Draining the swamp - Thank you Donald Trump

[DWill]

I wonder if anyone else has become more protective of government bureaucracy and agencies such as the FBI and CIA since the election of Trump. It was not that long ago that I did not exactly champion these govt. agencies, and was receptive to the charge that our democratic republic is really quite a mess,beholden to monied interests. Since Trump's attacks on law enforcement, the Constitution, and the deep state, I react emotionally to his attempts to upend institutions and violate norms and am less critical of "the establishment" in general. This might illustrate the damage that polarization can do: shuts our minds to needed changes because defensiveness has taken over. Or am I just weird.

[geo]

. . . It would be a mistake to assume the Republicans will continue to back Trumpism after Trump leaves the scene. But its problem will continue to be reason. It was getting harder and harder to find a Republican who could hold together the coalition. Nobody in the race except Trump could appeal to the anti-reason, anti-education forces within the party, which have been more and more empowered by its pandering to special interests (although the equally Macchiavellian Ted Cruz made a good showing, being the last non-simian standing). A candidate who insists on only taking positions he or she really believes in will, like Romney, not be able to ride the anti-liberal, anti-government hostility that drives the Trump wing.

Thanks for the post. I'm not very intelligent when it comes to the Civil War, and ditto for describing the forces that have taken our two political parties on different trajectories. But I am having a hard time imagining that there will be much good will left for the GOP after Trump. Brin takes some broad strokes in his assessment that the far right wants to destroy our country. Certainly Trump cares very little for our traditions and institutions, and many so-called "conservatives" are willing to go along with him. What is most perplexing is the anti-science, anti-reason crowd. Logic and reason are the tools we have used for centuries to build societies. Why else discard these unless your goal is to destroy.

On the bright side, no one can put mimic Trump's belligerence and ignorance and get away with it. So maybe we will have some return to normality after this foray into madness.

I wonder if anyone else has become more protective of government bureaucracy and agencies such as the FBI and CIA since the election of Trump. It was not that long ago that I did not exactly champion these govt. agencies, and was receptive to the charge that our democratic republic is really quite a mess,beholden to monied interests. Since Trump's attacks on law enforcement, the Constitution, and the deep state, I react emotionally to his attempts to upend institutions and violate norms and am less critical of "the establishment" in general. This might illustrate the damage that polarization can do: shuts our minds to needed changes because defensiveness has taken over. Or am I just weird.

No, I feel the same way. My last post is probably a good example of how emotionally reactive I get sometimes. Hostility sometimes provokes an equal and opposite reaction. Many of us probably agree that we need strong borders, but Trump's harsh words towards illegal immigrants triggers a backlash. Almost everything Trump says and does makes many of us oppose him, though there are areas where we might agree. As this article says, we have rarely seen such incivility in this country, and this is probably the first time it has come from the very top.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/p ... ation.html

[Interbane]

The introspection I see here is heartwarming after browsing facebook for an hour. You guys question the knee jerk reaction against previously held beliefs resulting from Trump's policies. There is something fundamental to this introspection that I think would cure much of the divisiveness.

I'm in a community that is blood red. I know no one around me who is liberal/progressive/democratic. And the only exchange I see in the people around me is heuristic and memetic. It's all shorthand reasoning that plays on emotions. Yet everyone accepts this reasoning as legitimate. To them, it's persuasive. There is no fact-checking. There is very little introspection. The process of daily life is dominant, and politics is a topic as whimsical as the weather.

Where there are communities like this that exist, the truth will not reign. Memetics and emotion will reign, as I suspect they did in tribal days. Any alignment with truth is circumstantial. And where emotional reasoning is concerned, this same nefarious effect of polarization will keep people cemented in their beliefs. Their certainty in their beliefs will be proportional to the amount of argument they encounter. They will fulfill the prophecy of confirmation bias and search for proof to prove their opponents wrong. Meaning, whenever their beliefs are challenged, they will emotionally support their beliefs, search for confirmation on the internet, and inevitably find it. Their internal narrator will loop endlessly with arguments against the opponent, and that loop grows and strengthens the more they search the internet for reinforcement. This process has already occurred at extreme levels in many people. We are officially a polarized nation. Any education will only be viewed as argument, and rejected.

Our struggle isn't political. It has more to do with epistemology. The politics of emotion will overcome the politics of reason as long as we have unmitigated access to other people's ideas. I see no solution. Look at the posts of Mike Sheedy. Batshit crazy and backed with absolute certainty. A depressing number of people in my community are the same way.

[KindaSkolarly]

The Republican and Democratic parties serve the same interests, the interests of Washington’s entrenched power establishment. Some people call the establishment the Deep State. It’s made up of hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats, most of whom have no real party allegiance. A few are ideologues, but most only care about their paychecks and pensions. And Trump broke into their house, figuratively speaking. Naturally they don’t like it. So they’re doing everything they can to sabotage Trump, in an attempt to get him out of the house.

But it’s not working. People see the government’s propaganda arm (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times and so on) delivering “reportage” that’s 98% anti-Trump. Nobody could be THAT bad THAT much of the time. The economy improves under Trump, unemployment falls, he initiates a peace process with North Korea, he signs an Executive Order to keep immigrant families together...but still the media trashes him. Voters know bias when they see it. Sympathy (and support) for Trump is growing.

And now the Democrats are calling for harassment of and violence against anybody who isn’t anti-Trump. One of Trump’s achievements is the way that he’s gotten the Leftists to drop their mask of civility. Leftists want to control. They lost control under Trump, and now they’re frothing. I’m glad to see it. I just wish they’d look in a mirror so they could see it themselves. THEY are the face of what they THINK the Trump supporters are.

Republicans freed the blacks in the Civil War, and now it looks as if Republicans are going to have to free the Black Ops victims of the left. Most leftists in America don’t know why hatred of Trump is demanded by their handlers, but the reason is obvious--psych warfare, black ops. The left’s handlers have worked the rank and file into an unreasoning rage. Fortunately most victims are in the densely populated Democratic areas of the country, so when they finally go ballistic they shouldn't be too hard to contain. Lord knows what they’ll do when the food deliveries stop. They’ll probably be eating one another within a week. I live in a conservative farming/ranching area, so I’m expect folks around here will be praying over the dinner table for a quick resolution to the insurrection.

[Taylor]

Somehow I just deleted two hours of work

[DWill]

On the bright side, no one can put mimic Trump's belligerence and ignorance and get away with it. So maybe we will have some return to normality after this foray into madness.

We've been looking for the bright side ever since Trump came up no. 1 in the polls during primary season. He can't possibly sustain that--the other candidates will ostracize him; the party could never hand him the nomination; he doesn't stand a chance against Clinton--all these were things I confidently said. Now I just hope you're right that Trump has some peculiar, unique mojo that an acolyte can't duplicate.

No, I feel the same way. My last post is probably a good example of how emotionally reactive I get sometimes. Hostility sometimes provokes an equal and opposite reaction. Many of us probably agree that we need strong borders, but Trump's harsh words towards illegal immigrants triggers a backlash. Almost everything Trump says and does makes many of us oppose him, though there are areas where we might agree. As this article says, we have rarely seen such incivility in this country, and this is probably the first time it has come from the very top.

Immigration might be the best example for what I was trying to say. I don't want to credit Trump for anything related to border security because of his abhorrent views and actions. Yet I do recognize that we need to control the borders and help Central American countries address the problems that make so many of their citizens flee. Ii think it's bad that talking about controlling immigration can bring accusations of racism from the left side of the spectrum.

[KindaSkolarly]

[Harry Marks]

I wonder if anyone else has become more protective of government bureaucracy and agencies such as the FBI and CIA since the election of Trump.

I am still officially neutral on these agencies. But I think Dear Leader's attacks on the FBI and DOJ are symptomatic of his McCarthyist paranoia and completely amoral tribalism (can you call it "tribalism" when what is really happening is the chief of the tribe protecting his position at all costs? Maybe. I mean, look at the behavior of Devin Nunes.)

I was terrifically impressed when I learned the procedures that had been put in place by Robert Bork, of all people, after the Saturday Night Massacre to protect the Republic from another president who believed that "when the president does it, it's not against the law." And followed in the decades since, including by the somewhat amoral administration that gave us the Iran-Contra mess, John Poindexter and Oliver North.

The increasingly desperate Republican Party, trying to win with money rather than straight-up find policies that make sense to a majority and explain them, has cast aside one set of norms after another. In that sense they share the populist authoritarianism taking over in Turkey, Russia and (with al-Sisi, before the coup that ousted him) Egypt. Both the elite few, who believe they can buy the country, and the popular masses, who easily conclude that educated people will sell them out at the drop of a hat, do not trust safeguards, checks and balances, and decorum.

At the risk of psychoanalyzing from a distance, for a group too large for any generalization to be literally true (and thus at the risk of looking ridiculous), I think the fundamental fear that drives rich people to protect their money from democracy (looking at you, Richard Mellon Scaife,) shares in the fundamental fear that drives farm and small-town people to project nasty assumptions on "urban" people, and buy into them when slithering whisperers tell them all manner of threats are there.

These fears can be calmed down. Like our own representative here on BookTalk, they are always moving on to the next claim because they don't have the kind of investment in this process that they have in, say, the price of land. I am proud of Robert Mueller for playing it straight, from beginning to end, like Obama did. The only ones who fault him will be paranoids, who always move on to the next bone to pick, and shills, who always move on to the next fight to pick. Only people who truly care about good process will stay around and discuss the substance.

It was not that long ago that I did not exactly champion these govt. agencies, and was receptive to the charge that our democratic republic is really quite a mess,beholden to monied interests. Since Trump's attacks on law enforcement, the Constitution, and the deep state, I react emotionally to his attempts to upend institutions and violate norms and am less critical of "the establishment" in general. This might illustrate the damage that polarization can do: shuts our minds to needed changes because defensiveness has taken over. Or am I just weird.

While agreeing with all this, including the emotionalism of my reactions, I do think we are at the point of needing to focus on "the damage that polarization can do." I have expressed before that I have had personal experience with a narcissist (of the Personality Disorder level). The hallmark is divisiveness. The narcissist is never happier than when envisioning himself or herself as the enemy of the bad guys, which requires picking a fight with them. This is not Goebbelsian manipulation by an evil genius, it is compulsive combativeness.

Since any hint of dissent is intolerable, whether it be Nikki Haley insisting "I don't get confused" or Jeff Sessions recognizing that recusing himself was called for by the law, or Steve Mnuchin insisting that rationality be used to formulate trade policy, Dear Leader is happy to dump on any of his minions at any time, and the more publicly the better. This is classic dictatorial behavior, because what counts for a dictator is not people's trust that he will do the right thing, but people's fear that he will turn on them.

Having recently been in a position of giving advice (the uncompensated "two cents" kind) to outsiders trying to get rational behavior from a corrupt government, I kept coming back to "cause and effect." People in the grip of fear (or greed, which is a species of fear) don't want to hear about cause and effect. People who know too much about cause and effect are a potential threat, and not a trustworthy friend or ally (defined by assurance of taking your side come what may). But cause and effect has the unparalleled virtue of not moving on to the next fight. It stays around, working its work, whether we are watching it or not.

[Harry Marks]

Somehow I just deleted two hours of work

That's happened to me three times now, and I still can't bring myself to save every long post before I submit it. I am getting more careful about submitting more than once, but whatever it is I was doing wrong, I know I am bound to do it again.

There's always the option of refraining from long posts!

Nah! What fun would that be?

[Robert Tulip]

Somehow I just deleted two hours of work

That's happened to me three times now, and I still can't bring myself to save every long post before I submit it. I am getting more careful about submitting more than once, but whatever it is I was doing wrong, I know I am bound to do it again.

There's always the option of refraining from long posts!

Nah! What fun would that be?

I always write longer posts on Microsoft Word. The absence of an undo function when posting directly means it is too risky and irritating when you lose work. My other standard practice at point of posting is Control A C to copy all in case there is some glitch. I also do this while writing as my keyboard is a bit unstable and has been known to accidentally select a paragraph, and then hitting any key deletes it.