My New Book — The American Crisis: Chronicling and Confronting the Trump Shitstorm

The American Crisis: Chronicling and Confronting the Trump Shitstorm, by Frank S. Robinson; Verity Press International; 247 pages; $12.95 (+ $4 shipping in USA). Payment by credit card; Paypal or Zelle to frank@fsrcoin.com; or check to me at Box 8600, Albany, NY 12208. 

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” Thomas Paine wrote in The American Crisis, in 1776. I’ve always been an idealist, not a cynic, a realist but an optimist — writing The Case for Rational Optimism, and blogging as the “Rational Optimist.”

But since 2016 I, like Paine did, have seen America in crisis. This book is a chronological selection of my relevant blog essays. I’ve tried to grapple with what’s happening, to understand and analyze it.

Long politically engaged (I was a conservative Republican), I published my first book about politics in 1973. This volume may be somewhat unique in tracing one observer’s perspectives on events as they were unfolding, when they were fresh and raw, echoing the notion of journalism as “the first draft of history.”

I have mercilessly edited the entries to minimize repetition, and for brevity, cutting out much verbiage; but have refrained from using hindsight to look smarter or more prescient.

In every civilization people have always groused that it’s going to the dogs. Sustaining our American project requires us to hold fast to our fundamental values. I’m not ready to give up on it, being still an idealist and optimist. That’s why I’m publishing this.

How to Play With Your Food

Who could resist that book title found at a yard sale? More, the authors were Penn & Teller — renowned magicians and outspoken advocates for reason against superstition.

We’ve all been scolded, “Don’t play with your food.” Well, food is good to eat, but also fun to play with. Where’s the problem? As the saying goes, you can have your cake (to play with) and eat it too. No?

The book is a how-to guide for tricks involving food. Like pretending to stab your eye with a fork, making a flood of white gunk spew out. Shock your dinner companions.

Most are fairly simple tricks involving sleight of hand and misdirection — or, as the authors put it, “lying.” Lying is wrong as a general moral principle, but only if you owe the lyee the truth. You don’t owe the Gestapo the truth about Jews in your attic. Penn and Teller would have excelled at that game.

And they do have moral scruples. One chapter is “How to Get Your Ethical-Vegetarian Friends to Eat Veal.” The “trick” is simple and obvious. But then they say don’t do it — it would be wrong.

Not everything in the book involves magic, exactly. Penn relates an encounter with non-aesthete truckers at a Nebraska eatery, menacingly picking a fight with him. He lifted his milkshake and poured it over his own head. That so confuzzled the truckers that they backed off and skedaddled. A food trick, I guess. Handy to know.

While magic is mostly fun and entertainment, the authors take a dim view of frauds who actually purport to be on the level. Like with spoon bending and other paranormal nonsense. They observe that if any such were really possible, then it wouldn’t be “paranormal.” So too with “supernatural;” anything real is natural.

There’s a nod to James (“the Amazing”) Randi who tirelessly exposed frauds like spoon bender Uri Geller. And Penn and Teller make this killer point: if someone actually had the kind of mental powers that could bend spoons — why waste them bending spoons?! Likewise regarding “psychics” — why are they hustling suckers for chump change when their abilities (if real) should easily make them rich?

I was reminded of Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy. One character, “The Mule,” was a rare mutant who really and truly could read minds. So he wound up ruling the galaxy.

Penn and Teller are merciless against all irrational beliefs. One chapter is headed “Salt in the Wounds of Credulous Fools.” A side box highlights “How many times can we say ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,’ ‘you can’t prove a negative,'” and several other truisms of rationality.

The food trick here involves using what’s actually mere table salt to “cure” a fake blister, calling it a “homeopathic” remedy, conning homeopathic suckers to buy some. (Salt couldn’t actually qualify as “homeopathic” which, the authors do correctly note, means there’s nothing in it except plain water; but never mind.) They end here with “make sure you tell them it cures herpes.” Adding, “we are the lowest of the low.”

Witch Hunts Past and Present

I’ve written about the Western world’s witch burning craze during the 15th-18th centuries.* Recently I’ve read more on the subject in a book by Martin Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches – The Riddle of Culture. Right after reading Steven Pinker’s book Rationality!

Timely because so much happening right now — in world events, and parts of American civic culture — seems so downright irrational. But reading about the witch craze makes that look far less mad in comparison. While also warning us just how far sociocultural irrationality can go. The story in America is far from over, and there seems to be a natural tendency for madness to keep escalating.

The Harris book makes plain just how horrific the witch persecutions were — with graphic descriptions of the torture regularly applied to get confessions, particularly to get victims to name other names, who’d be victimized in turn, an exponentially expanding cascade of horror. With hundreds of thousands burned to death.

Why were so many so ready to believe such bizarre accusations against their neighbors? Typically including women flying (on proverbial broomsticks) to “sabbats” where witches would congregate, and have sex with demons. Harris suggests such tales were not actually detached from reality — there seems to have been a hallucinogenic unguent that would put people in a dream state wherein such flights and sexual doings figured. But even if such indulgence was widely practiced (doubtful), would users have advertised their experiences?

Harris also discusses, as did my previous essay, the very real incentives for witchery accusations. Not only to vent communal backbiting, but there was actual monetary profit for accusers and prosecutors. Furthermore, with accusations rampant, a good way to avoid falling victim yourself was to join the ranks of accusers.

But Harris adds yet another theory. These were times of great hardship for large numbers of people, and consequent social unrest, shaking the foundations of the prevailing order. Those wanting to protect that order, safeguarding their own power and status, could deflect peasant resentment from themselves to devils and witches — blaming those for all sorts of misfortunes suffered by the less privileged. This Harris sees as the true explanation for why witch hunting became so huge.

This also relates to my earlier point analogizing today’s U.S. political situation. Of course there’s no comparing socioeconomic problems in modern America with those afflicting peasants centuries ago. Yet we’re seeing a lashing out that does resemble the old-time demonization of devils and witches. This is indeed how most Republicans view Democrats —as threatening all that’s good and holy — with about as much rationality. The earlier witch hunts got way out of hand, with horrific human consequences. I’d like to think 21st century Americans couldn’t go so irrational. Yet I’ve been shocked at just how far down that road so many have already gone.

* At https://rationaloptimist.wordpress.com/2021/10/16/religion-as-a-source-of-morality-and-witch-burning/

The Curse of the Undead: Trump Declares Candidacy Again

What a shocker. And with a meandering stream-of-consciousness speech predictably full of lies and howlers.

After January 6, it almost looked like Republicans might break from Trump. Didn’t happen; if anything, their deranged devotion doubled down. Now once more, after a weak 2022 GOP election showing — widely blamed on Trump’s malign effect — there’s a lot of noise they’ll turn away from him. Well, we’ve seen this movie before.

He’s called DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious.” Oh, please. Isn’t that sick shtick getting old? And it doesn’t have quite the ring of “Crooked Hillary,” “Lying Ted, “Little Marco,” “Sleepy Joe,” and all Trump’s other juvenile taunts.

A DeSantis candidacy’s logic, of course, is that he gives Trumpers all they want, minus Trump’s toxicity. But as I keep saying, logic is no part of MAGAtry. Religious cults don’t work that way.

Sane Republican party operatives have long dearly wished to be rid of this curse, knowing its evil. He’s now lost them three elections in a row. They wish he would just die. (Why no stroke or heart attack for this perpetually enraged 76-year-old unhealthy fatty?) But most GOP politicians are so scared of him they publicly kowtow. They’re pathetic, disgusting weasels.

They fear losing Republican primaries if Trump denounces them. His base of voters, the salt-of-the-earth folks who cheer at his rallies, probably still resist the possibility they’ve been worshipping a false god. Elise Stefanik (angling for Veep) rushed to endorse him, even before his announcement. The “stolen election” lie had such power because Trumpers, in their bedazzled bubble, could not even fathom how anyone could vote against him.

Yet of course those poor fools are a minority, turning off ever more people with wits intact. Republican voters renominating Trump might seem political insanity, but don’t bet against it. Especially if there’s a divided field against him, with not only DeSantis but Pence, Cheney, and others; and winner-take-all primaries.

As for Democrats, President Biden should retire gracefully. He’s done great service to the country, mainly saving us from Trump; another term won’t likely burnish his record. A noble renunciation, making way for a new generation of Democrats, will. A political reset good for America.

In contrast Trump running again will be a hellscape. The more his ego is threatened, the more desperate he becomes, facing likely humiliation, the uglier will his behavior be. His campaign will disgrace America.

He’s already damaged this country far more than anyone, ever. And like in a horror movie, repeatedly defied death. But such movies always end with vanquishment. Let us in November 2024, at long last, once and for all, drive a stake through the heart of this evil monster.

Climate: We’re Cooked

Like the proverbial frog in the pot whose temperature slowly rises.

Yes (sigh) this is about climate change. But please read it anyway, it may provide some clarity.

There’s another big global climate talk-fest going on now in Egypt. The 2015 Paris agreement set an ambitious goal of limiting Earth’s temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Centigrade. That was a big victory for poorer nations, which stood to be harmed most by warming (being less equipped to cope with it). However, Paris included no commitments for specific action to achieve the goal.

Since then, the 1.5 degree goal has become a totemic gospel, dominating climate discussion. But — as argued in a recent analysis in The Economist, aptly titled “An Inconvenient Truth” — the chances of achieving 1.5 are zero (and have been for quite some time). It would have required massive reductions in carbon emissions, that simply are not happening. Rather than biting the bullet, we’ve barely been licking it. Consequently, at this point, 1.5 would require, going forward, reductions even more draconian. Which won’t happen either.

Because there’s no way to develop and deploy, fast enough, the technological fixes that would be required to reduce emissions enough without huge dislocations to our way of life, for which there is no public or political will. We’re talking here about the burning of fossil fuels, as in power generation, industrial processes, car and air travel; and there are many further ways we put carbon into the atmosphere, another big one being agriculture. Cow farts are actually a significant factor.

The 1.5 target was adopted even though 1.5 would entail pretty severe climate effects — but that seemed the outer limit for both what might be achievable and what might be more or less tolerable. Now it looks like 2 degrees is about the best we can hope for. And the difference between 1.5 and 2 is the difference between bad and very bad. While blowing past 2 looks increasingly likely.

What are the bad effects? A lot of ice will melt, dumping more water into the oceans, raising sea levels, and flooding low lying coastal cities (and some island countries). More and worse heat waves, obviously; a lot of places becoming simply uninhabitable. More and worse weather events, like hurricanes. More floods, droughts, forest fires. Big disruptions to agriculture and food production. All of which will send vast numbers of people on the move.

Part of the problem is feedback effects: warming creating conditions that cause more warming. For example, ice reflects a lot of sunlight back into space; less ice means less of that. And permafrost melting would release a lot more carbon-rich methane into the atmosphere. There’s danger of a tipping point, causing runaway warming. That’s apparently what happened to Venus, whose temperature now averages a toasty 867 degrees Fahrenheit.

I have argued forever that the zealots were misguided to insist on emissions reductions exclusively, because reducing them enough was a pipe dream. And even if we cut emissions to zero tomorrow, rising temperatures would still be baked in, due to the carbon already in the atmosphere.

We have three main other options. One is carbon capture and storage — sucking it out of the atmosphere. The technology exists. So far, the amount being done is piddling. However, scaling this up to where it would make a difference would be a colossal and colossally costly undertaking.

Second, there’s geoengineering — action to actually lower temperatures. The best known method would mimic the effect of volcanoes — which do periodically reduce temperatures (remember 1816, the “year without a summer”) by throwing a lot of particles into the upper atmosphere that deflect sunlight. This would be problematical and controversial for a host of reasons, and it too would be a gargantuan undertaking.

Both carbon removal and geoengineering would take many years, if not decades, to be deployed at anything near the scale needed.

That leaves the third course — adaptation. Measures to anticipate and cope with higher temperatures. Like building sea walls to protect cities against rising waters. Some places (Venice, for example; the Netherlands, historically) already do this. I’m skeptical that makes sense in the long term; but there are many other things we can do. The Economist article shows how much is actually being done already, although much more is needed.

The idea that humanity is suicidally wrecking the planet is over-the-top. What we have done is what we had to do, utilizing the planet’s resources in order to make ever better lives for generations of people. Of course it was no free lunch, and now we must pay the price. We will pay it.

We will not go extinct. We are the most adaptable of species. Coming out of steamy Africa, humans accommodated to living in the Arctic, and a vast array of other different climates. And that was without the benefit of all the scientific knowledge and technology we’ve acquired since. We will cope with a warmer planet.

As long as it’s not another Venus.

The Election — Not the End of Civilization — Yet

Well, the worst was averted. Hailed as a victory by Democrats and President Biden, now suddenly politically rejuvenated. Sanity prevailed — in a lot of places at least — but even there just by the skin of its teeth. That’s still terrifying. Forty-eight percent of Georgians voted for Herschel Walker. Wisconsin re-elected Ron Johnson. Arizona’s Kari Lake could still win.

And even if they wind up losing the Senate, Republicans controlling the House of Representatives is still a national catastrophe. (I may have been right back in May, that New York’s redistricting screw-up could make the difference.)

The House GOP margin’s smallness actually makes things worse, because now Speaker-to-be McCarthy’s balls (has he any?) will be gripped by the GOP’s crazy caucus — the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, Louie Gohmerts, Paul Gosars. (At least one, Lauren Boebert, is trailing.)

While in normal times it can make sense to put Congress in opposition hands as a check on the administration, this is an extremist anti-democratic opposition. They will exploit their power with the chief aim of making the Biden administration look bad. They will block support for Ukraine, cancel the January 6 investigation, and refuse to raise the debt limit (which economist Paul Krugman has said will “blow up the world economy”). There’ll be a government shutdown, hard to resolve. A blizzard of phony “investigations.” And surely an impeachment. On what grounds? They’ll concoct some. So the next two years will be a real shit-show.

Handing Congressional power to these people is nuts. Why is this happening? Most Americans, once upon a time, whatever the unschooled ignorance and primitivist bigotries, believed in certain aspirational ideas, of what this country means. But those ideas have melted into muddled goo. They cannot be sustained if so few people, for all the flag waving, still understand them:

• Democracy is not just elections, but a pluralist ethos, with everyone’s participation accepted.

• Freedom to live the best lives possible, aided by a society’s web of interconnections.

• Compassion for the less blessed.

• A welcoming society, enriched by a diversity of people arriving to contribute.

• Rule of law, and equality before the law.

• Globally, our great power confers great obligations.

• Church-state separation, no one able to impose their faith on others.

• A society that progresses through truth and reason, fundamental honesty, civility, human decency.

• A society that vaunts virtue and shuns wickedness — and can tell the difference.

We’re retreating on all of it, especially the last. Government is failing, because in frustration we elect too many bad people who actually want to exploit the failure rather than actually fix anything. And the cascading failure just makes us crazier, so in the next cycle we lash out and go for even more irresponsible “outsiders” (opportunists). Or too many voters do (“the worst are full of passionate intensity”).

And those ideals are not merely forgotten. They’re why Democrats — who still do represent them, to a degree at least — are hated by those with a different mindset. Of macho white Christian nationalism, with “Christian” as a cultural signifier supplanting religious belief. Worshipping, indeed (despite all the “freedom” rhetoric), strength and power, the thwack of the cudgel, against the “others.” This is fascism. Which actually has psychological appeal, a sickness humanity still can’t get over.

You’d think news reporting would help Americans see things clearly. But “the news” as we once knew it is dying out. Fox is not “news.” What people now mostly absorb instead is a witch’s brew giving them only a foggy distorted impression of what’s going on.

So, impatient with an administration at least honestly trying to deal with our problems, we’re handing congressional control to a party flouting every one of the enumerated American ideals. A party steeped in lies, that tried to overthrow the previous election and keep in power a monster of depravity. While some Republican election deniers were defeated, at least 200 did win congressional and statewide posts. Setting the stage to mess with 2024 vote certification and create a chaotic constitutional crisis.

Trump was a big loser, with many of his whacko candidate picks doing poorly; a big winner was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. That won’t dissuade Trump from running in 2024, while energizing a DeSantis run. He’d actually be a much more dangerous candidate — the long-feared slicker version of Trump, without all his nasty baggage (though DeSantis has his own sort of nastiness). But could DeSantis beat Trump for the nomination? Trump can out-nasty DeSantis. And most Trump supporters are cultists not into rational political calculation. Nominating him in 2024 ought to incur massive defeat — in a rational world. Of course, we thought that in 2016.

Political Attack Ads: Bad for You, Bad for America

When America’s descent into idiocracy is chronicled, there will be a chapter on political advertising.

We keep seeing laments about campaigns growing costlier. Most of that spending goes on ads; saturating the landscape in closely contested elections.

Where does all the money come from? Much is “dark money” from fatcats, which has always been forthcoming. Most donated not out of altruism, but seeking a payback. But more lately grassroots contributions have expanded hugely too, as parties hone their techniques for seeking them, mainly email blasts.

Parties raise and spend these vast sums because they can. And because they don’t know how to do otherwise. It’s an arms race, even while, in great part, they’re shooting blanks. Because the effectiveness of political ads is limited. The number of undecideds — who will actually go on to vote at all — tends to be small. Ads may nevertheless seem justified for motivating your base. But even if you’ve got a killer ad, how many times must you air it? Surely there’s a point of diminishing returns with the same or similar ads broadcast over and over — most voters either tuning them out or actually getting fed up with seeing them. And “buying elections” is a myth. Annals are full of candidates who spent hugely and lost.

Meantime the ads tend not to help make an informed electorate. That’s putting it mildly. In fact they’re disastrous for our civic culture. Candidates don’t want to “bring a knife to a gunfight.” Standards for what you can get away with have collapsed. Politicians (well, mainly Republicans) have learned there is no penalty for lying. Thus proliferation of searingly nasty ads demonizing opponents as monsters, usually with gross distortion if not outright falsehood and appeals to the worst in human nature. This contributes to divisive polarization and turning people off about politics altogether.

One California candidate, interviewed on film, predicted his opponent would try to smear him by saying he proposed to introduce communism. That film clip duly appeared in an attack ad — doctored to make it sound like the guy proposed to introduce communism. (This episode was reported on The Daily Show.)

And here’s a shocker — the worst offenders, by far, for this sort of thing, are Republicans. We keep hearing how much better they are at messaging than Democrats. Well, it helps if your cynicism and bad faith know no bounds.

No he doesn’t

Too few voters can see it. In this campaign, for example, many are scared by Republican ads about crime. Which is still way below levels of decades past. Republicans posture as champions of “law and order” and the police. Even while excusing and even defending the lawless January 6 attack on police officers (not to mention our civic order). And even while blocking all efforts to regulate even the most murderous military weapons and other sources of rampant gun crime. “Law and order” my ass. Yet polls say voters trust Republicans more on this issue!

And they look set to win a big election victory.

America’s Appointment in Samarra

An old Arab parable: In Baghdad’s marketplace, a man’s servant finds himself eyed ominously by a figure he recognizes as Death. To escape his fate, he’ll ride immediately away, to Samarra, he tells his employer. Who goes to the marketplace and sees the dark figure. “Why did you frighten my servant?” he asks. “Oh, I was merely surprised to see him here in Baghdad,” Death answers, “because I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

In John O’Hara’s 1934 novel Appointment in Samarra, Julian English is an upper crust businessman, believing the world owes him his status. Then he does one stupidly impulsive thing. It sets him on a dark path, which he treads implacably, refusing to make a course correction. Ultimately wrecking his entire life. Was it fate, like in the parable?

I don’t believe in fate; we have choices. Julian, unlike that servant — or perhaps like him? — could have avoided what befell him. O’Hara’s book is discussed, together with Russell Banks’s Continental Drift, in one by Will Schwalbe, The End of Your Life Book Club. In the Banks book, Schwalbe writes, “one bad decision starts to unravel everything. As with O’Hara, it’s not just the bad decision; weakness and stubbornness also contribute.”

Reading this I realized that’s exactly what’s happening to America. We made one bad decision in 2016; in 2020 it briefly looked as though, unlike those novels’ protagonists, we were course correcting; but now it seems we’re veering back toward a disaster we’re incapable of averting. About to put in power a bunch of bad people, and lock in a fatal 2024 election blow-up. Inflation and crime won’t wreck America; the Trump cult’s assault on democracy, truth, and reason will.

This is insane. I have tried to sound the alarm, but most Americans’ heads are elsewhere. I feel like a Jeremiah, the Biblical prophet whose warnings were ignored.

America is racing toward an appointment in Samarra.

Iran: Theocracy Hypocrisy

Decrying Iran’s tyranny, and rooting for the women protesters, is facile. But two points:

One, Iran is seemingly a special case among the world’s dictatorships — a theocracy, rule in the name of religion. However, that’s just the regime’s cover story for what is in reality plain old autocracy, its guys (and they’re all male) ruling not to serve God but themselves; not by grace of God but guns.

Part of their pretend-piety is enforcing a stringent female dress code, putatively to protect against otherwise uncontrolled male libidos. (Western men aren’t unhinged by seeing gals’ hair, but never mind.)

Women are protesting after one was killed for a headscarf lapse. Note that the Koran merely speaks of dressing modestly, with all the extreme rules a later invention, to keep women down. Which goes way beyond clothing. Women are subject to suffocating restrictions in all aspects of life — even sometimes including who they marry.

Iran’s theocrats exploiting religion for self-aggrandizing power is hypocrisy enough. But the hypocrisy goes ballistic when women are brutalized with torture and rape to enforce a dress code supposedly to protect them. Yes, many are being raped by their captors. Rape in the name of protecting their sacralized virginity. Isn’t rape against the koran? Will anyone be punished — like those women are?

Some religious believers are sincere, even virtuous. But those many who exploit religion for self-serving ends never are. Religion is all too apt, as in Iran, to empower bad people to act badly. Religion and hypocrisy are blood brothers.

Which leads me to Point Two. America must guard against this. We are full of people who actually want us to be not a democracy but a theocracy. A majority would never accede; but the majority be damned (literally) in their eyes. Willing to use undemocratic means to get their way. That’s how they’ve already gotten a Supreme Court that’s smashing down our wall of separation between church and state.

Iran’s theocracy came in through violent revolution. I once thought The Handmaid’s Tale could never actually happen in America. But in a sequel, author Margaret Atwood explains how her fictional theocracy arose simply by a violent coup. Today I’m less sure it can’t happen here.

Herschel Walker and the Character Issue

The 2006 film Idiocracy’s premise was dimbulbs procreating like rabbits, producing a dumb population. Imagine the kind of people they elect. Our average IQ is not in fact falling; yet Republican Herschel Walker could actually win Georgia’s senate race.

A stupid, crass, ignorant, amoral liar, without a decent bone in his ex-footballer’s body. With a history mental illness (Walker claims he’s cured). The revelations that this professedly staunch “pro-lifer” paid for a girlfriend’s abortion — and then another girl’s (both of which he lies about) are just the latest travesties.

Walker — appropriately enough — calls Trump his mentor. But at least Trump retains his children’s loyalty. Even Walker’s son denounces him.

He’s running against Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, a clergyman with a virtue to match every Walker vice. Both being Black, racism might seemingly be no factor. Except that Walker is the candidate of the white nationalist party. Reason enough, it seems, for many white Georgians to continue supporting him no matter what.

It’s this no-matter-what vote that’s really turning America into idiocracy. But it may be even worse than that. Whereas bad character and behavior used to be a political handicap, today it actually seems an asset. With (Republican) voters not only willing to support reprobates, but positively attracted to them. It’s a very primitivist macho psychology. What ever happened to “the moral majority”??

In fact, having candidates of bad character is baked in to today’s Republican party. That comes with the territory of slavishly supporting a man with himself the rottenest character.

To spout his big “stolen election” lie you have to be either a fool or a liar yourself. And those are the only kinds of people who win Republican nominations. Honest people of good character, like Liz Cheney, have been methodically purged from the party.

Alabama voters did — just barely — refuse to send creep Roy Moore to the Senate. But that was way back in the innocent days of 2017. The times they are a’changing.

Quote of the day, just heard on the radio: “God does not need an election to make Trump president.”