The demographics have shifted solidly to the cities, and cities naturally promote progressive and intellectual values. We really need to overhaul our electoral system, at a minimum scrapping the Electoral College to eliminate the unfair advantage rural areas now have. Longer term, the more I compare parliamentary versus presidential systems, the more convinced I am we need to scrap Presidents and adopt a genuinely pluralistic system. (See The Perils of Presidentialism).

The Arts, the Sciences, the writers, the Press, the educated classes.

“The pointy-headed intellectuals who can’t park their bicycles straight when they get to the campus.” — George Wallace

“The nattering nabobs of negativism.” — Spiro Agnew

They recognized us as an enemy long before we recognized them as such.

Isn’t it interesting we’re having this conversation on Super Bowl Sunday?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4FtfZ1WuTA

Two Heads

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups… So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”

― Philip K. Dick

“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong – faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

The average person is apolitical, even though he may feel compelled to join a political movement out of necessity, as soon as he perceives the threat to his liberty to be over, he goes back to his regular life. This is what happened in Cuba, where a broad coalition of resistance groups joined forces to overthrow the tyrant Batista. Once the rebels rolled into the capital on captured army tanks, most of the resistance went back to doing what Cubans do best, working hard and partying like hell.

But the enemies of freedom are never satisfied, and they always seem to be better organized, and more ruthless and determined, than anyone else. Before long, the remnants of the other resistant movements were rolled up or dispersed, and the grip on the social and civic institutions of the society was tightened. Almost overnight, everyone suddenly woke up to find a monolithic police state apparatus in place, one that had somehow recruited the basest and most cynical strata of society, la chusma, a lovely Spanish slang term which translates roughly into Attic Greek as hoi polloi, or into English as “white trash”. These are the people (not necessarily the poor!)who used to be powerless but didn’t realize it, and now they have a tough-guy leadership that offers them patronage positions in the police state in return for obedience and collaboration. It quickly became obvious that the easiest way to control your neighbor, or your rival, was to denounce him as a counter-revolutionary. No one dared disagree with the charge or protest the accuser lest they be denounced as a contrarevolucionario themselves. The new order called itself a Revolution, but it was nothing but a gangster state. And it is not restricted to ideologies of the Right or Left. It can take root anywhere.

In Cuba it originated in a cadre of ideologues who sought wealth and power. In America, as in Germany in the 1930s, it comes from an ownership class that does not wish to share its wealth and power. In both cases, an oppressed class of victimized workers fearful of the unraveling of their own dreams and their inability to participate in the new prosperity has been enlisted by the presentation of scapegoats and the fanning of xenophobia. Their oppressors have simply convinced the oppressed to vote against their own interests and instead persecute foreign races, religions, and nations. Distraction, Delusion, Divide and Conquer.

Think about it. Who profits by lower corporate taxes? Who gains when the safety net and social legislation are removed? Who will prosper by the removal of regulation that ensures fair business practices, a free and competitive market, worker health and safety, consumer rights, and environmental protection? And who benefits from unemployment and lack of affordable housing and medical care? Why should employers work against unemployment? High unemployment drives labor costs down, this is not a moral question, it is simple economics. It is a driving force, like gravity, completely independent of human wants or desires or social justice: supply and demand. Anything that keeps salaries down only leads to higher profits, When people are terrified of losing their jobs they will work for less and tolerate extreme exploitation in the workplace. Unemployment is good for business.

Rokita’s bill makes the meaning of at-will status clear: “Such an employee may be removed or suspended, without notice or right to appeal, from service by the head of the agency at which such employee is employed for good cause, bad cause, or no cause at all.”

Think about that.

Political appointees could fire civil servants for “no cause at all.”

That’s dangerous.

Civil service procedures can be long and frustrating, but they are designed to guard against arbitrary actions. Federal law governing the workforce permits disciplinary actions for “such cause as will promote the efficiency of the service.” At odds with the “at-will” power Rokita advocates, among the government’s long-standing merit system principles is one designed to “protect employees against favoritism, political coercion and arbitrary action and prohibit abuse of authority.”

If things get too dangerous I might still drop out… Robert, I sent you an email on how I might do that…

There’s been a lot written in public lately about resistance to tyrants, most interestingly, from people who’ve actually lived under tyrannies. Their advice contains one universal: Don’t wait to resist. It becomes harder with time, as the tyrant becomes more entrenched and more powerful.

It’s heartening to see how hard so many people are resisting already, just two weeks into the Trump “Presidency”. I’m conscious of the risk of living in a bubble, but it’s hard to argue the objective reality of the widespread ridicule and downright contempt being heaped on Trump by the slice of America known as “thought leaders”.

It means something that late night television universally hates Trump. It’s as if American culture is in the throes of reverse peristalsis, to eject the offending mass.

So we’re not alone. Not such lonely voices in the wilderness, but more part of a growing popular movement to correct a ghastly mistake. We didn’t start the fire, but damn if we don’t have a responsibility to help put it out.

Never let alternative facts smother the knowledge that Trump was put into power by around 20% of Americans through a fluke of the electoral system, concerted gerrymandering and voter suppression by Republicans, and misplaced apathy. All of those things the 80% of us can fix.

“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I did nothing…”

You’re preaching to the choir, of course. “Well said”, we sang in harmony.

I’ve been actively working on the new site for the last month, fighting against gnarly database problems complicating the safe transfer of our precious messages to a new site. And to make a more secure site, one that Best Writing Service won’t find such a pushover. I was hoping to be ready to invite y’all in for an inspection as soon as this weekend, but that’s in doubt. But soon.

I have more in mind than just a revised UI, but I’m not ready to talk about it all just yet. I am hoping to bring it all together for an official grand reopening April 22, to coincide with the global demonstrations for science (and reason).

The technical improvements are important, but hardly sufficient. I want to reexamine what we used to call “moderation”, in light of how pathetically powerless moderation is in the modern counterfactual world. I’m thinking something more aggressive, borrowing the values of journalism; and watched over by “editors”, empowered to be immoderate when necessary.

Our enemy is isn’t just falsehood, e.g. “fake news”, but something far more insidious: intellectual dishonesty and bad-faith argumentation. We have to call out not only the blatant falsehoods, but the sly half-truths.

So yeah, old buddy, we are on the same wavelength.

Once more into the breech?