National Populism: Another book in the wake of Trump and Brexit

The book covers much the material that other books do. There are no interviews of actual voters that voted for populists, so we are stuck with numbers and surveys.

Yes, the politicians are no longer the same as the great mass of working class voters. They are rich or educated or both. Even in the UK, the labor party has no people that used to labor.

The various points are brought about in historical context. Yes, the rule of the masses has been a concern since Greek times.

One item I distilled out of this in my mind is that the average voter has to make some connection to the candidate in some manner. Trump managed this, Hillary did not (although she certainly got all the liberals, minorities etc. She was not feared by the voters that voted her. ) Conspiracies are not covered in this book, so all that surrounding Trump and distrust of Hillary is not covered. So we are left with this bond that the voter has to a like-minded candidate. The average voter does not seem overly concerned with the campaign promises ("they sounded good") but rather a distrust of politicians in general. Distrust of the elite is covered well. Distrust of "big government" not so much.

The book lists things other than jobs and economy that are important to white nationals: community, belonging, group identity, national identity.  In the examples in the book those items come out in Europe as rejection of Islam and immigrants who do not assimilate.

A bit on the academic side as far as the writing ( I would condense it a bit), I managed to get what I needed by grasping the main topic of each chapter: Distrust, Destruction, Towards Post-Populism.

There is an index if you need to keep it for reference. It is slightly on the academic/global side, so the coverage of the Trump era and the things leading to it (McCarthyism etc.) that might be labeled populist is rather a minor topic. This has the big picture.

The analysis of the voter from a journalistic or social psychology perspective is minimal.

Another side the books fails to capture is the current attempt to sidetrack the democratic process in the US state level control of elections. It could not have been included as it happened past 2020. But the claim is about populist movements supporting democratic elections in general. That may be more of a European trend.

The book has a number of charts that show lack of trust in the government in various places with time. Other charts track the other trends.  Party affiliation decline. The one item I know personally from talking to trumpsters on message boards is again an American trend, though the EU has lost popularity too. The US white working class has some hatred of the federal government, sometimes pretty much all it does. Taxes, regulation, bureaucrats, inspections, cultural programs. Fauci. Everything. Some of these functions are supported at the state level, enough for us to function.

Wages, Biden and Inflation

The wages are going up. This is good news. You can look for the video by Robert Reich with Chipotle in the title.

What happened was not even predicted by economists. But by providing unemployment benefits for a longer period in 2020 and 2021 the government gave people a chance to look for new jobs. With a lot of businesses slowing down services due to the pandemic, they were not needed for a while. Even if they came back to a similar job the pay was raised. Now that we are ignoring the pandemic, mostly, the service jobs are back. With raised wages.

Republicans are not making note of any of that. They are reminding us retirees that there is inflation. Food costs more. The government caused it! Biden caused it!

Well, the pandemic bail outs and unemployment certainly had that effect. But it was already well on its way to the current state before January of this year. Trump and Biden could just stand on the side lines and observe it. Presidents do not cause the economy. But occasionally, with the Obama-Bush bailout and now the switching jobs phenomenon, the trend over even a half year does help us along. Hopefully we raised stagnant wages. But the CEOs, including the Chipotle CEO in Reich's video, also got raises. 

It will be curious to see the long term effect. Rarely does the life ot the one percent and the working class go up at the same time. Maybe we found a more efficient way to work, working from home, so we spend less on transportation and such? Hard to predict.

The inflation? Well, the federal reserve has a small effect. But there will be inflation. The workers will only enjoy the raised wages and income for a short while. In 5-10 years they will be exactly where they were before the pandemic. Maybe we need that free community college.

Reich talks about raising prices when the sellers/providers have control of too big a chunk of the market:

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/truth-about-inflation

Note that big business does not care about "the economy" the way politicians tell us to care, and work hard and tighten the belt. Growth and acquiring more of your sector is the goal. Inflation is irrelevant to big business. 

When Conspiracy Theories Are No Longer Theories...They Move On

I am taking a class for seniors with the "down the rabbit hole" phrase in the title. My third class on conspiracy theory was a bit off topic. We of course think of the CIA as something of a conspiracy, but the professor wrote a book on ISIS etc. outfits recruiting Somali boys in Minnesota to go fight in Somalia and Syria. The conspiracy part is not quite the same, though the recruiters had to act in secret. Standard spy/propaganda recruitment efforts. Almost the same as is used to recruit boys to the US army. The political angle is much of the weight here. You utilize culture, beliefs and even religion to convince young men, anxious to show bravery for a cause, to go fight for your side, or "democracy."

But all this is outside the attractive side of conspiracy theories on social media. The aspects of life that relate to the government, or government sponsored or supported science (vaccines, climate change) are the most popular items to toss in with details of your own. You can also track the funding of various things to locate the conspirators. From my side, all things funded by Heritage Foundation are by definition a conspiracy.

The conspiracy theory has to be at the theory level for a long time. This is when it gets followers. When Russians hacked Podesta emails and released them through Wikileaks, it was no longer a theory, it was a Democratic conspiracy. Few bothered with the details and only read tweet sized bits of the emails. They had moved on to other theories.

The political angle of the conspiracy is certainly one factor for the believers, but much more important is the outrage that someone, a secret organization or a known one (FBI/CIA) is manipulating your opinions. The secret nature produces the outrage. "Deep state" included.

I'm interested in the process that leads so many to these theories in such a devoted, deep way. All of the Trump era there were endless little details coming from Trumpsters and their beliefs. It is based on their belief in small government, but the people stay there as long as it is a smallish club, not main stream, and the theory is a a theory. I have not finished this small book. But I suspect there is a lack of education behind much of it and the skills to use the Internet (the dreaded critical thinking.).

Twilight of Democracy

The book covers Poland, the UK and Spain well. She also knows Putin's Russia better than most of us. She speaks Polish. But the US is now alien to her.

The writer associated with right wing intellectuals and wrote articles in their publications all through the Bush era. She describes a few still active people from that era such as Ingraham well. They may have had democratic ideals back then. But Trump is rather superficially covered in the US chapter and she really has no idea about Steve Bannon or talk radio hosts. Even conspiracy theorists would be new to her.

The idea that the left has equally authoritarian ideas is outdated. That went out pretty much with the Vietnam era. The left is seen as elitist now, and the Trump base of uneducated voters that choose a candidate on gut feel is never going to pick one that does not speak in their terms. That is the one thing that Trump was good at.

Foxnews

Foxnews is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who has run a lot of television in the US for the past few decades. The cable channel is provided by cable TV and satellite TV. The broadcasting giant also runs popular TV shows, such as The Simpsons and back in my day of more TV watching, House (played by Hugh Laurie). With the popular shows, people are already tuned to Fox. Fox Sports is very popular. Not exactly ESPN, but a lot of viewers. Fox has one show I currently watch Hulu.

Many rural people rely on satellite TV for news and entertainment. Foxnews and regular Fox. Older people in cities may have some sort of Internet for the most essential use, or rely on help by their relatives to deal with the things they need to sign up for. Surprisingly, some have got used to cell phones so they get a lot of family news and essential things like weather from the smart phone, but still have not got to using the Internet widely and for anything more than headline news. The map if Internet use shows may Southern and Red states with less use. Surprisingly, some Red states like Idaho and Wyoming have good coverage. There are large parts of those states with low population, so there are in fact people with no internet, but those in the small number of cities (Boise etc.) outnumber them.

States like NE, SD and Iowa as well as Texas rely heavily on satellite TV for the news feed.

So then we come to Foxnews itself. It dominates both cable and satellite TV.

Even California and the East Coast, where MSNBC and CNN dominate, can't quite outdo Fox. If you add up those two, it is roughly the equal of Foxnews. One factor involved here is that the more "college educated" people have given up on TV news. They can get news on line and then watch Netflix and Hulu entertainment with no streaming live feed for the TV.

Tucker Carlson is the most extreme of the Trump supporting hosts on Forxnews. Chris Wallace certainly isn't.  Carlson reinforces the ideas that his conspiracy theory believing audience always wanted to believe. Immigrants are bad, the election was stolen and vaccination for Covid is dangerous. In addition the wearing of masks seems to rob the viewers of "freedom." School board meetings are full of Foxnews fans complaining about the mandates. Carlson's show has the best slot in evening "news," if you can call it news, at 8PM.

It's difficult to believe that he is getting away with this. But either the audience is entertained by this or has been brain washed by Trump supporting web sites, radio and the other sources of misinformation.

Lately he has been promoting a documentary that attempts to prove that the January 6 insurrection was a false flag operation, probably planned by the FBI. it's purpose was to get rid of Trump once and for all. But the impeachment failed, so we are still stuck erasing Trump from our politics.  He will faade away after the 2022 election and then be only part of the 2024 election. Trump is torn, he does not like to lose, and he wants revenge. But he had no fun being a president other than at his rallies.

The Foxnews phenomenon has been with us as a main problem for over a decade. When we had the 2008 financial crisis, Foxnews was able to spin it as a problem of too much government, when it really was a lack of control of the financial sector. Anat Shenker-Osorio explained it in her 2012 book Don't Buy It:

When Rural America Starts to Change

 Congresswoman Boebert gave a speech and fundraiser in La Plata County, on the Southern edge of Colorado. She lost the county in 2020, 57% to 42%. These are the people that came to hear her.

They appear to be a mix of working folks and small businessmen plus some ranchers. Rural people in farming do not see any advantage to the Build back Better plans of Biden. They only care about federal support of farming, roads and transportation. The Democrats from the county would look exactly the same.

The support for Trump does not seem to be anywhere near the same as in Texas. Texas has a huge population and whites still determine the politics. In the SW, the native American population as well as Latinos have some say, as they are a good portion of the population. Here the mix is only almost 90% white. But the 10% Latino is a significant number. They have been seeking an identity for decades. Some as business owners identify as Republican. Some of those businesses are not that well to do, and it may be tough balance to work with wages, taxes and all. This is not Silicon Valley. Minimum wage is all some of them can afford for their employees. Many are probably on Obamacare as the small end of business (not national chains) provide no benefits.

So the business people are probably Republicans, but not Trumpers. They get along with their local Democrats. Durango, the major city, is a tourist attraction. Tourist towns tend to keep politics out of the public view. Mearby there is a national park, Mesa Verde.

The past of the county included mining as an industry. Land use is mainly agriculture and tourism. There is no oil here, so it is never going to look like Texas.

Biden won the county 58% to 40%. This county is more like the future of America than Texas or Iowa.

I am optimistic about the US in the next 10-20 years

On a message board I found this (abbreviated here):

Every election going forward in the foreseeable future is going to be increasingly bitter as this country rips itself apart. The 2020 election was more bitter than the 2016 election, and the 2024 will almost certainly be even more bitter, more violent, and result in increasing radicalization. 

The only exception to this rule is that I suspect mainstream Democrats to continue to pretend this isn't happening..

I agree about the possibility of violence. But not the negative trend. The democrats have no choice  but continue as is. We don't have socialism. It will be obvious when some plan for health insurance finally appears. It will be basically Obamacare with insurance companies under federal control. Or Medicare as is. The presidential candidates will be centrists. 

The long term trend, however, is towards Democrats. People will eventually either join them, if they have any practical sense, or stay in red states where the republicans have local influence but less and less federal level control. The Senate will very soon go to the democrats by 5 seats or so and the GOP is out of it for a long time.

Anti-government sentiments will be strong in states and at the grass roots level. A large part, some 20-30% of the voters, will be lost to conspiracy theories forever. That way they can blame someone else for their personal failures.

The divide between the two parties has always been there. You cannot tell from turnout numbers alone who voted. But the multicultural groups are often low income, and election day is a work day. voting by mail eased that in 2020. From this graph we can guess that when voter turnout is 5% different from the year before, there was a major issue. In 2020 it was Trump.

The turnout is much the same. I can easily guess that the Trump voters turned out in equal numbers in 2008 and 2012. They hated Obama. But we did not see them so up close and personal until Trump rallies. When they liked someone, Trump, their racism and selfish opinions came out. They do not believe in society. They are out to take care of themselves and a few of their kind. The hatred of "foreigners" was always there, we saw that from DACA. But Trump brought it into focus.

The one thing that is entirely new is the election fraud claim. That could be expected, especially with the kind of personality cult Trump has. But it is something that is NOT normal. It appears that it was still easier for Trumpsters to lose prior to Trump, but now with Trump a shadow of his one time self, denial of the loss and a desperate attempt to change the course of events. The course is the slow change in favor of Democrats by the changing population.

The one thing that WILL keep the divide going is restricting voting. But the GOP can only do this easily in red states. And the battleground states are no longer the same for 2024. I will allow Wisconsin to be still about a 50/50 and the legislature has been attempting the usual tricks. But I predict ALL the battleground states will go the same as they did for Biden. In addition we have some laws, the John Lewis one, in the works. By the end of 2021, Biden and the Senate will allow filibuster to be "carved out" for the one law.

Democrats and Republicans

I am not saying all democrats are some kind of do-gooders. In many respects in daily life people behave much the same. I ride some 5 or 10 miles each morning on our city bike trails. There are annoying dog walkers talking on phones with an ear piece that i find hard to pass. I ring my bell, nothing happens. But these are almost equally members of either party. Most people are selfish. it is in the bigger matters at city and  country level that Democrats are willing to give something away if it makes a more stable, prosperous society. If you are in business, you want customers. republicans are willing to support others in a much more limited way. Generally they do not vote for things they will never use.

On my 15 mile loop around mostly bike trails, I do have a busy intersection where people in cars show their worst behavior. I use a crosswalk at a light. There are only joggers and bikes there, no families. Big SUVs, pickups and service vans (white working class?) block my cross walk routinely. I have never had a Prius block my way. The party affiliation is obvious.

The average democrat will support electric cars, green energy and public transport. It just comes down to affordability. I cannot afford at Tesla at this time, and probably never. I will not be driving much 20 years from now. But I support the idea and the owners. The Trump voters are devoted fossil fuel people. They hate Teslas and wind turbines.

COURTS

I don't want to start a whole new column on this, but in the Eastern part of the country, up to Missouri, courts are going to a more liberal side,. Appointments of judges are discussed here:

POLITICO ARTICLE

Quotes:

On Feb. 28, 1991, 17-year-old Robert Saleem Holbrook sat before a judge in a Philadelphia courtroom waiting to learn if he would spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Thirteen months earlier, on the night of his 16th birthday, Holbrook had served as a lookout for a drug deal gone wrong that ended in the murder of one of the participants. Despite never laying a hand on the victim, Holbrook was charged with first-degree murder, a capital offense in Pennsylvania. Facing the death sentence, he entered a plea deal for general murder, hoping that the judge overseeing his case would settle on a third-degree murder charge, which carried a penalty of 10-20 years in prison. Instead, claiming that his hands were tied by mandatory sentencing guidelines, the judge found Holbrook guilty of murder in the first degree. Under Pennsylvania law, the conviction carried a punishment of life in prison without the possibility of parole.


Thirty years later, Holbrook is, to use the lingo of the criminal justice system, “decarcerated,” thanks to a 2012 decision by the United States Supreme Court that found that life sentences without the possibility of parole for minors violated the Eighth Amendment.

(snip)

In 2018, for example, a coalition of criminal justice reform groups based in Philadelphia joined forces to organize the Judge Accountability Table, an organization dedicated to educating Philadelphians about candidates in the city’s judicial races. Ahead of the Democratic primaries this past year, the group held a series of virtual public forums with candidates running for the city’s municipal and common pleas court and invited candidates to answer a public questionnaire about their judicial philosophy and approach to key issues facing the judiciary. The questionnaire included questions such as, “Do you feel that implicit bias plays a role in our courts? If so, how do you think it should be addressed?” and “What role should judges play in making courts more transparent and accessible to members of the community? What will you commit to do if elected judge?”

The Trouble With Covid Vaccinations....in General

 We are now at the same rate of Covid cases as in late January. yet nobody is socially distancing and the people in states with no mandate are without masks. The problem is, we got vaccinated.

Because the adults got vaccinated, Covid now is considered nothing more than a flu level virus. That means people are going about life completely normally. We drove through Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska. Only in Oregon was there a mask mandate indoors. But even there, no social distancing. Young people are interacting, going to concerts and so on. Some among them definitely are not vaccinated.

We will get over this thing, as the vaccines and any future versions of vaccines will make sure that deaths are down, even if you get Covid. But the price of going about business as usual is that we will have a year more of the pandemic. It will go down to Jun and July levels by winter. A slight bump for Christmas. But it will not go away. So by not cooperating (hello Trump voters!) we are just dragging this thing out. And you may still get Covid. And you will not like it.

Right Wing Populism

The Trump era brought out populist tactics. These will rule in red states for decades. There is not really any campaign strategy of "things to do" to improve our lives. Taxes and all the things the right hate are there as fundamental issues, but the focus is on a gut feel against LIBERALS and every single thing they propose. You don't have to list those things in detail, merely label them as socialism. So this is what Trump has done. He funneled all the Foxnews concepts into actual campaign slogans. Politics for the right will be very simple from now on. An example is Teddy Daniels, who is running in Pennsylvania and labels all things liberal as "elitist bullshit." All things to do with  culture, multiculture and all that are just bullshit. The hatred of thing liberal is clear from his campaign ad. You can google for it yourself.

Expanding from Teddy, there are a few things shared by all of the right wing white working class. They think they get less from government than they pay in taxes. This may be true partly, as a lot of federal tax goes to nonproductive things like the military. (Like the trillion wasted in Afghanistan). But they certainly gain a whole lot from state and local government. They also believe that OTHER people get a lot more from the government. These would be the elite, who get culture and education and even jobs from the federal government. The white working class may do too, as the roads and so on are contracted by state and federal government. But that is never considered. The other people who get "free stuff" are minorities. Foreigners also should get not a penny from the government. Life for the trumpster is a zero sum game. You might get something little from government, like roads, but mostly anything someone else gets cannot come back to you as any benefit. Or for the community. Why do they even bother with towns? Just live in a trailer in the desert.

Returning to Daniels in PA,there is a more traditional Republican in that PA number 8 district, Jim Bognet. He got 48% in 2020 and lost. The theory to win, and get all the Trump people backing, is to run the more aggressive populist. The "real" Republican in any district that was not 100% behind Trump is faced with the possibility of being "primaried" out by Trump-minded forces in the state and PACs. The new populists do not need to be real politicians. They simply need to make dog-whistle statements week after week about "open borders" and other standard themes. And then vote NO on everything the Democrats propose.

Once some of these people then get picked as candidate, the 2022 election themes will be the same as under MAGA. Now there are additional "freedoms" that will come up, conspiracy theories about vaccines and all the possible QAnon themes.

"Foreigners" are not a major problem in post pandemic USA

 

The Trump theme was that foreigners are our problem. China was a problem, all the way in China. The others were a problem here, invading our country and taking our jobs.

The numbers are now up a bit over 2020, mainly because there are now jobs again, now that the economy has largely recovered.

The Boeberts and the Marjories are screaming about the border problem because they have a few Trump era things that they need to cling to. That is how they got elected. VP Harris is to deal with the current problem, and she and the government will, but not by visiting the border. All that can be done by executive order.

And I guess they got their wish. And then they will complain anyway.

But frankly, there is nothing new to do. The methods have been the same for 20 years. Deporting is a bit of a cost. But even there, we cannot stop people traveling to the USA. We normally rely on some tourism for income. Some visitors overstay the visa and eventually are asked to leave or deported.

Problems facing the average American are now more to do with the nature of your job, leases, income, home prices, etc. Almost none of these have anything to do with Mexicans or others crossing the border. More likely you will need some of those to fix your roof when you are ready to sell your house. Also, all over the county, crime is up and gun violence is up. You don't need those guns against the illegals. They don't usually have them. It is your neighbor that has one.

Drugs? The Republicans are repeatedly blasting the "open borders" brings drugs into the US. The places where migrants cross lead to a lot of arrests, but not for drugs. The fentanyl comes in by car, and mostly with Americans. See the CATO institute story.

https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-asylum-seekers

We need to get the world working normally so we can have all our consumer goods for fixing up everything that broke in the past year. And we need China. We do not make much of the clothing and shoes and small end stuff.

Science and the non-college educated voter

Many things in the modern world bother the conservative voter. They are conservatives, so they do not adjust well to new ideas or new science. Even weights and measures have to be what they learned in school, no meters and kilograms. What they know of science is some buzz-words: hypothesis etc. But in general they don't get far with the arguments, and just turn away with suspicion. "That vaccine might kill me." Anthony Fauci has taken a lot of flak for us scientists lately.

He has to take a lot of questions about viruses and Covid. The CDC is the agency that deals with pandemics, though there are state level people that do most of the work. Read Michael Lewis's latest book The Premonition. Pandemics are tricky in that in the beginning there is virtually no information. Mandates are general, from the previous pandemic.

The vaccine end is entirely different. People in government provided funding, contracts and speeded up testing of tens of thousands of volunteers. Those volunteers, by and large, have the college degree. In college you learn to trust the experts, whether you studied science or not. In any case "the government" is not one large entity but experts that look at a smaller task and do cooperate.

But it is broader, the distrust. "Climate does not change now, because it did not before." Send your friend, or read the arguments here:

Climate Change

Fossil fuels are more complex than you thought, but there is a smoking gun. Burning that coal has an effect on carbon isotopes we find in the air.

Evolution is a "theory" so it too is suspect. On these matters the uneducated voter will send their kids to the pastor, who will explain that there may be evolution and all that, but God created life in the first place, so only minor changes tale place. The age of the earth is a more complicated issue. I think the pastor will not give a straight answere.

Amuse yourself with the Lenski affair, a debate between  professor Lenski and a creationist:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lenski_affair

The main problem with science and the public is that the public sees things as black and white. Is it good for me or bad for me? Science has lots of things that require a more lengthy, grayer answer. The explanation may be too long, and starts to sound like the side effects list that is read out at the end of every prescription drug ad. There again the public will consult a trusted expert: their doctor. It's a little better than going to the pastor. And there are indeed issues with medicine today. There are many fantastic cures, but you have to be able to understand the benefit. And cost, the doctor may not know. You will need to talk to the hospital insurance people. The statistics for cures are available, and there are books for many diseases. But even in books, ask someone for a recommendation. Most books on vaccines at Amazon are written by antivaxxers. This one is not.

Pull-up Pants for 2024 Candidate?

 Trump gave a speech. It was the usual, the election was stolen and Biden is a terrible senile president. Well, I didn't actually listen to it. We all looked at Trump. He is wearing blue pull-up pants.

Under these he wears adult diapers. 

Trump does not actually need to say anything new. He did catch the people's attention in 2016 with his simple view of the world, with China at the focus of his hate and fear.

They do not have a candidate that will get anywhere near 45% of the popular vote for 2024. There is not even a chance to have another candidate rise to the occasion. This is simply what the Republicans are stuck doing. The voters will not move on for 2022, where Mitch and pals need all the votes they can get, or 2024. There is a small chance that Trump's diapers and other oddities will start adding up by 2024. That would be fortunate for the GOP. They need to move on and and go back to traditional taxes guns and abortions issues.

The voting itself will be affected by the Republican state laws. But it will not be enough to bring Trump back. All the gains will be in the House and Senate.

The US Constitution and Voting

 The US Constitution is less than 5000 words. Some paragraphs are really tightly written, but still leave some room for interpretation.

Oxford has a number of books on US politics. This one describes the Constitution in brief terms, but does point out the founding fathers and their thinking at the time.

Link:

U-S-Constitution-Short-Introduction-Introductions-ebook/dp/B079S9M7WJ/ref=pd_sim_9/134-8765157-6751848

The senators and congressmen were to be elected by the states. That means that mainly land owning white males were to vote. The expansion to all white males took place in the 1800s.

There is some more detail on the electoral college. The purpose of that was to vote, and then vote again by whatever rules they came up with if there was no clear winner.

So the problem we have now is that the Constitution has no guarantees on the right to vote. It clearly indicates the states have the power to run elections. There is some vague wording that suggests that congress together would decide elections, such as the day it is run, but it does not seem to imply much. This is exactly what the republicans are doing now. In the few hundred years we have run elections, some rough rules have appeared, such as "no poll tax." Women, and those who are 18, have special amendments, but it has been rather seldom that any rules were added.

If Congress decided to pass laws on voting rights, gerrymandering etc., the Supreme Court can always strike them down based on state rights.

Terminology: Let us dump these terms that the Republicans have wrangled to meaningless buzz words

 We can't do much about political correctness anymore. But other terms, all related to races, popped up during the Trump presidency. The ridiculing of these terms intended to make fun of people doing these things and in the case of antifa, a label intended to make Black Lives Matter and any resistance to white supremacism equally violent to their opponent.

The whole of resisting political correctness has expanded to memes that cover Mr Potatohead, Dr Seuss etc. etc. The right really has no argument against being politically correct, it just became a nudge nudge wink wink word for them.

In the pandemic, the political correctness of wearing masks became a target as well, there just was no catchy term for it yet. "Freedom."

The teaching of our history that includes slavery also has to be white washed according to the right. It is not right for right children in school to feel guilty for slavery and the America of the 1900s up to 1960 when segregation was the rule.

The implication of all this, for Republicans, is that blacks are indeed inferior, and that all foreigners are a lower class of people. "We will take a few geniuses from India for Silicon Valley, but that's it." They can't say these out loud in public or social media, but when they talk to each other, the buzz words help imply the meaning. The Karens of the world can go about their business unchallenged that way.

KAREN:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(pejorative)

The Here and Now and the Future

              

THE HERE AND NOW

We've just had an election and departed with a near dictator (though he had the will, he did not have the skill). The foundations of our election were shaken.

The  few words there are in the constitution about elections came to a test. The founding fathers apparently did not trust us that much. There was an option in there of the lower house of Congress (very big of them to leave it to a group of politicians representing more of us, not the senate) deciding who will be president if the election was a mess. The Supreme Court really is not involved.

Following this lead giving the states great powers, Republicans in dozens of states are writing bills to stop the great masses from voting. Working class people these days, with weak unions, have to vote on a working day. It could be in their 12 hour work cycle or a 12 hour sleep cycle. Some lucky few will have a day off on Tue, but that person will be working Sat and Sun.

Other parts of the Georgia election bill put the (gerrymandered) ruling party in control of elections. No more county control, no more canvas boards with two Democrats and two Republicans to certify the election. the goal is to prevent the election from being certified when a Democrat wins.

Other than election tampering, Republicans will just refuse many measures at state level. We saw this with the pandemic. This will be the trend for the next 10-20 years if the Republican party survives. They really do not represent the country, but can rule as the minority party, or at least stop all progressive ideas.

THE FUTURE

The structure of America is such that there are many rural states. We grow a lot of the world's food, in some manner. We send soy bean animal feed to China. China has run out of land, and even more so, the successful industrial nations of South Korea and Japan. These countries and most of Europe have urban people running politics. It does not mean farmers are cut short, it just means they will get subsidies, but will have to follow liberal social ideas of city folks. City folks work as a collective for common good, whereas rural folk have a feel for community, but it is a county with a small population. They will know more of the families in the county than a city dweller of their neighbors. If the state is a red state, they have feelings of unity state wide.

The future will be somewhat more like South Korea, though never that populated. Our states will have cities of a million or more people, like Saint Louis, and the politics will slowly drift towards Democrats. The Democrats will make sure that states follow their lead in things like energy and transportation. The states will not get funding unless they approve some of these measures. Old principles on guns, abortion, religion will stay in those red states. The frustration the Trump voters had was largely to do with this trend. There was racism too, but most of them realized the trend is to go little by little to the left. So the red states will soon become centrist. We see this with places like Montana where there is one Democrat, Tester, in a red state.

I brought up South Korea, where I have visited. It has 52 million people and is about 100 000km2 in area. Both Nebraska and Kansas are just slightly smaller, in the 70-80 000 km2 range. But those states have 2 and 3 million people. You can see it will not be much different even if it were 10 million people, compared to South Korea. With mostly hilly areas, the farming is squeezed here and there along the bullet train rail lines and freeways. A city might be 600 000 people between rural areas, where the American city in the same setting would be about 200 000, with no high rise apartments. Here is a picture from a city a half hour train ride South of Seoul. I walked a mile South of the main belt line and rail line to take this photo. There are somewhere over 500 000 people there.

Hunting and Gathering in a Pandemic

 I shop at several stores, but have been avoiding my main grocery for the most part. If I go there are all, it will be before eight in the morning. Avoiding a virus requires a face mask. Mine is a KN95 that goes behind the ears, but as those ear strings often slip off, I have adjusted it with a velcro strap behind the head. I was wearing it when a granny with a slipping mask was reading cheeses in the dairy aisle. I need a quart of milk. What to do? I parked the small cart and sneaked in, grabbing the milk one handed.

There is no need to read labels in a pandemic! Time is of essence. Here I am going in to Target to get coffee filters, a pack of veggies and frozen Chinese food. I also looked at a coffee maker for 30 seconds, noting it was 99 dollars.

The frozen items in the back seat cooler (I was going for a walk next) and the clock at starting the car. It took 16 minutes. After the hand sanitizer (always in one coffee cup holder).

After the walk, a second stop at Trader Joe's. More frozen items, including what I will call fish and chips. I did read the label of the box of frozen breaded fish. Pollack. It took 14 minutes.

There Would Be No Trump Without White Christians

 The Trump phenomenon is most pronounced in rural areas. The people there are aware of the masses of people in cities, and that their problems are mostly forgotten. The farm bill is what mainly supports their income. Other services are disappearing as the population leaves. Rural Internet has yet to reach them all. Trump timed his entry into politics perfectly. The "forgotten" people are a minority, but all in all, with suburban whites a minority that can have a powerful voice through the electoral system.

I'm pointing out the Christian aspect, as this seems to unite the people. Either through actual belief, or a somewhat racist attitude, as the congregations are largely white in rural areas and small towns. If the belief is not strong, they still like to list moral rules from the Bible. The city folk either have stopped belonging to an organized church, or are actual atheists in the European style. These are educated white folks. It seems a bit of a modern trend in Europe, brought to a maximum in recent, modern states like Estonia. the small countries are still unified by language, and that too has a white cultural history.

With the likes of Marjorie Greene and Ron Johnson saying things that were not said out loud 5-6 years ago, the model laid out by Trump is now fully functional. Transgender people, men in women's bathrooms and all the rest are laid out and boldly announced. They are like stand out comedians of the olden days (Don Rickles), insulting all the groups that do not conform to white Christianity.

All these people made Trump possible. We were in a rather dangerous situation with no real leadership on the pandemic. Other than the deals made with drug companies. Even the pandemic has to be made faun of, as is a chance for BIG GOVERNMENT  to tell you how to live your lives. A woman running a restaurant in the Copper Peninsula of Michigan was telling all this to a Finnish reporter. Her business has suffered. The county gave her shut down orders after no mandates were followed. She refuses to wear a mask, and has a note from her doctor allowing her not to wear one "due to asthma." Governors in red states are pretty much resisting any efforts by Biden to take over the vaccination effort. The situation in Florida has collapsed when the Publix food store with its pharmacies failed to register people in any orderly fashion.

The CPAC convention has whipped people into a frenzy. I guess Mitch gave up on resisting Trump. It must have been clear to him that they have no other candidate. This will go on for four years. Trump supporters will not give up until they have voted for him three times, or a candidate approved by him.

The support for Trump was 55% and there were no real other candidates. Nikki Haley has no possibilities. She may emerge after 2022. but from now to the 2022 they are going to be all Trump. Mitch may yet run the senate for two years. I predict that will be the end.

The people excited by Trump, for election turnout, will lose interest in elections if Trump is not there. They will go back to local resistance and acting like the victim.

Postscript

The thing that's difficult for us nonbelievers to understand is how the Christians can be so gullible as to support Trump and believe his beliefs about government somehow align with them. Trump really can't worship anyone but himself.

The Trump In Your Closet

 Recently Politico ran an article on Nikki Haley. She is forever tied with Donald Trump. She left her job but kept in touch with her friend in the White House. 

She will not ever rid herself of Trump. But we are here in the prairie. Only one of our states had a senator vote against Trump in the impeachment, Nebraska. Senator Sasse mostly got rid of Trump right then and there.

He just got re-elected in and is therefore not running in 2024 for re-election. But he may have other ideas for 2024.

The other senator from Nebraska is more typical. She became a statewide politician rather recently, 2004. As state senator from a large part of the state in the middle, she probably got to know voters pretty well. To get elected, you have to do something in one of the hot topic Republican problems. Her Nebraska bill was on abortions. She is also involved in education and would support Betsy Voss and private schools in the Trump era. In 2012 she ran for senator and got 58% of the vote against a popular Democrat. Well, as popular as you can be in a red state. She carried exactly the same vote in 2018, but the country was in the Trump era then, so it was unlikely she would lose. Democrats were active in the election but there is always the campaign finance issue. Republicans get funds.

The next time she runs will be a presidential election, 2024. You can guarantee Republicans will show up to vote. And there are still remnants of Trump era voters to guarantee good turnout.

It was probably wise to vote to acquit Trump. She is not going to lose many votes. No Democrat will ever vote for her. Independents are now some 20%, but many are libertarians.

Ben Sasse got into the senate in 2014. He just got re-elected. He will not be in the senate race in the so far hard to imagine 2024 Presidential election year. The Republicans do not have a candidate that has the social media status that Trump had. The white working class will only vote for a candidate like that.

Sasse got 64% of the vote in 2014 against a "let's run someone" from Omaha. It was a man. OK, he had some credentials: He represented the case against the Canadian Keystone XL-Pipeline. Currently Democrats are running women if possible.

Sasse pretty much also represents everything Republican. He denies climate change, opposes abortion and Obamacare etc.  His kids are homeschooled.  I'm having a hard time finding a single liberal thing about him. He opposed measures to give state legislatures more power, selecting senators if the state wants so. He opposed term limits.

Yet he became a vocal opponent of Donald Trump. By 2026 this may be of some benefit to him, as we start finding that Trump measures did not really help Republicans in the state. The China taxes could have destroyed Nebraska agriculture, but bail outs were passed. Some farmers got the idea to blame China, based on Trump, but I feel the majority are smart enough to figure out it was a big bluff.

The truth is, Sasse wants to run for president in 2024. The break from Trump will help him a great deal there. He will need to run nationally and will carry a lot of undecided voters, the same white working class as went for Trump. His personality is a bit quirky, so he may not get far in the primary. But in Nebraska there is not much else to move up to. Governor? That is not as desired a job as senator. But at 48, all options are open. He may move up the ranks to be a secretary for a future Republican president. That then opens opportunities. If none of that works, he will fall back to trusty jobs for these kinds of mid level republicans. He will be the president of some conservative university somewhere. Or just a university with political or similar emphasis. He has a short academic career, and there one learns to be tolerant of minorities. Sasse is familiar with the educated world and does not identify with the white working class. He identifies with Nebraska Republican issues which include the usual plus rural economic issues.

Trump Impeachment

 We had hours of evidence. We had Trump defense showing minutes of film with Democrats saying the word fight. With no crowds going out to terrorize anything after they left.

But it all boils down to this.

Republican Women With Guns: Greene and Boebert

There is a trend in the Trump years to promote "patriotic" people to politics. A simple way to do that is to go for gun rights. But it would not work so well for men. A mother with a gun, that's the symbol they want to use. Lauren Boebert comes from Rifle, Colorado. The name is old, and refers to an actual rifle found there: The city of Rifle gets its name from a local story, that a trapper had once left his rifle along a creek in the region; from then on, the city has been known as Rifle. Founded by Abram Maxfield in 1882.

                                    

The county is not as Republican as the people of Rifle would make it look.

Wikipedia: Garfield County has primarily voted for Republican Party candidates in presidential elections throughout its history, with the county only failing to back the Republican candidates six times from 1912 to 2016. Although the county includes the relatively liberal city of Glenwood Springs, this is outweighed by the extremely conservative city of Rifle, as well as the nearby towns of Silt, Parachute, and Battlement Mesa. Until 2020, the most recent Democratic win was by Bill Clinton in 1992, but Republicans were held to a plurality of the county's votes in half of the six following presidential elections prior to 2020. Notably, Barack Obama lost the county to John McCain by two votes in 2008.

Nevertheless, with Trump enthusiasm, Boebert won an election, planning to go to Washington to change the world with Trump. But Trump lost. Now she is left with gun tricks to demonstrate, such as taking a gun to work, or attempting to. But her voting will be simple. She just has to vote against anything Biden or Democrats propose.

Then from Georgia, we get a building contractor and conspiracy enthusiast entering politics.

Marjorie Greene has added quite a bit of QAnon beliefs and conspiracy theory to the pro gun mix.

I am not quite sure how seriously to take all this. On the one hand both women have entered politics with sound bites and dog whistle terms to get crowds excited. These crowds do not wish to understand politics on a deeper level, they just want to get rid of Democrats in politics and attack "foreigners" and other Trumpian targets. On the other hand, they will add to guns and violence. They promoted the attacks on the Capitol and aided the insurrectionists. They can be charged with aiding and abetting domestic terrorists.

The actual gun issues will play out in the Supreme Court, so we will have to watch that for the next two years.

The Supreme Court decided on District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008. There were some other decisions in modern times. It would seem that the original amendment was rather limited in scope, and dealt with the relationship of the federal government and the states. It mentions a militia, giving the states the right to have such organizations. It does not plainly state that the federal government has any further say on arms. Going along that, it would seem the peace keeping and owning of guns, or prohibition of certain guns if such an issue came up, was left to the states.

The constitution is a brief document that left a lot of power to the states. Even federal taxation needed an amendment.

America is broken? Well, people of all sort feel powerless, but...

I have never had much hate directed towards me in any situation. I may disagree with many people, but as an immigrant and an atheist, I have learned, for decades, to keep quiet for my own safety. I actually believe in government, so I prefer to act through voting, anonymously. I would be reluctant to runs for an office.

But there are millions of angry, disgruntled people out there.

I can't say I am patriotic. I left a country a long time ago, and adjusted to the new one. I've been an upstanding citizen and paid my taxes etc. I was never disgruntled. But, still, I never felt completely at home in a country whose politics have always been to the right of me. And the silly patriotism of supporting the military, that I have never supported. Yes, there have been wars we had to engage in, but the spreading of democracy around the world by force, that rarely works. I am not into forcing our culture or politics on other countries. Sure, free press and all that, and I don't support authoritarians, but that is the extent of it. I do not think this mission is worth dying for. Defend what you have, but stay there.

There are many people who supported Trump, because none of the other culture and tradition appealed to them. Many were racists. There was a sense of powerlessness. They had given up trying to affect things through normal politics. Trump gave them the sense that they could actually punish foreign countries and bring jobs back. That is not going to happen. Globalism has gone too far, manufacture is world wide.

The point I am trying to get to is that the recent events, storming of the Capitol mainly, has weakened our trust in the US government. It buckled a bit. And it did not protect politicians from a lynch mob. We liberals felt weak for the first time. Through the four years of Trump we had a firm belief in normalcy returning. We believed in our country prior to Trump, despite all the problems we have. We were able to keep order. The world was not perfect. Too many blacks were in jail, too many low income people had no healthcare. But the day to day workings of the country were still working. There were even people like Fauci in power, able to function for the common good despite Trump.

I look at a few extremist web sites once in a while, and I see a good number of people "down the rabbit hole" on Reddit. There are a large number of people who no longer are able to weed through information on the Internet to get any facts. They have organized life around the belief in a conspiracy. Life is easier that way,  no more seeking. All the people you chat with agree with you on most things. They have a mission. Most missions are to "put things back to the way they were." So the change they want is a conservative change. Not a progressive one.

Looking at all this, I still have one choice only. I believe we can deal with it. I believe in the system. If the state that I live in completely breaks down and goes full Trump for decades to come, I may need to pack up and move. But I am so far in the middle of the land, that a short move would not change much. I would need to sell a house and move into a tiny condo somewhere where the state is able to maintain the country as I have known it since 1976. That is when I decided to accept it as my own, once we were done with Nixon.

Jumping to 2021, the US dealing with COVID in a responsible way (vaccinating those willing to believe in science) and our return to normalcy by the end of summer will go a long way in convincing the majority of us that we need government. But we now know the number of people fallen off the main stream and stuck in the disgruntled world of conspiracies and libertarianism is significant.

Moving On From Trump

 Trump is history. He will fly off Wednesday with a little parade or something. The impeachment? Who knows. The politicians here in the prairie are not going to help with that. They got voted in by the same people that voted for Trump. No need to make them angry. There were a lot of disgruntled people who thought Trump was their solution to jobs and prosperity. Or maybe just to stop "Democrats from giving stuff to poor people." Where is Trump going to be in half a year? And these people?

They are not people interested in politics. They are racists, white nationalists and conspiracy theorists. They are not interested in tax rates and all that with any passion. Possibly a vague "small government" or libertarian feel. But they do not really hold opinions on regular matters for long. Flint water? That's a Michigan problem. They are only interested in their stuff. They also distrust science, vaccines, masks and all that.

These people are going to be there, but they will not be a political force in 2022 or 2024. Neither will Trump. If he were able to run, he no longer has funds to muscle his way into the primary. What will we get in 2024? The old resistance. McConnel types, tea party types. People fed up with the federal government in a general way. Not the conspiracy way.

The future of a connected world, according to Kevin Kelly

With rather windy weather, we are stuck indoors sometimes three days at a time. I will only go out to shovel 3 inches of snow today, in rather windy weather. 

This is what I have been reading. 

It describes the future based on what we have know, in his world. It is quite different in the rural areas of the prairie, where we do not have high speed internet. We do have a GPS signal everywhere, so farming equipment will be operating based on that, had irrigation and fertilizer application will undergo a revolution soon. Seeds themselves are high tech product that you license from seed producers. You do not own the entire crop you own anymore. They are sort of renting your land and paying labor, you sell the product back to big corporations that are all connected, seed to product on the market. Or even ethanol.

Back to the book:

A rather "soft" review of technology and how it affects your life. The author is connected to Wired magazine and lives a life where he does not own a car or a home. He just pays to use goods and services that make life simple. He owns no physical books or music.

On page 170 Kevin Kelly gets to echo chambers. We are currently experiencing a bit of a shake up with right-wingers and libertarians, the militant type, having no place to scream their loss of a leader who expressed the outrage they had for the left, or even the mainstream of politics.

This sort of negative stuff about the Internet is mainly left out of the book. The chapters are well thought out, so you will find this sort of tracking by those who track (gov't et al) listed in the chapter titled Tracking.

Technology has reached most of the world, though we in the developed world have a much bigger quantity available to us. The farmer in India, as mentioned in the book, may not have running water, but he does have a cell phone.

Crowd sourcing in promoted in the book, as is free software. The communities in the world are connected and are creating a lot of this stuff you borrow from the internet. You do not own much of it, you share.

Examples of crowd sourcing and everyday life are listed, connecting the on-line world to the real world. We are experiencing some of it as we pick up groceries during the pandemic, after ordering it on line. I hope my vaccination will be similarly organized, as we drive though to get vaccinated. If the pandemic drags on, band will start giving concerts on line, with you donating a few dollars of your choosing to hear the concert. Some bands already give out free music, with you deciding what

I said the book is light on the hardware part. It explains what is possible in a connected Internet world, how servers are connected to give you a streaming feed without interruption. But little is explained about technical side and its vulnerabilities. As independent as we are, we are still dependent on internet providers and our phone provider to keep in touch with the world.

I use an iPhone and I use Windows computers. I still pay for those. I am even stuck using them, as I cannot stand how the cursor and typing works on Android devices. So the free stuff in the book may or may not arrive. We may even see the lower income people lose some services as the rest of us keep paying for our instant news and entertainment.

The future is not really mapped out that well in the book. The fact that you could carry all the music ever produced in your pocket 20 years later may be true (he says to keep it in the cloud) but other aspects of the real world will rule what we get in ten years. You would need an economist as well as a biologist to flesh out the physical world a little better. What happens to homelessness, food supply and all that?

Still, it did help for him to focus on the positive. it will be necessary to just go along with these changes. Otherwise you will be stuck in some resistance echo chamber and will not be able to keep up with the world and interact with it in a normal way. There is a democratic aspect to being and creating in the Internet that the author keeps pointing out. And he believes is inseparable from what we have. Let us hope it stays that way.