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Blog Archive
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2021
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December
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- Trump Needs an Intervention
- The Stock Crystal Ball?
- Xmas: It could be Worse
- Happy Holidays vs Merry Christmas
- Manchin Buries BBB?
- US is a Flawed Democracy?
- Extreme Weather Causation?
- History by Trump / O'Rielly?
- FOX Loses Credibility
- Trump For US Debt Default
- Democracy to End in 2024?
- School Shootings
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About Me
- John
- I am married and we have 3 adult daughters and a dog. We live in Plymouth MN. My interests are learning, communicating, home improvement projects, motorcycling, boating, and other outside activities. Thank you for reading my blog and have a great day !!!
36 comments:
I was just wondering what these two sexual abusers / harassers talk about behind the scenes. :-O
It's all about getting over stuff.
--Hiram
And yet if it was anyone else, the religious right would be out to crucify them... :-O
Imagine if a stripper said that Biden had sex with her while his wife was still nursing their baby!!!! :-O
It always amazes me how people can over look SIN, when it is convenient. :-)
It is interesting to me that Christians feel it's okay if they cheat. Lots of Christians think they are in possession of a universal truth. They think those who differ from them are wrong, and I guess, just not morally entitled to see their views prevail. At least that's one theory.
--Hiram
Originally my Mom rationalized supporting Trump by comparing him to Saul / Paul.
Now I think "fake news" and denial have taken its place.
What similarities does Trump bear to Paul? Has Trump ever worked with leather goods?
--Hiram
Well that went right past me...
From her perspective, Trump was a sinner that now is a saint.
Paul was a worker in leather, at least that's suggested in one of his letters. There is a huge amount we don't know about Paul and what he taught. His letters were mostly responses to particular problems in particular churches. If some aspect of this teaching didn't create problems, it didn't show up in his letters. Very frustrating.
==Hiram
Paul was the earliest Christian writer, or at least the earliest writer whose writings survive, and while he didn't know Jesus in life he did meet the disciples. At least that's what his letters and the book of Acts says. It's a shame that his surviving writings didn't tell us more about the life of Jesus. Oh, well.
--Hiram
But in this I am more interested in his alter ego... Saul...
"We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe,’ new study says"
https://wapo.st/3E8oKxh
"3 retired generals: The military must prepare now for a 2024 insurrection"
https://wapo.st/3yB1czI
Laurie,
Do you not remember my regular warnings about confirmation bias?
You are starting to remind me of my parents... Except totally the opposite... :-)
As I explain to them, if you want to be stressed out, angry, fearful, etc, keep reading and watching opinion pieces that stoke your emotions.
If you want to be happier and more relaxed, stick to watching and reading the news.
Confirmation bias is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their existing beliefs or hypotheses.
Confirmation bias happens when a person gives more weight to evidence that confirms their beliefs and undervalues evidence that could disprove it.
People display this bias when they gather or recall information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way.
The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs.
And maybe recite the serenity prayer a few hundred times until it sticks.
God, grant me the serenity to
accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference...
Now more seriously... And with the Serenity Prayer in mind...
What do you recommend we citizens do to change this predicted path of destructions and ruin?
Should the DEMs stop fighting against State rights to allow more flexibility by region?
If the Bible belt States do not want LGBT rights, abortion, etc. Should we let them decide?
Remember my theory... As the LEFT tries to pull us ALL into PROGRESSIVE policies... The rope grows tighter and tighter. Hopefully it does not break to destructively.
While 37% of the German people voted for Hitler, far fewer of them where members of the Nazi Party. I wonder if those Germans who warned the rest of Germany about the dangers facing them were criticized for confirmation bias. People who believe things and who put together facts and arguments in support of their belief can always be accused of having confirmation bias, but that should never be a reason for not taking their views seriously. The fact that an opinion is the result of bias has nothing to do with whether or not it is true. Calling it biased is simply a strategy for dismissing it. And as a rule, the harder people work to dismiss an opinion the greater is their fear that it is true.
--Hiram
Godwin's law, short for Godwin's law (or rule) of Nazi analogies,[1][2] is an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1.
Speaking of an obsessive focus.
How about you share where a successful economically stable country slid into a Dictatorship or Oligopoly?
This seems an excellent reason for State Rights and not having a Parliamentary form of government. The people get to decide their fate for better or worse.
I mean if 30% of citizens do not care enough to get out and vote.
They are still making a choice. :-O
Germany was among the most amazingly successful countries in Europe. The fact of it's emergence as a prosperous and technologically advanced and militarily powerful advanced country, literally out of nowhere, was by far the most destabilizing political event of the 19th and early 20th century. Willfully ignoring the history of Europe simply can, in no way, add to our understanding of the events of today.
Somewhere along the line, we persuaded ourselves that opinions that differed from our own, were the product of bias, and that biased opinions could be dismissed. Neither of those things are either true or helpful.
--Hiram
For me, Godwin's Law means not accusing people of being Nazi's, at least not in public. And I mostly don't. Trump isn't a Nazi, and I don't think I have ever accused him of being one. I have noticed that a corollary of Godwin's Law, that it should be off limits for people on the right to call people on the left Communists never seems to have caught on in our discourse. Ironically, I have on some occasions had to defend against the charge that the Nazi Party, also known as the National Socialist Party, is a leftist party because it has the world "Socialist" in it's name. The implication being, I suppose, that we on the left are the real Nazi's. It's not enough for us to be communists, I guess.
The problem with too wide an interpretation of Godwin's Law is a tendency to rule out an examination of the history of the 20th century, an extremely eventful history, from which there is much we would otherwise want to learn.
Just by chance, I happened to watch Nazi episode of the original Star Trek series last night. At one point, Spock describes Germany before the rise of Hitler as a tiny and devastated country. He missed a lot about Germany and it's impact on world history. Apparently Vulcan education has it's linits.
--Hiram
I get most of my news from the Washington Post, a far more reliable source than Fox news. This source does no propegate lies such as Trump won the election or climate change is a hoax. I just like linkiing to provocative opinion pieces.
The people quoted in the first piece seem to have good credentials of expertise to me. Do you agree the level of our democracy decreased under Trump? You just seem to dismiss alot of opinions out of hand if they challenge your world view.
Things deteriorated so dramatically under Trump, in fact, that the United States no longer technically qualifies as a democracy. Citing the Center for Systemic Peace’s “Polity” data set — the one the CIA task force has found to be most helpful in predicting instability and violence — Walter writes that the United States is now an “anocracy,” somewhere between a democracy and an autocratic state.
"U.S. democracy had received the Polity index’s top score of 10, or close to it, for much of its history. But in the five years of the Trump era, it tumbled precipitously into the anocracy zone; by the end of his presidency, the U.S. score had fallen to a 5, making the country a partial democracy for the first time since 1800. “We are no longer the world’s oldest continuous democracy,” Walter writes. “That honor is now held by Switzerland, followed by New Zealand, and then Canada. We are no longer a peer to nations like Canada, Costa Rica, and Japan, which are all rated a +10 on the Polity index.”
The generals in the other piece also seemed to have expertise and facts supporting their opinion. Is it that hard to imagine rogue members of the military. Even if the numbers are small it could cause big problems.
Maybe you could respond to the content of the essays you disagree with rather than just dismiss them.
Hiram,
Maybe you would be better off discussing the causes of WWI then.
By the time Hitler entered the scene Germany was country that had lost a war and owed a great deal of money in reparations.
Laurie,
I am having a hard time finding the report on which your opinion writer drew his conclusions from.
I gave the Economist a bunch of personal data to get this link. Not sure if it will work for you.
Here is their summary...
The global average score hit an all-time low
As recorded in the Democracy Index in recent years, democracy has not been in robust health for some time. In 2020 its strength was further tested by the outbreak of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. The average global score in the 2020 Democracy Index fell from 5.44 in 2019 to 5.37. This is by far the worst global score since the index was first produced in 2006. The 2020 result represents a significant deterioration and came about largely—but not solely—because of government-imposed restrictions on individual freedoms and civil liberties that occurred across the globe in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The deterioration in the global score in 2020 was driven by a decline in the average regional score everywhere in the world, but by especially large falls in the “authoritarian regime”-dominated regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa. Their scores declined by 0.10 and 0.09, respectively, between 2019 and 2020. Western Europe and eastern Europe both recorded a fall in their average regional scores of 0.06. The score for Asia and Australasia, the region which has made the most democratic progress during the lifetime of the Democracy Index, fell by 0.05. Latin America’s average score declined by 0.04 in 2020, marking the fifth consecutive year of regression for the region. The average score for North America fell by only 0.01, but a bigger decline of 0.04 in the US score was masked by an improvement in Canada’s score.
And more.
"US democracy under pressure from rising polarisation and declining social
cohesion. The US’s performance across several indicators changed in 2020, both for better and worse. However, the negatives outweighed the positives, and the US retained its “flawed democracy” status (see page 42). Increased political participation was the main positive: Americans have become much more engaged in politics in recent years, and several factors fuelled the continuation of this trend in 2020 including the politicisation of the coronavirus pandemic, movements to address police violence and racial injustice, and elections that attracted record voter turnout. The negatives include extremely low levels of trust in institutions and political parties, deep dysfunction in the functioning of government, increasing threats to freedom of expression, and a degree of societal polarisation that makes consensus almost impossible to achieve. Social cohesion has collapsed, and consensus has evaporated on fundamental issues—even the date of the country’s founding. The new president, Joe Biden, faces a huge challenge in bringing together a country that is deeply divided over core values.
Now you can blame that on Trump if you want, but I think that is a stretch...
Our polarization problem started 20 years ago... Unfortunately it only seems to getting worse.
I hope PEW updates this wonderful analysis soon.
I blame Trump for the big lie and the insurrection. Also, Trump and the GOP deserve a lot of blame for making it more difficult to vote and talk about ignoring election results.
For me, I date the polarization problem to Newt Gingrich's rise to power in the House of Representatives. He introduced a take no prisoners attitude to what had previously been a staid and collegial institution. Just to both sides the issue, I think many Republicans would date the polarization to confirmation hearing for Bork. One can also go back further to Watergate, particularly with respect to the campaign against the media that has come to dominate Republican politics. When I watch the documentaries about Watergate, I am struck by how the attacks against the media then, are so similar to the attacks on the media today.
--Hiram
How to Tell When Your Country Is Past the Point of No Return
it is easy to find essays lately about the demise of our democracy.
There have signs of political decay for a long time. For me, I always thought it was a bad sign that unlike every other advanced industrial nation, we didn't have national health care. What that said to me, is that we couldn't do, what every agrees needed be done. The Bork-Gingrich polarization was not good, nor was the increased use of the filibuster. The election of a minority president in 2000, was a sure indication that something was seriously wrong with our political system. What was worse was that nothing was done to correct it.
But obviously, putting Trump in office, someone who was clearly unfit for the job was a defining circumstance that our nation was failing. After that, the decline in our political processes was present for all to see.
--Hiram
Laurie,
I do not disagree that Trump was a terrible President and an awful loser.
However I blame citizens for their stupidity and becoming part of a cult.
Folks like Jerry are responsible for their own choices, beliefs, paranoia, etc.
And again you are reading opinion pieces that are based on someone's prognostication of the future. Did you even read the quotes from the source material?
"The negatives include extremely low levels of trust in institutions and political parties, deep dysfunction in the functioning of government, increasing threats to freedom of expression, and a degree of societal polarization that makes consensus almost impossible to achieve. Social cohesion has collapsed, and consensus has evaporated on fundamental issues—even the date of the country’s founding."
The Far Right are the worst of the 2, however the Far Left is certainly not innocent.
Laurie,
You are going to have to copy some of these pay wall pieces in.
I am not paying for WAPO or NYT.
Hiram,
As you know... I believe the end of the Fairness Doctrine under Reagan was the starting point. Then came Rush Limbaugh, cable news, etc. And then online news sources and social media sent it into hyperdrive. Citizens can now effectively live and never see news that challenges their warped perception of reality.
Since I challenge any mistruths posted by my FB friends, I have had at least a dozen people unfriend me. These are folks on both the Left and Right.
With this willingness to bury themselves in their echo chambers... What else can we expect except polarization, strife, etc.
Trust in our institutions is declining because in large part, many people are working to decrease it. Many people feel that a decline of trust benefits them in different ways, financially and otherwise. So they hire consultants, advertising agencies, and do various other things to persuade voters that institutions are untrustworthy. This is their right. And to some degree they are not, particularly when they elect candidates who see it as their job to make America less trustworthy.
I often see political spokespeople boast about their opponents' declining poll numbers. I find this incredibly disturbing. It seems to me that we hire people to do jobs, and to do them well, not to be popular. I would never be impressed with a politician who came to my door with the message, "Elect me, I will work to become well liked." And what's worse is that declining population in our political system isn't evidence of bad governance, it's evidence mostly of negative advertising purchased by political entities. Declining poll numbers are just another product that can be bought, just like Oreo cookies, and what's worst of all, they are bought by people who are utterly indifferent to the notion that we should be governed well.
==Hiram
Go here for my response.
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