (He later said he misspoke, and that he remembered it.)

The result was a hearing that, at times, felt less like a reckoning than an attempted gaslighting — a group of savvy executives trying to convince lawmakers that the evidence that their yearslong antitrust investigation had dug up wasn’t really evidence of anything.

At one point, Mr. Bezos was asked about a recent Wall Street Journal report that Amazon had set up a venture capital fund to invest in start-ups, only to then introduce its own versions of those start-ups’ products.

“I don’t know the specifics of that situation,” Mr. Bezos replied."

To prepare for the hearing, lawmakers obtained solid evidence of activities that may violate antitrust law. Because of that, the PD shields the CEOs raised were not very convincing. The NYT argues that the CEOs are not "sloppy or forgetful." The CEOs PD performance was not credible. The hearings indicate that the beginning of accountability for the abuses that tech giants have been getting  away with for years. The PD shield seems to be crumbling.

The morality of PD in situations like this is obvious, i.e., it is immoral when used to hide crimes. It hides and protects far too many white collar crimes and criminals.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, who often went without a mask, tests positive for the coronavirus

WASHINGTON — Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, who has refused to wear a mask, tested positive for the coronavirus Wednesday shortly before he was expected to travel with President Donald Trump to Texas.
Gohmert, 66, said he tested positive during the routine screening at the White House prior to boarding Air Force One and blamed his infection on the fact that he had begun to wear a mask more frequently in recent days.

News that the Texas Republican contracted the coronavirus sent lawmakers scrambling to account for Gohmert's whereabouts in the Capitol in the days leading up to his positive test. It also reignited conversations about whether lawmakers, many of whom travel to Washington from all around the country and tend to be in vulnerable age groups, were taking appropriate precautions to prevent an outbreak on Capitol Hill.

Gohmert attended Attorney General William Barr’s hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, sitting for hours in a hearing room with dozens of other lawmakers. Gohmert, along with other Republicans, was seen at times during the day without a mask.

In an interview with a local Texas news station Wednesday morning after learning he was infected, Gohmert said it was "ironic" that he tested positive "because a lot of people have made a big deal out of my not wearing a mask a whole lot, but in the last week or two I have worn a mask more than I have in the whole last four months.”

“I can't help but wonder if by keeping a mask on and keeping it in place, if I might have put some germs, some of the virus on the mask and breathed it in," he said.

Gohmert appeared to be dialing into the interview from his Capitol Hill office, where many lawmakers and staffers were working Wednesday. It is unclear why he went back to the Hill, where social distancing can be difficult, after testing positive.

In a statement he posted to Twitter, Gohmert said he would be "very, very careful" to make sure he did not give the coronavirus to anyone and referred to it as “the Wuhan virus,” a phrase that has been associated with a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans.

Gohmert was seen standing in proximity to Barr in the Capitol hallway Tuesday while neither he nor Barr wore a mask. His chief of staff, Connie Hair, tweeted Wednesday that "he wore a mask at the hearing, unless he was speaking," and suggested, as Gohmert did, that fiddling with the mask could have been what led to infection.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec confirmed reports that Barr took a coronavirus test Wednesday after it was revealed Gohmert had tested positive. Kupec did not immediately respond when asked whether Barr had received the test results.

Rep. Granger Kay Granger, also a Texas Republican, said she was seated next to Gohmert on a flight from Texas on Sunday evening and would self-quarantine at the direction of the Congress's attending physician. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., said he would also self-quarantine after attending a hearing of the Natural Resources Committee with Gohmert on Tuesday.

It is unclear when an infected person becomes contagious. The World Health Organization has said that people who have not developed symptoms can pass the virus to others, but more research is needed to understand how frequently that occurs.

Gohmert told CNN in June that he was not wearing a mask because he was tested regularly for the coronavirus, but that he would wear one if he tested positive.

"I don't have the coronavirus, turns out as of yesterday I've never had it," he said. "But if I get it, you'll never see me without a mask."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people wear a mask when in public, regardless of whether they have tested positive or negative for the coronavirus. The CDC says that masks are critical to slowing the spread of the coronavirus, especially in cases where an infected person does not have symptoms and is unaware that they could make others sick.

“If you test positive or negative for COVID-19 on a viral or an antibody test, you still should take preventive measures to protect yourself and others,” the CDC website says.

Gohmert was potentially exposed to the coronavirus after he attended the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in February. Gohmert tweeted at the time that a CDC physician had cleared him to return to work in Washington after assessing his situation.

Multiple lawmakers have tested positive for the coronavirus since the outbreak hit the U.S. earlier this year, and many others have self-quarantined after potential exposure. Reps. Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Fla., Neal Dunn, R-Fla., Morgan Griffith, R-Va., Mike Kelly, R-Pa., Ben McAdams, D-Utah, Joe Cunningham, D-S.C., and Tom Rice, R-S.C., have tested positive for the virus. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has also tested positive.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., has said that he and his wife had tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, and Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., also said he had tested positive for the antibodies.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in response to the news on Gohmert that she was “so sorry” for the lawmaker. “But I’m also sorry for my members, who are concerned because he has been showing up at meetings without a mask and making a thing of it,” she said.

When asked about Gohmert, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said he was “concerned about the irresponsible behavior of many of the Republicans who have chosen to consistently flout well-established public health guidance perhaps out of fealty to their boss, Donald Trump, who is the head of the anti-mask movement in America.”

Congress declined the White House's offer to provide lawmakers with rapid coronavirus testing capabilities earlier this year.



https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/newspolitics/rep-louie-gohmert-who-often-went-without-a-mask-tests-positive-for-the-coronavirus/ar-BB17kEy2?li=AAggNb9&ocid=mailsignout

Trump Tests the Idea of Delaying the November Election

A Washington Post article published today, Trump floats idea of delaying the November election, a power granted Congress, as he ramps up attacks on voting by mail, comments:

President Trump on Thursday floated the prospect of delaying the November election, as he ramped up his attacks on mail-in voting, claiming without evidence that its widespread use would be a “catastrophic disaster” that could lead to fraudulent results.

“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” Trump tweeted. “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”

WaPO goes on to point out that Constitution gives congress the power to regulate the “time, place and manner” of elections. Only congress can change that. The constitution does not grant the president any power to change anything about elections. The constitution also specifies that a president’s term ends on Jan. 20 in the year after a presidential election, i.e., Jan. 20, 2021 in this case.

The president was unclear about how the election would be moved, either by congress according to the constitution or by unconstitutional executive order. If by congress, the chance of that happening is nil. If by executive order, the US would enter a period of intensified constitutional crisis relative to what it is now.

As usual, the idea was floated in a Tweet. The tweet came after a government report showed the U.S. economy shrank 9.5% from April through June. That is the largest quarterly decline since data began to be published by the government 70 years ago.

 

Given the president's bitter animosity to voting by mail (70 attacks since late March), it is reasonable to assume that he will intensify his efforts to throw the election into chaos in any ways he can. By doing that he can create false grounds to attack the legitimacy of the outcome if he loses. 

This election is probably going to be ugly and messy.

“Damn those negative emotions,” she said angrily.

Emotions can be real killers, sometimes literally.  We all have them and some of us are in much better control of our emotions than others.  I’d say the level of control depends on how one is wired. Some have pretty short fuses.  Others, it takes some serious doing to get them all riled up to the point of finally reacting negatively.  It’s all in the person.

Where do emotions come from?  What is their ultimate source?  Does it go deeper than our wiring?

Just to take a trip down Philosophical Lane, according to the theists, God is the fundamental source of who we are as a species, and further that humanity was created in “His” image.  Atheists would, of course, disagree.  But no matter your religion/non-religion, we all know of the God creation narrative.  And the bigger, overarching idea of “God the Entity” is as ubiquitous and cross-cultural as the oxygen we collectively breathe.

Whether you’re a denying agnostic atheist like me, a practicing theist of whatever stripe, or somewhere in-between, the idea of God is universally known.  And the going (common) idea is that God (e.g., First Cause) made us who and what we are; whether crawling up from the evolutionary primordial slime, or as a full-blown, packaged and ready-to-go human being.  (Work with me here on this, hardcore atheists/theists. This is not yet the question. ;)

Sooo, back to our emotions, that got me fantasizing and thinking about how great it would be to be able to “play God” and wipe out all those nasty emotions.  So here it is… your opportunity to play the role of God:

For argument’s sake, you, as God, get to un-contaminate humankind with one negative emotion.  You only get to pick ONE, that’s the caveat.  So which one would it be?  Would it be, for example, greed, hatred, jealousy, anger, envy, other?  Is there one overarching negative emotion that would “take care” of the others, all in one fell swoop?

Your challenge: Play along with this hypothetical.  What emotion, as God, would you fix/undo?

Thanks for posting and recommending.

Evidence That HHS is Corrupting COVID-19 Data for Political Reasons

Pillars of Creation in the Crab Nebula

The 24 minute video below describes how a scientist (astrophysicist), Jeff Hester, who is not an expert in infectious diseases or epidemiology analyzes the CODIV-19 data coming from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) up until July 16, 2020 and then by the HHS (Health and Human Services) thereafter.

Hester has peer-reviewed publications, e.g., this one about the Crab Nebula. He worked on the team that helped repair the Hubble space telescope. He was a tenured professor at Arizona State University. He is now a public speaker, 'Thought Partner' (whatever that is) and whatnot.

The reason Hester focused on July 16 is that it is the date the president required COVID-19 data to be sent to HHS for analysis and reporting, thus removing the CDC as the main federal data analysis and reporting agency. At the time of the transfer, various people were suspicious that the move to HHS was for the purpose of tampering with the data for political purposes.

Based on Dr. Hester's analysis, and assuming it is correct, it looks like the president has required that HHS manipulate the data for political reasons. Two main caveats are that (1) this is one person's analysis and it has not been peer-reviewed by experts, and (2) Hester is not an expert and thus not able to assess whether there are legitimate reasons for the inflection in the data beginning on July 16 that a non-expert might not be aware of.

The reason I am posting this is because of the stark change in data that occurred starting on July 16. It is hard to understand why the data would change so drastically the day that HHS started doing the analysis and reporting. It could be that HHS is doing a different kind of analysis but if I recall correctly, HHS claimed it was doing the same analysis that CDC did (can't find a link to that).

For people who do not want to watch the video, three screen shots below summarize the gist of what his analysis shows.

Screen shots

On July 16, the US infection rate stopped increasing sharply 

and it flattened off

The curve flattening happened only in states that voted for Trump in 2016

Trump has corrupted data before and lied to try to get away with it

Thanks to Larry Motuz for bringing this video to my attention.