Yet Another Shooting

Yet another shooting.

It just goes on, even getting more frequent. And the National Rifle Association, which has lots of members, lots of money, and a very effective lobbying apparatus, nips in the bud any talk about imposing new restrictions on gun ownership.

Donald Trump said, "It's a mental health issue, not a gun issue."  Speaking from Tokyo, he said, "We have mental health issues, just like any other country." Yes, Mr. Trump, but have you thought at all about the fact that most other countries don't have these mass shootings? If every country has mental health issues, and mental health problems in the population cause these shootings, then why don't those other countries have numerous and frequent mass shootings similar to ours? Simple logic shows that Trump is wrong.

In Great Britain, just as an example, it is illegal to own a gun. There are still a few guns anyway, and no doubt guns are sometimes used in the commission of a crime. But do we hear about mass shootings in Great Britain? If my rhetorical question needs an answer, No, we do not.

In fairness, it must be admitted that it's not quite so simple as just widespread ownership of guns. I understand that, on a per capita basis, there are a lot of guns in Canada. There are a lot of guns in Switzerland. But those countries don't seem have the equivalent gun use in shootings.

One thing that may make a difference: I have said before, the United States has a gun culture. Possibly this is as simplistic as some other comments on our mass shooting problem, but I think that Western movies glorified, and normalized, using guns to shoot people. Some people in other countries think all of America is the Wild West; and to some extent that's true.

If we look at other countries' experience with gun control laws, it looks like they do work. Australia had a problem with mass shootings. For example, motorcycle gangs were engaging in wars with guns. A turning point came in 1996. "The Port Arthur massacre in 1996 transformed gun control legislation in Australia. 35 people were killed and 23 wounded when the gunman opened fire on shop owners and tourists with two semi-automatic rifles. This mass killing horrified the Australian public [Wikipedia, s.v. Gun laws in Australia]."

Under Australia's new laws, no one may own a gun without showing a good reason. With money raised from a levy, a million guns were bought back by the government. The result?

Between 2010-2014, gun related homicides across all of Australia had dropped to 30-40 per year. Firearms in 2014 were used in less than 15% of homicides, less than 0.1% of sexual assaults, less than 6% of kidnapping/abductions and 8% of robberies.
Since the 1996 legislation the risk of dying by gunshots was reduced by 50% in the following years and has stayed on that lower level since then [Wikipedia, s.v. Gun laws in Australia].

I don't understand why no one in the US Congress calls the attention of the public and the rest of the government to the experience of Australia.


Copyright © 2017

Donald Trump and "Fake News"

Whenever Donald Trump is criticized, he lashes out in retaliation. When he is criticized in the media in any way, or caught out in one of his many, many lies, he responds by labeling it "fake news." What is sad is that many Americans evidently believe Trump when he suggests that the media are wrong (or maliciously lying about him, etc.). A recent poll indicates that 46% of Americans believe Trump's accusations of "fake news" coming from the media.

Manipulating or discrediting the news media is nothing new. In the administration of Richard Nixon, Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew, was evidently charged with the task or attacking the media. He was part of the program to defuse criticism of Nixon, who famously said "I am not a crook." Ironically, not only was Nixon proved to be a crook (or at least a liar, who wrongly denied his involvement in the infamous Watergate scandal), but Agnew was also a crook, who had to resign the vice presidency amidst evidence that he accepted bribes when he was governor of Maryland.

And Franklin Roosevelt, reportedly, was masterful in manipulating the media.

I submit that when the media is wrong, it usually is because they were fed incorrect information by the White House or the Pentagon. This became apparent during the Vietnam War, when the public was misled, many times, because the media were lied to by the government.

A free press is vital to a democracy, and it's important that citizens be able to trust the media. It does not help that cause when the President systematically attempts to discredit them with his accusations of "fake news." I think the public should be more inclined to believe the media than Mr. Trump.

It's getting off the subject, but mentioning Spiro Agnew and the Nixon administration suggests this thought to me: When there are crooks in a government (as Agnew in the Nixon Administration), should the President be guilty by association? That proved to be the case with Agnew and Nixon. Now, with scandals in the Trump administration--several of his nominees for government positions withdrawing because of adverse news, and at least five of Trump's appointees being accused of taking trips on private and luxury flights, thus incurring unnecessary expense to taxpayers--we need to ask ourselves whether this casts any pall on Trump himself. Will we believe him when he tells us, "I am not a crook," as Nixon did?

Copyright © 2017.

Tired of Hearing about Mass Shootings

I am really, really tired of blogging about the problem of gun violence in America. Of course it's much more strain, pain, etc., for those whom it has touched more directly.

Let me simply say, once more and maybe for the last time, that I cannot understand how anybody (e.g., the NRA and Republican congressmen and senators) cannot see, or refuse to admit, that there should not be such easy access to assault weapons as we have in the US. It's just ridiculous. In Great Britain it is not permitted to own guns, period.

Copyright (c) 2017.

Trump's (Latest) Unwise Words

Today, Donald Trump, in a speech before the United Nations, referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as "Rocket Man."

According to the protocols of international diplomacy, one national leader does not publicly disrespect another national leader in that way. It just is not done.

Plus, make him angry enough and Kim might just send one of his nuclear missiles our way.

Trump's handlers need to keep him under better control.

I am not a Twitter user so please, anyone who reads this and agrees with me, please send a tweet to @realDonaldTrump.

Meanwhile, keep your eyes peeled and scan the sky for a North Korean ICBM.

Copyright © 2017.

Christians and Muslims, Historically

At one time there were Islamic societies which led the world in their arts and sciences: notably mathematics and astronomy but also medicine, architecture, philosophy, and poetry. We owe to Muslims (and the Christian Byzantines) the preservation of much of the literature and knowledge of the ancient Greeks. By comparison, the Christian West was generally backward, and I am sure that the Muslims regarded it as even barbarian.

So how and why did the Islamic civilizations decline? I am not a historian but from what I do know, I think I can say this with hopefully only slight inaccuracy: wars with the Christians were a big factor.

In Spain, where there was quite a glorious Islamic civilization, with advanced medicine as well as philosophy and other arts and sciences--and, incidentally, generally remarkable tolerance of non-Muslims (Christians and Jews)--centuries of war (the so-called Reconquista or reconquest by Christian Spanish kingdoms) culminated in 1492 with the fall of Granada and thus the ending of the last Islamic kingdom in Spain. (In 1492, not coincidentally, Spain's Jews were expelled; the Muslims were granted tolerance but that promise lasted only some 30 years.)

In the Middle East, where notable Islamic civilizations centered on Baghdad and Persia, there similarly were several centuries of wars between Christians and Muslims, centering on the Crusades, which supposedly had the aim of recapturing Jerusalem for Christians but which caused enormous killing and destruction over a larger area. Wars between Christian states and Muslim powers lasted at least until the eighteenth century.

The last of the Muslim temporal kingdoms--and this is starting to get off the subject--was the Ottoman Empire, which had absorbed the Byzantine Empire (culminating in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople) but weakened over centuries until its final collapse with World War I.

Copyright © 2017

Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, and Their Attitudes toward Their Predecessors

I have to believe that Donald Trump has multiple staffers in the White House whose main or perhaps only job is to look over everything that former President Barack Obama did while he was in office, and especially his "executive orders" --so that Trump could reverse every one.

"Obama did this? Okay, now it's reversed." "Obama did that? I'll reverse it!"

I am not the first one to point out that Trump seems hell-bent on reversing every single thing that Obama did. "We don't like you, never did, and we're going to wipe out every last little bit of your legacy." Yes, Trump is that childish.

But this thumbing your nose at your predecessor reminds me of at least one thing that President Ronald Reagan did, some 30 years ago. His predecessor, Jimmy Carter, had installed solar panels on the White House roof. Reagan ordered the solar panels removed and dismantled.

Why on earth would he do this? Were there any bad or harmful results of having those solar panels there? Possibly Mr. Reagan thought that the hot water for his bath was not hot enough and so the entire water-heating system, as it was, needed to be substantially modified.

But I doubt that the reason was anything like that. I think Reagan just wanted to thumb his nose (or give the finger, or flip the bird. . .) to Carter. Jimmy Carter had told the American public that fossil fuels were a finite resource that needed to be conserved. He advocated for a more serious attitude toward energy use, perhaps even a bit of belt-tightening.

Reagan, on the other hand, comes along and, while campaigning for President, says, basically, We don't need to tighten the belt. Screw conservation. We are America and austerity is not for us. There is plenty of oil.

Incidentally, and at risk of straying from my subject: Reagan did not believe in government support of research into alternative energy sources. The day he took office he froze Department of Energy funding of alternative-energy research projects, thereby setting American alternative energy programs back by 30 years.

Copyright  © 2017

U. S President Tronald Dump Speaking on the Flooding in Texas

Note: This is fake news. This did not happen. Any resemblance to persons living or dead if purely intentional.

Mr. Dump speaking:

I want to tell the people of Texas, and America, and the world: we will fix Texas. We will fix Texas. We are going to make Texas better than it ever was before. We have a plan. We have a great plan, a greater plan than there's ever been before. And we will fix Texas.

I can't release all the details of this plan, but we have a weapon. We are going to soak up all that water. We are going to make all that flood water go away, so fast you wouldn't believe.

We are going to bring in a sponge. A really, really big sponge.  A sponge like nobody's ever seen before. And we are going to soak up all that water. And then we will dump that water. We are going to dump that water, maybe on some country we don't like. Maybe on North Korea, or on Iran.

Meanwhile, I've got people looking for the drain. And we are going to open that drain, and let all the water drain out. Drain away. We've got divers, right now, looking for that drain, that will let all that water drain away. And with God's help, we are going to find that drain. We are going to drain all that water away. We are going to drain Texas to where It’s drier than it's ever been before. Believe me. We are going to fix Texas. And we're working on it right now. And we've got really, really great ideas on how to fix Texas. And we are going to fix Texas, I can tell you.

Copyright (c) 2017.

One Little Observation, and a Joke

The coming (next Monday) total solar eclipse which is to be visible in the US has gotten so much publicity and hype in the news that I suspect that the Sun must have some of the best press agents in the world.

What's the best month for joining the military? Answer: March.

Copyright (c) 2017

Does Religion Do Any Good?

This country is virtually carpeted in churches and awash in preachers of various stripes. But, despite volumes, mountains, torrents of preaching and reading and writing about religion, God, morality--proper human conduct--it's not clear that we have even the tiniest bit less lying, cheating, corruption, and even killing.

Human greed and lust impel men to lie, cheat, and murder for the sake of obtaining money, power, position, and sex.

Most people have a conscience--I say "most people" because it is clear that some criminals simply have no conscience whatsoever--but a person can do another person wrong and then confess, and then he is told, "Say twenty Hail Marys," and this institution of the confessional lets him or her shed all feelings of guilt whatsoever. It is said that some Mafiosi would murder other people six days a week and then go to church on Sunday and confess (and receive absolution).

Not only does religion, it seems to me, not lessen the net sum of human evil in the world; but religion sometimes even adds to it. There is evil committed in the name of religion. It is not only Islam (let me hasten to add, "as some people interpret it") that gives us terror attacks, with people being killed, almost daily, these days; but Christianity (if we look at the record) is far from blameless. The Crusades, for example, were very brutal: the aim, as incited by the Pope, to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims not only resulted in many Muslims being brutally killed, but the Crusaders, on their way to the Holy Land, would pass through many towns in Europe and massacre any Jews they happened to find there.

And let us not forget about the Hundred Years War, when Catholics and Protestants were brutally slaughtering one another.

So I am saying, if you care to take a cold and detached look: The good that religion does is, at best over-rated. Yeah, churches sometimes feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, etc. But I feel strongly that these things could and maybe would be done in the absence of religion. And to look at the large picture, as I have tried to do in the opening paragraphs, of whether religion has had success in ameliorating some of the kinds of evil that are prevalent in the world, I don't think it really does much good.

Copyright © 2017

Donald Trump, Climate Change, and the Paris Accords

Donald Trump has announced he is pulling the United States out of the Paris agreement or accord on climate change. This puts the United States in the company of the only two nations in the entire world who are not party to that agreement: Syria and Nicaragua. Nearly 200 countries are signatories to the accord, in which they pledge to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases.

 

Mr Trump says his first duty is to the US and US jobs. Presumably he means jobs in the fossil fuel industries. Statistics, interestingly, show there are three times as many jobs in renewable energy fields--wind and solar--as there are in coal mining. It looks like Mr Trump's real effort is to aid, not coal miners, but the Koch Brothers, whose wealth depends on fossil fuels, and who are prominent conservatives and big financial supporters of Mr Trump.

 

If Trump really wanted to help Kentucky coal miners, he would not be taking away health insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions, which will leave miners suffering from black-lung disease with no health insurance.

 

By this latest action, Trump may have done a lot to secure his legacy--as the single human being who did the most to help destroy the planet.

 
Here is an AP (Associated Press) article, available online, that shows the fallacies of Mr Trump's arguments for his decision:
climate change fact-check

Copyright © 2017

More Lies from Trump, More Blogging about the Man and His Lies

Donald Trump is a liar, as I've pointed out before. The latest instance is that we've gotten differing and inconsistent accounts of why FBI Director James Comey was fired.

Trump is a horrible, horrible man. He contradicts himself. His statements are contradicted by testimony of others in government. When he says something that makes no sense, his press secretary has the job of explaining that away, and will say something like, "Well, at the time Mr. Trump made that statement, that was what all the available evidence was pointing to." When the media point out that Trump has said something false, or when they say anything critical of him, the tries to discredit the media, using the term "fake news" in a tweet (and Trump is the first president, I am sure, to continually voice himself on Twitter. He not only does it daily but now it's even three tweets a day).

I'd like to believe that many  people who voted for Trump by now have seen their mistake. Still, it's clear that there is a hard core who will never stop supporting him, not even the Kentucky coal miner with black lung disease who stands to lose his health insurance or find that it has become unaffordable, because he has a "pre-existing condition." That man says, "I voted for him and I'd vote for him again."

People want positive feedback for the choices they've made. They want to be told they made a good choice, a good decision--whether it's the car they bought or the political candidate they voted for. This is why some people will reluctantly, or never, confront the fact that they made a very unwise decision in voting for Trump.

Trump is a disgrace and an embarrassment to this country. In France, in their recent presidential election, there was a candidate quite a bit similar to Trump--Marine Le Pen, who was an extreme right-wing candidate running on an anti-immigration platform. The French voters soundly rejected Le Pen. Looks like Frenchmen are smarter than Americans.

Copyright © 2017.

Trump Supporters Haven't Learned

Two people were recently shown in an interview by ABC network's national TV news. These people are in Kentucky, in a county that voted for Donald Trump. And both are people with serious medical problems. Theirs is a coal-mining area, and I think at least one of the two men has black lung disease.

They rely on "Obama Care"; one of the men said he didn't know what he'd do without his health care coverage. Yet he voted for Trump (as did the other man), despite the fact that Trump's promises might well take away this man's health insurance.

Is this illogical only to me? I don't think it's nice to wish anybody ill. But if this man loses his health insurance, I would say to him-given the chance--that he brought that on himself when he cast his ballot for Trump.

Well I guess it's not news that Homo sapiens is not always a completely logical animal. And neither Americans in general nor Kentucky coal miners have any monopoly on illogicality. Yet I was certain that Trump supporters had begun to understand their mistake. So far that does not seem to be the case.

Copyright © 2017.

Donald Trump and "Fake News"

As has been pointed out--by me, here, and by many others at many times and places--Donald Trump dispenses lies, while calling any media stories or articles that he feels are unfavorable to him "fake news." This--as has also been pointed out--is the tactic of a dictator. Dictators feel compelled to deflect criticism of themselves by attacking the media.

To define the term, fake news stories that are wholly manufactured; they are started by some usually unknown person, perhaps on a web site, and then they gain wide circulation via the Internet and social media.

I thought I would make up some "fake news" stories myself.

Fake News: Trump admits that the accusations that Obama wiretapped him were totally made up, and apologizes to Obama and the American people.

Fake News: Trump appoints all people-friendly choices to head his cabinet departments.

Fake News: Kellyanne Conway (Trump advisor) says, "I've been an evil, lying b*itch but I've been converted and now I see my evil ways."

Fake News: White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer resigns, saying "I just can't lie for that clown any longer."

Fake News: Trump resigns!!

Well, since none of these are true, they'd count as fake news; but I admit that to me they're just as much wishful thinking.

Copyright © 2017.

My Issues with the Feminists

First, let me assert that I am a feminist, at least as far as condemning domestic abuse (and the attitude of men toward women that is shown by men who feel they can do that sort of thing to their spouses and girlfriends), condemning sexual harassment, favoring equal pay and equal opportunity, and encouraging girls to consider any and all traditionally masculine occupations.

Also, I positively applaud when women in third-world countries start businesses; and I believe women should have control over their own health and reproduction, and do not feel that a man should be able to override the woman's decision. (Sadly, in too many countries, women cannot obtain contraception supplies or even counseling because of the objection of a husband, priest, or some other--usually a male).

On the other hand, I find I have to take issue with some of the claims, assertions, and implications that feminist women seem to use.

I used to work for a woman who was quite the energetic feminist. One time when she and I were chatting, I referred to one of my female students--this was community college--as a "girl." Said boss very quickly said, "I she over 16? If she's over 16, don't refer to her as a 'girl'."

Well, this is nonsense. Never mind that many women refer to their fellows of that gender as "girls" (or even guys!). Adult men are often called "boys": the boys in the band, boys' night out, the boys of summer, our boys in the service. And surely many, if not all, of the males to whom this term is applied are over 16.

Can you say "double standard"? Maybe even hypocrisy?

Next, women seem to like to facilitate the idea that cancer is a women's issue: women own cancer, and seem to be trying to make "cancer" synonymous with "breast cancer." Contrary to the impression they foster, breast cancer is not the most common type of cancer. Both of these are false. According to statistics I just saw, one in three women will get cancer, whereas for men the figure is one in two! And breast cancer is the third most common type of cancer. Most common is digestive tract (I would have thought lung cancer). Second most common is male genital tract cancer. In other words, more men die from prostate cancer (possibly lumping it with some other "male genital cancers," if there are others) than women die from breast cancer. Yet, where are all the marches for prostate cancer, the pink ribbons, etc.? Women have been very vocal about all the women who are carried off by breast cancer--and that is a terrible thing, to be sure. (Let me hasten to point out that I have lost more than one friend to breast cancer, and it has stricken my family as well.) But by comparison, I have to suppose that men are just dying in silence.

P.S. Confession, disclaimer, or whatever: I am a survivor of prostate cancer, so maybe I have an axe to grind in all this.

Copyright © 2017.

Donald J. Trump, Car Salesman

Donald Trump is like a car salesman.* He will say whatever comes into his head in an effort to persuade, with little or no thought to whether he is uttering the truth.

Examples: He said that his inauguration drew the largest crowd in US history. Untrue. Photographs of Trump's inauguration crowd on the Washington, D.C. mall and of Barack Obama's inauguration crowd four or eight years earlier clearly showed that the latter was larger.)

He said that he won the election with the largest number of electoral votes, at least among recent presidents. Again, untrue. Most if not all of the four or five most recent presidents received more electoral votes. I believe I heard him say he'd gotten 360 electoral votes. The correct number was 304.

He said that the only reason he did not win the majority of the popular vote in the election  was because of voter fraud. Many people, including people in Trump's own party, have said there is no evidence of significant voter fraud.

It's very interesting, even astonishing, that a speaking event which Trump has scheduled is to be, his team claims, an election event. One can only speculate as to why he is campaigning for re-election when it is not even a month into his present term.

Possibly, out of insecurity, he does not feel confident that he will be able to run, in four years, on a record of solid accomplishments. More likely, he knows that his approval ratings, according to the polls (which Trump publicly denounces and claims contempt for) are very low.

________

*I apologize for the calumny against car salesmen. Compared to Trump they probably would come off favorably. Also, I want to admit I am engaging in a stereotype. It may be outdated and even if it is not, it is no more accurate than any other stereotype, and doubtless there are many, many car salesmen who are essentially honest and ethical.

Copyright © 2017.

More (Bad News) on Donald Trump

It has been not yet a month since the inauguration of Donald Trump as the new president of the United States, and it's been terrible, alarming, and a disaster--at least in my opinion. No doubt there are some who approve of everything he's done so far--although polls show he rates a very low approval rating.

 

I will try to enumerate just a few of the reasons for concern.

 

• First, on the very day of his inauguration, he claimed that his inauguration drew the largest crowd in history to the Washington, D.C. mall. When that was proved to be incorrect by the publication of a photo of an obviously larger crowd at the inauguration of the previous president, Barack Obama, Trump--who simply cannot stand to be criticized, let alone proved to be wrong, ordered the National Park Service to come up with a different photograph--and claimed that he had presented an "alternative fact." Alternative fact!! What possible sense can anyone make out of a term like that? It has conjured up in people's minds the depiction of a future dystopia in the George Orwell novel 1984, where the government tries to force people to believe contrary-to-fact things. 

 

• Even before his inauguration, Trump asserted that he lost the popular vote (by some 3 million votes) because of voter fraud. Even people in his own party have said that there is no evidence whatsoever of any significant voter fraud.

• Second, there is his travel ban. He banned entry to the United States of people from six Muslim-majority countries. The very day after Trump signed the executive order which put that ban into effect, a report was issued by researchers from the University of Chicago which showed that 83% of acts considered terrorist attacks (I imagine this includes things like school and mall mass shootings) were committed by "home-grown" terrorists rather than visitors from foreign countries. But Mr. Trump has his mind made up and does not want to be confused with facts. Besides, anti-Muslim xenophobia plays well with many of his supporters.

• Then, when a judge issued a stay of the no-entry order, Trump immediately attacked the judge, calling him a "so-called judge." He did this in a tweet, via Twitter, as he is so fond of doing. Such name-calling is childish, but is typical of Mr. Trump. Note that even Trump's nominee to the vacant seat on the U.S Supreme Court, Judge Gorsuch, deplored this attack on the judiciary.

 

Mr. Trump cannot brook being reminded that he does not have absolute power but that the American system has separation of powers and constitutional limits on the president's power. As stated above, he does not handle any criticism, contraction, or any disagreement very well. This is not quite the definition of a diplomat or public official.

• Trump had asserted that crime in the U.S. is at a 47-year high. When David Muir of ABC TV news was interviewing Trump and pointed out to him that crime, in fact, was at a 57-year low, Trump said something like, "Well, the people believe that." Hey, Mr. Trump: Once upon a time "the people" believed that the Earth is flat. That doesn't make it so. Isn't it up to you to lead them to the truth, rather than confirm and reinforce false beliefs?

And he keeps repeating his lies. It was Hitler's propaganda minister, Goebbels, who said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. I guess that's Trump's model.

 

• In another example of how Trump and his associates lie, KellyAnne Conway, his "advisor" and one-time campaign manager, keeps talking about a "Bowling Green massacre," when there was no such thing. They give us "alternative facts," and when refuted in the media they claim those media outlets dispense "fake news." Trump, at a recent news conference, would not accept any questions from media which he viewed as hostile, calling them "fake news." This is very dangerous as we rely on the news media to keep us informed and let us have a check on our government officials.

 

• Next, there are the people whom Trump has nominated for cabinet positions ("secretaries" or ministers of the various government departments). Just one was Betty DeVos, Trump's nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education. The qualifications of this woman have been questioned in Congress (not only by opposition Democratic senators but even by two Republican senators, i.e. members of Trump's own party) because she has no experience with public education. She personally has never attended a public school and never taught in a public school, nor has she sent her children to public school.

 

• Then there is Senator Jefferson Sessions of Alabama, Trump's nominee to be Attorney General, and this charged with enforcing laws such as civil rights laws and voting-rights laws. This man was well-known 40 years ago to be a racist. He now denies that he is a racist but one my well doubt whether he has changed.

 

Unfortunately, at least these two nominees of Trump's have already been confirmed by the Senate of the U.S. Congress. His other nominees are opponents of environmental protections and of minimum wages for U.S. workers. People who voted for Trump in the belief that he would be the champion of "the little guy," if they have not yet realized their serious mistake, will at some point.

 

Revised 2/12/2017

Copyright © 2017.

Trump Starts Out with More of the Same--Lies

Donald Trump started off his presidency, on Inauguration Day, with yet another one of his lies. He claimed that his inauguration had drawn the biggest crowd in U.S. history. That was refuted in short order by a news outlet issuing side-by-side photos of the Trump inauguration crowd and the one that Barack Obama drew for his inauguration; the Obama crowd was clearly a lot bigger.

 

Trump and his people promptly claimed all this was a lie and a fraud. I guess we are to believe that the photo of the Obama inauguration audience had been photoshopped.

 

A policeman once told me of a doctrine that they use to help decide if an assertion should be believed. It's known as cui bono, meaning (translated a bit loosely), Who would benefit (if that were true)? In this case, who has more to gain my lying, the Trumpets or the media? (It also reminds me of the attempts of the Nixon administration to discredit the media as a way of deflection criticism or perhaps even scrutiny.)

 

Evidently, in trying to weigh in on whose side should be believed, or the Trumpets' practice of lying, Mr. Spicer, the new White House Press Secretary, used the phrase "alternative facts." This conjures up a very scary, dystopian image such as was depicted in George Orwell's novel 1984, where the government demanded that people believe (in some fashion) things that they knew to be false, or help in their own brainwashing to believe in these incorrect things.

 

Trump, according to a documentary program about him on the PBS series "Frontline," evidently has always believed that he could get away with telling lies. I think in his campaign he exercised the belief that, if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. This is not only cynical, it evokes the tactics of Hitler's propaganda minister Hermann Goering.

 

As I said in a previous blog posting, if only people (when they've heard Trump's lies and before they decide to vote for him) would avail themselves of means (e.g., web sites like FactCheck.org) of ascertaining whether something is true or not.

See a related article:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/alternative-facts-the-needless-lies-of-the-trump-administration/ar-AAm7jly?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=DELLDHP

 

Copyright © 2017.

Politicians' Lies

According to an article by the Associated Press and appearing on MSN.com, Donald Trump, in his inauguration speech today, made several statements which the AP, rather tactfully, termed exaggerations:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fact-check-trump-starts-on-familiar-note-with-exaggeration/ar-AAm4guB?li=AA5a8k

This probably should not surprise anyone, since  his campaign was full of claims and statements of very doubtful truthfulness. To me it is very, very sad that someone can get himself elected based on selling the voters a bunch of lies. (Of course I have to think that the voters, ultimately, are to blame for this state of affairs--but then probably not too many people know where to find fact-checking.)

I wonder whether all politicians are untruthful. Studies have shown that people will say that politicians (for example, Congressmen) are a pack of scumbags--presumably liars and perhaps stupid as well--but that their representatives are good. Or at least perfectly okay.

I wonder whether my readers believe that all politicians lie, at least at times. I'd welcome comments on that.

Copyright (c) 2017

The Winner by a Slogan; or, How to Get Elected President of the United States

There are many people who are saddened, disappointed, and alarmed by the election of Donald Trump. And there have been (and will be) many analyses as to how or why that came about.

I believe that one factor (among, doubtless, many) was his slogan, "Make America Great Again." Evidently this slogan had some effect, in terms of persuading some voters that Mr. Trump was offering something desirable for the country.

 

But, what does this mean? This is very vague, but it packs at least a couple implications, namely that America was once great, and that it no longer is (plus, that Mr. Trump can effectively do something abut that).

 

Besides questioning those two assumptions, a voter, before the election, should  have asked—at least to himself, if not aloud--"Great in what sense?" There are countless parameters or measures or rankings in which America would not score Number 1. To name just a few: per capita income; literacy; student math and science scores; life expectancy; low infant mortality—the list goes on.

 

Are these the things Trump has promised to improve? I don't think most of these are the things he talked about in his campaign speeches. The slogan is vague and, sad to say, has suckered in a lot of people who, I am sure, never stopped to really think about it.

No complex idea or issue can be adequately encapsulated in a four-word slogan. That is why I will never join in any march where the marchers are chanting some short and chantable slogan.

 

Slogans are effectively designed to discourage and even prevent real thought, by which I mean an analysis of what it is they're saying. And a great many people have never been taught or encouraged by parents or teachers to think analytically or critically. I know this from teaching: I used to berate my students for not being more critical. I'd tell them, "I could stand up here and say 'Black is white' and you'd just mechanically write that down in your notes."

I don't mean to suggest for a minute that slogans are the sole property of right-wing demagogues like Donald Trump. Barack Obama ran on the slogan, "Yes we can." Can do WHAT, fer chrissake? Did anyone stop to ask that? Surely, the people who come up with these slogans appreciate the power of the unstated, that-which-is-left-unsaid. They know slogans are vague, and pretty much let the audience supply what meaning they choose--like an ink-blot test. And they do that deliberately. Sloganeering is a fine art, and a part of propaganda as it was pretty much perfected by Hermann Goering, Hitler's propaganda  minister.

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