Probability, coincidence, and the origin of life

The philosopher Epicurus was shown a wall of pictures — told, reverently, they portrayed sailors who, in storms, prayed to the gods and were saved. “But where,” he asked, “are the pictures of those who prayed and drowned?”

He was exposing the mistake of counting hits and ignoring misses. It’s common when evaluating seemingly paranormal, supernatural, or even miraculous occurrences. Like when some acquaintance appears in a dream and then you learn they’ve just died. Was your dream premonitory? But how often do you dream of people who don’t die? As with Epicurus, this frequently applies to religious “miracles” like answered prayers. We count the hits and ignore the many more unanswered prayers.

I usually work with the radio on. How often do you think I’ll write a word while hearing the same word from the radio? (Not common words, of course, like “like” or “of course.”) In fact it happens regularly, every few days. Spooky? Against astronomical odds? For a particular word, like “particular,” the odds would indeed be very small. But the open-ended case of any word matching is far less improbable. Recently it was “Equatorial Guinea!” Similarly, the odds of any two people’s birthdays matching are about one in 365. But how many must there be in a room before two birthdays likely match? Only 23! This surprises most folks — showing we have shaky intuitions regarding probability and coincidence. Most coincidences are not remarkable at all, but expectable, like my frequent radio matches.

So what does all this have to do with the origin of life? I recently began discussing Dawkins’s book, The Blind Watchmaker, and life’s having (almost certainly) begun with a fairly simple molecular structure, naturally occurring, with the characteristic of self-duplication. Dawkins addresses our intuition that that’s exceedingly improbable.

The essence of evolution by natural selection is, again, small incremental steps over eons of time, each making beneficiaries a bit likelier to survive and reproduce. The replicator molecule utilized by all life is DNA,* which maybe can’t be called “simple” — but Dawkins explains that DNA could itself have evolved in steps, from simpler precursors —non-living ones.

Indeed, non-living replication is familiar to us. That’s how crystals form. They grow by repeating a molecular structure over and over. (I’ve illustrated one we own — trillions of molecules creating a geometrical object with perfectly flat sides.) Dawkins writes of certain naturally occurring clays with similar properties, which could plausibly have been a platform for evolving the more elaborate self-replicators that became life.

Maybe this still seems far-fetched to you. But Dawkins elucidates another key insight relevant here.

Our brains evolved (obviously) to navigate the environment we lived in. Our abilities to conceptualize are tailored accordingly, and don’t extend further (which would have been a waste of biological resources). Thus, explains Dawkins, our intuitive grasp of time is grounded in the spectrum of intervals in our everyday experience — from perhaps a second or so at one end to a century or two at the other. But that’s only a tiny part of the full range, which goes from nanoseconds to billions of years. We didn’t need to grasp those. Likewise, our grasp of sizes runs from perhaps a grain of sand to a mountain. Again, a tiny part of the true spectrum, an atom being vastly smaller, the galaxy vastly larger. Those sizes we never needed to imagine — and so we really can’t.

This applies to all very large (or small) numbers. Our intuitions about probability are similarly circumscribed.

If you could hypothetically travel to early Earth, might you witness life beginning — as I’ve explained it? Of course not. Not in a lifetime. The probability seems so small it feels like zero. And accordingly some people just reject the idea.

Suppose it’s so improbable that it would only occur once in a billion years. But it did have a billion years to happen in! Wherein a one-in-a-billion-year event is hardly unlikely.

The odds against winning the lottery are also astronomical. Our human capacity to grasp such probabilities is, again, so limited that many people play the lottery with no clue about the true smallness of their chances. Yet people win the lottery. And I had my “Equatorial Guinea” coincidence.

And what’s the probability that life did not evolve naturally, along general lines I’ve suggested, but was instead somehow deliberately created by a super-intelligent being of unimaginable power — whose existence in the first place nobody can begin to account for?

Surely zero; a childishly absurd idea. As Sherlock Holmes said, once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, howsoever improbable, must be the truth. But the Darwinian naturalistic theory of life is not at all improbable or implausible. There’s tons of evidence for it. And even if there weren’t, Dawkins observes, it would still be the only concept capable of explaining life. Not only is it true, it must be true.

* That all living things use the same DNA code makes it virtually certain that all had a common ancestor. Your forebears were not, actually, monkeys; but the ancestors of all humans, and of all monkeys, were fish.

“Treated very unfairly” — a Trump trope

“Treated very unfairly” is an incessant Trump trope. Like he’s a great stickler for fairness.

First it was National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, “treated very unfairly” Trump said — after he himself fired Flynn for lying. Flynn was later convicted.

Then he pardoned racist Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, convicted of defying a court order.

Then it was Paul Manafort — also fired by Trump, as campaign manager. Later convicted by a jury for illegally concealing his work for foreign dictators, and failing to report the income to the IRS. But somehow he was “treated very unfairly,” said Trump.

Others he’s said were “treated very unfairly” include right-wing propagandist Dinesh D’Souza, who he pardoned after pleading guilty for a campaign finance felony; Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh; Veterans Affairs nominee Ronny Jackson; National Intelligence Director nominee John Ratcliffe; Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy, facing recall; and various others including, of course, Trump himself, unremittingly whining of “very unfair treatment” in innumerable instances. He said he’s changing his residence to Florida from New York because he was treated unfairly there. He’s even said the writers of the U.S. Constitution treated him very unfairly; even that Fox News has treated him very unfairly!

Of course he never says why, exactly, something was unfair. It never works that way with him. It’s enough to just say “unfair.” One of his many forms of lying.

Now it’s navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, court-martialed for war crimes in Iraq, convicted by a military jury, and demoted. Trump ordered Gallagher’s rank restored. He also pardoned two other soldiers punished for misconduct. “Treated very unfairly.”

War is hell, and bad stuff happens. But America has long insisted on the highest standards of conduct by our military. Trump’s actions shred that honorable tradition, sending totally the wrong message. That’s why they horrified our military; higher-ups said this would undermine maintaining good order and discipline, calling this a crisis in military governance.

They pushed back, scheduling a review board to consider Gallagher’s expulsion as a SEAL. Trump tweeted he wouldn’t permit that, and Gallagher is being allowed to retire as a SEAL with no demotion. But meantime, Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, who opposed Trump’s action but tried to work something out with the White House, has been fired. His resignation letter said he’d been given an order he could not in good conscience carry out.

“Treated very unfairly?” Gallagher, convicted of war crimes? Or Spencer, ousted for trying to uphold standards of honor?

And how about Trump himself, his endless business history of screwing people? All those left holding the bag in his bankruptcies? Victims of his “Trump University” fraud? All the contractors and workers he just stiffed? Were they not “treated very unfairly?”

And how about our former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch — our longest serving envoy with a sterling record of exemplary service — smeared by Trump as prelude to abruptly yanking her from her post. To serve his corrupt political scheme. And then, right amid Yovanovitch’s congressional testimony, Trump tweets idiotic juvenile insults. “She started off in Somalia, how did that go?” She was a junior foreign service officer there, as if that made her responsible for Somalia’s mess. She went into a very tough, dangerous situation, serving her country, and that’s the thanks she gets from the President of the United States.

“Treated very unfairly?”

Normal human beings have some basic sense of what fairness means. Trump does not, and uses the word with perverted cynicism. Those he calls “treated very unfairly” are typically scumbags, like Flynn, Arpaio, Manafort, D’Souza, actually getting what they deserve. While upstanding people like Spencer and Yovanovitch are in fact treated very unfairly, by Trump.

One more way in which Trump’s is a bizarro world, where black is white and white is black; wrong is right and right is wrong.

Evolution: The Blind Watchmaker and the bat

What is it Like to be a Bat? was a famous essay (I keep coming back to) by Philosopher Thomas Nagel. Its point being our difficulty in grasping — that is, constructing an intuitively coherent internal model of — the bat experience. Because it’s so alien to our own.

Biologist Richard Dawkins, though, actually tackles Nagel’s question in his book The Blind Watchmaker. The title refers to William Paley’s 1802 Natural Theology, once quite influential, arguing for what’s now called “intelligent design.” Paley said if you find a rock in the sand, its presence needs no explanation; but if you find a watch, that can only be explained by the existence of a watchmaker. And Paley likens the astonishing complexity of life forms to that watch.

I’ve addressed this before, writing about evolution. Paley’s mistake is that a watch is purpose-built, which is not true of anything in nature. Nature never aimed to produce exactly what we see today. Instead, it’s an undirected process that could have produced an infinitude of alternative possibilities. What we have are the ones that just happened to fall out of that process — very unlike a watch made by a watchmaker.

However, it’s not mere “random chance,” as some who resist Darwinism mistakenly suppose. The random chance concept would analogize nature to a child with a pile of lego blocks, tumbling them together every which way. No elegant creation could plausibly result. But evolution works differently, through serial replication.

It began with an agglomeration of molecules, a very simple naturally occurring structure, but having one crucial characteristic: a tendency to duplicate itself (using other molecules floating by). If such a thing arising seems improbable, realize it need only have occurred once. Because each duplicate would then be making more duplicates. Ad infinitum. And as they proliferate, slight variations accidentally creeping in (mutations) would make some better at staying in existence and replicating. That’s natural selection.

Dawkins discusses bats at length because the sophistication of their design (more properly, their adaptation) might seem great evidence for Paleyism.

Bats’ challenge is to function in the dark. Well, why didn’t they simply evolve for daytime? Because that territory was already well occupied, and there was a living to be made at night — for a creature able to cope with it.

Darkness meant usual vision systems wouldn’t work. Bats’ alternative is echolocation — sonar. They “see” by emitting sound pulses and using the echoes to build, in their brains, a model of their outside environment. Pulses are sent between ten and 200 times per second, each one updating the model. Bat brains have developed the software to perform this high speed data processing and modeling, on the fly.

Now get this. Their signals’ strength diminishes with the square of the distance, both going out and coming back. So the outgoing signals must be quite loud (fortunately beyond the range of human hearing) for the return echos to be detectable. But there’s a problem. To pick up the weak return echos, bat ears have to be extremely sensitive. But such sensitive ears would be wrecked by the loudness of the outgoing signals.

So what to do? Bats turn off their ears during each outgoing chirp, and turn them on again to catch each return echo. Ten to 200 times a second!

Another problem: Typically there’s a zillion bats around, all creating these echos simultaneously. How can they distinguish their own from all those others? Well, they can, because each has its own distinctive signal. Their brain software masters this too, sorting their own echos from all the background noise.

The foregoing might suggest, a la Nagel, that the bat experience is unfathomable. Our own vision seems a much simpler and better way of seeing the world. But not so fast. Dawkins explains that the two systems are really quite analogous. While bats use sound waves, we use light waves. However, it’s not as though we “see” the light directly. Both systems entail the brain doing a lot of processing and manipulation of incoming data to build a model of the outside environs. And the bat system does this about as well as ours.

Dawkins imagines an alien race of “blind” batlike creatures, flabbergasted to learn of a species called humans actually capable of utilizing inaudible (!) rays called “light” to “see.” He goes on to describe our very complex system for gathering light signals, and transmitting them into the brain, which then somehow uses them to construct a model of our surroundings which, somehow, we can interpret as a coherent picture. Updated every fraction of a second. (Their Nagel might write, “What is it like to be a human?”)*

A Paleyite would find it unimaginable that bat echolocation could have evolved without a designer. But what’s really hard for us to imagine is the immensity of time for a vast sequence of small changes accumulating to produce it.

Dogs evolved (with some human help) from wolves over just a few thousand years; indeed, with variations as different as Chihuahuas and Saint Bernards. And we’re scarcely capable of grasping the incommensurateness between those mere thousands of years and the many millions over which evolution operates.

Remember what natural selection entails. Small differences between two species-mates may be a matter of chance, but what happens next is not. A small difference can give one animal slightly better odds of reproducing. Repeat a thousand or a million times and those differences grow large; likewise a tiny reproductive advantage also compounds over time. It’s not a random process, but nor does it require an “intelligent designer.”

Dawkins gives another example. Imagine a mouse-sized animal, where females have a slight preference for larger males. Very very slight. Larger males thus have a very very slight probability of leaving more offspring. The creature’s increasing size would be imperceptible during a human lifetime. How long would it take to reach elephant size? The surprising answer: just 60,000 years! An eyeblink of geological time. This would be considered “sudden” by normal evolutionary standards.**

Returning to vision, a favorite argument of anti-evolutionists is that such a system’s “irreducible complexity” could never have evolved by small steps — because an incomplete eye would be useless. Dawkins eviscerates this foolish argument. Lots of people in fact have visual systems that are incomplete or defective in various ways, some with only 5% of normal vision. But for them, 5% is far better than zero!

The first simple living things were all blind. But “in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.” Even just having some primitive light-sensitive cells would have conferred a survival and reproductive advantage, better enabling their possessors to find food and avoid becoming food. And such light detectors would have gradually improved, by many tiny steps, over eons; each making a creature more likely to reproduce.

Indeed, a vision system — any vision system at all — is so advantageous that virtually all animals evolved one, not copying each other, but along separate evolutionary paths, resulting in a wide array of varying solutions to the problem — including bat echolocation, utilizing principles so different from ours.

But none actually reflects optimized “intelligent” design. Not what a half decent engineer or craftsman would have come up with. Instead, the evolution by tiny steps means that at each stage nature was constrained to work with what was already there; thus really (in computer lingo) a long sequence of “kludges.” For example, no rational designer would have bunched our optic nerve fibers in the front of the eye, creating a blind spot.

You might, if you still cling to an imaginary “designer,” ask her about that. And while you’re at it, ask why no third eye in the back of our heads?

(To be continued)

* Some blind humans are actually learning to employ echolocation much like bats, using tongue clicks.

** This is not to say evolution entails slow steady change. Dawkins addresses the “controversy” between evolutionary “gradualists” and “punctuationists” who hypothesize change in bursts. Their differences are smaller than the words imply. Gradualists recognize rates of change vary (with periods of stasis); punctuationists recognize that evolutionary leaps don’t occur overnight. Both are firmly in the Darwinian camp.

Medicare for All: a critical look

Bill Hammond gave a talk on this to the Capital District Humanist Society. He’s the Empire Center’s Director of Health Policy, and is critical of the single payer concept. CDHS members being mostly well to the left, Hammond was received like a skunk at a picnic.

He started by quoting Bernie Sanders that “Health care must be recognized as a right, not a privilege.” Which Hammond said nobody really disputes; but Sanders and his fans equate it to a “single payer” system. (The “single payer” — seems they’re afraid to say this plainly — would be government, responsible for all health care.)

Hammond noted that a “right to health care” would have been unintelligible to our founders. Health care itself was not even a concept; he described how George Washington was really killed by the medical “care” he received. We’ve advanced a lot since. But meantime they saw “rights” as things the government should notget involved with, whereas for Sanders backers a right means an entitlement. And his “Medicare for All” plan goes even beyond a “universal access” model (e.g., schools, libraries, and indeed existing Medicare), with only government being allowed as a payer for health services.

Hammond also saw equality of access as a big part of it; the idea that people should get the same care regardless of income. This, he said, is a kind of extreme egalitarian moral reasoning we don’t apply in any other sphere (for example, food).

He presented some figures illuminating the status quo. Private insurance penetration is 67%, the bulk of that employment-based. Most of the rest is public coverage — Medicare and Medicaid. Medical costs are paid roughly half from private sources and 42% from taxes. Nine percent is self-pay and charity care.

Major flaws in the existing landscape include millions uninsured; out-of-pocket costs too high even with insurance; a fragmented, poorly integrated delivery system; and health care is 17% of our economy, an excessive burden far above other countries’, with no corresponding benefit in health outcomes. Hammond said “single payer” would not tackle the latter two problems.

He also cited some misconceptions. First, that our private insurance model is the cause of high costs, with too much profit. One audience member, a friend of mine, insisted no one should be allowed to profit providing something as vital as health care. I would turn it around: why should anyone be forced to provide her with any service (let alone one so vital) without compensation? People get paid for their work (she does). Those who expend effort to set up, invest in, and operate health care systems surely deserve compensation in the form of profits too.

But are they excessive? Hammond presented numbers showing that while compared to other countries, our health care overheads, including all administrative costs, arehigher, they’re only about 8% of total outlays, with the bulk of the cost difference being what we actually spend on care. And that’s not for more or better care but, rather, in the prices paid for care — mostly due to much higher salaries for medical professionals than in other advanced countries.

It’s also often asserted that all other advanced nations have single payer systems. Not so. Most actually have mixed systems (which ours is), but are more tightly regulated (hence their lower price levels). Obamacare was a step toward convergence with those other countries. But Hammond noted that even in Britain, which does basically have a single payer system, you’re still allowed to buy private insurance, which many Brits do. Sanders (and Warren) would disallow that.

Another notion is that their plan would merely be an expansion of the existing and successful Medicare system. Hammond pointed out that existing Medicare actually entails a lotof cost sharing; it’s far from free*, and there are out-of-pocket costs at point of service too.

He also discussed the proposed New York Health Act, seemingly on the verge of passage. In Hammond’s telling, this would be a “Medicare for All” plan on steroids; a “carte blanche” with the state simply paying allhealth related costs for all residents. He presented various studies attempting to estimate the costs. While there might be some cost savings, increased demand for health services would likely raise overall spending levels. Total taxation would have to double or triple. Hammond acknowledged that a majority of New Yorkers would probably come out ahead after higher taxes are set against lower health bills. But this would require richer people paying dramatically more. (A notion garnering vocal approval from attendees; but it was pointed out that rich people could simply leave the state.)

A comparable federal plan would, he said, entail similar ramifications. [Though presumably richer people would be less apt to leave the country than the state — FSR.] Hammond cited an Urban Institute estimate that over ten years, $34 trillion in higher federal taxes would be required, replacing $27 trillion in current outlays.

Questioners from the audience gave Hammond a rough time. My own question said I agreed with him about single-payer, but that we’re a rich country and can afford to somehow make sure every citizen gets a minimum level of basic care. (This elicited applause!) Hammond responded that actually this can be achieved with modest tweaks to our existing system. In particular, the Medicaid program already aims to do it for low income people; a problem is that many of those eligible simply don’t sign up for it. [Also, Medicaid requires money from states; red state Republican regimes hate it and try to limit it — FSR.]

Hammond concluded with a story about Fidelis Care, a New York health insurer run by the Catholic Church, which received a $3.75 billion buyout offer. Long story short, Gov. Cuomo figured out a way to get control of $2 billion of that, which he used as a kitty to hand out goodies to favored entities in the health care industry; in return for which he glommed unprecedently large political contributions.

Hammond said that single payer advocates seem to imagine that having the entire health care industry under government control would be a good thing. They idealize government. But the Fidelis story is a cautionary tale about how things really work; tending to be run for the benefit of insiders; and big players in this industry have tremendous clout to make it work for them.

After his talk, Hammond was taken outside, where he was tarred and feathered.

* My own monthly Medicare payments were high enough that I opted out.

Christian destruction of the classical world

Hans-Friedrich Mueller is Professor of Ancient and Modern Languages at Union College. I heard (twice!) a talk he gave, based on a book by Catherine Nixey titled The Darkening Age — the Christian Destruction of the Classical World.

Nixey was brought up in a religious environment, and got the traditional “sunday school” story of Christian monks preserving, through the Dark Ages, the writings of the ancient world. She was shocked to find out that in fact such preservation was almost accidental and was overwhelmed by a much bigger tale of destruction and suppression. Her aim in writing was to present this other “untold” side of the story.

The religion of the ancient Greeks and Romans was what we call “pagan,” with a pantheon of deities like Zeus and Athena (Jupiter and Minerva to the Romans). Actually the word “pagan” was a Christian coinage intended to be derogatory; it derived from “pagus,” meaning “countryside.” Hence a religion of country bumpkins.

The change came when the Roman Emperor Constantine I (ruled 307-337 AD) converted to Christianity, making it now the state religion. But Professor Mueller observed that it’s actually hard to convince people to change their religion. He pointed to conflict in his own family concerning his marriage, involving two kinds of Christianity; and of course between paganism and Christianity there is a far bigger gulf. The conversion was accordingly achieved by much violence and repression.

Indeed, Mueller started by reading from Nixey’s account of what happened at Palmyra, a Syrian city, in 385 AD. “The destroyers came from out of the desert,” it began. A large “swarm” of Christian men, targeting everything pagan in Palmyra. Described in detail was the dismemberment of the beautiful marble statue of Athena, likened to a rape. “The triumph of Christianity had begun.”

In an unmistakeable reprise of this past, Palmyra’s ancient monuments were again ravaged, in 2016, by ISIS, with a quite similar religious impetus.

Hypatia was not a marble statue, but an actual woman, a notable philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, in Alexandria, Egypt. In 415 AD, she was lynched by a Christian mob at the direction of their bishop. Professor Mueller gave a graphic description but I will spare my readers here the ghastly details.

Meantime, however, we’ve all been told how Christians themselves had suffered persecution in prior centuries. This is part of the mythology Nixie sought to debunk. While the Romans did require everyone to partake in some pagan rituals, and executed refusers, this wasn’t a big thing. Mueller quotes a letter from the Emperor Trajan (98-116 AD) to a Roman governor, embodying a kind of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The Roman state practiced a whole lot more religious tolerance before Constantine’s conversion than afterward, with persecution of pagans far more severe than what Christians had experienced. Indeed, Christians persecuted each other far more, over doctrinal disputes.

Nixey thinks not only that Christianity’s triumph by violence and oppression was a crime, but also that something valuable was lost. Pagan religious practice was a part of civic community life, and may have accorded more holistically with human nature. Professor Mueller noted in particular that ancient pagans had more open attitudes about sexuality, that were probably healthier, in comparison to Christianity’s frankly twisted up doctrines.

The ancients more generally took religion less seriously, tending to view their gods as being merely symbological or metaphors. Poseidon, for example, was the personification of the sea. But most intelligent people were not so silly as to imagine the gods were actual beings. Religion was for them a way to acknowledge our context within the natural world. It was not something central to their lives, as it is for high octane modern Christians or Muslims, for whom god does play a big role in the world and in their lives.

The degree of violence and social upheaval experienced in past civilizations, as depicted in Professor Mueller’s talk, was actually pretty typical throughout human history. Our own societal dispensation, with its separation of church and state, ethos of tolerance, and constraints upon violence and other forms of governmental power, is something not to be taken for granted. Yet there are fools today actually trying to tear this down.

Also there’s a notion that modern monotheism is a somehow more advanced religion than silly childish paganism with belief in many deities. A humanist might agree only insofar as belief in just one god approaches the correct number.

Foreign service heroes and patriots, telling the truth

Foreign service professionals normally toil for their country under the radar. Now some are at the center of a storm. Trump has tried to keep them silenced, to bar them from giving evidence to Congress. But their loyalty to the nation, and its rule of law, comes first.

Testimony from them — dedicated professionals like former Ambassadors William Taylor and Marie Yovanovitch, and Alexander Vindman, George Kent and others — has already been devastating. They’ve documented factually how Trump’s Zelensky phone call was just the tip of an iceberg of corruption: a lengthy scheme to force Ukraine’s government to give Trump political dirt (likely trumped up), in exchange for military aid. All the foreign policy professionals who became aware of this were horrified.

Let’s be clear. Of course aid to a country is often conditioned on its doing things consistent with U.S. policies. But serving a president’s private political interests is entirely different. In fact, literally a crime — it’s against the law for a foreign government to give anything of value to a U.S. political campaign. That’s what Trump sought from Ukraine. Not just a quid pro quo, but extortion. Soliciting a bribe.

Moreover, what he did actually undermined U.S. policies and security interests, by hampering Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression. Saying he was really concerned about corruption in Ukraine is a laughable lie.

The scheme was only stopped by the whistleblower’s blowing the whistle. Only then was the Ukraine aid finally released. It’s questionable whether Trump even had the authority to withhold it in the first place.

Not an impeachable offense, say Republicans? If this isn’t one, nothing ever could be. Manipulating $391 million in Congressionally-mandated foreign assistance, to get another country to smear a political opponent. A worse abuse of power is hardly conceivable.

And anyone inclined to give it a pass should consider the defendant’s record. This vileness is just the latest in a long sickening string of one vile thing after another.

Republicans who bray that this is a sham, a witch hunt, a hoax, disgrace themselves. By saying it, they’re the ones perpetrating a sham, a witch hunt, a hoax.

The whistleblower, and the foreign service officers who are testifying, telling the truth, in the teeth of presidential intimidation and threats, are courageous patriotic heroes. They show that the American ideals, which Trump so travesties, are not dead yet. Republicans who vilify them as shameful treasonous partisan hacks are themselves the shameful treasonous partisan hacks.

Bolivia, China, and 1984

Bolivia’s longest-serving President Evo Morales was first elected in 2006, a left-winger, of indigenous background, former head of the Coca growers union. He held a referendum to change the constitution to allow him to run for a fourth term. Voters said no. He ran again anyway. Typically for such autocrats, he got a packed court to legalize this. But voters said no again. When Morales tried to fiddle the election results, huge protests ensued. On Sunday, the military — Morales had not consolidated his co-opting it — finally said he must go. And Morales actually did step down; as did three others in his line of succession.

So it’s still possible for citizens to get rid of a seemingly entrenched regime. This is very encouraging. Yet the global trend is unfortunately contrary. Such regimes are perfecting the techniques for staying in power, neutralizing opposition. Look at Venezuela. The Maduro gang is literally destroying the country, impoverishing the populace, yet still it seems impregnable. There, unlike in Bolivia, the army is totally in bed with the regime. They’ve got the guns, and aren’t squeamish about using them.

It also helps to have at least some citizen support. In Venezuela, there are actually still a lot of people who actually believe the regime’s propaganda and back it. And they go into the streets and use organized violence against regime opponents.

It is indeed dismaying how so many people, everywhere, can be so misguided in their political allegiances. Look at Brazil. Its last presidential election had a run-off between right-wing and left-wing extremists — because in the first round few people would vote for the sensible, responsible moderate choice. So they wound up with an absolutely terrible person. The Brazilian Trump. Then there’s the Philippine Trump. Not to mention, of course, the American one.

But the godfather of authoritarian regimes, consummating the techniques for holding unchallengeable power, is China’s. PBS recently ran an exploration of Artificial Intelligence; one segment, titled “The Surveillance State,” focused on China’s use of AI to suppress any and all dissension. In its largely Muslim province of Uighuristan, it employs AI to intensively profile every citizen (or, more accurately, subject), and anyone suspect has been put into “re-education camps.” It’s estimated that that’s a million people. Meantime, nationwide, China is perfecting facial recognition technology to keep tabs on everyone, deploying a “social credit” system giving every inhabitant a score for subservience. Those with low scores are being treated accordingly. To make the whole system truly pervasive, China is deploying — wait for it — surveillance cameras — six hundred million of them.

Hong Kong is in revolt against all this. It’s widely feared that this must end with China’s regime violently cracking down, like in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Maybe; but I suspect that will not happen because it’s not necessary for China’s regime. There is simply no way for Hong Kongers to gain the democracy they seek. The Beijing bosses can just sit tight doing nothing. And the vast majority of China’s population is actually already so brainwashed that they support the regime — fervently —against the Hong Kongers.

Nineteen Eighty-Four may have been too optimistic. At the book’s end it was clear it was looking back on a regime that was no more.

Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy

Democrats love government; Republicans hate it. Of course that’s a big oversimplification. But in this respect Elizabeth Warren is the quintessential Democrat.

I was long a Republican, with a libertarian/conservative perspective. Not hating government, but seeing unconstrained government power as a problem. Warren doesn’t share that viewpoint.

The word “socialist” is thrown around a lot by people who don’t actually know what it means. It’s not “social welfare” or government regulating the private sector; it’s government replacing it.

Warren says she’s no socialist, and seems to mean it, actually having good things to say about the role of the private sector in creating economic dynamism. At least in concept. However, she does propose what amounts to socialism for one major economic sector: health care, prohibiting private insurance.

There’s much to hate about private health insurers. Typically in free market capitalism, a company makes money by making customers happy. But health insurers perversely make money by limiting what customers get. Nevertheless, it remains a principle of a free society for people to choose for themselves, and many Americans seem satisfied with their health insurance arrangements.

Taking that freedom away, with a government-only system, is not only wrong but unnecessary. Let Democrats instead create a government option as an alternative. If, as they believe, it’s so much better, it will outcompete private insurers and put them out of business that way. Warren’s refusal to accept that logic is politically stupid. Pointlessly so, because her plan can’t be enacted.

She targets inequality, her centerpiece proposal being a wealth tax (also impossible to enact). This reflects the standard left wing mindset of seeing the problem as what the rich have, as if it’s gotten at the expense of the rest (a basic fallacy). Thus their approach of beating down the rich rather than finding ways to uplift the others.

Actually, Warren does have some proposals in the latter vein, and some are actually reasonable. And I actually agree that richer people like me should pay more tax, especially after Trump’s disgraceful tax giveaways. But a wealth tax is a terrible idea, as several countries trying it have found out. Will an army of federal assessors be sent out to evaluate the worth of all rich folks’ assets — all the mansions, yachts, art collections? Which would invite stratagems to hide wealth and otherwise avoid the tax.

Far better to resuscitate the moribund estate tax. That makes much economic and social sense, and the counter-arguments are bogus. But the estate tax has gotten politically toxic. Though I cannot fathom how a wealth tax sounds better.

More broadly, a cause of inequality is corporate power, which Warren seeks to curb. And I find much to agree with here, free market champion though I am. “Free market” really means free, with open competition. With that, consumers capture the lion’s share of wealth creation. But too many big corporations use their power to squelch competition, especially by enlisting government in that effort. It’s one of the reasons I’m leery of government in general. Warren does have some plans, like stronger antitrust enforcement, breaking up “crony capitalism,” that I endorse; yet her idealization of government seems oblivious to how it’s in the very nature of big government to be captured and suborned by powerful businesses in the ways she herself decries.

And when it comes to coddling businesses, Warren herself does exactly that with her protectionist stance toward trade. Historically, Democrats were the party of free trade, understanding how that benefits consumers and the country as a whole, whereas Republicans were the protectors of businesses. But somewhere the left lost its way on this issue — while Republicans saw the light — until Trump came along and blinded them. Warren would not roll back his insane trade policies, that so harm the global economy and our own.

But most fundamentally, I don’t like the tenor of her campaign. The us-against-them stridency. That if you’re not on board with her program, totally, you stand for nothing, you’re weak, part of the problem, even morally deficient. It’s just this sort of scorched-earth partisan bloody-mindedness that’s tearing the country apart. Warren’s favorite word is “fight.” I think America’s had enough fighting; let’s have some peace.

I have endorsed Joe Biden, whose moderation and centrist reasonableness are far more in line with what we so desperately need. And, notwithstanding all the whining about Biden’s supposed electoral weaknesses, I continue to see him as the best candidate to beat Trump. (That’s why Trump viciously targets him.) National polls show Biden beating Trump soundly; with Warren it’s a toss-up. Her high-octane ideological shrillness (not to mention, alas, her gender) turns off a lot of voters. Whereas Biden is seen as a calm safe pair of hands, an antidote to the sturm und drang of Trump’s presidency.

Pete Buttigieg scores even higher on centrist reasonableness. He’s actually by far the best of all the candidates. His being gay would repel some voters, but I think most would be able to get past that when they see his admirable qualities. I believe he too would do better against Trump than Warren. And if Buttigieg did manage to rise to the top and get the nomination, it would be America at its best. Gosh how I miss that America.

And if it’s Warren nominated? What’s at stake in this election far transcends matters of ideology or policy. America’s soul will be dead if — after every monstrous vile thing he’s done — Trump is re-elected. It would repudiate every good principle this country used to embody. Warren understands those principles, and is everything Trump is not: honest, well-informed, competent, responsible, a decent and sane human being. For all I’ve said against her, we’d be far better off with her than Trump.* Another four years of him would be the end of America.

An imperfect world presents imperfect choices. If it’s Trump versus Warren, I will support her more strongly than I’ve ever supported any cause in my life.

* And if Republicans’ Trumpmania winds up resulting in their worst nightmare of a left-wing president, it will be poetic justice.

End Road Work? No!

We’ve all seen those signs along highways, saying “End Road Work.” This movement seems very misguided. I can think of many things that should be ended, but road work surely isn’t one of them. In fact, most people would consider it a very good thing if not, indeed, vitally necessary. Having myself sustained a flat tire recently due to a pot hole, count me as strongly in support of road work. What can these people be thinking, wanting to end it?

Sure, it can be an annoyance, slowing up traffic. But traffic would ultimately become a lot slower if the campaign against road work succeeds! One of the many things about modernity we blithely take for granted is good serviceable roads. But there’s no free lunch, everything has a cost.

Maybe road work opponents have been confuzzled by all the rhetoric trying to soft-soap socialism, by claiming that anything government does is socialism. So they think road work is socialism. Well, I’d be happy to see it done by the private sector. But failing that, I still want roads repaired, even if it is socialism. There are a lot worse ways for government to use taxpayer money.

Fortunately, years of “End Road Work” signs seem to have had little or no impact on curtailing the practice. These foolish cranks should give up and find a different issue to protest about.

Facebook: helping to destroy civilization

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he won’t stop running political ads — even lying ones. Trump has already run ads falsely smearing Biden. But Zuckerberg says Facebook banning or censoring such ads would violate freedom of speech.

He’s wrong. Freedom of speech (embodied in the First Amendment) means government may not squelch what anyone says. Facebook — big and powerful though it is — ain’t the government (yet). “Freedom of speech” in no way obligates Facebook to make itself a platform for lies. (Twitter’s chief Jack Dorsey, trying to be a more responsible citizen than Zuckerberg, is stopping political ads on Twitter.)

We now know how thoroughly Facebook was manipulated by the Russians in 2016 to get Trump elected. It went way beyond political ads. Among other ploys, they also set up vast numbers of seeming Facebook user groups to spread disinformation and dissension.

Not only does Facebook blow it as a gatekeeper on all that, it even does so on it’s own mis-named “news feed.” More accurately a garbage feed. Because to increase traffic (and hence ad revenue) its algorithms parlay user information to show people stuff calculated to push their buttons — whether true or not. And much is not.

In fact Facebook’s system rewards falsity. I heard a radio interview with one guy who candidly explained how he cooked up a false report about Hillary vote fraud, and made thousands from it. This is called “clickbait” — whenever someone clicks on such a link, not just Facebook, but the link’s creator too, make money from ads.

Some time back, a Trumper I know indignantly distributed a bunch of quotes from leading Democrats slamming the Constitution. Obviously (to me) fake quotes. But instead of ignoring it, I did some googling and quickly found the source, a lying website, and the debunking. This was just one small taste of a monster phenomenon.

Manufacturing phony quotes or vote fraud reports is easy enough, low-tech lying. But now you can create fake video. Like the recent “drunk Pelosi” clip. But worse yet, you can even cook up footage showing someone appearing to say whatever outrageous things you want to put in their mouths. Watch for this in the 2020 campaign. How will the average voter know what to believe?

In the internet’s infancy, we naively imagined it would make people better informed. Instead, it’s a fountain of weaponized lies, and most people (like my Trumper friend above) just don’t have the capability for vetting all the stuff coming at them. This poisons the well of information influencing our voting decisions. Democracy cannot function this way.

It’s exacerbated by having a president who — instead of trying to confront the problem — is himself a big part of the problem.

We are headed toward a world where there’s no such thing as truth or reality. Or so it will seem. But, of course, no matter what rubbish fills minds, there will still actually be a reality out there. And voters with rubbish-filled minds will make for a pretty ugly reality.

Trump is just a harbinger.