Trump Supporters Are Defective?

I just posted this to Facebook today. Am I wrong to be so opinionated about this? I guess I'm being somewhat hyperbolic out of unrestrained desire to vent my building frustration and anger over the Trump presidency. I suppose there could be other causes or reasons why people love President Trump that I don't list here. Even so...

There is something seriously, SERIOUSLY lacking in anyone who enthusiastically supports Trump and can't understand the legitimate reasons why so many of us despise his presidency. 

The evidence documenting his abominable character and actions throughout his adult life and his gross ignorance, intellectual and social incompetence, crippling psychopathology, mendacity, and odious conduct overall as president is too abundant for anyone with their eyes even halfway open to think he's an exemplary president worthy of their fawning support. 

It's one thing to hold one's nose and vote for him because he supports, even if for blatantly opportunistic reasons, policies one believes are of overriding urgency such as anti-abortion, but it's quite another to praise him to the heavens as God's chosen representative and as a great man and great president. Anyone who does THAT clearly has a screw loose, or they're just plain STUPID!

Trump Makes Me Actually Like George W. Bush

I'm no presidential historian, professional or amateur. So, I claim no expertise in rating presidents on a quality scale. But when George W. Bush was president, I despised him and thought he was one of the worst presidents ever.

For better or worse, the presidency of Donald J. Trump has me looking back with fondness on the Bush presidency. And I actually find myself liking Bush as a person.

I now understand, in a way I never could before, why George Bush was reputedly the president people would most like to have a beer with, if he still drank alcohol, that is. I probably would too. And not because of his fame as an ex-president. But because, especially compared to our current president, he seems to be a genuinely nice person that it would be interesting and fun to talk with, no matter how incompetent he arguably was as president.

I suspect that Trump will make every president we ever had before or will ever have after his disastrous occupancy of the White House seem great by comparison. Should I be terrified at the thought?

Meryl Streep's Incredibly Beautiful Photo

I’m much more of a verbal person than a visual one. So, I tend to get much more excited about beautiful words than about beautiful photographs.

But today is Meryl Streep’s 68th birthday, and when I saw the photograph above of her on a Facebook friend’s page, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I don’t know who took that photo or when they took it, but I don’t think I’ve ever been as struck by a photograph of anyone as I am of this one. I think it’s absolutely stunning. Meryl looks so incredibly beautiful and alive in it. It’s almost too much to bear. But in the best of ways.

Happy Birthday, Meryl. Your amazing photo has certainly made my day a happy one. And I suspect that it's brightened the day of virtually everyone who's seen it. Everyone, except, perhaps, Donald Trump or his supporters.

Is Cataclysmic War Imminent?

"North Korea is a problem. The problem will be taken care of." ~ President Trump

Is there about to be a nuclear war? NBC News reports that the U.S. may launch a preemptive conventional strike against North Korea if that country seems on the verge of conducting a promised nuclear weapons test, and it's maneuvering some serious weaponry in place for this. True to form, North Korea threatens massive retaliation if the U.S. does attack. Suppose it does and they do. What then?

North Korea has nuclear weapons and says it will use them against the U.S. if it attacks. They also have conventional and presumably chemical and possibly nuclear warheads they could use to attack South Korea and elsewhere. Moreover, relations between the U.S. and China and Russia are hardly amicable at the moment. And China and Russia are neighbors and supporters of North Korea to some degree.

My wife is traveling to Thailand next week to visit her family. What if war breaks out in that part of the world while she's there? And what if it goes worldwide?

I can't help but be concerned. I deplore the way the North Korean government conducts its affairs and treats its people. By all accounts, North Korea is a hell of unimaginable oppression and suffering for millions of its people. And there is grave and legitimate concern about North Korea improving its nuclear arsenal and soon threatening the U.S. mainland with it. But what effect would a devastating war now have on countless millions of people?

And why is North Korea so bent on building its nuclear capabilities? Has U.S. saber rattling played no role in this? Has the U.S. really done its best to stop North Korea's nuclear arms development by diplomatic means, or has it been kindling the flames with its policies and posturings for decades?

What would we do if we we perceived ourselves to be threatened by a superior military power, we had a nuclear weapons program, and we believed that we needed to flex our nuclear muscle to deter aggression against us?

What concerns me even more is that Donald Trump is our president. Yes, we appear to have some capable people in charge of our military. But President Trump is in charge of the people in charge. He makes the final decisions. And I have a difficult time thinking of anyone less qualified than Donald J. Trump to make sound decisions in a time of climactic crisis.

Sometimes I get so fed up with the way of the world and with human folly that I just think, "Fuck it! Let it all be blown to hell!" But I don't really want that to happen. I want peace to prevail and for people and life everywhere to flourish on this pale blue dot.

Maybe my concerns are overblown. Maybe sanity will prevail at the moment of truth. After all, despite NBC News' report, I don't hear alarm bells going off in the journalistic media. Yet, one lesson I've learned after all this time is that human beings are dangerously unpredictable and that crises can build and spin out of control amazingly quickly. And when I look at the world as it is this morning, I'm not sanguine.

Trying Not to Vilify Trump Supporters

Today I posted to Facebook a Nicholas Kristof column in which he urges his readers not to vilify Trump supporters as the "enemy." He says he received a backlash from people disinclined to follow his advice after he initially tweeted it. A friend of mine commented that "Actually many of them are [enemies]." This is how I replied:

It's very easy for me to demonize and malign Trump supporters. And goodness knows I've done my share of it. But it doesn't feel good to me to despise and reject people for their beliefs, just as it doesn't feel good to be despised and rejected by others for my beliefs. It also seems counterproductive, as Kristof points out.

What helps me to stop doing this or, at least, to do less of it is to understand that various factors cause people to do the things they do, including support Trump, that they don't choose. Researchers and theorists such as Jonathan Haidt and George Lakoff are illuminating what these causes are.

The way I see it, the fact that we don't support Trump is not something we can rightfully take credit for, and we can't rightfully blame others for supporting him. What we can do is try to understand why people do what they do and work with this understanding as best we can to foster the best circumstances that we can. As the great philosopher Spinoza said, "“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.”

I'm REALLY trying to follow Spinoza's lead because it seems like the best way to live. It's tremendously difficult at times. And this is one of those times. But, as Spinoza also said, "All excellent things are as difficult as they are rare."

Donald Trump vs Bill Clinton on Illegal Immigration?

One of my Facebook friends posted a video of President Clinton once proposing stern measures against illegal immigration arguably not so dissimilar to what President Trump proposes now, and she says: "What happened to this concept and why is it deemed so wrong today, by so many? I don't get it. I supported President Clinton on immigration then and I support President Trump now." This is how I replied to her:

"There's an old Zen saying that goes like this: "When the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way." One could argue that whether one agrees with Trump's immigration policies or not, he is so blatantly odious in personality and character and unsuited to the presidency in temperament and aptitude that everything he does, for good or ill, bears the insufferable stench of his overwhelming psychopathology and personal repulsiveness."

Black Friday in Washington DC

Donald Trump became President of the United States today, and I can't find the words to adequately describe how I'm feeling. So, I'll just say that I'm alternatingly angry, disgusted, despondent, worried, and frightened.

I'm no historian, but I think I can safely say that the White House has never been occupied by as horribly ill-suited a person for the office than Donald J. Trump has amply shown himself to be in every way imaginable. In fact, no one probably even comes close, especially in modern times. And these modern times present so many complex and dangerous challenges that need a far more capable person than Mr. Trump to deal with them.

I really don't know how to conduct myself at this point. I've been very strident in my opposition to Trump, but it did nothing to stop him from being elected, and it will do nothing to stop him from inflicting his worst on the country and world. And it won't do anything to enhance my physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being. Yet, I don't want to roll up into a pathetic ball of resignation while the nation and the world burn down around me.

What to do? I guess I'll have to figure it out as I go along.

Do Liberals Project Their Shadows Onto Trump?

A Facebook friend of mine shared this blogpost contending that liberals who hate Donald Trump are “projecting” repressed parts of themselves onto Trump. They hate the narcissism, the greed, the psychopathy, the egomania, and so forth that they subconsciously realize exist within themselves and attribute it to our President-elect to what is possibly an exaggerated extent.

However, I don’t think their attributions are exaggerated at all. I think Trump is all the unsavory things liberals say he is and with such pathological strength that there’s more than ample reason to feel very apprehensive about his looming presidency. But I do agree that the emotional responses of many are misshapen and exaggerated as a probable result of correctly seeing in Trump disowned and reviled parts of themselves.

Here is my comment from this morning on my friend’s shared blogpost:

If "projection" is attributing repressed aspects of oneself to someone else who doesn't actually embody them, then I don't think liberals are projecting pathological narcissism, egomania, greed, mendacity, intellectual vacuity, and overall incompetence onto a president-elect who doesn't truly embody these undesirable traits. I think Trump embodies those traits to a striking and extremely unsettling degree and that to deny this is to exhibit a maladaptive psychological response, by whatever name, every bit as salient as the so-called "projection" Davis attributes to liberals.

However, to the extent that liberals hate Trump for the traits at issue, I think it may well be true that this reflects the fact that liberals who hate him or who feel extreme anger or disgust toward him are manifesting their hatred, anger, or extreme disgust for traits or tendencies that ALSO exist within themselves but are repressed into "shadows." It seems to me that the healthy or un-repressed way of responding to Trump and to his impending presidency is not with hatred, violent anger, or overweaning disgust, but with grave concern and sadness that such a man could ever come to occupy the White House, and with intense determination to resist actions of his administration that threaten the safety and well-being of "We the People."

More Moral Outrage

Yesterday, I examined my moral outrage against or, at least, disapproval of drivers who illegally misuse carpool lanes while the rest of us don't. Today, I want to address another, stronger example of moral outrage or, at least, of disapproval on my part.

One of my Facebook friends published the following post: "I suppose you have the freedom to burn the American flag but don't be surprised if most Americans think you're an idiotic, disrespectful, sophomoric, coward."

If you've read much of this blog, which I realize you probably haven't, you can well imagine that I didn't agree with my "friend's" sentiments. This is how I responded:

Perhaps some who burn the flag wouldn't lift a finger to aggress against nations we have no business invading and destroying but would lay down their lives to defend you or this country against attack. Maybe one reason they burn the flag is that they're contemptuous of our government habitually sending young soldiers into harm's way to wreak devastation and death in situations that don't warrant it but which do aggrandize the "military-industrial complex" and garner misguided support for politicians who push for it. I may not like it when people burn the flag, but when we get upset when people do it, we need to understand that we're just upsetting ourselves and giving other people power over our emotions that they don't need to have.

Moreover, instead of reflexively condemning and pejoratively labeling people who burn the flag, maybe we should remain clear-headed and try through dialogue and probing reflection to understand why they do it. We might then be able to empathize whether or not we continue to disagree with their actions.

Now that was pretty tame considering what I was feeling at the time and in keeping with my message of empathy and tolerance. But then I read the following comment in that same thread: "Anyone who burns the flag hates the country and should be punished or deported," and I responded this way:

Not everyone who burns the flag necessarily hates the country. In fact, they may love the country so much that their burning the flag is their frustrated and angry protest against what they perceive not as a symbol of the country as a whole but of its excessive meddling and military misadventures abroad and its callous neglect of serious problems and suffering here at home and of mindlessly "patriotic" spoutings like we see here in this thread.

 I would never burn our flag in protest, but I can empathize with why some do, and I would never be so foolishly presumptuous as to accuse them all of hating this country. In fact, I suspect that some of them genuinely love this country far more than do their pseudo-patriotic and insufferably self-righteous accusers, especially if those accusers voted for the dismal likes of Donald Trump.

Voting for Trump is arguably an act prodigiously worse than the protest burnings of a thousand American flags, because it could do vastly more harm to this country than those burned flags ever could.

For example, Trump has chosen an ideological fanatic to be Health Secretary who reportedly wants to dismantle Obamacare and Medicare as we know them and replace them with disastrously privatized systems that could leave untold millions of our most vulnerable citizens without adequate health care and/or hopelessly impoverished.

Why aren't you railing against THAT instead of against harmless flag-burners, you pathetically posturing fools?!

This was undeniably and blatantly less empathetic and tolerant, a fact not lost on me even as I was posting it.

So why did I post such a clearly hypocritical put down of people in that thread? Did I do it out of uncontrollable anger or hatred? Not really. I don't think. The fact is, I didn't feel all that angry at the time, and I don't hate, at least not consciously, the woman who posted or those who agreed with the comment I attacked. So why did I say what I did?

I think there are times when I'm just in one of those moods when I want to vent, as provocatively as possible, frustration and resentment. I'm frustrated that people are so simple-minded in their so-called "patriotism," and I'm especially frustrated and resentful that many of these same people undoubtedly voted for Donald J. Trump to be our next president. So, even if it meant contradicting my own previous advice and making myself look like a first-class hypocrite, I just had to let 'er rip. And so I did.

Having said that, I believe that what I wrote in both comments was true. Except, perhaps, for the last line in my second comment. My jury's still out on that one.

Zakaria Interviews Kissinger

I've come to pretty much despise CNN. Its pre-election obsession with Donald Trump is no small part of the reason. It seemed that almost every time I tuned into CNN over the past umpteen months, they were talking almost exclusively about "TRUMP...TRUMP...TRUMP."

It was as though there were virtually nothing else, short of an occasional terrorist attack or natural catastrophe, going on in the world worth covering. To make matters worse, their coverage of Trump, as with almost everything else they sporadically touched upon, was shockingly shallow.

Rather than investigate Trump's past with due journalistic diligence or thoughtfully explore the ramifications of his policy proposals, such as they were, CNN chose to lightheartedly and nitwittedly dwell at mind-numbing length on "The Donald's" most recent petulant tweet in response to the latest SNL skit mocking him or on some other such trivial nonsense. They treated Trump like everybody's favorite clown, or, as NYT literary critic Dwight Garner semi-famously said, like a "dancing bear" who always has a chance to win when an election is turned into a "three-ring circus."

Indeed, if psycholinguist George Lakoff is right, this incessant attention from CNN and the rest of the so-called mainstream media, even when seemingly negative, boosted Trump's visibility and correlative popularity. I'm thinking it may well have been the decisive factor in Trump being elected.

But there's one CNN program that I still like. Well, actually, there are two. The other is Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown. But first and foremost is Fareed Zakaria GPS.

No doubt many, depending on where they fall on the political spectrum, would accuse Zakaria and his show of being either too liberal or too conservative. But I find every episode informative and thought-provoking even though I'd love to see a wider range of guests and opinions presented.

Fareed's first guest today was Henry Kissinger. Now say what you will about Kissinger--some consider him one of our greatest Secretaries of State while others think he's one of the world's most monstrous living war criminals--, this 93-year-old guy seems to have retained his smarts, and he said a couple of things today that stood out to me.

First, he said that Trump comes to the office with less "baggage" than any president-elect he could recall. I think he meant that Trump doesn't appear to be intransigently ideological and hasn't spent time in political positions where he's accumulated political debts to anyone. Once in office, he could do pretty much what he wanted provided it was constitutional and he could, when necessary, marshal requisite popular and congressional support.

When Zakaria asked whether Trump carried the baggage of policy proposals he made during his campaign, Kissinger cautioned against the press 'nailing' him to those positions and criticizing him for turning away from them, because there was a chance that if they did as Kissinger advised, Trump's pragmatism would prevail over destructive and dangerous ideology.

This morning, I saw a Saturday Night Live sketch where Adam Baldwin portrays President-elect Trump feeling overwhelmed by preparations to assume office and exhibiting resistance to carrying out some of his campaign pledges, such as rescinding Obamacare. And I thought this might not be so far from how it really is for Trump now that the campaign is over and it's time to dispense with the bullshit and face up to the crushing realities of being president of the world's pre-eminent nation. Maybe Kissinger is right that we can help him to handle reality more effectively by giving him some space.

Yet, what the sketch also showed was Trump delegating as many duties and responsibilities as possible to Mike Pence and his staff. And given the sensibilities and histories of Pence and others Trump seems intent on surrounding himself with, I fear that he'll be letting incompetents, fanatical ideologues, and ethical pygmies run this country while he largely retires to his gold-plated penthouse in Trump Tower between ceremonial functions in which he'll represent this country on the domestic and world stage with nothing approaching the impeccable intelligence, eloquence, and class our outgoing president unflaggingly demonstrated for the past eight years.

The second thing Kissinger said was that Trump's professed attitude toward Russia's Vladimir Putin may actually defuse some of the tensions between our countries that the condescension toward Russia and the aggressive expansion of NATO's military capabilities near the Russian border under the Obama administration may have gone far to arouse.

We shall see...

No More Holy War

What if love was holy, and hate was obscene?
And it wasn't twisted, what a wonderful dream.
Living for love, unafraid of the end.
Forgiveness is the only real revenge.
Oh, so we can hear each other and feel each other,
We can break these walls between each other.
Baby, blow by blow and brick by brick,
Keep yourself open, yourself open.
So maybe we should love somebody
Maybe we could care a little more.
So maybe we should love somebody
Instead of polishing the bombs of holy war.
-- Alicia Keys

The recent election of Donald Trump as our next president has left me reeling with disbelief and despair along with more anger and bitterness than I care to admit. I expect to post more about this after I've had time to gain a clearer perspective on it all.

In the meantime, I want to share a video I saw and commented on this morning. A clearly distressed but hopeful Alicia Keys posted a video to Facebook after the election in which she sings a modified segment from her song Holy War. And here is the comment I left on her page in response to her powerful video:

Alicia, I'm a relatively old man who confesses that while I've long been aware of you, I haven't listened to much of your music, because I've always been more drawn to instrumental jazz and jazz-fusion music than to lyrical songs. But I have to say that I've seen some recent interviews you've done that have left me enormously impressed with the stirring beauty of your spirit and with your gleaming authenticity. And when I woke up early this morning and saw this video, I cried. The unguarded rawness and depth of your singing and emotion touches me overwhelmingly and gives me hope that during these most troubling of times, there are people like you in the world who are inspiring love rather than hate, hope rather than abject despair, and that maybe, just maybe more and more of us can follow your lead. Thank you, beautiful lady, for your wonderful video and for being a light in my life and in all our lives during this dark, dark moment in our nation's history.

Preliminary Thoughts on Brexit

Brexit seems to be the world's biggest story at the moment. The British people have voted in a referendum to exit from the European Union, and in the immediate aftermath of this momentous decision, ripples of uncertainty and chaos are coursing through the economies and politics of many nations.

I've done some reading about what Brexit is and what it's likely to mean for the UK and the world, but I'd be the first to admit that I know very little of what there is to know about the whole thing. And it seems pretty clear to me that even those who know vastly more about it than I do don't begin to know for sure what's going to happen as a result of it.

Some on one far end are predicting enduring economic and political catastrophe. Some at the other far end are predicting economic and political nirvana for the UK and for other nations that extricate themselves from the centralized mismanagement and evil of globalization and open immigration.

As for me, I'm intellectually agnostic and taking a wait and see attitude about it. But emotionally I'm angry about Brexit, and I haven't been reticent to focus that anger on a Facebook friend of mine who voted for Brexit and is happy as hell that it passed.

I think what I'm so angry about is that I see the British vote as largely the result of a misguided populism fanned by power-hungry demagogues appealing to the deeply entrenched tribalism, racism, nativism, isolationism, and simplemindedness of large swaths of the population, much like Donald Trump is doing in this country, and I hate it, just hate it.

But then I think that, aside from momentary ill effects of Brexit on our own economy, I really don't have good reason to care all that much about what happens in the UK. It's their country and their decision to make, and I need to stop engaging in one of my most frustratingly ineffectual pastimes--trying to control what others think and do.

I admit that I do have concerns that what happened in the UK could presage a Donald Trump presidency. After all, just as pollsters here are predicting that Hillary Clinton will win November's election, I think pollsters in the UK were predicting that Brexit would not prevail there, and look what happened.

I read an article somewhere arguing that the two situations aren't equivalent because whereas Brexit is largely the result of activated racism on the part of many if not most of those who voted for it, Trump's largely racist message of blocking immigration and condemning radical Islam will not win enough hearts and minds of our much more racially and ethnically diverse electorate to get him elected. However, I'm not so sanguine about this.

But the bottom line, as I see it now, is that frustration, anger, and fear about what Brexit means for the UK, the world, and the USA won't help me or anyone else. So, it's time to bring my emotions in harmony with my intellect and go on about my business.

Are the Intellectually Mediocre Truly Oppressed?

I posted yesterday about an online magazine piece asserting that high intelligence is fetishized in this society while lack thereof is mocked and unfairly disadvantaged. And no sooner had I shared a link to that piece on Facebook than a thoughtful Facebook friend of mine largely disagreed with its thesis.

According to him, the media caters to stupid people with stupid "news" and entertainment content, politicians such as Donald Trump successfully appeal to the lowest common denominator in intelligence and thoughtfulness with the crassest and most simplistic political nonsense and manipulations, and stupid, thoughtless people show no shame in asserting their stupid, thoughtless opinions on Facebook and everywhere else. If anything, my friend opines, stupid, thoughtless people dominate political and other kinds of discourse in this country while intelligent, thoughtful people are given short shrift.

I concede that he may be right in some respects, but I think the article and my blogpost about it are also correct that people of average to below-average overall intelligence and/or academic achievement are looked down on and disadvantaged by a society that increasingly views high intelligence as the touchstone of human worth and which affords less and less opportunity to the intellectually and academically mediocre to earn a decent living and flourish.

Yes, the media and politicians will cater to and thereby reinforce mediocrity if there's money and power to be had from it, but this doesn't mean that those who control the media and society at large respect intellectually or academically mediocre individuals or that the mediocre consequently respect themselves and aren't filled with conscious to subliminal self-loathing, and it could and has been argued that strong support for the likes of Donald Trump and the ostentatious embrace of fundamentalist religion and racist, sexist, jingoistic, and simplistic conservative politics is at least partly the result of a backlash against feeling scorned and oppressed by the liberal intelligentsia.

In other words, I think both The Atlantic piece and my friend are right about what are two largely separate but concurrent phenomena.