What Some More Trump Supporters Think

Rempel’s burned equipment in the field

The New York Times wrote this about a farmer in Nebraska, Johnathan Rempel, who put Trump flags on his farm equipment. Some moron came along and burned his equipment down. The NYT writes:

“In Mr. Rempel’s farming community of Henderson and in the countryside that makes up much of the majority Republican state of Nebraska, people say that President Trump represents their deep convictions. And those strongly held beliefs exist in a good versus evil framework in which many see issues like abortion, immigration and what is to them the trade-exploiting, virus-spreading nation of China in the starkest of terms.

“The forgotten men and women of our country,” he promised back then, “will be forgotten no longer.”

The president’s supporters in places like rural Nebraska say they feel remembered. To them, these four years have brought a sense of belonging in a country led by someone who sticks up for, and understands, their most cherished beliefs. To the more than 50 percent of Americans who disapprove of the president, Mr. Trump can represent division and dishonesty. In Henderson, and many places like it, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign pitch that he is fighting for the soul of the nation simply doesn’t resonate. People here would view its soul as being in jeopardy if he triumphed.

“I said, ‘No, that’s not possible,’” Mr. Rempel, a fourth-generation farmer, recalled, describing his disbelief that his equipment had been destroyed and his corn harvest put in jeopardy. Mr. Rempel won’t speculate on a motive for what he believes was arson; the State Fire Marshal has said only that it is investigating the incident.

“Whenever you see something on fire that was lit on purpose, or whenever you see a business destroyed, whenever you see somebody making a point through violence, it’s evil,” Mr. Rempel said. “And evil destroys.”

“I like what he stands for. He’s against abortion. He’s against evil. He’s against higher taxes,” said Pat Goossen, who owns The Petal Pusher, a flower shop on Henderson’s Main Street. “He shares my values. I don’t want higher taxes. I don’t want our jobs going out.”

Though the president has refused to denounce white supremacy, Ms. Goossen, who is white, like most of her neighbors in Henderson, said she couldn’t believe that the president was being tied to violent outbursts at rallies against racial injustice.

“Do you honestly think he caused the burning and the riots? Are you out of your ever-loving mind? He did not,” she said. “He was a victim of this just like the rest of us.”

Mr. Rempel enjoys the lonely feeling of being on the farm, where he can zone out in the cab of his combine or behind the wheel of his pickup, bouncing down gravel roads. “I love being in flyover country. I love it. I embrace it,” Mr. Rempel said, walking through his rows of corn and fretting over every bent stalk. “I lived in Omaha. Nobody knew who you were. You could do whatever you wanted. You could go steal a car and run into a post and run away and nobody cares.” Rural life, he said, offers accountability among people who share a set of values. Being around parents, grandparents, those “who take pride in you,” is grounding. It’s something he thinks is lost in big cities.

‘Everybody wants to put people in a box so we can decide right away if we hate you. You’re a Trump supporter! You’re a Biden supporter! We hate you!’ he said. ‘We need to quit that as a country. You are who you are, and I am who I am, and I can love you even if I don’t agree with you.’” (emphasis added)

What can one say in the face of that? Politics has been weaponized by moralizing it into good vs. evil. The articulation of evil in Biden and the political opposition is fuzzy at best. Once again, this looks like another example of radical right political poison doing it’s intended job in the minds of decent people. Rempel sees rural life as a source of accountability among people who share a set of values. That implies that people in urban areas are bad or evil. Is that what rural people really believe about people in cities? Are people who work their butts off in cities and raise their families as best they can just evil slackers and freeloaders who could not care less about being good, honest or hard-working?

How can Remple love people in urban areas or one who support Biden if he sees this in terms of good vs. evil?[1] I don’t think he can.

Footnote: 

1. That is why I try hard not to slap the evil label on average people. I criticize lies, deceit, irrational emotional manipulation as immoral or, if malice is there, evil, but not most people. Trump is an exception. He is evil and dripping with malice.

Trump’s Immoral Legacy of Distrust

Flags at the D.C. Armory grounds in Washington representing those who have died of the coronavirus in the United States. The lasting effect of Mr. Trump’s relationship with the truth may be most evident in terms of the pandemic.

The New York Times writes about the president's legacy as one of significantly eroding public distrust in facts, the legitimacy of political opposition and democracy itself. Those have been among the top Trump goals from day one. Sadly, he succeeded. The NYT writes:

“Born amid made-up crowd size claims and “alternative facts,” the Trump presidency has been a factory of falsehood from the start, churning out distortions, conspiracy theories and brazen lies at an assembly-line pace that has challenged fact-checkers and defied historical analogy. 

But now, with the election two days away, the consequences of four years of fabulism are coming into focus as President Trump argues that the vote itself is inherently “rigged,” tearing at the credibility of the system. Should the contest go into extra innings through legal challenges after Tuesday, it may leave a public with little faith in the outcome — and in its own democracy.

During his final weekend of campaign rallies, Mr. Trump continued to sow doubt about the validity of the election, making clear that he would deem any outcome other than victory for him to be corrupt. At a rally in Philadelphia, which has a sizable nonwhite population and a Democratic-led government, he asserted that the city would falsify the results. “Are they going to mysteriously find more ballots” after polls close, he asked. “Strange things have been known to happen, especially in Philadelphia.”

The nightmarish scenario of widespread doubt and denial of the legitimacy of the election would cap a period in American history when truth itself has seemed at stake under a president who has strayed so far from the normal bounds that he creates what allies call his own reality. Even if the election ends with a clear victory or defeat for Mr. Trump, scholars and players alike say the very concept of public trust in an established set of facts necessary for the operation of a democratic society has eroded during his tenure with potentially long-term ramifications.  

‘You can mitigate the damage, but you can’t bring it back to 100 percent the way it was before,’ said Lee McIntyre, the author of “Post-Truth” and a philosopher at Boston University. ‘And I think that’s going to be Trump’s legacy. I think there’s going to be lingering damage to the processes by which we vet truths for decades. People are going to be saying, ‘Oh, that’s fake news.’ The confusion between skepticism and denialism, the idea that if you don’t want to believe something, you don’t have to believe it — that’s really damaging, and that’s going to last.’”

That assessment is basically correct. In my experience, most of the president’s supporters are mostly closed to accepting facts, true truths and/or sound reasoning. In particular, true truths and sound reasoning are often rejected out of hand. Unfortunately, most of his supporters cannot see this and deny it when the facts and argument is presented. 

Maybe his worst legacy boils down to this: Tribal loyalty and reality talk, and everything and everyone else walks. Tribal reality can be true, false, mixed or ambiguous, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is loyalty. The radical right has been working for decades to get the typical conservative mind to this point. They surely are not going to give up on what has finally succeeded for them. Radical right elites are on the cusp of realizing their decades-long vision of a corrupt, authoritarian, white America and culture. That vision is built mostly on lies and deceit, and thus it is built mostly on immorality.

As the NYT comments, “the very idea of truth is increasingly a fungible commodity in a political environment that seems to reward the loudest voices, not the most honest.”

My Restless, Discontented Mind

Multiple matters are on my mind before this election. Here's a couple.

The morality of the capitalist mind, and its 

intent to deceive, knowing or not

One of the things I am exposed to for hours and hours and hours is financial reporting, information and news on cable TV. If it were up to me, I would be exposed to very little of it. Maybe that mindset is a mistake. 

But once awakening to that kind of content and listening carefully for years, it is now clear that the word moral and the concept of morality is almost never used. The closest the capitalist folks ever get to is 'good' or 'bad', almost always in the context of future earnings. That now strikes me as intending to wall off broader thoughts about morality beyond the culprit(s) and heroes du jour. That is how I interpret this. My personal opinion.

What basis in logic or reason is there for that? Why would the concept of morality be walled off, even by Bloomberg? As best I can tell, people deeply involved in capitalism are all most on the same page. Capitalism, free markets and profits are sacrosanct. Social impacts are downplayed into almost non-existence. Adverse social impacts, more pollution, exploitation of poor people, etc., are almost never even mentioned, much less discussed in significant detail. The modern capitalist propaganda mirage (lie) is that business is "amoral" and thus off the table for moral consideration.

IMHO, that is a false capitalist lie and deceit propaganda tactic. That said, there is also such a thing as pure socialist, communist, fascist and/or Christian-religious propaganda. We are awash in in all of that nastiness and deceit. It is not going to go away because it is protected free speech, at least so far.

The morality of rigid political, economic and religious ideology, and their 

hidden intent to deceive and enslave

Over the years, the power of rigid ideology to corrupt and deceive minds, societies and governments has become clearer and clearer. Ideology tends to kill acceptance of, real facts, true truths and sound reasoning. Rigid and/or sacred ideology goes a long way to lead minds to reject inconvenient facts, inconvenient true truths and inconvenient sound reasoning. Al Gore was partially right to label the concept of inconvenient reality and reason as inconvenience. The rest of the right he didn't mention was that intentional deceit is immoral and unwitting deceit is ignorance.

As social and political polarization stays in place, or increases, ideological distortion and misplaced beliefs are more likely to get worse than better. The radical right has been working relentlessly for decades to get most conservative minds to where they are today. That cannot be undone in my lifetime. The problem is multigenerational. One line of thought posits that this problem could eventually lead to forever human enslavement as the power of tyrants and demagogues to deceive, divide and enslave populations increases. One source labeled that technology-enabled potential outcome as "The grim fate that could be ‘worse than extinction’." 

The question is whether societies can keep up and self-preserve against the increasing power of evil, often powered in the name of (1) sacred profit, (2) a sacred ideology, and/or (3) a sacred God.

Now, exhale

Obviously, that is all potential, not certainty. Societies can and do learn to self-defend. It is possible that on Nov. 3, Americans will reject the path we are now on. That would come in the face of millions of Americans who see the path we are now on as the road to salvation, goodness and morality, not something worse than human extinction. From what I can tell, the differing visions of reality and possible outcomes could not be much different.

The Long-Term Effects of Trump Judges

Since 2017, there has been no plausible basis to pretend that republican Supreme Court judges are impartial. All basis for that pretense is gone. GOP justices are politicians in black robes proclaiming radical right outcomes by whatever means works for them. Party loyalty and ideology trumps principle, reason and the public interest. Given that personal opinion, it is of some interest to try to gauge the situation from the point of view of how long a judge can affect the law and American society. 

Propublica analyzed the situation, and it looks like this for the Supreme Court. 

The situation is even more dire for federal appeals court judges, where Trump has also had a major impact.

ProPublica writes:

"President Donald Trump says he considers one of his greatest accomplishments to be appointing a record number of federal judges. But the tally doesn’t tell the full story. Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court and appeals courts tend to be younger than appointees by presidents going back to Richard Nixon by about four years on average. As a result, because these are lifetime appointments, they’re poised to serve for decades to come, shaping American law and politics long after Trump leaves office. Of the current nine Supreme Court justices, Amy Coney Barrett, 48, just confirmed Monday, was the second-youngest when appointed."

It looks like Trump judges are going to be plaguing American society, democracy and the rule of law for a long time to come. Even if the president is not re-elected, it is hard to see how our democracy, which is under direct attack by the radical right, can survive mostly intact in view of this harsh reality.

Regarding How Social Media Works and What It Does to the Human Mind

This 27-minute video, A Real Doctor Watches "The Social Dilemma", summarizes the key points from the longer NetFlix program The Social Dilemma. A commentator, ZDoggMD, plays key passages from The Social Dilemma and then explains them to make the points clear to his audience. 

Four key points of about five or six:

1. The real customer: "If you are not paying for the product, you are the product." People who use social media are the product being sold. Specifically, people's time and attention is sold to advertisers. The customers of social media companies are advertisers, not the millions of people who use social media. 

2. You are not paranoid, you really are being watched and watched very carefully: Social media tracks everything that people do online in great detail. All of that data is used to profile you and package your profile for sale to advertisers. The algorithms that social media use are sophisticated, powerful and used to predict with you will do next online. In time, the software will improve to the point that it will know more about you than you do, e.g., it will be able predict if you are at risk for suicide before you even know you have a problem. 

3. Social media can damage people and whole societies: Social media is intentionally designed to be addictive and vacuous to better package customers for advertisers. The rise of social media in the hands of children correlates with the rise of various kinds of damage, e.g., increased suicide, especially in teenage girls. The rise of this kind of damage to children was observed in the ~2010-2011 time period. The damage to society includes the new political polarization and accompanying hate, distrust and belief in blatant disinformation. The point is this: Polarization sells and advertisers want it for profit. That also correlates with the rise of social media. In my experience, I believe that the way social media works on the human brain, as described in the video, it causes the polarization, hate, distrust and tribal belief in disinformation.

4. Social media can be designed to be less harmful to people and societies: The owners control the product. They know exactly how and why it works, e.g., little squirts of dopamine in the brain, etc. Social media works exactly the same way a slot machine works, i.e., little squirts of dopamine reward in the brain. The science of addiction and manipulation is sophisticated and getting better all the time as the software improves. The owners are 100% aware of the damage they are causing. But in our significantly unregulated capitalist economy, profit talks and social concerns walk.

Question:

Are me or Dissident Politics a personally or socially damaging or addictive social media source?

Radical Right Activist Judges and the Farce Called Originalism

A Washington Post editorial by Fareed Zakaria describes a bizarre theory called Originalism that the radical right Supreme Court sometimes relies on to get conservative outcomes in the law. According to the late radical right Justice Antonin Scalia, that the U.S. Constitution “means today not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.” As pointed out here repeatedly, there is no way to discern “what it meant when it was adopted” because the Founders, the drafters of Constitutional Amendments, congress and the people were bitterly and hopelessly divided on what the much of the Constitution, Amendments and laws meant or should mean. The Founders were divided over whether there should even be a new constitution at all, instead of merely revised Articles of Confederation. 

The historical record is clear. Originalism is irrational because there is no basis in fact for any claim that originalism is authoritative or real for most contested issues. It exists mostly in the minds of conservative authoritarian radicals who desperately need an excuse to do and get what they want using the courts. In general, advanced democracies believe that laws are interpreted based on a combination of changing societal standards, core democratic values and when it is clear, original understanding.[1]

What Originalism delivers is what radical authoritarian conservatives want, not principled law based on defensible sound reasoning (roughly logic) or core democratic values, e.g., the right to vote. In essence, even Originalism itself is beside the point. Radical conservative outcomes is the point, regardless of what the alleged controlling legal theory is. Zakaria writes: 

“And even in the United States, liberals and conservatives alike accept important deviations from originalism. Otherwise we would still have segregated schools, prohibitions against interracial marriage and laws outlawing homosexuality — all of which were deemed unconstitutional by judges who used the 14th Amendment of the Constitution to do so, even though it cannot be plausibly claimed that was the intent of Congress when it passed that amendment.

Many conservatives have argued that originalism is the only way to ensure that judges stay restrained and modest, not imposing their views on a society that did not elect them. (Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. refers to this as calling “balls and strikes.”) And perhaps the self-styled originalists would accomplish their goal if they actually practiced what they preach. But in fact, the new breed of judicial activists seems to be abandoning the restraint that Roberts prizes and is simply seeking conservative outcomes, using whatever means necessary.

The original sin was the 2000 Supreme Court Bush v. Gore decision, when conservative justices flagrantly violated their long-espoused principles to achieve their preferred political aim. The Constitution is crystal clear that states have final authority over the selection of their electors during a presidential election. Courts had long upheld that view.

And yet, in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court shut down Florida’s recount using a tortuous and novel interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified to give equal rights to Black people in 1868. The writers of that amendment could not possibly have meant that it prohibited different counties within a state from using their own approaches to counting ballots in an election — an utterly unrelated issue and something that was widespread in 1868 when the amendment was passed.

In a brilliant podcast, “Deep Background,” Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman outlines this hypocrisy to Jeffrey Sutton, a federal appeals court judge who sees himself as a conservative originalist. Sutton’s response — to my ear — was that he believed Bush v. Gore had been wrongly decided.

And, in fact, after the ruling, judicial conservatives rarely cited or celebrated its rationale. Scalia’s response was usually three words: “Get over it” — not exactly an intellectual argument. Privately, according to Evan Thomas’s reporting, Scalia said he thought the decision was “a piece of s---.” In the most telling admission of its illogic, the majority opinion contains the remarkable guidance that the decision[2] should be viewed as a one-off and not cited as a precedent — contrary to the intended function of Supreme Court rulings.

Feldman’s podcast series — which is well worth listening to — highlights a growing divide between conservatives who viewed originalism as part of a philosophy of modesty and restraint and new activists who are untroubled by the hypocrisy and simply seek conservative outcomes. It is these activists who have been able to weaken Obamacare (clearly violating the original intent of the legislature that passed it) and invent new rights for corporations that had never before been found in the Constitution (as they did in the notorious Citizens United case).

All this might come to a head next week. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that ballots sent before the end of the election that arrive up to three days late should be counted. The Republican Party appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which still had a vacancy and deadlocked 4 to 4, with the new conservatives plus justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas expressing willingness to intervene, and the liberals, plus Roberts, acting as the voices of judicial restraint. 

On Wednesday, if Trump is ahead in Pennsylvania, the Republicans will again ask the court to shut down the vote count. This time, the court cannot deadlock since there is now a ninth justice, Amy Coney Barrett. She will have to decide whether she actually believes in the ideas she and Scalia espoused — or whether, like her mentor, when the stakes are high, she will choose power over principle.”

My bet is that the new radical conservative court will choose power over principle. Those radical judges were put there to exercise power and remake America in the self-righteous, intolerant, radical right image. They are not there to be principled or concerned with what the American people want.

Footnotes: 

1. The practice in America is called American Legal Realism. I discussed it in this book review, which included this quote from the book: 

“This is an attempt to describe generally the process of legal reasoning in the field of case law, and in the interpretation of statutes and of the Constitution. It is important that the mechanism of legal reasoning should not be concealed by its pretense. The pretense is that the law is a system of known rules applied by a judge; the pretense has long been under attack. In an important sense legal rules are never clear, and, if a rule had to be clear before it could be imposed, society would be impossible. The mechanism accepts the differences of view and ambiguities of words. It provides for the participation of the community in resolving the ambiguity by providing a forum for the discussion of policy in the gap of ambiguity. On serious controversial questions it makes it possible to take the first step in the direction of what otherwise would be forbidden ends. The mechanism is indispensable to peace in a community.”

Forbidden ends include legalized abortion, legalized same-sex marriage, legal interracial marriage and voting rights (to avoid ‘mob rule’), all of which most Americans now support. What used to be a mostly peaceful process of social progress, is now now being reversed by legal, legislative and executive coercion by the radical right. We are on the road to tyranny, kleptocracy and loss of civil liberties.

2. That source summarised the limiting of the scope of its opinion in one sentence. “Loathe to make broad precedents, the per curiam opinion limited its holding to the present case.” In other words, the Supreme Court knew its decision was, as Scalia put it, ‘a piece of s---’. Nonetheless, it did get the job done and Bush got to be president thanks to radical conservative judicial activism pretending to be authoritative and principled in the guise of originalism.