Patriotism

Donald Trump has his base supporting him and those 40% will vote for him no matter what. But there are states that still are borderline. Given a 5% error in polling, the states of the rust belt still matter.

This is where patriotism matters. Trump is in a position to act patriotic and strong. His tweets and acts support a strong effort, though no military action. If Putin took over Ukraine, we would do nothing.

As it is, he appears patriotic in front of crowds, and there is some appeal to simple working class folks who celebrate Fourth of July with a bang. Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet and all that. There is nothing wrong with being loyal to your country, to enlisting in the military, to feel good about your country. Provided we are in a situation where our military actions get the support of our allies.

The Democrats are in a position of weakness. Though Clinton got talked into some military action, he was a centrist. Hillary is history as well. Our trend is not to support nation building. We see the exporting of "democracy" as mostly a failed effort. Oil states rotate toward a dictatorship because the people in general do not own the land oil.

Our military efforts would be in support of our allies or toward stability in trouble spots, such as Kosovo. None our acts are seen by voters as "strong" or particularly patriotic. The Trumpsters, as I now understand, just want us to be boss in every situation. Negotiation is not seen as patriotic. We just want our way, they say. Trump is doing exactly that at least in appearance, and tweets. Basically he says fuck you to any foreigner, any unamerican party or view. We will go alone!

The Democrats tend to attend to matters more important at home: veterans, firefighters at 9-11 (as expressed by John Stewart to Congress recently). We go about it differently: less cheer leading.

Problems come from appearances. Trump appears patriotic to his fans. it is difficult to understand that most of them do not see it as a con. He represents them, whether he is sincere or not!

Bush was a rather useless president to start with. His golden opportunity was provided by Bin Laden. It is kind of sad we could only rise to the occasion when assaulted. But that is how things went. Bush was not as good as Trump at appearances, though Trump hugging a flag and Bush lading on an aircraft carrier amounts to the same. Just showmanship.

Trump's fight against "foreigners" and "China" or "Mexico" is seen as patriotic. This is a problem. We need to deal with immigrants in some manner, and the Democrats better get a clear message on that soon. Biden could use to his advantage that Obama deported 2.5 million illegals.

Trump plans big Fourth of July celebrations on 2019 and 2020. presidents normally do not participate. I hope the people will come to see that it is now  ALL ABOUT TRUMP. He is stealing our national holiday!

Abortion

Missouri became a leader in the anti-abortion movement all of a sudden. Quietly, clinics have closed by arbitrary rules. The major urban area at the Western end, Kansas City, has no clinic. Curiously, very conservative Kansas next door has a clinic in nearby Overland Park.

Nationally, white men have been ruling on abortion in all these states. Missouri had a Democrat for a senator, and even a governor. But now it is fully conservative. When the economy is doing well, the conservative issues, like abortion and guns, become campaign issues. The death penalty is also a popular campaign item. The Missouri house and senate look like this:

Nationally, Joe Biden was holding on to 20 year old ideas on abortion. These things were always decided by men. But as we have several women candidates running, Biden had to change his mind on this immediately. He no longer bans federal funds for abortion.

Nobody wants to face abortion personally. The rules put in are there to scare the single women, who have no means to support a child, to carry the child to term and put up the newborn to adoption.

The facts concerning abortion are the same as any other item you can look up on the internet. The truth lies out there, but you have to search a bit deeper. Start with Wikipedia.

Fetuses have a heart beat to exchange oxygen with the mother through the placenta. This not mean a fetus of 8 or 12 weeks is a functioning being. At 8-9 weeks it has limbs, fingers and toes. You can look up pictures of it.

Survival at past 20 weeks is only 50%, and the whole thing becomes a healthcare cost issue. Do you want the senators to pay for it? If not, what business do we have deciding? The options for the mother at 20 weeks are few, depending on insurance and local rulings. At this point, all options should be purely medical angles. Past 30-32 weeks survival is quite optimistic. But the whole thing is still quite in the medical arena at this point. The decision should be between parties involved and the doctor. The state legislature or the US senate has no business inside the uterus at this point. There are medical reasons even for late term abortions. These are rarely done, something like 1-2% in most countries. Before we had abortion, women had to carry a dead fetus along for 9 months and give birth to a dead baby, if it did not abort on its own. It was quite common.

Added note: Biden was still struggling with this issue. It's not complicated. Katie Porter explained it to Bill Maher: Your mother made a choice. You are the consequence of that choice. We are all here because of that choice our mothers made. (Well, past 1960 something).

Someone else is getting something for free!

Global warming is not real. The foreigners are taking all the jobs. Foreigners are not smart and we should not them into the country. And we absolutely should not ban plastic bags, how else will the owner of this pick up get his fishing snacks and supplies to the lake?

He was at the local lake, popular for all joggers, grannies, fishermen, kayakers and all. And me. He honked at me, passed me and came out to direct me to the bike path. The bike path around the lake is gravel, some of it was under water, and there were plenty of people at the shore using it. Dog walkers. I get to ride it when it is empty in November. He however is annoyed at my blinking tail light and HIS paying for my bike paths that I did not use. I was on the paved road. The road is used to get to locations in the park. It is useless for through traffic. He was going back and forth on both shores of the lake, "policing" it by his rules.

The main principle these people have with public spending is that "someone else is getting something for free that I do not." The thinking is close to that of libertarians, but not as well thought out.

There is no guesswork in deciding that he voted for Trump. These people are not interested in spending any public money for any group, any cultural activity (other than 4th of July rockets), anything different from the mainstream. Fishing is OK, "guys do it," because they need to get away from their wives on weekends. Bicycling is some liberal crazy thing. Jogging is almost as crazy. Half the funding for our trails is there for joggers. We host a well known half marathon. Crazy spending! Actually the marathon brings income. Billy Bob approves of baseball diamonds, and might even support the tax money supporting a local small time baseball team. At least the stadium. The games get ticket income for a little support to the athletes and staff.

Billy Bob must be really hurting when we have our once a year trail event, with thousands of cyclists and families doing loops that are cut off from car traffic on a June weekend. Trails are used for about half the distance.

Billy Bob is happy to know we do not spend public money for abortions. That is for the crazy socialist Europeans.

I wonder if Billy Bob favors education? He must have kids and grandkids in town. Do we need to have them learn modern life? Just the basics? Anyway, I am paying for his kids to learn, I pay property tax. I don't mind. I do not have kids or grandkids in town. some other Billy Bob will have to pay for their education elsewhere in the country.

Politicians

Who wants to make a career as a politician? What skills do they have? What motivates them? Who wants to spend decades in an office building with meeting rooms? Suppose you are in Montana or Idaho and are public minded, and here is where you go, or even a more plain office block building built in the 1900s. There the passionate Republicans can debate for days and days about acceptable ways to execute criminals or perform abortions. Or to ban the clinics in some technical manner, making the abortions more or less impractical. The abortion is only a bus ride to Seattle and back, but that itself is mostly impossible.

If I had the inclination to go into politics, I would tackle some practical matter for one or two terms, such as trash, and be done with it. Even there, you get people on the right or left to oppose NEW IDEAS, sometimes together.

The people out there is sparsely populated states have the same tasks as in the populated East. Police, city utilities, highway patrol, flooding and all the practical matters of life. The Kansans had to finally deal with their penny pinching Republicans and collect funds to take care of mounting problems. I admit that when Republicans are forced to deal with a practical problem, they can do it. I also admit that Democrats can also solve those same problems, but perhaps with more spending and debt. They want to fix it RIGHT, for the long term. The Republicans, however, are  more likely to be buddies with the contractors and play golf with them.

In middle of the road states you get the pendulum effect. The right merely has to cut taxes and spending for as long as possible. They never have to solve problems that cost money. They have to do things  they were voted to do: stop abortion, stop gay marriages, stop liberals. This costs nothing! Well, actually costs a lot, in the form of social problems and crime that follows. But the voters do  not see the connection.

Then in the middle of the road states the Democrats take over for 4-8 years and fix the stuff the Republicans refused to fix.

As an effective use of taxed money, politics is not the solution that spends the least money. They rarely use trained professionals, such as city managers who actually do know how to do public spending. Those type of managers do not get involved in social programs, only remotely, such as providing housing.

But there are forward thinkers, and eager young people launch into a career to push medical marijuana or wind power or some other thing. I guess there is a place for them. In many ways a dictatorial system such as China is better equipped to deal with practical problems: roads, infrastructure, health care, dams, waterways, harbors, airports etc etc. They also have allowed capitalism to enter in the form of manufacturing. This makes us dependent on them and war less likely.

I don't need to think about being a politician. I could only be and adviser. Where I live, they would not vote for an outsider and an atheist.

Lock Up Trump already!

I'm allowed to say that, because I have no power to lock him up. Crowds of simple working class folk who seem to be threatened by immigrants, democrats, healthcare, lack of jobs without a college degree etc etc. seem to think it's OK for the president to incite a crowd to physically threaten opponents who have different political views.

This was what went on at Grand Rapids. It is sad to see that the supporters do not see a difference in MSNBC or Saturday Night Live making fun of him, criticizing his politics and making conclusions about his crooked business practices and then Trump's behavior. The most powerful man on the planet suggesting treason and asking Adam Schiff to resign is entirely different. We call it bullying at this point but it is on the verge of becoming illegal.

The Uninhabitable Earth

The Mueller report release is the topic of the day, although the Trump camp has started another attack on Obamacare. The 2020 election is coming and the Green New Deal has brought the environment slightly to the news. However, most liberals see the main task is getting rid of Trump first.

Here in the prairie we suffered flooding that was the result of a bomb cyclone. Violent weather and excessive rain are thought to be a consequence of warming.

I picked up a book on the climate change issues and politics, David Wallace-Wells’ best seller The Uninhabitable Earth. In this book you can find all our climate related problems catalogued. However, my main interest was in the chapter Crisis Capitalism. Rather than actually focus on capitalism as a factor, it is a list of behavioral economics factors. Psychologists have now studied for decades how we make economic decisions. Israeli scholars Tversky and Kahneman started the ball rolling and came up with the terms to describe our “rule of thumb” behaviors when given choices.

This behavior is related to climate, because our response follows those rules of thumb.  Most people resisted the idea initially, of human caused warming and carbon dioxide effects. Anchoring, ambiguity and other behaviors are at work. When faced with uncertainty, we tend to react in such a way as to minimize loss. We are programmed to recognize possible loss and avoid it. Winning is good, but loss is what guides our behavior. Somehow it is not working in the face of climate change. David Wallace-Wells stated that we treat it as a riddle, something not understandable by the average person. He does not list conspiracies, but many people have started thinking of the government and its published science as merely as a conspiracy. Alex Jones and Breitbart capitalize on this, The Heritage Foundation actually publishes misinformation.

David Wallace-Wells also mentions the bystander effect (let us see what others do!). Optimism bias and pessimism bias are both active. The latter leads to defeatism. We cannot do anything! The planet is too big, nature is too big, it does stuff we cannot control, so why try doing anything? 

Others think politics is useless for any change, as lobbyists control politics rather than voters. The internet and its manipulations in social media adds another item to things we can’t fight. Others have pointed out that leftist dictatorships, such as China, have more power to change things quickly if they wish. Some writers point this out and a label, “shock doctrine” is used by Naomi Klein.

Young people without children are more likely to be affected by peer pressure to do something in their personal lives. They can choose where to live and work. Middle aged people are unlikely to change anything at all until the children have left the house. Much of our rich lifestyle comes directly out of burning fossil fuel. We are reaping the benefits of the energy spent somewhere else on the planet and sent to us as food and products. Just the shipping of cheaply made goods from Asia is a big energy drain. That fuel is cheap diesel oil, so it does not add to the price of goods. Unless you tax it.

People are drawn to prophets and preachers. Some will respond to charismatic speakers rather than science. I myself have supported people who have this skill, fully knowing that the prophets are simplifying things for the common man. Al Gore, however, is not a favorite, I do not really like the politicians who have taken up the challenge. Millionaires sometimes feel guilty for the wealth they have collected and start global initiatives through their charities.

The economic impacts of climate change will eventually  become a nagging everyday item. People will eventually be dulled by it. However, small investments now will prevent even bigger changes later on. We are not quite sure how the free market will help things. It probably won’t. It will just be a fight for every little patch of earth we own.

Finally: a little dark humor to end this piece.

He could have gotten a dog or run for president

Now it finally came out. Trump is just an old man with nothing to do. He wanted some people, any people, to like him. He found his crowd.

But we could all have got off easier if he had just gotten a dog. He rambled on about dogs in his El Paso speech. But, if he had gotten that German shepherd, that dog would have liked him. Dogs are bred that way. That dog would have saved us from a lot of misery.

Trump is the Republican Brand now

Having stuck to low taxes and less government for decades now, the Republicans are now fully behind Trump. They have not grabbed national attention in previous election years, and the politicians realize the facts: they themselves will get the maximum votes if Trump is on the ticket. It does not matter if he wins or not. The people fired up about "foreigners" and "the wall" as well as repealing all Obama did are the ones that get them voted in. Not just in red states but borderline states as well, and states with one senator from each party. Our governor ran on Trumpian ”less regulation” and less government issues. He also erased all benefits the state was providing illegal aliens. We allowed them some semi-official papers and healthcare.

The RNC decided not to have any primary challengers to achieve their goal. And it will make it easier for them to work with Trump in whatever time he has left. I believe impeachment is coming, but perhaps just rolling to full force in late 2020. This would be perfect for Democrats as well. They may lose a few seats in the house 2020 or hold on to their own, but it will give them something to do for Oct, Nov and Dec of 2020 and the new Democrat coming in taking over. First, bring it to near impeachment by election and then use two months to bring Trump to a halt.

Shut Down Not Going Anywhere for Trump

Trump will have very little to brag about after his proposal. He may offer some temporary relief for DACA children, but nothing permanent. But Trump can't deport them all either, too costly. So he really has nothing to bargain with. As it is, the courts have put DACA on hold for at least a year. The Trump directive to erase it was not legal.

Trump may declare an emergency and order the wall built. Almost nothing will happen on that for the two years he has left.

His defense of election dirty deeds is going badly. Cohen will testify and set any remaining issues straight. Then the rest of his term will be a battle fighting an actual impeachment.

A president polling 39% approval and that hanging over him cannot win a 2020 election.

Congress also will do almost nothing, though some solution to the shut down will come in a month or so. The country is too crippled past that to operate. And Democrats will have proven all those officials and bureaucrats were necessary.

One thing the news have sort of missed is that neither Trump or Mitch care that the government is shut down. Trump is free to travel and act normally while his staff is not paid. Mitch on the other hand is running his own experiment to cut down Big Government. He does not care what it causes.

The world simplified: it must be a conspiracy!

I touched upon conspiracies a few times earlier. The column addressed common beliefs.
Americans and conspiracy

I also had a column on our tribal view of leadership:
Tribal age views of life

Looking a little deeper into this thing, there is a benefit to thinking up reasons "somebody is out to get you." When societies were developing, people had to adjust to living with a number of others and to be wary of any threat. We looked at others and tried to recognize patters of behavior to categorize people as friend or enemy. It did not actually matter if a few neutrals were classified as enemy, just to be on the safe side. Once we had sorted things out, we could go about our business more calmly.

Trump voters tend to be these people that simplify things in this manner. Trump himself does not bother learning details of things. He quickly decides if it is with him or against him.

Democrats do something and they get angry. There must be some bigger force behind this phenomenon. Let's blame Hillary! Or even George Soros!

We live our lives by rules of thumb. We make quick decisions. Blaming something on a conspiracy categorizes it. It no longer needs to be thought about. Generally we make these generalizations with little evidence. They can be adjusted a  little, but the Trump voter rarely completely changes his mind on any matter.

It's been found that people that believe in conspiracies also tend to believe in the supernatural. Both supply a simplified explanation to things unexplainable otherwise. When the belief becomes overwhelming, or a fear of conspiracies, the people no longer function normally in their daily lives. So a small amount of suspicion helps save you from harm, but too much can take over your life.

Science and technology are other things that come under suspicion, especially if a government is involved. These have been discussed in previous columns.