Musing about facts, evidence, opinions and subject matter

Arrogance

We are experiencing a rising tide of radical right (fascist IMO) political and religious crackpottery, irrational fear and rage-mongering, lies, slanders and the like. While watching this train wreck unfold, differences between religion and politics on the one hand, and other kinds of subject matter on the other come to mind. 

Subject matter like computer science and engineering are heavily grounded in facts and empirical evidence. Logic matters. If a product fails to work properly, the people who built, use or own it usually know about the failure about the time it occurs. There is usually no argument about it. Failure is failure. In that evidence-based world, facts are usually mostly accepted. 

On the other extreme, we have politics and religion. There, facts and logic usually do not matter much or at all. Despite that, most people claim their politics is based on facts and sound reasoning. Social science research indicates that such beliefs are mostly false most of the time for most people. Human biases, emotions, morals, interests, loyalties and so forth usually push aside facts, true truths and/or sound reasoning when they are inconvenient or threatening. That's just how we evolved. Human intelligence is limited by evolution.

There are some people who are exceptionally smart in dealing with science and engineering. Elon Musk is one. In his business dealings, he usually knows what works and what fails. When some product or idea he works with fails or is false, he knows. There usually is not much to bicker about, maybe other than how to fix the problem fastest and at lowest cost.

But what happens to all that intelligence when it enters the realm of politics and/or religion? It usually decreases a hell of a lot. People like Musk aren’t much or any better than the rest of us. They revert to the mean. They can arguably be worse than average people when things such as rigid ideology, arrogance, fame and/or wealth leads them to false beliefs and rejection of what is inconvenient but true. 

It just feels so good to believe what feels good that most people cannot resist, even when what feels good is false. Two researchers described the human condition in politics like this:

“. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”

That applies to Elon Musk. Recently, Musk fell for a false crackpot conspiracy theory related to the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband. It was put out by a known source of crackpot conspiracy theories and lies. The lie was that the attack on Pelosi’s husband was a false flag operation and involved a male prostitute. Not one shred of evidence existed. No facts were involved. Just pure comforting lies. 

Musk has 100 million followers on Twitter. He tweeted that lie, but hours later deleted it. He wanted to pretend he did not make the amateur mistake he made. The damage his Tweet caused cannot be undone. He was no better than most of us. His hate of government, taxes, Democrats and love of brass knuckles capitalism made him believe lies and slanders that were obviously false but deeply comforting and satisfying.  

That is not fact or logic at work. For most people (~90% ?), that is standard human mental performance in politics. Religion is the same.[1] The other people who try to set aside the allure of deeply comforting and satisfying mirages and lies are the ones with moral courage and a solid work ethic. Politics isn’t a game or entertainment. In a democracy, it is complex, hard work. In tyrannies and theocracies, politics is a nasty game. Lazy, arrogant jackasses like Musk are clueless when they play their toxic brand of self-centered anti-democratic politics. They really think they know it all and we should listen to them. They are so wrong it is pathetic.

Footnote: 

1. To me, discussing matters of theology never made any sense. It is just not subject matter for rational discourse. It is a matter of faith, not fact or logic. Religious beliefs are mostly whatever a person, church or denomination needs them to be. What the sacred texts say to the contrary just doesn’t exist or matter for the most part. 

Conspiracy theories are a mental health crisis

No one's talking about the complex relationship between disinformation and mental health. That changes now.

(Admittedly a bit dated, 2021 article, but still relevant)


Every day, people who spend time online face a deluge of conspiracy theories, misinformation, and disinformation. Plenty of them move along, clicking past outlandish or false content that's designed to lure them in. Some, however, become ensnared for reasons experts don't fully understand. Thanks to algorithms, like the ones that drew many into QAnon, people quickly slip into dark corners of the internet and find a community of believers, or even zealots, who swear they've discovered hidden truths and forbidden knowledge.

These people might rightfully distrust government authorities, find political polarization invigorating, and search for information that confirms their own views, all of which could make them more vulnerable to falsehoods. Conventional wisdom says media literacy, fact-checking, and critical thinking skills are the best weapons against those impulses. Yet this approach rests on the dangerous assumption that people's emotional and psychological well-being has little bearing on their vulnerability to far-fetched ideas, elaborate lies, and cunning propaganda. In fact, recent research suggests that their mental health can influence what they're willing to believe.

Studies have shown that conspiracy theories appeal to people with unmet psychological needs. They crave knowledge, desire safety and security, and need to maintain positive self-esteem. Conspiracy theories, which may sometimes be true, help explain the unknown, giving people a deep sense of satisfaction. That relief, however, can be temporary. Past research shows conspiracy theories are associated with anxiety, social isolation, and negative emotions. Now a new wave of research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic suggests a plausible connection between uncertainty, anxiety, and depression and an increased likelihood of believing conspiracy theories.

Perhaps with so much beyond understanding, people looked for answers wherever such revelations might be found. Insight was plentiful on YouTube, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter, and other media platforms where grifters, hucksters, and conspiracy theorists peddled the truth as they saw it to people who wanted what few could offer: certainty. That confidence became an antidote to the misery of not knowing what might come next.

Many of those drawn into communities that trafficked in conspiracy theories also found misinformation and disinformation. The former is shared without malicious intent. The latter, according to disinformation scholar Dr. Alice Marwick, Ph.D., comprises false information, distorted stereotypes, and mischaracterizations as part of a campaign of persuasion. Disinformation can include conspiracy theories presented as fact, and those who share disinformation typically refuse to admit when they're wrong.

People who immerse themselves in this swamp of "polluted information," particularly those with a deep attachment to QAnon, have anecdotally expressed preoccupation with and distress over solving riddles and clues, waiting anxiously for predictions to come true, fractured relationships with loved ones over their beliefs, and increased isolation. If their mental health hadn't been poor prior to their involvement in these online communities, it seemed to decline the deeper they got. Their friends and family have noticed. In one subreddit dedicated to people who've lost a friend or family member to QAnon, posters frequently despair over losing their loved one to what they often describe as a cult.

MORE:

https://mashable.com/article/mental-health-disinformation-conspiracy-theories-depression

Halloween monsters! 👹☠️👻

Those pesky churches: The rule of law has fallen

ProPublica writes:

Churches Are Breaking the Law by Endorsing in Elections, Experts Say. 

The IRS Looks the Other Way.

Six days before a local runoff election last year in Frisco, a prosperous and growing suburb of Dallas, Brandon Burden paced the stage of KingdomLife Church. The pastor told congregants that demonic spirits were operating through members of the City Council.

Grasping his Bible with both hands, Burden said God was working through his North Texas congregation to take the country back to its Christian roots. He lamented that he lacked jurisdiction over the state Capitol, where he had gone during the 2021 Texas legislative session to lobby for conservative priorities like expanded gun rights and a ban on abortion.

“But you know what I got jurisdiction over this morning is an election coming up on Saturday,” Burden told parishioners. “I got a candidate that God wants to win. I got a mayor that God wants to unseat. God wants to undo. God wants to shift the balance of power in our city. And I have jurisdiction over that this morning.”

What Burden said that day in May 2021 was a violation of a long-standing federal law barring churches and nonprofits from directly or indirectly participating in political campaigns, tax law experts told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Although the provision was mostly uncontroversial for decades after it passed in 1954, it has become a target for both evangelical churches and former President Donald Trump, who vowed to eliminate it.

Burden’s sermon is among those at 18 churches identified by the news organizations over the past two years that appeared to violate the Johnson Amendment, a measure named after its author, former President Lyndon B. Johnson. Some pastors have gone so far as to paint candidates they oppose as demonic.

It does not take an expert to see that churches are breaking the law. There is no “appearance” of law breaking. And, it is a hell of a lot more than just 18 churches doing this. I know that and I don't even go to church. There is actual law breaking by churches with the blessing of church leadership and God himself. As usual for law breakers like this, no law enforcement effort exists and the law breaking is thus condoned by whoever is in charge of defending the rule of law. 

What, us innocent, peace-loving Republicans 

promote violence? Never!

The NYT writes:

Pelosi, Vilified by Republicans for Years, Is a Top Target of Threats

The attack on the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which appeared to target her, came after more than a decade of Republican efforts to demonize and dehumanize the most powerful woman in Washington.

In 2006, as Nancy Pelosi was poised to become the first female speaker of the House, Republicans made a film spoof that portrayed an evil Democratic empire led by “Darth Nancy.”

In 2009, the Republican National Committee ran an advertisement featuring Ms. Pelosi’s face framed by the barrel of a gun — complete with the sound of a bullet firing as red bled down the screen — a takeoff on the James Bond film “Goldfinger” in which the woman second in line to the presidency was cast as Pussy Galore.

This year, a Republican running in the primary for Senate in Arizona aired an ad showing him in a spaghetti western-style duel with Democrats, in which he shoots at a knife-wielding, mask-wearing, bug-eyed woman labeled “Crazyface Pelosi.”

Darth Nancy? Gun points at her face? Arizona Republican freak runs ad shooting her? 

As thug, liar RNC Chairman Ronna McDaniel complained about Republicans being blamed for inciting violence “I think that’s unfair. .... It’s just unfair.” It’s a miracle Pelosi wasn’t murdered years ago by some enraged Republican freak.

Oh yeah, those innocent, peace-loving Republicans would never, ever foment violence against anyone. What a lie. It’s a whopper.

Musk’s Twitter Hellscape v. 2.0 is erupting --

Chief Twit spews crackpot conspiracy theory

then tries to hide it

WaPo writes: 

Elon Musk, who has more than 100 million followers, had owned Twitter for less than three full days when he shared a post containing misinformation — then hours later deleted it.

On Sunday, he posted a response to Hillary Clinton that “there is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story” behind the attack on Paul Pelosi in San Francisco, linking to an opinion article in the Santa Monica Observer, a site described by fact-checkers as a low-credibility source favoring the extreme right.

The article claimed without evidence that Pelosi was drunk at the time of the assault and “in a dispute with a male prostitute.” The article, which was amplified by several right-wing figures, cited no sources and attributes its contents to IMHO — internet shorthand for “in my humble opinion.”  

One commenter, Yael Eisenstat, a vice president of the Anti Defamation League and former Facebook executive, noted on Twitter that Musk seemed to be violating his own pledge to advertisers last week that the site would not become a “hellscape” under his ownership.

When the world’s richest man/owner of this very site himself traffics in conspiracy theories days after claiming to advertisers that he’s going to be a responsible leader, all I can say is: I’m not overreacting by expressing my concerns. Actions always speak louder than words. pic.twitter.com/00RhlJa4rh

— Yael Eisenstat (@YaelEisenstat) October 30, 2022

WaPo writes again:

Elon Musk and a wide range of right-wing personalities cobbled together misreporting, innuendo and outright falsehoods to amplify misinformation about last week’s violent assault on Paul Pelosi to their millions of online followers.

A forum devoted to former White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon’s right-wing radio show alerted its 78,000 subscribers to “very strange new details on Paul Pelosi attack.” Roger Stone, a longtime political consigliere to former president Donald Trump, took to the fast-growing messaging app Telegram to call the assault on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband an “alleged attack,” telling his followers that a “stench” surrounded mainstream reporting about the Friday break-in that left Pelosi, 82, hospitalized with a skull fracture and other serious injuries.

The skepticism didn’t stay in right-wing echo chambers but seeped also into the feeds of popular online personalities, including Musk, Twitter’s new owner.

These merchants of misinformation, said Carl Cameron, a former longtime Fox News political correspondent, deceive their massive audiences using rumors and lies about everything from the integrity of elections to the details of a police report.

“They are creating a dystopia wherein lying and physical violence become part of our politics,” he said.

Dinesh D’Souza, whose recent film “2000 Mules” burnished his right-wing bona fides by pushing Trump’s debunked claims of widespread voter fraud, aired falsehoods and innuendo in a viral Twitter thread suggesting the attack on Paul Pelosi was a form of intentional misrepresentation sometimes referred to as a “false flag.”

No doubt about it, Twitter was Hellscape v. 1.0. Musk is turning it into Hellscape v. 2.0. Prepare for a tidal wave of enraged Christofascist Republican lies, slanders, crackpottery and violence the likes of which decent people have not yet experienced.

There’s the roundup of some of the Halloween monsters on the loose this time around.  

News bits: Crossing the line, or already crossed?, etc.

Crossing the line?

In recent years, it seemed reasonable to think that elite Republicans would start openly attacking things like inconvenient truth, sound reasoning, democracy and civil liberties that God and/or the GOP disapproves of. Republican elites claimed they did no such thing, despite plenty of contrary evidence. That day has undeniably arrived, if it already hasn’t some years ago. Salon writes:

Michigan GOP candidate Tudor Dixon wants a new book ban: No divorced characters

With so many radical Republicans running for office across the country, there's been relatively little coverage of Tudor Dixon, the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee for governor in Michigan, who’s running against incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer. .... She has described working women as having "lonely lives," declared a 14-year-old incest victim to be a "perfect" candidate for forced childbirth, and, unsurprisingly, backs Trump's Big Lie. During her debate with Whitmer on Tuesday night, Dixon accused Michigan schools of distributing "pornographic" books.

.... a Democratic PAC called American Bridge 21st Century dug up an audio clip demonstrating how expansive Dixon's views are when it comes to controlling what students are allowed to read. In it, she proposes that books featuring divorced characters are just too spicy for most kids.

Dixon complained that her daughter had checked out a book about having “two different homes” and how the very idea of divorce “caused an unnecessary anxiety.”

“Why was this something she was just able to pick up off the shelf?” Dixon inquired. She allowed that a kid whose parents are divorcing might find some use-value in such a book, but evidently believes all other kids should be kept blissfully unaware about this widespread social reality.  

Tudor Dixon’s unwillingness to explain the reality of divorce to her daughter sounds like it’s about Dixon’s own discomfort, not about her child's best interests. Unfortunately, she’s not alone.

It’s unfair to criticize Republicans or the Republican Party

After the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband by an enraged, deranged radical right freak, RNC chairperson Ronna McDaniel complained about blaming Republicans: “I think that's unfair. I think this is a deranged individual, you can’t see people saying, ‘let’s fire Pelosi’ or ‘let’s take back the House’ is saying ‘go do violence.’ It’s just unfair.”

Unfair? No, it is not unfair. It is what one would expect. The Republican Party elites and their propaganda Leviathan have been openly arguing for violence against political opposition at least since Trump took over. Republican rhetoric goes way beyond let’s fire Pelosi or let’s take back the House. Ronna is a liar. Once again we are looking at shameless Republican lies, crackpottery and 

News digest

Republicans tone down talk of impeaching Biden

We all know that once they retake the House, Republicans want to impeach, impeach, and impeach some more. Democrats of course, not their own. The NYT writes: 

With Majority in Sight, Republicans Hush Talk of Impeaching Biden

Since the day President Biden took office, Republicans have publicly called for his impeachment, introducing more than a dozen resolutions accusing him and his top officials of high crimes and misdemeanors and running campaign ads and fund-raising appeals vowing to remove the president from office at the first opportunity.

But in the homestretch of a campaign that has brought the party tantalizingly close to winning control of Congress, top Republicans are seeking to downplay the chances that they will impeach Mr. Biden, distancing themselves from a polarizing issue that could alienate voters just as polls show the midterm elections breaking their way.  

“Joe Biden is guilty of committing high crimes and misdemeanors,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, wrote in a recent fund-raising email. “And it’s time for Congress to IMPEACH, CONVICT, and REMOVE Biden from office.”

Ms. Greene has already introduced five articles of impeachment against Mr. Biden, including one the day he took office, when she accused him of abusing his power while serving as vice president to benefit his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine.

Those sneaky Repubs. They tone down their crackpot anti-democracy and hyper-radicalism just in time for the elections to deceive as many voters as possible about what they really stand for. Moral cowards.

From the radicalization of politics files

The WaPo writes:

Attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband follows years of GOP demonizing her

In 2010, Republicans launched a “Fire Pelosi” project — complete with a bus tour, a #FIREPELOSI hashtag and images of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) engulfed in Hades-style flames — devoted to retaking the House and demoting Pelosi from her perch as speaker.

Eleven years later, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) joked that if he becomes the next leader of the House, “it will be hard not to hit” Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel.

And this year, Pelosi — who Republicans have long demonized as the face of progressive policies and who was a target of rioters during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — emerged as the top member of Congress maligned in political ads, with Republicans spending nearly $40 million on ads that mention Pelosi in the final stretch of the campaign, according to AdImpact, which tracks television and digital ad spending.  

The years of vilification culminated Friday when Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was attacked with a hammer during an early-morning break-in at the couple’s home in San Francisco by a man searching for the speaker and shouting “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” according to someone briefed on the assault.

This blind, unwarranted rage, hate and deranged violence is the new normal. The radical right Republican Party and its propaganda Leviathan mostly created it. They get ~90% of the credit if you like it, or ~90% of the blame if you don’t like it. Repubs and the radical right love it. I hate it. 

Tyranny of the minority?

Your friend and mine, Fareed Zakaria, writes in an op-ed for the WaPo:

America is now a tyranny of the minority

 

History and current polling both tell us that the House of Representatives will likely flip over to Republican control in the November midterms. What happens then? Actual governance will come to a standstill. There will be a flurry of investigations on everything from the Justice Department to Hunter Biden to the border crisis. The Jan. 6 committee will almost certainly be disbanded. And it’s not implausible to imagine that President Biden will be impeached.

The primary system American parties use to choose their candidates is extremely unusual; no other major democracy has one quite like it. Primaries ensure that the candidates chosen are selected by slivers of the parties — around 20 percent of all eligible voters. And this selection is not at all representative — these are the most intense, agitated activists, often far more extreme in their views than run-of-the-mill registered Republicans or Democrats. Add to this decades of sophisticated, computer-enabled gerrymandering, and you get extreme candidates who run in safe districts where the only threat to them is a primary candidate who is even more extreme.  

While the problem is far worse and much more dangerous on the Republican side, these pressures also affect Democrats.

It is not an accident that Germany and France have both been run largely by solid centrists in a time of populism. They have chosen to keep to the old system of democracy based on the principle of majority rule. In the United States, and to an extent in Britain, democracy has become minority rule, and the minority holding power is unrepresentative, angry and increasingly radical.

Fareed argues that democracy has become minority rule with an unrepresentative, angry and radical minority holding power. As time passes, it is now almost certain that the minority rule will be even more unrepresentative, angry and radical than it is now. The anger and radicalism have been encouraged and are now freely welling up and manifesting as violent rhetoric and sometimes behavior. 

Two common rural American delusions

Delusion 1 - Democrats hate rural America

A WaPo opinion piece comments: 

There’s a story Republicans tell about the politics of rural America, one aimed at both rural people and the rest of us. It goes like this: Those coastal urban elitist Democrats look down their noses at you, but the GOP has got your back. They hate you; we love you. They ignore you; we’re working for you. Whatever you do, don’t even think about voting for a Democrat.

That story pervades our discussion of the rural-urban divide in U.S. politics. But it’s fundamentally false. The reality is complex, but one thing you absolutely cannot say is that Democrats don’t try to help rural America. In fact, they probably work harder at it than Republicans do.

Let’s talk about just one area that has been of particular interest to Democrats, and to rural people themselves: high-speed internet access, a problem that’s addressed by hundreds of millions of dollars in funding that the Biden administration announced this week.

The problem is straightforward: The less dense an area is, the harder it is for private companies to make a profit providing internet service. Laying a mile of fiber-optic cable to reach a hundred apartment buildings is a lot more efficient than laying a mile of cable to reach one family farm.

The opinion goes on to argue that government is needed to fill the gaps. Lack of high-speed service makes it harder to start and sustain many kinds of businesses, have schools access the information students need, and so forth. Republicans are hell bent on letting regulated free markets fill the gaps. By now, it is clear that regulated free markets refuse to fill gaps unless there is enough profit in it. 

Social conscience is not part of free markets. Only profit is.

The Biden administration has a $759 million plan for new grants and loans to build rural broadband. This money comes from the infrastructure bill, but the other big spending bills President Biden signed, the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act, also had a wealth of money and programs specifically targeted to rural areas. If Republican elites were in charge, that plan would not exist. They hate government. People in rural areas would just have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Delusion 2 - All the rural problems are the Democrats’ fault

In 2016, conservative commentator Kevin Williamson wrote his intensely bitter (but in my opinion mostly accurate) analysis about the rural American situation and its radicalization. He references a once-prosperous but now poverty-stricken rural town, Garbutt NY where gypsum was once mined. His National Review article opined:  

[Williamson's friend Michael Brendan Dougherty argues that] Garbutt is Trump Country, and Dougherty, while not a wild-eyed Trumpkin, is generally sympathetic to Trump’s critique of current American economic policy, namely that international trade and immigration are dispossessing the white working class. There is not, in fact, very much evidence for those claims: Immigration does put some downward pressure on wages, but it also puts downward pressure on prices. Native-born low-skilled workers’ money income may have stagnated, but their real income — what they can buy with the money they earn — has continued to improve modestly. The main effect of new immigrants’ wage competition is felt in the wages of earlier immigrants. But the effects of immigration overall are tiny compared with the effects of factors such as health-care expenses.

Dougherty cites the work of the conservative polemicist Sam Francis, one of those old capitalism-hating conservatives who very much embraced the paterfamilias model of government. His analysis, like mine, finds emotional and policy links between the Trump movement and its earlier incarnation, the Pat Buchanan movement.

It is therefore strange to me that Dougherty so fundamentally misdiagnoses the conservative reaction to Trump: “A Trump win,” he writes in another piece, “at least temporarily threatens the conservative movement, because it threatens to expose how inessential its ideas are to holding together the party.” (Dougherty also equates the fundraising engaged in by conservative organizations with the Social Security fraud that sustains his fictional Mike, a characterization that indicates the emotional temperament at work here.) Of course there is careerism in the conservative movement, but to proceed as though it were impossible to imagine that conservatives oppose a man running (knowingly or not) on a Sam Francis platform because we oppose the loopy crackpot racist ideas of Sam Francis is to perform an intellectual disservice.

It is also immoral.

It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. It hasn’t. The white middle class may like the idea of Trump as a giant pulsing humanoid middle finger held up in the face of the Cathedral, they may sing hymns to Trump the destroyer and whisper darkly about “globalists” and — odious, stupid term — “the Establishment,” but nobody did this to them. They failed themselves.

If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that.

Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

If you want to live, get out of Garbutt.

Qs:

1. Is most of rural America mostly in the thrall of delusions, lies and/or slanders, or are the two posited delusions themselves delusions, lies and/or slanders?

2. Is there such a thing as empirically provable facts, true truths and sound reasoning, or is all of that just vaporware nonsense?

3. Is Williamson’s argument that dysfunctional, downscale rural communities deserve to die because they are economically, negative assets economically, morally and/or otherwise defensible? (That is be a hard core capitalist argument -- but there is subtlety in it -- this is not a no-brainer [hint: consider what is destroying respect for democracy and truth, and tearing American society, government and religion apart these days])