Truth Is Under Attack

A New York Times article lays out an argument that truth itself is under a major direct attack. Is the argument persuasive? The NYT writes:

“An impeachment hearing on Capitol Hill presented radically competing versions of reality. An F.B.I. inspector general report punctured longstanding conspiracy theories even as it provided ammunition for others. And a trove of documents exposed years of government deception about the war in Afghanistan. 

While truth was deemed an endangered species in the nation’s capital long before President Trump’s arrival, it has become axiomatic in the era of ‘alternative facts’ that each person or party entertains only their own preferred variant, resisting contrary information. Rarely has that been on display as starkly as on Monday, underscoring the deep distrust that many Americans harbor toward their leaders and institutions. 

‘We’re in a dangerous moment,’ said Peter Wehner, a former strategic adviser to President George W. Bush and a vocal critic of Mr. Trump. ‘The danger is people come to believe that nobody is giving them the facts and reality, and everybody can make up their own script and their own narrative.’ 

In such a situation, he added, “truth as a concept gets obliterated because people’s investment in certain narratives is so deep that facts simply won’t get in the way.” 

“The story of the past half-century is the steady degradation of trust in the institutions and gatekeepers of American life,” said Ben Domenech, the founder of The Federalist, a conservative news site. ‘Everything from politics to faith to sports has been revealed as corrupted or corruptible. And every mismanaged war, failed hurricane response, botched investigation and doping scandal furthers this view.’”

Is truth under attack from the president and his supporters? Is there equivalence or near equivalence on this matter among republicans, democrats and the business community?

Reasons to say Bah Humbug! at Christmas

Ebenezer Scrooge had it right. There is so much palaver about Christmas these days that we should just skip it altogether.

Here are the five biggest reasons why I'm over Christmas! 

In my father’s time, people from his rural village in Ireland walked to the big town for midnight mass, rain or shine.

They wore shoes, perhaps for the only time that year, determined to show the townies they were as good as them. During the day, after the simple presents, they walked to the rambling house, the one in the village where the storytelling began. It was a simple Christmas just like it should be.

Now we can hardly walk on the sidewalks here in New York so vast are the throngs seeking the bargains to give to the kids who have everything but nothing.

Did you know Christmas was on the wane before Charles Dickens reinvented it?

That’s how fake it is.

The victoriaweb.org says:

“It was 'A Christmas Carol,' by Dickens, published on December 19, 1843, that has preserved the Christmas customs of olde England and fixed our image of the holiday season as one of wind, ice, and snow without, and smoking bishop, piping hot turkey, and family cheer within. Coming from a family large but not-too-well-off, Charles Dickens presents, again and again, his idealized memory of a Christmas associated with the gathering of the family which ‘bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes.’”

The most annoying thing for me is how political the term “Merry Christmas” has become.

You can’t say Happy Holidays, including Hanukkah or Kwanza, without the religious right seeking to castrate you for being inclusive. PS, dear religious right, Jesus was Jewish last time I checked. Thanks to Fox News there was a phony war on Christmas and Donald Trump has very deliberately stated “Merry Christmas” in recent remarks.

And did you know Coca-Cola invented Santa as we know him, plump, jolly and merry?

Until 1931, Santa was often an elf or a skinny old man in a green coat. Then Coke got involved.

According to the Coca-Cola archives in 1931 the company began placing Coca-Cola ads in popular magazines. Archie Lee, the D'Arcy Advertising Agency executive working with The Coca-Cola Company, wanted the campaign to show a wholesome Santa who was both realistic and symbolic. So Coca-Cola commissioned Michigan-born illustrator Haddon Sundblom to develop advertising images using Santa Claus — showing Santa himself, not a man dressed as Santa. Not blaming Coke but the “real” Santa is as fake as a three dollar bill.

For inspiration, Sundblom turned to Clement Clark Moore's 1822 poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (commonly called "'Twas the Night Before Christmas"). Moore's description of St. Nick led to an image of a warm, friendly, pleasantly plump and human Santa. (And even though it's often said that Santa wears a red coat because red is the color of Coca-Cola, Santa appeared in a red coat before Sundblom painted him.)

Sundblom’s  Santa debuted in 1931 in Coke ads in The Saturday Evening Post and appeared regularly in that magazine, as well as in Ladies Home Journal, National Geographic, The New Yorker and others.

I also dislike how early Christmas is starting nowadays.

There are Christmas shops open all year round, and in Ireland, a major store started Santa in September. Here in America Thanksgiving gets in the way, but don’t be surprised if someone begins a campaign to move Thanksgiving to the week after July 4th in order to make more money jingle in their pockets.

So, as I say, Bah! Humbug! Boo!

Niall O'Dowd

Dec 09, 2019

https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/craic/bah-humbug-christmas

Government Lies About Afghanistan

In another deeply discouraging revelation, the Washington Post has obtained documents clearly showing that American officials were, yet again, lying to the American people about the status of the Afghanistan war. WaPo obtained the documents after a three-year legal fight under the Freedom of Information Act. This is Vietnam deja vu all over again. The WaPo writes:

A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. 

The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.

“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015.

With most speaking on the assumption that their remarks would not become public, U.S. officials acknowledged that their warfighting strategies were fatally flawed and that Washington wasted enormous sums of money trying to remake Afghanistan into a modern nation.

In her 2015 book, Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (book review here), Sarah Chayes pointed out that for years American efforts in Afghanistan were grossly ignorant of the situation there. Due to astounding US ignorance, US activities were utterly incompetent. Worse yet, at times State Department attempts at effective US policy were directly undermined by CIA activities that both negated useful action and fomented hatred of the US presence. The CIA secretly supported kleptocrats and brutal warlords, apparently in return for very little. Many ordinary Afghan people came to see the US no better than the brutal kleptocrats and murderers who ran the country.

The WaPo documents corroborate the story that Chayes figured on her own based on her personal experiences in trying to help the Afghan people.

Things like this provide good reasons to distrust the US government and its role in global affairs. This failure is bipartisan and long-running. This is another example of why I have given up on both parties and their incompetent, corrupt, self-centered two-party system. They have learned nothing from history. They afford the American people no trust or respect, keeping us in the dark and feeding us lies and BS. They operate in opacity and squander the people's wealth and blood in service to hiding the embarrassment of their own corruption and incompetence. Three presidents have failed so far, Bush, Obama and Trump. All three have failed to deliver on promises to prevail in Afghanistan.

US experts have argued that the war is lost. The end game is a desperate search for the least worst failure. No politician wants to look bad, so the end will be spun as peace with honor or some other such nonsense. The president's negotiations with the Taliban will lead to either no resolution or failure. That is despite him being self-described as the world's best negotiator.

What next?

So, what should America do? If we withdraw, people who tried to help the US to nation build will be slaughtered and women will go straight back to the dark ages. Under GOP anti-immigrant policy, we cannot allow those illegal immigrants to come here now, even if they did risk their own lives to help us. The Afghan kleptocrats we propped up and funded will quietly leave the country and live in luxury off of their stolen wealth. American taxpayers provided that wealth.

This really is the Vietnam quagmire all over again.

Happy Holidays versus Merry Christmas

This article discusses using a greeting that respects everyone instead of using one that excludes many religions

By Michael Rubino, Ph.D, MFT, Patch Mayor 

https://patch.com/california/pleasanthill/happy-holidays-versus-merry-christmas

Last year there was a big debate between people saying Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. The United States has people from various ethnic backgrounds and religions living in our Country. There are also many people who have no religious beliefs. Our Country is suppose to be the "great melting pot." Therefore, we are suppose to all live together peacefully and respectfully together.

Unfortunately, it does not appear we are living up to the goal of being the "great melting pot." We have people who are singling out certain nationalities and trying to prevent them from immigrating to the United States. We have also seen a 57% increase in crimes against people of Jewish decent. For example, last year the largest amount of Jewish people in the United States where killed at one time as they were worshiping in their Temple. This type of violence has not occurred for decades, but it is baaack. Freedom of religion is one of the core beliefs of the United States. However, it does appear that core belief is eroding and possibly disappearing.

In addition to increase discrimination towards ethnicities and religions, there is an increase in the discrimination towards people who are homosexual or identify as anything other than heterosexual. The United States Declaration of Independence states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These are the beliefs that our Country is based on and what our Country represents. It states "all men" not just Caucasian people, not just Christian people and not just people who are heterosexual.

The Declaration of Independence and Constitution assume that we may have differences in our cultures or religious beliefs, but that we can all live together peacefully and respect one another. Unfortunately, when we see a 57% rise in hate crimes towards people who are Jewish, we are not living together peacefully or respectfully.

This brings me to the debate between Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. I am a proud Italian, Catholic, American, however, my family taught me to respect people regardless of ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. Therefore, I always wish people Happy Holidays. In the United States during this time of year we celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa (I am sure there are some religious celebrations I missed) and New Years. If I am going to be respectful, Happy Holidays is the most appropriate saying not Merry Christmas. Some one may not be Christian and they may have no religious beliefs at all. However, most likely they celebrate Thanksgiving and New Years. Happy Holidays covers this without imposing my beliefs on someone else. Everyone who is Christian think about this point, what if you were not allowed to say Merry Christmas or if the entire Country acted like Christmas did not exist? How would that make you feel? You probably would not like it.

Therefore, I think we need to return to our roots: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This is a very powerful statement and in order to honor it we must respect all cultures, religions and sexual orientations. This statement is what makes the United States so different from every other country in the world. If we are going to honor our Country then Happy Holidays is the appropriate greeting during this time of year not Merry Christmas. If you are Christian it is appropriate to say in your home and at your Church not at work or out in public.

We also need to look at the amount of violence that is occurring in our Country. Besides fire drills at schools, now children are having to do mass shooting drills. Schools are actually practicing and teaching first and second graders what they need to do if there is a mass shooting at their school. Many children are frightened by these drills. They do not know if they are practice or real and they are afraid that they will be killed at school. There are a number of reasons why we have these mass killings, but the lack of respect we show to each other cannot be helping the situation. Therefore, out of respect for everyone when you are in public try using Happy Holidays. When you are at home or among family and friends use the greeting that works for your family.

Dr. Michael Rubino is a psychotherapist with over 20 years experience treating children and teenagers.

Fact Checking the President

Among modern US presidents, maybe all presidents, the president has an unprecedented record of making false and misleading statements to the public, over 13,000 as of last October 9. With that record, there is no basis for trust in anything the man says unless one knows there is truth in at least some of his assertions or fact checks and finds some truth.

The AP reports recent fact checking and that shows the president continues to make false and misleading statements to the public. He honestly has no concern for truth, facts or the fact that his statements can often easily be shown to be false. Some examples:

1. TRUMP: “The word ‘impeachment’ is a dirty word, and it’s a word that was only supposed to be used in special occasions: high crimes and misdemeanors. In this case, there was no crime whatsoever. Not even a little tiny crime. There was no crime whatsoever, and they know it. ” — remarks Wednesday with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.
THE FACTS: That’s a misrepresentation of the conditions for impeaching a president. The constitutional grounds for impeachment do not require any crime to have been committed. In setting the conditions, treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors, the Founding Fathers said that a consequential abuse of office — crime or not — was subject to the impeachment process they laid out. Months after the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers that a commonly understood crime need not be the basis of impeachment. Offenses qualifying for that step “are of a nature ... POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself,” he wrote. 

2. TRUMP: “We won, in the World Trade Organization, we won seven and a half billion dollars. We never used to win before me, because, before me, the United States was a sucker for all of these different organizations.” — remarks Tuesday with Stoltenberg.
THE FACTS: He is wildly wrong to state that the U.S. never won victories in disputes taken to the trade organization before him. The U.S. has always had a high success rate when it pursues cases against other countries at the WTO. In 2017, trade analyst Daniel Ikenson of the libertarian Cato Institute found that the U.S. won 91% of the cases it took to the Geneva-based trade monitor.

3. TRUMP: “We have a tremendous amount of captured fighters, ISIS fighters over in Syria. And, they’re all under lock and key, but many are from France, many are from Germany. Many are from U.K. They are mostly from Europe.” — remarks Tuesday with Macron.
MACRON: There are “very large number of fighters ... ISIS fighters coming from Syria, from Iraq and the region.” Those from Europe are “a tiny minority of the overall problem.”
THE FACTS: Trump is incorrect to say the Islamic State fighters who were captured and held by the Kurds in Syria are mostly from Europe. Of the more than 12,000 IS fighters in custody in Kurdish areas, only 2,500 are from outside the region of the conflict, some from Europe, some from other parts of the world. Most of the captured fighters — about 10,000 — are natives of Syria or Iraq.

Given how easy it is to fact check and find the president’s statements are often or usually false, it leads to a conclusion that the president has little or no concern for the social damage his lies cause or that his contempt for truth is poisoning other people. The president is normalizing lies, deceit and disrespect for truth and objectively true facts.

A reasonable moral judgment is that our president is deeply immoral at best. Or, is that an unreasonable moral judgment?

What if Election Interference Becomes Impossible to Trace?

The New York Times is reporting that China is interfering with upcoming elections in Taiwan. The point is to undermine Taiwanese democracy and nudge it toward dictatorship. The NYT characterizes the Chinese operation as “still largely unverified.” The NYT calls the Chinese effort “a multipronged effort to finance pro-Beijing candidates, buy off voters and sow disinformation on television channels and on the internet.”

A NYT story from a couple of weeks ago described the situation:

“A man claiming to be a disillusioned Chinese intelligence operative has told the Australian authorities that China’s military intelligence agencies were directly intervening in politics in Hong Kong and Taiwan, buying media coverage, infiltrating universities, funneling donations to favored candidates and creating thousands of social media accounts to attack Taiwan’s governing party.  

So far, some Western diplomatic officials believe the claims by an asylum seeker named Wang Liqiang to be reliable at least in part, according to two people briefed on the matter. While some of his details appeared speculative and impossible to verify, the officials were taking his claims seriously, the people said.”

This sounds very familiar because it is what has been happening in the US at least since 2014. About that time, the Russian government ramped up its endless disinformation campaign to divide Americans and prod them into irrational distrust, fear, anger, bigotry, disgust and other fact- and logic-killing emotions. Russia’s goal for the US is the same as China’s goal for Taiwan -- destroy democracy and the rule of law and replace it with corrupt tyranny and mass oppression.

A growing problem is proving the scope of Chinese and Russian involvement. As time passes, these kinds of attacks will become harder to trace and prove. Both China and Russia deny any interference in the US despite contrary evidence. There is good reason to believe that over time external enemies will become both more effective in their propaganda and harder to trace, maybe impossible.

In July of 2018, Robert Mueller indicted 12 named Russian intelligence agents as responsible for interfering with the 2016 US election. According to the NYT, the Russian effort included “phishing attacks to gain access to Democratic operatives, to money laundering, to attempts to break into state elections boards, the indictment details a vigorous and complex effort by Russia’s top military intelligence service to sabotage the campaign of Mr. Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.”

New York Times - July 13, 2018

No doubt that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was very unhappy, maybe furious, to see how much detail US intelligence could gather on his intelligence agencies and their activities. That situation will probably not be allowed to happen again without some people being shot for failing to hide well enough. Mueller’s indictment not only named names, it also specified days on which some attacks occurred and the role that the indicted officers played. For example, the Mueller indictment included this: “Defendant VIKTOR BORISOVICH NETYKSHO (HeTanmo BHKTOp Bopnconnq) was the Russian military officer in command of Unit 26165, located at 20 Komsomolskiy Prospekt, Moscow, Russia. Unit 26165 had primary responsibility for hacking the DCCC and DNC, as well as the email accounts of individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign.”

The day will probably come when it will no longer be possible to trace the origin of Russian and Chinese attacks on democracies. That day may already be here. Invisibility of attacks adds to the plausibility of the plausible deniability that China and Russia routinely deploy to try to deceive the world and their own people about how they operate and what their goals are. To the extent that China, Russia and other hostile nations are able to hide and deny their online activities, that adds to the pressure on open democracies to somehow defend themselves against the onslaught of tyrants.

It is not clear to what extent our president’s refusal to accept the reality of the situation damages American security and democracy. Given that Russia has been relentless with disinformation campaigns against the US for decades, one could credit them with some of the blame, e.g., maybe about 20%, for the rise of the anti-fact, anti-reason, pro-distrust mindset that has poisoned American conservatism and populism. And, it may be beginning to poison the rest of American society, if it hasn't already accomplished that to some extent.