Me, My Wife, and 3 Amigos

This picture is not an AI or photoshop creation. My wife Therese and I attended the big March 28 Democratic fundraiser at New York’s Radio City Music Hall (where I hadn’t been in 60-odd years).

Never actually met a president in the flesh before. Three together was kind of surreal. Each warmly greeted us and shook hands. I thanked them for doing this. Therese was tingly with excitement that President Biden had put his hands on her shoulders.

A surprise was the photographer being the world famous Annie Leibovitz! (We learned that afterward, through mention on The Daily Show.)

Only late the night before did an email instruct download of our tickets through Ticketmaster. I couldn’t get it to work on my computer. We tried again on my wife’s phone at our hotel; I gave up after a while, but she, bless her, persisted, and finally succeeded. Good thing: Radio City was barricaded by cops, demanding to see tickets.

In the hotel I met with Orin Kramer, a Democratic operative who’d started out working in the Carter White House. It was Kramer who’d contacted me as a past donor and persuaded me to step up again. We two had a great conversation about the political scene. Then my wife and I were visited by Wisconsin Democratic Chairman Ben Wikler and sidekick Jill Strauss (I’d made a special Wisconsin donation in 2020). Wikler is a terrific guy who’s done great work countering Republican voter suppression.

Landrieu

At the pre-event reception, Chuck Schumer was working the room, but we weren’t on his radar. I did say hello to Democratic National Chairman Jaime Harrison and reminded him of a phone conversation we’d had. Also was delighted to encounter Mitch Landrieu, a really great guy, and laud what he’d done removing Confederate statues as New Orleans Mayor.* Landrieu was very gracious.

Well, enough name dropping. I hadn’t remembered just how huge Radio City is; 5000 people in that hall. The program featured some star performers including Queen Latifah, Lizzo (striking for her energy and verve), and Ben Platt (whose pretentious gyrations seemed just ridiculous).

The main event was Stephen Colbert conversing with the three presidents. Though there was some levity, I was surprised by how serious and substantive it mostly was. Highlighting Trump’s threat to everything good about America, but also Biden’s positive story: so much accomplished, with a really strong economy. Making inexplicable so many voters’ attraction to so perverse an alternative.

Biden mentioned Trump’s rallies opening with the national anthem sung by imprisoned January 6 rioters whom he now calls “patriots” and “hostages,” pledging pardons. Whereas on that day (after doing nothing to stop the violence) Trump had actually denounced them as un-American lawbreakers who’d properly be punished.

There was a big pro-Palestinian protest outside the hall; and even inside, loud disruptive shouting. Biden deemed it okay for them to be heard (while Obama admonished them to listen as well as shout). All three, though acknowledging the October 7 horror, also recognized the unacceptable suffering of innocent Gazans, while stressing how very hard it is trying to resolve this complex intractable conflict.

At least Biden is indeed trying, bringing to bear all his human decency, compassion, experience, and wisdom. We mustn’t replace him with a mentally ill bull in a china shop devoid of morals.

I’m always thrilled visiting New York, the very capital of civilization. A civilization whose future is on the ballot in November. And while it was a thrill to meet three presidents and some other great people, that doesn’t compare with the thrill of having so wonderful a wife at my side.

*Read about that here: https://rationaloptimist.wordpress.com/2018/08/02/mitch-landrieu-and-confederate-monuments/

It’s the Culture Stupid

“It’s the economy stupid,” decreed James Carville, Bill Clinton’s 1990s campaign guru — a line that became a staple of our politics, saying it’s the economy that really decides elections.

If so, Joe Biden would be winning easily. Okay, inflation’s still bothersome. But economic growth is strong, lifting many boats, wages are rising, unemployment is at record lows, and stocks are up.

But today, it’s the culture stupid. More specifically, cultural flux. That’s the only way to make sense (if you call it sense) of an election that’s close between a normal decent president with a decent record and one of the vilest human beings ever to disgrace the species.

That species has existed over 100,000 years. So civilization, only around 10,000 years old, is still a relatively new thing, requiring some getting used to, tweaking our ancestral mindsets and psychologies. But at least for nearly all that latter time, there’d be hardly any change during one person’s life.

That’s no longer true. People around when the Wright Brothers flew lived to see men land on the Moon. And in just the last few decades, our world has been quite thoroughly remade. Computers and the internet only took off in the ’90s. Smartphones began in 2007. Then came social media. Younger people today, grown up with all that, seem like a different species.

But it’s not just technology. A whole other realm of change is cultural. Old verities concerning race, gender, sexuality, have been thoroughly discombobulated. Bigger still, the role of women has been revolutionized. It’s only a few decades since The Feminine Mystique was published. In that short period, male-female relations, family life, and work life have undergone dramatic change.

In general, this is all progress, giving ever more people greater opportunities to lead rewarding lives. Yet it’s messing mightily with the mentalities bred into us by all those millennia of evolution. In so many ways, we weren’t built for the world we’ve got today, and we’re scrambling to adjust.

NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s recent book, The Anxious Generation, looks into an explosion of depression and other psychological ills afflicting younger Americans. Social media, he thinks, and changing styles of parenting, play a big role. Here too it’s people struggling to adjust our ancient ways of being to new and different ones.

Not much here is directly political. Nevertheless, in a world that to many people seems confusing, out of control, even leaving them behind, politics does offer one way at least to assert themselves. To exert some control and fight their felt disempowerment. Giving expression to their bubbling resentment at the cultural upheaval mucking up their comfort in their skins.

This is the deep story behind all the right-wing nationalist populist politics we’re seeing in most of the “advanced” world. Take immigration. Seen by many as affronting their idea of “the way things should be.” That is, the way they used to be, with ethnically homogeneous communities. Immigration in America in fact hasn’t really expanded, but what’s different is that today newcomers are more spread out rather than concentrated in a few big cities. The cultural change associated with immigrants fuels right-wing populism everywhere.

Thus we see Britain’s government heedlessly pushing an idiotic, inhumane (and costly) scheme to ship asylum seekers to Rwanda. While notably, the one rich nation with no such nationalist populist movement is Japan — which has almost no immigrants.

Elsewhere it seems the world is going haywire. People losing their grip. And the perverse thing about it is that this political response, far from achieving what populists imagine, actually threatens to make things much much worse for them. Take immigration again. To actually shut our borders and bar newcomers would be national suicide. In fact a key reason why America’s economy is actually doing so well compared to other leading nations is that we have more immigrants, replenishing our work force as the native population ages and pensioners proliferate.

The Economist recently examined the sad decline of many American small towns with population shrinkage in death spirals. More immigration would help. Trump’s promise to deport millions would be economically catastrophic for U.S. businesses benefiting from their labor. Trade war is also ruinous for the economy. All in all, populist medicine is poison.

And if you hate how ugly politics has become, electing Trump would hardly be the cure. It could happen because many people are indeed turned off by the ugliness he’s unleashed, so they won’t vote. David Brooks in a recent column noted that young people (18 to 34) in particular are disaffected, with only 36% saying they’re greatly interested in this election. Astonishing given the stakes.

I consider myself a humanist. The essence of humanism is understanding that our fates are in our own hands. The vast changes to our world give us vast opportunities. We mustn’t screw it up.

The British Post Office Scandal: How Not to Handle One

“The worst miscarriage of justice in British history,” it’s been called — “an affront to justice.” Hundreds of innocent people convicted on false evidence. Not a 16th Century witch hunt, but one in the 21st.

This true story was dramatized in a multi-part Masterpiece Theater production, “Mr. Bates vs The Post Office.” A disturbing window into an aspect of human nature.

The British Post Office introduced a new Fujitsu computer system called “Horizon,” for local postal outlets, run by private individuals (“sub-postmasters”), mostly as adjuncts to other businesses like little stores. Horizon started showing widespread account deficits. The Post Office’s “help line” was useless in sorting this out (and lied to callers that they were alone having these problems). Hundreds were forced to repay amounts ranging into tens of thousands; stripped of their licenses; nearly a thousand criminally prosecuted for theft and fraud. The P.O. insisted their contracts made them completely responsible. Many lives were destroyed. Several committed suicide.

When this began to unfold, you’d think someone high up in the P.O. would say, “Wait! This makes no sense! Something’s messed up here!”

But no.

A question that came up in the dramatization was — where did the money go? Not to the sub-postmasters, many being bankrupted by the repayment demands. But a question that somehow never arose was — how could those tiny postal outlets even have turnover in such large amounts in the first place?

It made, indeed, no sense at all. There was never anything to indicate that any money was actually missing. The “deficits” were just figments of Horizon computer glitches. That should have been obvious from the get-go.

Yet the Post Office muckety-mucks went into a bureaucratic crouch, refusing to entertain the possibility of anything wrong with the system, insisting all the prosecutions were perfectly proper. Oblivious to reason and the injustice. This continued for a decade. They went through the motions of an internal investigation, an outside review, and a mediation process for victims — all jerry-rigged to bury the truth and produce the desired results. Officialdom in all its gory glory.

It was a human unwillingness to acknowledge error. They also wanted to protect the P.O.’s “brand” from any opprobrium. Perhaps arguably understandable had there been much chance they’d succeed. But with hundreds of victims all across the country, the crap was bound to hit the fan somehow, eventually. Damaging the “brand” far more than an honest handling of the matter in the first place would have done.

They should have quickly realized something was wrong, and gotten out in front of it, doing everything possible to make things right. Instead they doubled down, violating the first rule of holes: if you’re in one, stop digging.

I’ve previously written that all human sins are ultimately rooted in arrogance. And reviewed a book titled Assholes – A Theory, also centralizing arrogance. The “Horizon” story is illustrative — behavior quintessentially arrogant. Asshole behavior.

Being fallible, I make mistakes in my own business. I try to correct them. But government bureaucracies have little impetus to do so, free to behave arrogantly instead. This is a key element of a traditional antipathy toward governmental power.

In the end of a very long and tortuous story, the sub-postmasters, led by the indefatigable Mr. Bates, won a sweeping judicial victory. That “affront to justice” quote came from appeal judges, voiding some of the many criminal convictions. The real criminals, it was now clear, were the Post Office bureaucrats.

Led by Paula Vennells. She almost seemed like a human being — almost. At the end, she was shown in church (she was also a pastor — a woman of God!) at last apologizing to the legions of people who’d suffered so cruelly. Yet still disclaiming criminal responsibility. And: her lips didn’t move. The contrition was only in her head.

Vennells was not prosecuted. Instead, awarded a CBE (“Commander of the British Empire,” a step below knighthood). Vennells later renounced the CBE, a gesture without effect; but King Charles has revoked it.

Yet even now the story’s not over. After the TV drama aired, the BBC News had a brief item quoting Vennells labelling the false numbers spewed out by Horizon not “bugs” but “exceptions” — to make them sound “non-emotive.”

The hole so deep no light can reach the bottom.

Why Not a Trump-Trump Ticket?

The ass-kissing wannabees for Trump’s running mate —like Elise Stefanik, Tim Scott — even Marjorie Taylor Jewish Space Laser Greene — are making a ludicrous spectacle of themselves.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (a Melania look-alike trying to be the new Sarah Palin) seems out of the running, having bragged in a book about shooting an unruly puppy (rather than bother with training. And don’t mention the goat). Guess she figured on a macho vibe, playing to Republican proclivities for cruelty and guns. But she overshot the mark. Or maybe MAGA world hasn’t sunk that far . . . yet.

Anyhow, the VP pick must be a tough call for Trump, feeling betrayal when his previous one, Mike Pence, refused to join his coup to overthrow the government.

But here’s some free advice: why not a Trump-Trump ticket? With Donald Junior for VP.

After all, a chip off the old block; that apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

Qualifications? Schmalifications. Donald Junior has what it takes to be Veep in a Trump administration. Spouting shameless lies smearing all opponents, with 150% loyalty to the creep-in-chief. He would not have gone wobbly like Pence on January 6.

Of course dynastic succession is de rigueur for authoritarian regimes. North Korea’s on its third generation of their beloved Kims.

It would be a perfectly balanced ticket, with a Trump at each end. The cultists can double down, wrapping themselves in Trump-Trump flags and signs and bumper stickers.

Trump-Trump-Trump-Trumpity-Trump.

Drain the swamp!

The Campus Protests and Radical Chic

Israel’s Gaza atrocities unfolded over months with scarcely a whimper of campus protest. Then suddenly all hell broke loose. Why now?

Well, the weather is nicer now.

But seriously, who’d want to march outdoors or sit in a tent with temperatures below forty?

Am I suggesting some shallowness there? Israel’s Gaza actions merit the outrage. Yet I can’t avoid a somewhat jaundiced view toward the protests.

What comes to mind is a decades-old locution: radical chic. Coined by writer Tom Wolfe about upper class white dilettantes lionizing the likes of the Black Panther party. Maybe that was actually supportable. But they didn’t really know what they were talking about. Just nevertheless thought they were being cool.

Today’s campus demonstrators may have romanticized protests past, and were just looking for a suitable opportunity to reprise them. The fact of making a stand on something being more important than what that something is.

Footnote: The Economist’s Lexington columnist mentioned that these demonstrators often make a thing of pronouncing “Gaza” in the Arab way, much like 1980s predecessors embraced an exaggeratedly spanishy pronunciation of “Nicaragua” (Nee-ha-RAH-hua). I inquired of my daughter, who’s studied Arabic, and “Gaza” sounds something like HRUH-zhuh.

Meantime, the issue has deep historical roots of which most protesters appear ignorant. Yet it’s readily slotted into the standard woke-left paradigm of nasty white(ish) Western(ish) colonizing oppressors versus noble non-white(ish) “indigenous” peoples. A perspective these protests almost seem to parody.

With the obligatory censoriousness toward other viewpoints deemed impermissible. Thus a scheduled commencement speech by America’s UN Ambassador was cancelled. But elsewhere a student’s valedictorian address was barred because she happened to be Muslim and the school poohbahs feared controversy. Over-reacting being endemic.

Of course, for the protesters, it’s good guys versus bad guys. In the real world most conflicts are not right-versus-wrong but right-versus-right (much harder to assess). And much as Israel (its present government at least) strives hard to earn its bad guy chops, Hamas is not exactly good guys. A nuance that doesn’t often come through in the protests.

And it’s not as though this is the only bad thing happening in the world. Not a whisper of campus protest greeted Russia’s Ukraine invasion (a true case of right against wrong). Nor regarding what’s happening in Myanmar, Sudan, or Xinjiang. Guess none of those fitted the woke narrative like the Gaza story does. And the difference is that the students might imagine themselves conceivably influencing U.S. policy, or even Israel’s. Whereas protesting about any of those other crimes would be whistling in the wind.

And what is it with the anti-Semitism? Slamming Israel’s government is one thing, targeting Jews quite another. The student protests seem to lose it when the one veers into the other. It’s actually a well-known phenomenon that when people form a mob their moral compasses go haywire; opinion within groups moves toward that of their most extreme (and vocal) members. And a comprehensive historical ignorance (so common today even among the notionally educated) doesn’t help. A shockingly high percentage of these students, in surveys, think the Holocaust was a myth. Even more say they don’t know.

Unfortunately all this presents campus administrators with impossible dilemmas. Somewhat their own fault after years of upholding a political orthodoxy with free speech for only those mouthing it, while demonizing any dissent as equivalent to violence. Now they’re faced with real violence by the very voices they’d coddled. Freedom of speech does not extend to that. And we see that “hate speech” isn’t after all (as if we never knew) exclusive to the right. It can be a fine line between letting these protests run amok and overreacting with yet more violence.

I believe they’ve drawn the line clumsily. All those cops with billy-clubs. What were those Lords of Academe thinking? Had they never heard the words “Kent State?” Well — at least this time it hasn’t been national guardsmen with guns.

Artificial Intelligence Explains There’s No God

ChatGPT, a leading Artificial Intelligence entity, is very easy to use. Just google it, go to the site, and sign up: very simple and free. Then there’s a box where you can ask it anything. Just for fun, I asked it to write a blog post on whether God exists. Here’s the (unedited) result:

Introduction

In a world filled with diverse beliefs and spiritual ideologies, the question of the existence of God has been a source of profound contemplation for centuries. Atheism, the rejection of the belief in gods or a higher power, has gained prominence as a rational and empirical alternative to religious doctrines. In this blog post, we will delve into the arguments that challenge the existence of God, exploring the philosophical and scientific perspectives that have led many to adopt atheism.

The Absence of Empirical Evidence

One of the central tenets of atheism is the demand for empirical evidence to support any claim, especially one as significant as the existence of a deity. Unlike scientific theories that rely on observable evidence, the concept of God often lacks the tangible proof that skeptics seek. Critics argue that if God exists, there should be concrete evidence or at least a reasonable basis for belief. In the absence of such evidence, atheists maintain that the most reasonable stance is to withhold belief until proof is presented.

The Problem of Divine Hiddenness

A compelling argument against the existence of God is the problem of divine hiddenness. If a benevolent and all-powerful deity exists, why is there a lack of clear and universally accessible evidence of this presence? Atheists posit that if God wanted to establish a personal relationship with humanity, the signs of such a relationship should be evident to all, rather than being shrouded in ambiguity and subjectivity. The diversity of religious beliefs around the world further adds to the perplexity, as different cultures claim exclusive access to the “correct” understanding of the divine.

The Role of Science

Scientific advancements have reshaped our understanding of the natural world, providing logical explanations for phenomena that were once attributed to the supernatural. As our knowledge of the universe expands, the gaps that were once filled by religious explanations are continually narrowing. Atheists argue that the scientific method, with its emphasis on empirical observation and testable hypotheses, offers a more reliable and consistent framework for understanding the world than relying on ancient scriptures or divine revelations.

The Problem of Evil

One of the age-old challenges to the existence of an all-powerful and benevolent deity is the problem of evil. If God is omnipotent and benevolent, why does evil and suffering persist in the world? The existence of natural disasters, diseases, and human-inflicted pain raises questions about the compatibility of a loving God with the harsh realities of life. Atheists argue that the prevalence of suffering is more in line with a world governed by natural processes and random chance, rather than a world overseen by a caring deity.

Conclusion

While belief in God is deeply personal and often rooted in cultural, familial, or experiential factors, atheism provides a rational and evidence-based alternative perspective. The absence of empirical evidence, the problem of divine hiddenness, scientific advancements, and the enduring problem of evil all contribute to a robust argument against the existence of God. It is essential to engage in open, respectful dialogue to explore these ideas further and foster a better understanding of diverse perspectives on the profound question of the divine.

[End]

AI is faulted for occasionally “hallucinating” false information. But on this subject, at least, it seems pretty clear-headed. It’s human religious believers who are hallucinating.