Tag Archives: Trump

With Great Power Comes Great Vulnerability

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You might feel powerful cruising around in your luxury car, but you’ll quickly defer to the first guy in an old beater that decides to run you off the road.

Wealth and power certainly bring with them lots of advantages. In fact great wealth and power bring so many advantages that it’s hard to grasp, let alone sympathize with, the incredible vulnerability and weakness they bring with them.

We have always understood that the greater your wealth, the more you have to lose. What we don’t understand as clearly is that the more you have to lose, the more timid and compliant you become. In ways even the compulsive greed of the wealthy can be understood in part as needing ever more buffer to alleviate their anxiety over losing what they have already acquired. The more they acquire the greater that anxiety becomes and the more they need to feel secure – a self-perpetuating cycle.

As that wealth grows, so does vulnerability and risk aversion. The phrase “I’ve got nothing to lose” is a very scary one. But in the greater society “I’ve got too much to lose” is even scarier.

Rich people are paradoxically more controllable and manageable then poorer ones. They just have too much to lose to make any waves or stand up to more powerful forces, no matter how corrupt. If you want to control someone entirely, enrich them with enough money and power to make them easy to bring to heel.

This applies not only to individuals but to corporations any other entities that amass wealth and influence. Donald Trump has demonstrated clearly that powerful interests are both the strongest weapons for a dictator to control and the easiest to force into compliance. The rich and powerful who should be most capable of protecting democracy and standing up to corruption are the first to abandon democracy and become thoroughly corrupted.

It’s probably futile to expect the rich and powerful to risk anything at all for the greater good. Ultimately the only answer to this and a host of other social problems stemming from great wealth inequality is a wealth cap that prevents anyone, individual or corporation, from becoming both dangerously powerful and easily corruptible by Trump or any other despot.

I Cannot Exaggerate Exaggeration Enough

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Although numbers vary day to day and poll to poll, about 97% of Americans support deporting immigrants who commit violent crimes. About 52% support deporting immigrants who have committed nonviolent crimes. Only 32% support deporting all immigrants who entered illegally, and a vanishingly small number support expelling legal immigrants.

News and political commentators often cite these kind of numbers to point out that people simultaneously support the deportation of criminals but not the harassment of legal immigrants. But this sheds little light on the huge disconnect in public opinion over the wholesale rounding up immigrants by the Trump Administration.

I submit that the missing puzzle piece of our understanding is the role of exaggeration. In fact I cannot exaggerate the awful power of exaggeration enough.

The fact is that undocumented immigrants are about half as likely to commit violent crimes than native-born citizens. They are 4 times less likely to commit nonviolent crimes and 2.5 times less likely to commit drug-related offenses. These numbers hold firm across all geographical boundaries.

But when Trump talks about immigrants, he hyper-exaggerates the level of crime in that population far beyond what the data supports. To hear him talk, one would think that immigrants are running amok and causing mass havoc.

This incredible level of exaggeration, well beyond anything the actual facts support, creates the essential disconnect in our brains that allows people to both conclude that while they support legal immigrants but want to see “all those criminal illegals” deported.

Look at it this way. Just to take a number for illustration purposes, let’s say 5% of illegal immigrants are criminals. Trump makes it sound like 90% are criminals. Even if we are skeptical and fair-minded and allow for some exaggeration, we conclude that let’s say 25% are criminals that should be deported.

So when the actual number is 5% and Trump skews our perception to “feel like” it’s something on the order of 25%, what happens? We naturally expect and demand to see 25% arrested and deported. But there are not 25%, so to show it is meeting expectations the government rounds up and deports a whole lot of innocent immigrants in order to demonstrate it is doing it’s job to keep us safe. It must round up a whole lot of good, honest immigrants to satisfy the false perception it has created. We expect no less.

Using gross exaggeration to create unwarranted expectations is used, particularly by Trump, in a lot of other areas as well. Take Social Security as just one other example. The actual administrative overhead of managing our Social Security program is about 0.6%. This is a fantastically low amount of overhead that private companies and even non-profit organizations cannot come anywhere close to matching.

Yet to listen to Trump, you would think, even allowing for his characteristic hyperbole, that the Social Security system is at least somewhat bloated with waste and inefficiency. So say a 5% cut to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse might seem like a reasonable, measured, and warranted cost control measure. But if one made such cuts it could in reality only come from reducing legitimate benefits.

That is the power of exaggeration and it is perhaps one of the most destructive weapons that Trump wields wantonly with complete abandon. It dramatically affects how we perceive immigration, Medicare, Medicaid, tariffs, and most everything else that Trump chooses to rail about.

We need to call out Trump more strongly and more often for exaggeration, as well as others who grossly exaggerate, and not simply accept it as a personality characteristic or a legitimate rhetorical style.

Recognizing the destructive power of exaggeration is a first necessary step toward arriving at more sane and fact-based public policy.

And THAT is no exaggeration.

Trump Is Not a Joker

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Trump is not a joker, he is The Joker.

In the Batman Universe, the Joker and the Penguin are two iconic villains. But while both are criminals who seek to “take over” Gotham City, they are nothing alike in their tactics and goals.

Oswald Cobblepot, commonly known as The Penguin, is a petty criminal who craves legitimacy. He dons his ostentatious tuxedo in order to appear successful and respectable. He runs crooked but relatively small time businesses to amass money for a run for mayorship, winning him the respect he craves. He makes business deals with other crooks, he suborns police and politicians, and unscrupulously undermines any opposition. But he does build alliances, stands by his allies, and honors his commitments. Upon becoming mayor, while stealing public funds, he still does his best to run a stable government that appears legitimate and respectable.

Some might think that this describes Donald Trump to a tee. But it is far too generous. Donald Trump is no Penguin. He has far more in common with The Joker.

Like the Penguin, the Joker also sometimes takes control of the mayor’s office. But unlike Penguin, Joker takes glee in inciting crazed lunatics to storm City Hall. He doesn’t crave honest respect like the Penguin but takes far more satisfaction from terrorizing people who are repulsed by him into fawning over him. Joker does not care about maintaining the traditions and decorum of his corrupt office, rather he revels in making a mockery of them. He doesn’t care about quiet stability but rather seeks the constant attention produced only by the most garish and capricious displays of power.

In our real world, so similar to comic books, we do see real-life Penguinesque dictators and we also see Joker style dictators.

The Penguin style dictators are our businesslike kleptocrats. They are represented by the likes of Putin, Suharto, Marcos, Mobutu (early), Chavez (debated, early), Abacha, Mbasogo, Nazarbayev, Aliyev, and Mugabe. These dictators, at least early on, attempted to run their countries as profit-driven enterprises serving them and their cronies rather than the people. They maintained just enough stability to maximize wealth extraction and to hold power.

The Joker style dictators are the unstable or negligent leaders. They include Pol Pot, Mobuto (later) , Chavez (debated, later), Amin, Bokassa, Nkurunziza, Gaddafi, Kim Jong-un, Hussein, Milosevic, and Turkmenbashi. Unlike the Penguins who are motivated mainly by self-enrichment and long-term survival, the Jokers are driven by ideology, paranoia, and shocking exhibitions of personal power. They do not attempt to maintain stability but rather allow or even revel in chaos. They do not attempt to conceal their corruption, instead they flaunt it as defiant evidence of their strength and power.

I listed all these names to convey the reality that dictators are not uncommon and that many are not even as “responsible” as Penguin or Putin. Many are truly Jokers, irresponsible, damaged, sociopathic, and even insane people who have taken power but any means.

Jokers have captivated followers and taken control in many, many countries and the United States is not immune. Donald Trump clearly has much in common with The Penguin, but increasingly more in common with The Joker. Like Mobuto who started out as a Penguinesque dictator, expect Trump to descend even further into full-on Joker insanity every day that he holds office.

And one thing we know from the comics is that no one survives long in service of, or even in proximity to, The Joker. So don’t hold any false illusions that once becoming mayor or president, a Joker will produce anything but even greater chaos and destruction, let alone bring anything but ruin upon you.

How We Liberals Destroyed Democracy

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The title of this article is intentionally provocative. But for good reason. Democrats should at least consider their shared responsibility for destroying our democracy. I’m not trying to be fair and balanced and comprehensive here. I and others have opined ad nauseum about the flaws and dangers of conservative thinking. But in this article I wish to focus on the role of liberals.

Regardless of what we will admit to ourselves or to others, the Supreme Court immunity ruling and the subsequent reelection of Trump has effectively ended our long noble struggle to hold on to our democracy in America. I don’t believe it is hyperbole to acknowledge that we are now firmly, and probably intractably, marching along the path to becoming just like Russia, a brazen kleptocracy flaunting a thin facade of democracy.

And whether they will admit it in that way to themselves and others, half the country is effectively OK with that. It would not have been their first choice for our fate, but they would rather live in a dictatorship than continue to tolerate the excesses, real or perceived, of many democrats, at least of those driving the agenda. I predicted this based on game theory a while back (see here).

To be fair, conservatives have largely tolerated if not embraced a stunning amount of social change since the 1960’s and even before. The end of slavery was social change, women gaining the vote was social change, a sweeping host of equal rights practices was social change, interracial marriage was social change, women entering the workforce and arguably taking half the jobs in the country away from men was social change, the changing expectations of men in the home and in society was social change, accepting gay pride parades and gay marriage was social change. Those are just the broadest reminders of the incredible social change that conservatives tolerated if not always embraced.

But democrats weren’t satisfied. They pushed too hard, too aggressively, too gleefully on social, race, and gender issues mostly. I would suggest that the critical point at which their incessant pressure turned dark and counterproductive was the cancelling of Al Franken. It continued with a cancel culture that vilified everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Matt Damon. It took the form of policing gender pronouns, rallying behind gay wedding cakes, drag queen story hour, transgender surgery, bathrooms, and military service. The entire year leading up to Trumps election I watched liberal women on MSNBC fixate on women’s issues and overtly tell men they should support us or shut up. The list goes on and on and on.

So don’t tell me that democrats are purely the victims here and conservatives are the bad guys. I revile much or even most of what conservatives stand for, but democrats kept making more and more extreme demands until the point at which conservatives said, I’ve had enough of even trying to make this marriage work, I’m out.

One can continue to insist that all those demands were just and right. But even granting that, one must at least question the tactical wisdom of how we went about fighting for them. One can argue that regardless of the provocation and pressure, upending our democracy is a self-destructive and disproportionate response. True enough. But if liberals are capable of any self-examination they must consider their own hubris and lack of restraint in forcing this response.

In the media today there is a lot of coverage of democrats gleefully saying “I told you so” to conservatives in reference to the disastrous actions of Trump. But perhaps conservatives are also justified in saying “I told you so” to the democrats who have been so incessant and extreme in their long history of cattle-prodding conservatives into ever more unpalatable concessions without any apparent expectation of the extreme blowback that was virtually assured to come… and now has.

The Insidious Effect of Big Lies

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In this blog and in my book, Pandemic of Delusion (see here), I have written a lot about how it is that we are all so woefully susceptible to lies and misinformation. We are clearly far more vulnerable than most of us are willing to believe, particularly with regard to our own thinking.

Just as there are lots of ways that vines can wiggle their way into a garden, are many mechanisms by which lies can infiltrate our neural networks and eventually obscure the windows of our very perceptions.

And as with invasive species of vines, one infiltration mechanism is a simple numbers game. Our neural networks are “trained” through repetition. So regardless of how skeptical we imagine we are, the more lies we hear and the more often we hear them, the more we become increasingly comfortable with them.

Another counter-intuitive infiltration mechanism is size and scope. In many cases, the whopper of a lie is easier for us to accept than more modest lies. We conclude that surely no one would make up such a big lie, and surely a lie that big would be exposed it if were not true. So therefore it must be true by virtue of its audacity alone!

Implicit in this is the concept of anchoring, but I have not yet discussed this explicitly. The concept of anchoring is most often used in economics to describe the effect of pricing. If you “anchor” the retail price of a rock at say, $100 and then mark it down to say $10, most consumers conclude that $10 is a great deal on a rock that’s totally worthless. This perception is enhanced if you see lots of “competing” rocks being sold for similarly high prices and purchased by others.

As it relates to lies and misinformation, anchoring has a similar effect. When we hear a really, really big lie we sometimes accept or dismiss it outright. But the effect of the big lie is more insidious than that. First, as we have said, if we hear it often enough we will become inexorably more accepting of it. But also, the big lie anchors our skepticism.

Big lies anchor our skepticism in two ways.

First, a big lie causes us to consider that, as with the rock, there must be <some> value, <some> truth there. This plays well into our self-image as measured and open-minded thinkers. Our brains compromise. We take intellectual pride in not being fooled outright by the big lie even as we congratulate ourselves for being open-minded enough to consider that some of it might or even must be true.

Second, big lies further anchor our thinking when we are exposed to a lot of them. As with individual lies, we pride ourselves in rejecting <most> of the big lies, even as we congratulate ourselves for accepting that some of them might or even must be true.

And each lie we accept, or even entertain in whole or in part, makes it easier to accept more and bigger lies.

We humans have always had the same neural networks with the very same strengths and limitations. Our neural networks have always been trained through repeated exposure and have always been susceptible to the same confounding effects such as anchoring. But it is only very recently with the advent of social media that our neural networks have been exposed to so much misinformation so incessantly.

As if that was not enough to drive us to delusion, we now have Artificial Intelligence. AI has yet to show whether its god-like powers of persuasion will nudge us toward facts and reason or plunge us further into delusion and manipulation.

And to make it even worse, our reason has been further attacked the emergence of the virulent, invasive new species called Trumpism. Trump and his allies, intentionally or instinctively, leverage the power of big lies, repeated over and over, to cause us to believe absolute nonsense. Dangerous nonsense. Even democracy-ending nonsense.

Understanding the effect of big lies on us, particularly when we imagine that we are being moderate and measured in our acceptance of them, is critical. We have to understand this at a gut level, because we cannot trust our brains on this.

One final, and perhaps somewhat gratuitous comparison to make is that this “partial” acceptance of an anchored big lie is not unlike the imagined “reasonable” position of agnosticism when it comes to the completely, utterly false claim that god exists. It is perhaps not completely a coincidence that Trump’s most deluded followers are Evangelical Christians.

Why White Women Want Trump

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By the 2016 election it was undeniably crystal clear to everyone that then candidate Donald Trump was almost a caricature of everything women loathe, hate, and despise. He was not only an overt misogynist but bragged about being physically abusive toward women and exerting coercive pressure to demean them.

This was abundantly, undeniably clear to everyone, most of all to white women who have become extremely sensitive toward, and intolerant of, this kind of Neanderthal. I label Trump, and men like him, as Neanderthals, although I have no evidence that actual Neanderthals were anywhere near as contemptuous toward their women as is Donald J. Trump.

And beyond his incredibly objectionable personality, there is his personal physical attractiveness which has to impact these appraisals. In this regard, again, Trump is perhaps the least likely man in the universe to attract women. He’s old, fat, and arrogant, pretentious, with no sense of humor, a bad comb-over, clownish make-up, wearing ill-fitting suits and reveling in disgusting eating habits. In short, he makes the comic book villain The Penguin look like an absolute charmer in comparison.

Given his incredible abundance of offensive and unattractive characteristics, would any woman possibly vote for Trump to represent their best interests as president?

Well we do know the answer to this. Trump did lose the overall female vote to Hillary Clinton, but how did he fare amongst white women in particular? Did even 20% vote for him? Did he somehow win over 40%?

It was actually 53%.

One could dismiss 53% as a slim majority. But in presidential elections, 53% is typically considered a political landslide. So the reality is, amongst white females at least, Trump won decisively.

How can this be? It seems to confound reason and rationality so completely, that people have a hard time accepting it, let alone explain it. And no, these were not just a lot of befuddled old white ladies living in Florida retirement homes. This 53% included women across the age spectrum.

Journalist Sarah Jaffe examined this perplexing phenomenon in her article “Why Did a Majority of White Women Vote for Trump?” (see here). She cites a number of reasons including a rejection of Hillary Clinton, security, and morals, but while all these rationales may be real factors, they all feel weak and convoluted. Certainly they seem insufficient even collectively to explain the stark magnitude of this disconnect.

In addition to these other “rational” calculations that are often put forth as speculative explanations, I’d like to offer one additional speculation that is not often, if ever, mentioned.

Instinct. Simply put, females evolved to be attracted to Neanderthals. Or, more precisely, to Alpha males who are often the worst, most brutal, meanest Neanderthal in the pack, like Trump.

This is not to demean or be reductionist toward women. It is only to recognize the role of evolved traits and behaviors that may not always serve us well in modern society. One of these is what attracts us at a visceral, unconscious level. Men are irrationally attracted to a great set of boobs, and women are irrationally attracted to the biggest, most thuggish alpha male of the group.

This behavior was clearly observable to me “in the wild” on a trip I booked in Argentina. It was a 24/7 bus-based camping trip that lasted over a month. I was considerably older than the rest of the group and could observe their behavior from a detached perspective.

There were a couple absolutely great guys on the trip. Handsome, college educated, accomplished, witty, considerate. They were everything the women on the trip ought to be attracted to on paper, but I observed no interest of any kind.

Then, halfway through, another guy joined. An extreme Neanderthal. He was slovenly, brutish, uneducated, and never without a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. To illustrate the extent to which I am not doing this guy an injustice, his favorite story he told over and over proudly was about how “This chick got in my face at a dance club and says she’s having my baby. I took her in the bathroom and shoved her face in a urinal and told her never come getting in my face when I’m with another chick.”

And yet, a number of those sensible, college educated, suburban type women on the group immediately and overtly started to flirt with this Neanderthal. Flirting so far as grabbing his butt in the bus and loudly “sleeping” with him nightly in turns in his small camp tent.

The last night of the trip I was alone at dinner with the three remaining girls. They were lamenting once more, as they had often over the course of the long trip, about how there were “no nice guys.” I finally felt compelled to point out their behavior, how they had ignored the really great guys on the trip and fallen all over the deplorable Neanderthal.

Initially they dismissed and denied it, but after some mild pressing one of them agreed that yes, she had to admit they did do exactly that. Another turned to me and told me most sincerely by way of explanation that “yes, but when we want to settle down we go for the nice guy.”

I laughed and said, so you’re saying that when you need a man to help raise a baby and fix the toilet, that’s when you’ll give the nice guy a second glance. She answered, as if it made it all understandably fine, that that was absolutely right.

I relate this story not to blame or shame women, but to help us understand and appreciate the extent to which evolved behaviors can and do still play a powerful role in modern life, even in presidential politics. Our innate instincts, uniquely male instincts as well as those of females, manifest in behaviors and rationalizations that do not serve us well any longer in our modern civilized world. Trump is like that guy on the trip. Women, whether we like to admit it or not, are innately attracted to peacocking, even threatening, alpha males like Trump who they perceive, however irrationally, as the strongest and most ruthless leader to protect them and their families.

That’s my hypothesis as least and I’m putting it out there for consideration. I’m not claiming it’s the only factor, but I do suggest that it is a contributing factor that should be at least recognized and factored in if we are to have any hope of overcoming it.

Women, when it comes to the next election, resist getting attracted to the perceived Alpha candidate who brags about grabbing pussy. You know he’s bad for you. Don’t even flirt with the Neanderthal who is only going to abuse you and inevitably shove your face into a urinal. There really are nice presidential candidates who are available. Next time around, go for the boring responsible guy that will help you raise your baby and fix the toilet.

And men, don’t feel the least bit smug or superior because I happen to be focusing on women in this particular situation. You have more than your unhealthy share of evolutionary baggage to acknowledge and leave behind as well!

Trump Exposed Our Stupidity

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I have long expressed the speculation that we are probably no smarter than the population of ancient Babylon. Yes, we may have more technology and more knowledge, but brains evolve very slowly and have probably long ago reached intrinsic intellectual limits like the maximum size of an insect with an exoskeleton. Similarly, we are probably no smarter overall than people were way back when.

Given the number of people in our population who believe in any sort of crazy, nonsensical, disproven claim, it’s hard to deny that we have a lot of really stupid people in our population. Despite that, we have long preferred to respect the intelligence of our fellow humans and at worst characterize them as misled, uninformed, uneducated, and so on. Not stupid though. Oh no, we’re not saying that.

When Trump came to power I said that was further proof of how stupid we are. Clearly we are not stupid in all ways, but I was talking about the particular set of “social intelligence” smarts that might allow us to form a just and sustainable social system. As social stupidity exerted itself throughout the Trump era, more and more people found they had no choice but to refer to his supporters as simply stupid.

Still, most continued to resist that harsh point-blank criticism. They hung on to hope that Trump voters were simply misinformed by Fox News.

Then Covid came along. As it became clear that many Trump supporters and some others were continuing to resist vaccines and thereby placing themselves and others at mortal risk, the rest of us have pretty much been forced to admit that, yes, they are just plain stupid. We can no longer continue to pretend that any less critical adjective is sufficient to describe them.

Trump has not made people stupid. Stupid people created Trump. Trump didn’t tell them what to think, he threw out trial balloons at his rallies and he echoed whatever they cheered to most strongly. He led stupid people wherever they told him they wanted to go.

The stupid people don’t worship Trump. They don’t even follow Trump. The moment he tries to take them where they don’t want to go, they rebel. They boo him as they did when he tried to urge them to get vaccinated. As horrible as Trump may be, the real problem is not Trump, the real problem are the stupid people who created and continue to empower Trumpism.

Look, it’s clear we have different kinds of smart and stupid. Some people may be brilliant in lots of ways, but still be quite hopelessly stupid at math. You don’t want them teaching math to your kids. In the same way, we should accept that some people, as smart as they may be in lots of ways, are simply hopelessly stupid when it comes to social policy and they should not be allowed anywhere near making it.

In their excellent book, Hating America, authors Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin document the dire misgivings that many 18th century European intellectuals expressed regarding the formation of a Democracy in America (see here). They warned that a system that empowered uninformed and stupid masses to make critical decisions was doomed to be dysfunctional and destructive. Their concern was elevated by their certainty that America, with all its vast resources, would become very powerful. Putting that much power in the hands of the stupid masses would be disastrous, they warned.

It has taken longer than those European intellectuals feared, but their predictions and warnings are finally coming true. A powerful America, dysfunctional and destructive in its behavior, careening down the road to a calamitous global future with stupid people behind the wheel.

Why now? I mean, the stupid people who support Trumpism – if not Trump himself – have always been here. They spewed nonsense in ancient Babylon, they owned slaves in America, and lynched free Blacks more recently. They have always hated government, believed in nonsense, proudly flew their Confederate flags, denied climate change, and rejected vaccinations. But we have managed pretty well so far. We have made progress despite them. So why worry about them now? What makes them more dangerous today?

I’ll give two reasons why our stupid population is more dangerous today – social media and guns. Social media gives them the critical ability to mutually-reinforce their stupidity, to coordinate, to rise up in online or real-world mobs, and to take over our government through coordinated action or even under threats of violence. Social media promised to empower the masses, and unfortunately it has succeeded.

And guns give these people the real power not only to mobilize, coerce, and threaten, but to exert their will through with profoundly horrifying violence and destruction.

It is long past time that we all accept and acknowledge that we have, and always will have, a socially stupid and dangerous fraction of people in our population. We must further accept that no amount of education, media campaigns, or empathetic outreach – or even fear of death – will dissuade these people from their stupid behavior. We cannot “bring them around.” We rather must find ways to moderate them, disempower them, and achieve a fair and sustainable society despite them.

We need, as George Will has said, sane and rational people in our representative form of government who can moderate our worst, stupidest, passions. But social media, and increasingly guns and threats of violence, are installing stupid people in our government who then gerrymander and create other pathways to bring in even more stupid people.

Eliminating, or strongly controlling, the two major enablers of stupidity, social media and guns, is essential if we are going to survive our socially stupid population and prove those European intellectuals wrong about the unavoidable fate of a Democratic system of government.

A Right Makes It Right for the Right

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In order to continue to rationalize and legitimize their support for Trump and all of the reprehensible things he says and does, Conservatives have had to abandon any semblance of principled ethical decision-making. They have retreated in their ethical justification to one recurring assertion…

Well he has the Right to do it.

We hear it all the time nowadays. But look, let’s be clear. We value and respect the Rights that we afford to each other through social norms, mutual respect, and as codified in our Constitution. But let’s also be clear, simply asserting that one has a strictly legal right to do something does not make it right to do. Acknowledging that someone technically has a right to do something does not excuse one from recognizing any other ethical considerations.

Having a legal or technical Right to do something doesn’t make it a wise thing to do, or a courteous thing to do, or a sensible thing to do, or even an honorable thing to do. In fact, sometimes asserting one’s Right is a dick thing to do. It may even be a selfish and unconscionable thing to do. Asserting a Right can in fact be the sociopathic thing to do.

It may be my Right to wear my stovepipe hat in a crowded movie theatre, but it’s a dick move. It may be my Right tell you that your little child looks like a mutant Klingon, but no one should do that. It may be my Right to exploit loopholes so that I pay no taxes on my millions, but really? And it may be my Right to brandish my gun and wave my Confederate flag around, but is it really right to exercise those particular Rights in that manner?

Similarly, the Congress may technically have had the “Right” to block Supreme Court Nominee Merrick Garland for eight months, but it was a dick thing to do. They technically had the “right” to appoint Amy Coney Barrett only weeks before a Presidential election, but it was still hypocritical and low-class to assert that Right. The President may technically have the “right” to personally intervene in Federal criminal cases to serve his own personal agenda, but it is still wrong. Trump may claim a “right” to grant pardons to anyone he wishes, or redirect resources, or to have private conversations with dictators, or any of a million other things. He may have the “right” to lie about matters personal and official, but it is still unethical. Simply put, his “right” to do those things does not make any of them the right thing to do. It certainly does not excuse them or make them into behaviors that we must accept.

It is not surprising that Trump, self-serving child that he is, would assert a “right” to do practically anything he wishes. Nor that Mitch McConnell would assert that any dirty tactic he may employ is within his “rights.” But it is really sad that so many outsiders, so many pundits and elected representatives, folks whose ethical responsibility it is to be ethically responsible, respond to concerns about ethical integrity only by saying “well he has the right to do that.”

Claiming that someone else has “the right to do that” is a weaselly and cowardly attempt to appear ethically-grounded while in fact abandoning anything beyond a pathetic pretense of ethical integrity. Conversely, quite often the truly right thing to do ethically is to put aside one’s own personal selfish “rights” to service a far greater and more noble good.

And it must be pointed out that very often these “rights” invoked are usually not affirmative, specifically granted rights, or even generally accepted rights. Most often these are matters of common human decency that no one ever felt they needed to enumerate in some gargantuan list of all the things no honorable person would ever do, or would even think of doing.

The lack of a specific prohibition is not a Right.

Yet, for the most part, this is the new Trumpian ethical low that we Americans have fallen to. If your totally reprehensible and unthinkable behavior has no specific law against it beyond hundreds of years of decorum and mutual respect, then you claim that it is your “right” to do that thing. And if you are a partisan or sycophant, you excuse that behavior by simply pointing out that it is technically and legally within their rights.

Invoking a technical right to do something is one of the most abused, misused, disingenuous, and yes even unethical, levels of ethical thinking and behavior. So realize that when apologists justify bad behavior as a “right,” they are almost certainly resorting to the weakest possible justification that they hope sounds principled, lofty, and unassailable.

We should not so easily let them off the ethical hook by simply invoking this sort of disingenuous justification.

Any Fool Can Do It

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SurvivorOn October 9th, 1989, I watched an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled “The Survivors” that made quite an impression on me. In it, Captain Picard and his crew encounter an elderly couple living in an unnatural oasis on a devastated planet. It turns out that the wife is a phantasm, an unknowing replica of the actual wife, now long dead. She was conjured by her husband Kevin, a godlike being who was devoted to her before her death and who has remained so centuries after.

By the way, Kevin was played by the iconic character actor John Anderson (see here). You probably don’t know his name, but if you watched any television from the early 50’s to the early 90’s, you cannot fail to recognize his distinctively Lincoln-esque countenance and voice.

Anyway, at the end Kevin reveals his shameful secret. When the planet he was living on with his wife was attacked by hostile aliens called the Husnock, he tried his best to use his powers to trick or dissuade them. Those efforts failed. Refusing to take any life, even those of the deplorable Husnocks, Kevin stood passively by as they devastated his planet and killed his wife along with the rest of her people.

The anguish of this loss caused him to lose control of himself, releasing a momentary outburst of uncontrolled rage. As Kevin told it:

“I went insane. My hatred exploded, and in an instant of grief, I destroyed the Husnock. I didn’t kill just one Husnock, or a hundred, or a thousand. I killed them all. All Husnock everywhere.”

What touched me was not merely the poignant tale of grief and loss and shame and regret. What touched me was what was implied by the story. What touched me was what else the story of Kevin teaches us.

Take note that Kevin was essentially a god. Unlike Thanos, Kevin didn’t need to expend all the power of the Infinity Gauntlet. It only required one stray thought for Kevin to selectively exterminate billions of lives. He was that powerful.

So after watching this episode, I asked myself the logical question. Given all that power, and given Kevin’s deep love and mourning for his wife, why didn’t he simply think her back into existence? Why didn’t he bring back all her people and restore her planet? In fact, given his deep regret, why didn’t he bring back the Husnock and direct them along a better path? Of course he would have… if he could.

The only answer is, he couldn’t.

So the truth, the revelation, the epiphany for the viewer must be that any fool can destroy. Tearing down is easy. It can be done with one errant thought. But even an omnipotent god cannot easily create. Even one as powerful as Kevin cannot in a million years ever recreate what he can mindlessly destroy in an instant.

We humans are certainly not gods, but in this regard we are the same as Kevin. We can easily, even unthinkingly, break a dish, crush a rose, tear someone down, shoot a gun, dash a hope, take a life, smash a historical relic, burn a building, bomb a city, nuke a country, even devastate a planet. Any fool can destroy. But it is immensely difficult, even impossible, to create or restore any of those things.

And what makes us immeasurably worse than Kevin is when we take pride and joy in destroying. When we believe that destroying makes us powerful. It does not. Any fool can destroy. Fools destroy because it makes them feel powerful.

However, it takes real strength and true genius to create.

This applies not only to physical things but to ideas. Any fool can knock down ideas. Any fool can pick them apart and tear them to pieces.  It takes an exceptional person to conceive new ideas and to build on the ideas of others rather than take delight in crushing them.

And this applies to ideas like Democracy as well as to our institutions. It required generations of strong and wise people to create our democratic ideals and institutions. But it only takes a few short years for a weak-minded and craven fool like Donald Trump to mindlessly tear them all irretrievably asunder. Feeling power and even pride in the “dismantling of the administrative state” – without building something stronger and better upon it – is the work of fools.

And we have no shortage of fools.

They Didn’t Really Hold Their Noses

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Portrait of a young woman holding her nose because of a bad smel“The Religious Right held their noses and voted for Trump.”

You know this line all too well. Unless you live in a sensory deprivation tank, you probably hear it many times a day from pretty much every expert analyst. You’ve heard it so many times that you probably believe it without even thinking to question it.

But it is simply baseless nonsense.

The Religious Right did not in fact hold their noses and vote for Trump. They enthusiastically embraced Trump AND all of his vile, disgusting behaviors and rhetoric.  And even after nearly two years of incessent exposure to his lies and indictments and mean-spirited policies, these supposed nose-holders still support Trump without significant reservation or qualification. At this point it is fair to ask whether they support him precisely because of all his vile, disgusting behaviors and rhetoric.

You can reality-check this for yourself. Simply tune in any talk show that accepts calls from the Religious Right. The overwhelming number of these callers not only still support Trump, but they support him passionately and vehemently. You won’t detect any nose-holding from them.

The next time you hear an analyst repeat this meme, notice that they never provide any evidence or data to support it. In fact, this narrative of the mythological nose-holding, morally conflicted religious right voter is definitively disproven by impartial analysis of the facts. In a study of voting data, political science professor Paul J. Djupe at Denison University concluded that:

“To the central claim: noseholding is not disproportionately common (or uncommon for that matter) among white evangelicals (see here).”

Professor Djupe goes on to point out that:

“I understand why the claim of noseholding is attractive. It suggests that you and your group are better, more pure than a political candidate, that your support is temporary and subject to revocation. It is a claim of both independence and moral superiority.”

So any such claim of moral angst in a Trump voter is a false claim. Rather, it is a strong indicator of moral deficiency. It is analogous to my admitting to my wife that I had an affair with a seedy prostitute, but that I had to “hold my nose” to do it. And this moral failure is not only evident in their support of Trump, but in their wholehearted support of a Conservative Congress that engages in similarly egregious behaviors that are in direct conflict with their espoused moral values.

It is clear why the elite on the religious right like to push this narrative to make themselves look and feel better, particularly while they support politicians who engage in blatant behavior that is antithetical to everything they falsely claim to stand for.

But this nose-holding meme is also repeated without legitimate skepticism by mainstream analysts. I suspect this is partly because they themselves would be conflicted in such a situation. Perhaps they genuinely held their nose and voted for Hillary when their heart was with Bernie. It is natural then that they would naively project their own angst into those on the religious right.

But do not make the mistake of giving the Religious Right too much credit for basic human decency and morality. Do not underestimate their capacity to rationalize terrible behaviors as somehow moral and justifiable. I previously wrote about their support for torture as one example (see here). In the case of Trump, they did not, and still do not, even have the rudimentary decency to actually hold their noses while they fervently embrace both him and all his enablers.