Last thoughts before the election

America was founded as a secular nation, 

not a Christian nation

These comments by prominent 1700s politicians are worth being aware of:

John Adams: “Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, ‘This would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it!!!’ ” "The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

Thomas Jefferson: “The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and preeminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained.” 

James Madison: “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise”. During almost 15 centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." 

Ethan Allen: “That Jesus Christ was not God is evident from his own words.” 

Benjamin Franklin: “As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion . . . has received various corruption changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho’ it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.” 

Thomas Paine: “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.”

A long-time observer comments

A NYT opinion by Paul Krugman:

Ten or 20 years ago, those of us who warned that the Republican Party was becoming increasingly extremist and anti-democracy were often dismissed as alarmists. But the alarmists have been vindicated every step of the way, from the selling of the Iraq war on false pretenses to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Indeed, these days it’s almost conventional wisdom that the G.O.P. will, if it can, turn America into something like Viktor Orban’s Hungary: a democracy on paper, but an ethnonationalist, authoritarian one-party state in practice. After all, U.S. conservatives have made no secret about viewing Hungary as a role model; they have feted Orban and featured him at their conferences. 

At this point, however, I believe that even this conventional wisdom is wrong. If America descends into one-party rule, it will be much worse, much uglier, than what we see in today’s Hungary. .... Indeed, Hungary provides a case study in how democracies can die in the 21st century.

But what strikes me, reading about Orban’s rule, is that while his regime is deeply repressive, the repression is relatively subtle. It is, as one perceptive article put it, “soft fascism,” which makes dissidents powerless via its control of the economy and the news media without beating them up or putting them in jail.

Do you think a MAGA regime, with or without Donald Trump, would be equally subtle? Listen to the speeches at any Trump rally. They’re full of vindictiveness, of promises to imprison and punish anyone — including technocrats like Anthony Fauci — the movement dislikes.

And much of the American right is sympathetic to, or at least unwilling to condemn, violence against its opponents. The Republican reaction to the attack on Paul Pelosi by a MAGA-spouting intruder was telling: Many in the party didn’t even pretend to be horrified. Instead, they peddled ugly conspiracy theories. And the rest of the party didn’t ostracize or penalize the purveyors of vile falsehoods.

In short, if MAGA wins, we’ll probably find ourselves wishing its rule was as tolerant, relatively benign and relatively nonviolent as Orban’s.

The propaganda plan

From a NYT article:

People who study disinformation are warning that far-right influencers will seize on ballot-counting delays and other routine issues as evidence of fraud.

While misinformation has played a consistent role in the midterm election season, researchers are warning that the biggest surge could come after Election Day, as far-right candidates and their supporters seize on ballot-counting delays and misleading narratives to sow doubt about the results.

Several election deniers are running in tight races where it may take days to decide the winner, likely extending the wave of misinformation, researchers warned, allowing additional theories to gain traction.

Voter suppression in Pennsylvania

WaPo writes:

Pennsylvania voters scramble to cast new ballots after GOP lawsuit

The effort spawned a two-hour line at Philadelphia City Hall, as well as anger among voters who saw it as an attempt to infringe on their rights

Six days after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court invalidated thousands of mail-in ballots in response to a Republican lawsuit, citizens in Philadelphia and other parts of this battleground state scrambled to cast replacements so their votes will be counted on Election Day.

The 2022 elections could be the last time elections in America are as free and fair as they are now. In 2022, they are less free and fair than in 2020. Republican Party political intent and its anti-democracy, anti-elections trend is already clear.

When they come a-cryin'

I believe the die is cast: the US is headed toward an authoritarian dystopia and a climate. . .um. . .let’s just say it won’t be pleasant.

Eventually, the people who allowed this to happen will become dissatisfied with it. I’m not talking the hard core neo-nazis, Proud boys, Oath-Keepers, Ron De Santis types. I’m talking the apparently clueless “independents” who voted Red because inflation is more important than democracy, and they inexplicably believe the Republicans can and will do something constructive about inflation. The people who weren't sure about the science of climate change. The people who were afraid transgender people might victimize their children, or thought brown people were stealing their jobs.

They will eventually grow weary of Republican oligarchy just as they currently appear to be weary of the hard work of democracy. They will come a-cryin’ about how bad things are. And if we are still alive and not in prison, we will want to tell them to go fuck themselves: they could have prevented this when they had the chance.

We will have to resist the temptation. Not because forgiveness is the “right” thing to do. But because we will need them. It will not be easy to dislodge the oligarchy. We’ll need all the help we can get, including the help of those who were complicit in its ascendance.

We'll have to resist the temptation to say "told you so" and instead ask each other, "What can we do now?"

(this is the opinion of Dan T and does not necessarily represent the views of dispol or any other reputable or disreputable blogger)

The Supreme Court takes up a case on a patient’s rights

Going forward, it is likely that I will be following the Supreme Court more closely as it attacks and eliminates civil liberties, regulations, consumer protections, laws, law enforcement, democracy and secularism one case at a time. 

The lawsuit the Supreme Court has just agreed to hear is centered on just one question: Should people who depend on spending programs that are at least partly funded by the federal government, e.g., Medicaid or nutrition, housing or disabilities programs, be allowed to sue states when their rights are violated?

The stakes in this case are gigantic. One expert in health care law, Jane Perkins, an attorney at the National Health Law Program, summarized the real world impact of a Supreme Court decision that says people do not have a right to sue: “The reach of an adverse decision would be catastrophic. It would leave these programs really standing out there without a true enforcement mechanism.”

The decision in this potentially critically important case will most likely come down in May or June of 2023. The case is discussed in detail by NPR.

I predict (~95% confidence level) that the court will eliminate or severely limit people’s right to sue when their rights have been violated under federal spending laws. The outcome will be (i) higher profit margins and further reduced accountability for the state-funded organizations that states use to implement federal spending, and (ii) increased abuse and deaths of people in federal spending programs. Reasons for my prediction, some of which are discussed in the NPR article:

• For decades, it was settled law that people who had rights violated could sue states to get them to enforce people’s rights under federal spending programs. 
• Because the law was thought to be settled, court agreement to hear this case shocked experts who assumed the Supreme Court would never agree to hear a case like this. That the Supreme Court agreed to hear this case is a strong signal that it will gut the rights of people to enforce their rights under affected federal spending laws. 
• Other enforcement mechanisms are ineffective, mostly enforcement by the federal government. Federal enforcement has been attacked and undermined for decades by Republicans and affected business communities, both of whom hate government, business regulations, consumer protections and the rule of law, except when it protects wealthy or powerful elites and their interests.
• Twenty-two Republican state attorney generals openly support elimination of people’s rights under these laws. They are siding with the company who violated a patient's rights, which led to the lawsuit against the state to enforce the law. The company does not want these federal laws enforced and neither do Republicans in law enforcement. The Republicans argue that these lawsuits overburden their states and just reward attorneys instead of the people in federal spending programs whose rights were violated. (Notice the incoherence in that “reasoning”? It’s blatantly irrational.)
• Maybe most importantly, the Republican Attorney Generals are arguing to expand the scope of this case from people’s right to sue under federal spending programs, to people’s right to sue for all alleged civil rights violations. For example, if a state denies a permit to protest and the affected person or group sues the state for violating their right to freedom of expression, that mechanism to defend their right to speech would be eliminated. That is how fascism works.
• The NPR article includes this comment: “But even if the agency [involved in the lawsuit] complies with the demands and withdraws its petition, legal experts say it might be too late. Now that the Supreme Court has shown interest in looking at such a sweeping question, there's a good chance it could pick up the next case that raises it.”

I’ve been warning about the Republican Party threat to democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. This is another warning. 

I don’t know the odds of this happening (maybe ~50% ?), but in this single case all of our civil liberties could wind up severely limited or eliminated because there would be no practical mechanism to impel law enforcement to enforce the laws that defend our rights. If not this case, another one that follows behind it. The radical right now sees that the Supreme Court is open to entertaining legal rights cases and cutting them back. 

Neutering our civil liberties is a core goal of the Christian nationalist elites and the brass knuckles capitalist elites that now fully control the Republican Party. Those GOP elites are hell bent on taking power from federal and state governments, the laws and the people and shifting that vast power to themselves and the business community. Those people are Christofascists, regular fascists and kleptocrats, not patriots, truth tellers or democrats. Obviously, none of those elites will admit to their real intentions or any of their attacks on democracy, the rule of law or civil liberties. That is the case even though they are now openly attacking all three and their Christofascist-fascist-kleptocrat agenda is crystal clear.

The day will come when Republican elite fascists can do their filthy work behind closed doors. They will close down means for information like this to become public. Then the fascist’s poison daggers will finally kill off all meaningful vestiges of democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. After that, people like me will be at the top of the Republican menu of things to be silenced. That day is coming.

Waddabout the rank and file?

The Republican rank and file is either unaware of most or all of the fascist elite’s agenda, or they are at least partly aware and support it. I bet that less than ~3% of the rank and file are fully aware and openly support it. Maybe ~10% are mostly aware and support it, but not openly. There is a hell of a lot of deceit going on here. 

Qs: Is the deceived and/or clueless Republican R&F not blameworthy in any of this because they are deceived or clueless? To they have any responsibility of any kind to become a little less deceived or clueless? Do average citizens in a liberal democracy have any responsibility do do anything at all, e.g., obey the rule of law or defend democracy? 

Midterms…

We’ve all been waiting for it; the newest moment of U.S. national political truth and clarification begins tomorrow.

Comments, expectations, prognostications, other??

Random thoughts: Inflation politics and radical reductionism

Recent comments here led to some things of personal interest or general political interest. Two are discussed.

Thoughts about inflation

The Republicans are beating Democrats over the head about inflation, blaming the Dems for all of it. Is that true? No. But the lie is working. Multiple factors are at play. The war in Ukraine, supply chain disruptions are still present, the ongoing aftermath of COVID, decades of idiotic energy and climate policy and big Dem spending programs are all in the mix as factors. Also in the mix is price gouging by companies. 

Common Dreams wrote this last August:

Federal data published Thursday shows that nonfinancial corporate profits in the U.S. surged to an all-time record of $2 trillion in the second quarter of 2022 as companies continued jacking up prices, pushing inflation to a 40-year high to the detriment of workers and consumers.

According to figures released by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), corporate profit margins over the past three months were the widest they've been since the 1950s as ongoing price hikes pad the bottom lines of large businesses—and eat into the paychecks of employees.

The Economic Policy Institute commented in September:

• Even under a worst-case inflation scenario where every penny in extra pay that results from moving the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2027 is passed on in the form of higher prices, the result would be a five-year stretch of inflationary pressure equal to 0.1% per year (or about 1/100th of the increase we’ve seen since 2021), then the inflationary effect would return to zero.
• Even this extremely mild inflation could be substantially blunted by other margins of adjustment to a higher minimum wage—including a retreat from today’s still sky-high profit margins. During normal times, profits account for about 13% of the price of goods and services, but since recovery from the COVID-19 recession began in the second quarter of 2020, rising profit margins have accounted for roughly 40% of the rise in prices. When these margins normalize, there will be ample room for noninflationary wage growth.

Common Dreams writes about a speech by Federal Reserve Vice Chair Lael Brainard:

While attributing high inflation to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Brainard—who was addressing a meeting of the National Association for Business Economics in Chicago—asserted that "there is ample room for margin recompression to help reduce goods inflation" in the retail economy. 

"Retail margins have increased 20% since the onset of the pandemic, roughly double the 9% increase in average hourly earnings by employees in that sector," she noted. "In the auto sector, where the real inventory-to-sales ratio is 20% below its pre-pandemic level, the retail margin for motor vehicles sold at dealerships has increased by more than 180% since February 2020, 10 times the rise in average hourly earnings within that sector."

Ample room for margin recompression? That means that companies can reduce prices without becoming unprofitable.

This is a topic that Democrats are failing to pound on every day at every opportunity. That is a failure of messaging. From the looks of it, Dem spending programs are not the only thing causing inflation.

Reductionism cannot fully explain life 

or the human mind

This topic is wonky, probably not of interest to everyone. An article that Big Think published, “More is different”: why reductionism fails at higher levels of complexity, explains why standard science so far has been unable to explain aspects of life, consciousness or unconsciousness. BT writes:

We cannot deduce laws about a higher level of complexity by starting with a lower level of complexity. Here, reductionism meets a brick wall. Key takeaways:

• Reductionism, the notion that complex systems can be studied by breaking them down into their smallest constituents, is an incredibly successful scientific tool.
• But it is severely limited as we try to explain the organization of complex states of matter.
• “More is different” means that as assemblies of matter grow larger, new laws come into play that are not derivable from the laws that describe lower levels of organization.

One of the greatest ideas of all time is reductionism, the notion that every system, no matter how complex, can be understood in terms of the behavior of its basic constituents. Reductionism has its roots in ancient Greece, when Leucippus and Democritus, in about 400 BC, proposed that everything is composed of “atoms,” which in Greek means “that which cannot be cut.” So, atoms came to signify the smallest constituents of matter, even though what we understand by “smallest” has drastically changed in time.

Radical reductionism

The more radical view of reductionism claims that all behaviors, from elementary particles to the human brain, spring from bits of matter with interactions described by a few fundamental physical laws. The corollary is that if we uncover these laws at the most basic level, we will be able to extrapolate to higher and higher levels of organizational complexity.

Of course, most reductionists know, or should know, that this kind of statement is more faith-based than scientific. In practice, this extrapolation is impossible: studying how quarks and electrons behave won’t help us understand how a uranium nucleus behaves, much less genetic reproduction or how the brain works. Hard-core reductionists would stake their position as a matter of principle, a statement of what they believe is the final goal of fundamental science — namely, the discovery of the symmetries and laws that dictate (I would say “describe” to the best of our ability) the behavior of matter at the subatomic level. But to believe that something is possible in principle is quite useless in the practice of science. The expression “fundamental science” is loaded and should be used with care.

Anyway, over the years I went from a radical reductionist to open-mindedness. An online course, Minds and Machines and a couple of commenters here beat radical reductionism out of me. I moved on to a “higher” mental state of uncertainty. 

Democracy is in deadly imminent peril

This 8 minute video is the most spot on, accurate description I am aware of about what we are facing in the 2022 elections. 

Aside from some of the jokes, none of that is hyperbole. All of it is truth.

Acknowledgment: Thanks to Susan for bringing this video to my attention.

From the too little, too late files

The Texas Observer writes:

CHRISTIANS MUST PUBLICLY DENOUNCE

CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM

A former pastor explains why more churchgoers must condemn the bigotry of Donald Trump and his supporters in order to save democracy.

My husband and I expected to be pastors until we retired, but the Christian nationalism embraced by some church members has caused us to give up on that idea.

From 2017 to 2020, we were co-pastors of a church in Amarillo. Members knew that we did not share the positive opinion of former President Donald Trump that many of them had, but we rarely discussed our political views. We left that church before the 2020 election, planning to continue our careers as pastors elsewhere.

We have since realized we cannot do that. Serving as pastors now seems incompatible with God’s call to preach and live according to the teachings of Jesus. We know that other congregations, especially in red states like Texas, are likely to include MAGA Republicans who don’t want to hear that their bigoted views go against everything Jesus taught and modeled. They can’t accept that politicians they support, like Donald Trump and Governor Greg Abbott, are endangering lives and ignoring Jesus’ call to help “the least of these.”

My husband experienced this firsthand when he led worship at a rural Texas congregation on June 19, 2022. The person reading the prayers provided by the national church left out one that recognized the Juneteenth holiday and condemned white supremacy. During his interview with the church council after worship, he asked why that prayer had been omitted. He was told that similar prayers at previous services had caused one man to walk out and say he wouldn’t be back and several others to complain. When he said he found that troubling and did not think white supremacy was part of God’s kingdom, the council president looked straight at him and said, “I disagree.”  

As you’ll see below, many Texas Christians recognize the danger Christian nationalism poses and are publicly expressing their opposition to it. Even so, far more Christians in Texas and elsewhere need to denounce Christian nationalism. The silence of those who know better not only contradicts the teachings of Jesus, but also legitimizes the cruel policies, threats, and violence.  

The term “Christian nationalism” means different things to different people. That makes it easier for political and religious leaders to falsely claim this dangerous ideology will make our country better. I am using Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry’s definition from Taking America Back For God. They spent five years analyzing data and conducting interviews about Christian nationalism in the United States, and they define the term as follows:

“Christian nationalism is a cultural framework—a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems—that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civil life.”

They emphasize that “Christianity” here means something other than its usual definition. It is not simply a religion whose adherents worship Jesus as Lord.  

Whitehead and Perry continue,“It includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism. It is as ethnic and political as it is religious.”

Even in supposedly progressive denominations like the one my husband and I belong to, there are people who embrace Christian nationalism and believe the United States needs to be reclaimed as a Christian nation. What used to be the private prejudices of some church members are now painfully obvious. Even worse, they believe God shares their bigoted views and wants everyone to be forced to live by them. State officials like Abbott seem to agree.

Those warnings speak for themselves. I’ve got nothing to add.