Sorry, we were upgrading our blog software last night, and the new software corrupted the database and files. We restored to 10/16, and will try to post the columns for 10/17 and 10/18 later today.
Wrongo
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Author: wrongologist
The Lyinâ Game
âIf a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was, and never will be.â – Thomas Jefferson
We received quite a few emails about the column âLie to Me â Itâs a Post-Truth World.â In it, Wrongo called for a means of rebutting lies as they emerge and crawl across our political landscape. Citizens who otherwise lead commonsensical lives cannot seem to hold on to facts when in a political argument.
Letâs start by taking a closer look at how things work in the Lyinâ Game. Charlie Pierceâs 2009 book, Idiot America, lays out what he calls the Three Great Premises that explain how lies take the form of truth:
1. Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or moves units.
2. Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.
3. Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is measured by how fervently they believe it.
It seems that the 2016 election is confirmation of Dr. Pierceâs diagnosis. The prognosis is not necessarily fatal, though left untreated, it surely could be. Here is a quote from his book:
In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a scientist, or a preacher, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.
So, itâs not just that we are fact free, itâs that we, the people, are unable or unwilling to learn the facts.
Susan Jacoby also wrote about the risks of a fact-free society about the same time as Pierce, the 2008 presidential election. In her book, âThe Age of Unreason,â she made a great point about FDR and his relationship with citizens and the truth. In FDRâs radio fireside chats, he would ask the people listening out there to spread a map of the world out in front of them so that as he talked about the battles that were going on, they would understand what he was saying about the places, the geography, and the strategy of what was happening. Doris Kearns Goodwin said in a lecture at Kansas State University that one of her favorite fireside chats was the “map speech,” delivered in February, 1942. Millions of Americans went out and bought maps, and they sat by the radio and followed what FDR was talking about.
And FDR wasnât on the radio every week as presidents are today. He only delivered two or three of these fireside chats a year, deliberately holding himself back for the moment when the country needed to hear from their president. He understood something that we have lost, that less can be more.
In 2009, Pierce offered a prescription about how to get out of the âperception is realityâ paradigm: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
Iâve given that a lot of thought and the best answer I can give is that we, as citizens, simply have to do better at self-government. We have to distinguish between entertainment and information. Our powers of discernment have to be sharpened…Any journalist who accepts âperception is realityâ as axiomatic is committing professional malpractice. Our job is to hammer the reality home until the perception conforms to it.
When our journalists accept âperception is factâ there is no hope for truth.
Jacoby says that the spread of ignorance and the acceptance of non-truth as fact is caused in part by the absence of national education standards, combined with the anti-intellectualism that we see everywhere. Americaâs insistence on local control of schools means that children in the poorest areas of the country have the worst school facilities and teachers with the worst training.
Among OECD nations, only in the US, Israel and Turkey do disadvantaged schools have lower teacher/student ratios than in those serving more privileged students.
This gives us an America in which anti-intellectualism is not only tolerated, but celebrated by many politicians and the media. Meanwhile, 25% of Texas high-school biology teachers believe that human beings and dinosaurs shared the earth, and more than a third of Americans canât name a single First Amendment right.
Facts don’t matter, because more and more Americans cannot recognize facts as true. Jacoby says:
This level of scientific illiteracy provides fertile soil for political appeals based on sheer ignorance.
Our 2016 presidential campaign has clarified whatâs wrong with us as a nation. Yet, weâve proven to willingly to put up with it.
Instead of putting up with whatâs wrong, how about fixing it?
Trapped in a Nightmare of Our Own Making
This bald eagle became trapped in a passing car [a Saturn] in Clay County, Florida on Saturday, presumably while minding its own business. The look on the birdâs face really says it all. But police and emergency responders were able to extract the unfortunate creature and get it to a wildlife sanctuary, where itâs currently being nursed back to health.
The bird will be fine, but isnât this the perfect meme for 2016? And we still have 25 days left until we are also liberated from being stuck in Trump’s grille.
Does anyone else see the irony of our great American symbol being stuck in the grille of a discontinued car brand? Here is a pic of the rescue:
Imagine the dialogue between the first responders and the eagle:
âYou have to come outta there. America needs you!â
âNope. Iâm not coming out until November 9th. Maybe not even then.â
âOh come on. You canât just stay in there forever.â
“Fix Americaâs Grille Again”, or as one Gizmodo commenter said, imagine: Before help showed up, there had to be a 911 call:
911: â911 what is your emergency?â
Driver: âI have a bald eagle stuck in my grill.â
911: âYou are choking on a chicken? Sir, please use slang we can understand.â
Feel free to add your own humorous observations.
Lie to Me: Itâs a Post-Truth World
Trump’s approach to lying is new, and it’s on a totally higher level. The essence is to undermine the concept of truth itself, to confuse and persuade and convince. From the Economist:
Mr. Trump is the leading exponent of âpost-truthâ politics â a reliance on assertions that âfeel trueâ but have no basis in fact. His brazenness is not punished, but taken as evidence of his willingness to stand up to elite power.
When someone is for Trump, it doesn’t matter if he comes out with some outrageous statement because either a) the media is blowing it out of proportion or b) he’s just telling it like it is or c) he’s just being Trump. Below is a fact-checking by David Leonhardt of the NYT published the morning after the second debate:
He lied about a sex tape.
He lied about his lies about âbirtherism.â
He lied about the growth rate of the American economy.
He lied about the state of the job market.
He lied about the trade deficit.
He lied about tax rates.
He lied about his own position on the Iraq War, again.
He lied about ISIS.
He lied about the Benghazi attack.
He lied about the war in Syria.
He lied about Syrian refugees.
He lied about Russiaâs hacking.
He lied about the San Bernardino terrorist attack.
He lied about Hillary Clintonâs tax plan.
He lied about her health care plan.
He lied about her immigration plan.
He lied about her email deletion.
He lied about Obamacare, more than once.
He lied about the rape of a 12-year-old girl.
He lied about his history of groping women without their consent.
Dishonesty in politics is nothing new. Remember Nixon? Lyndon Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, thus getting the country into a war in Vietnam. In 1986, Ronald Reagan insisted that his administration did not trade weapons for hostages with Iran, before having to admit a few months later that:
 My heart and my best intentions still tell me thatâs true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not…
Reaganâs words point to what is different. Political lies used to imply that there was a truth. Evidence, consistency and scholarship had enough political power to make Nixon resign.
Today, many voters, a few politicians like Trump, and some pundits simply no longer care:
- They deal in insinuation (âA lot of people are saying…â is one of Mr. Trumpâs favorite phrases) and question the provenance, rather than accuracy, of anything that goes against them (âThey would say that, wouldnât they?â).
- And when the distance between what âfeelsâ true and what the facts say grows too great, it can always be bridged by trotting out a conspiracy theory.
But the manner (and frequency) of Trumpâs lies, are different, and more worrisome. When you are a Trump-like chameleon, you can be all things to (most) people.
The magnitude of this information change is greater than any since Gutenberg started printing pamphlets. People who are bombarded with new information do not know what/who to trust. Old media that used to be trusted sources of information have been destroyed or forced to change by the new technology.
There is no source of authority which is not intensely disputed. As an example, there is hardly an article in the old media which a few commenters do not challenge, often calling into question the integrity of the writer, the editor, or the owners; this was not true in 2000. The net result is a lessening of trust, which has many serious implications.
We need a language/methodology for rebuttal. People have suggested real-time fact checking, but in a divided post-truth society, who can be a non-biased fact-checker? And in a divided society, some, like televangelists  Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell Jr. wonât even accept that the Pant Load committed sexual assault when there is video evidence. What is it that Donald Trump has to offer that these preachers will sell their souls and misquote scripture to support him?
It could take us a few generations to decide who to trust. In the meantime, a few populists will become leaders, a few wars may be started, more young people will be inspired to express their political beliefs through terrorism, and some young people will opt out of our political process.
It will remain very difficult to have a reasoned conversation with anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the same version of the truth as you do.
Donald Trump’s statements are only true or mostly true 15% of the time. He has largely rejected reality and entered a delusional realm where what “feels right” is fed to a portion of the public that wants to believe his lies.
Monday Wake Up Call: Sex, Lies & Emails Post Debate Edition
Why do the debates have to conflict with Wrongoâs football teamâs game? Anyway, watched the debate with Ms. Oh So Right, and desperately wanted to turn it off after about 45 minutes. It seemed clear that Trump was trying a form of the Rick Lazio stalking maneuver, or the way McCain stalked across the stage right up to Obama. Although they started without a handshake, possibly a first in presidential debates, there was a quick one at the end.
- Trumpâs denied that he assaulted anyone. He says âitâs just words, folksâ. Heâs now opened himself up to a major problem if a woman steps forward with allegations of assault/harassment.
- The video clip is a result of investigative reporting by the WaPo. There is an element of payback in that Trump has attacked WaPo editor-in-chief Marty Baron personally, and has revoked the paperâs credentials for his rallies. Payback is a bitch, especially if you’re someone like Donald Trump, whose life doesn’t really bear much scrutiny.
- Here is what Trump really meant about Muslims:
We will set up thought police, where Muslims will be required to report on their parents and children. If you see something, you MUST say something.
- We learned that tax policy was Hillaryâs fault. According to the Pant Load, she wrote the tax code, ran the wars and passed health care. Hillary caused all the inner city problems. She has talked about all of these things for years, but she did nothing.
- Trumpâs message: Bill is more of a perv than me. Hillary canât be trusted, she has been around for 30 years and things have gotten worse.
- NO questions on immigrants and jobs, or outsourcing and trade.
Hillary got the better of Trump in laying out policy points, and won on the Trump video tape frat boy issue, but Trump got the better of Hillary with her (non) response on the email issue. Trump comes across as angry, and angry is not likable.
While the idea was for average people to ask questions directly of the candidates, they used each question as a way to swing at the other. There was a lot of Trumpâs word salad, and he continually worked the referees. All of that wore thin very quickly. The Pant Load offered lots of red meat to his base, but it was hard to see him making many converts because of his performance tonight.
In a way, it was mean girl vs. the bully, but we are no longer in 7th grade. Itâs truly a sad and pathetic commentary on the state of our election process.
We will have to wait until tomorrow to see the ratings that can tell us if and when people began to turn off the debate to watch something else.
To help those of you who stayed up to see the debate and maybe some of the punditry afterwards, you clearly are in need of a wakeup call this morning. There was a rock concert called Desert Trip in Indio CA over the weekend, where the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Roger Waters and The Who performed. The affectionate name for the concert is âOldchellaâ, since it involves ancient performers and is being held on the same site as the annual Coachella Rock festival.
It is usually a disappointment to see stars of yesteryear perform when they are in their 70s, and in reviewing many videos of the performances from the Desert Trip, Wrongo prefers to remember them at their best, which apparently, wasnât on display at Indio this weekend.
Wrongo also has had many happy days at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, where the concert was held. We spent a week every January on the Polo grounds for 10 years, showing our dogs. It is a fabulous venue.
Here is âRockin in the Free Worldâ by Neil Young & Promise of the Real, recorded on October 8th. Neil is the best guy in the geriatric wing of the Rock Pantheon this weekend. He starts by telling the audience that they are going to play a 40 second version of the song, but they rock on for 8:28. We know you are busy, and probably late for work, but watch to the end.
Now, where are my mushrooms?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOh5ETyyKuE
FYI: Green Bay 23, Giants 16
Will The Candidates Discuss Syria?
Although it is Sunday, there will be no cartoons today. Sorry. Instead, time to eat our vegetables and prepare for tonightâs second Presidential Debate.
Wrongo thinks Syria should be a featured topic, since it lays bare our conflict with Russia, which has steadily grown since their annexation of Crimea. But, the debate is in a town hall format, with half of the questions coming from the audience, so it is difficult to say if Syria and Russia will make it to the table.
Certainly they should be discussed. On October 3, the Obama Administration walked away from the Geneva negotiations with Russia, aimed at ending the war in Syria. On October 5, the Principals Committee met at the White House to consider four options for Syria:
- Create a no-fly zone over Syria;
- Create safe zones along the Turkish and Jordanian borders inside Syrian territory;
- Bomb the entire Syrian Air Force;
- Arm the Syrian rebels (jihadists) with anti-aircraft weapons (MANPADS) as part of a prolonged insurgency directed against the Assad government, which are increasingly dominated by the very terrorist forces that the US and Russia were jointly targeting up until last week.
The first three options require the imposition of a no fly zone over Syria. There are big risks with a no fly zone, if the US imposes it without Russian cooperation. The Russians might refuse to respect it. If they defy the no fly zone and we shoot down Russian planes, it could lead to war. The Russians categorically oppose a Syrian no fly zone, because they believe it will weaken Assad.
Option four means the US aligns with our former jihadi terrorist enemies against Assad, in a semi-permanent war in the Middle East. So, consider these statements:
- Last week, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said while touring US nuclear weapons facilities that the US was prepared to use nuclear weapons to defend against the emerging Russian threat in Europe.
- John McCain said in an op-ed last week in the Wall Street Journal, âStop Assad NowâOr Expect Years of Warâ:
Any alternative approach must begin with grounding Mr. Assadâs air power…If Russia continues its indiscriminate bombing, we should make clear that we will take steps to hold its aircraft at greater risk.
- On Oct. 6, Russia warned the US not to intervene in Syria. Major-General Igor Konashenkov, the Russian defense ministry spokesman, threatened that it may shoot down any aircraft attempting to launch strikes:
I would recommend our colleagues in Washington to thoroughly consider the possible consequences of the realization of such plans…
Thatâs the current geopolitical landscape. What do the candidates think?
The Pant Suit wants to remove Assad and defeat ISIS simultaneously. She supports a no-fly zone. Clinton does not support an American troop commitment. Instead, she wants to arm and supply Syrian and Kurdish rebel groups. Her plan is to replace both Assad and ISIS with another group to be named later. Itâs a weak plan, but it appeals to Americans because Clintonâs plan doesnât require more American troops on the ground.
Trump has no plan, but during the primaries, he said: (brackets by the Wrongologist)
So, I donât like Assad. Whoâs going to like Assad? But, we have no idea who these people [Assad replacements], and what theyâre going to be, and what theyâre going to represent. They may be far worse than Assad. Look at Libya. Look at Iraq. Look at the mess we have after spending $2 trillion dollars, thousands of lives, wounded warriors all over the placeâwe have nothing.
But during the VP debate, Pence adopted Clintonâs position. Pence said:
The United States of America needs to be prepared to work with our allies in the region to create a route for safe passage and then to protect people in those areas, including with a no-fly zone.
Obama has repeatedly refused to impose a no-fly zone.
Here is some context: Arming terrorists in a sovereign nation is an act of war. Bombing and attacking targets in a sovereign nation is an act of war. Establishing no fly zones without permission in a sovereign nation is an act of war. Stationing troops or Special Forces in a sovereign nation without permission is an act of war.
We have no UN mandate to be in Syria. Congress has not given its approval to be in Syria.
Itâs a big fat mess, with no good solution in sight, made worse by the scale of the Syrian humanitarian crisis. And marked by Congressâ lack of courage.
It would be nice if at least ONE candidate would recall that during the Cold War, the number one goal was not to provoke a war between the US and Russia, but to find ways to de-escalate the situation.
Perhaps this is too much to expect, given the temperament of both candidates.
Trumped!
(This post is for Pat M, a long-time blog reader, who called, expressing outrage at the Pant Load)
From the mouth of Trump comes the ultimate âshorterâ GOP:
âAnd when youâre a star they let you do it,â Trump says. âYou can do anything.â
This is Donald Trump admitting to sexually assaulting a woman.
This is why the GOP said yesterday, and will say today and tomorrow whatever they think they need to say to get by the latest insight into the true character of Donald Trump.
You see, racism, bigotry, misogyny were a part of the Republican Party long before Trump. The ugly truth is that the real problem has long been “moderate Republicans” who looked the other way and allowed that hatred to take root in order to garner political power, particularly in the last eight years.
Republicans voted for him in the primaries, the Partyâs elite endorsed him. The Republican base still plans to vote for him for president, and NOW, the Party will look the other way as their elderly, frat boy pig of a candidate does it again.
And the best part is that Republicans now wish that Mike Pence was at the top of the ticket. Remember Mike Pence? The vile, bigoted, misogynist who signed a law making LGBTQ folks second-class citizens? The Republican governor who forced women to pay for funeral services for their aborted fetuses?
So Trumpâs statement that âYou can do anythingâ resonates with the core supporters of the Republican Party:
- If youâre a Big Bank, you can do anything, and ordinary mortals be damned. (Remember the GOPs opposition to the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and to Dodd-Frank)
- If youâre Big Pharma, you can do anything, and ordinary mortals be damned. (Remember the GOPs opposition to allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices)
- If youâre the NRA, you can do anything, and ordinary mortals be damned. (See the GOPs opposition to even collecting data on gun deaths)
Itâs the Leona Helmsley Principle: Rules are for the little people. Trump took her tax idea and made it better, showing us that he was smart, while the rest of us are chumps.
Remember Chris Christie shutting down the GW bridge, or Rick Snyder and the poisoning of Flintâs water.
âWhen youâre a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.â
The Republicans wonât take Donald Trump off the ticket, he is one of their kind.
He is the logical conclusion of what it means to be a Republican in 2016.
Can a Main Stream Party Win Millennial Voters?
Millennials seem to be on the fringe of the political action in 2016. A new survey âThe Millennial Economyâ by Ernst & Young (E&Y) shows that they are also on the fringe economically, and that they distrust many American institutions.
That may explain why they are disaffected with the current Presidential race. A mid-June survey of 1,200 18-34 year olds was conducted online and via cell phone buy E&Y. It has a margin of error of ± 2.83%. E&Y found that coming of age during an historic economic downturn has severely impacted Millennials:
- 30% of respondents live with their parents, and itâs 40%Â if they are still single.
- Nearly oneÂ-third believe their local community is still in a recession.
Millennial stress levels are high:
- 78% of Millennials are worried about having good-Âpaying job opportunities.
- 74% are worried they wonât be able to pay their healthcare bills if they get sick.
- 79% are worried they will not have enough money to live on when they retire.
Millennials are the most educated generation in US history, but they are not convinced of the cost/benefit of higher education. Instead of education opening doors, many Millennials feel that student debt has boxed them in. The WSJ reported that among college-educated Millennials, 81% had at least one source of long-term debt, while The Atlantic reports that real wages have fallen for Millennials (and only Millennials) in the past five years, even as education costs have skyrocketed.
E&Y surveyed Millennialsâ views of the establishment. They find that Millennials have very little confidence in many of our established institutions, but they are patriotic and supportive of a leading role for the US in the world. This chart is from the study:
Millennial men have greater confidence in US institutions than women, with 34% of men expressing confidence in the institutions polled compared to only 25% of women. Overall, Millennials:
- Had the least confidence in the News Media (73%) closely followed by the Federal Government, Governors, and Corporate America (72%).
- Had the most confidence in the Military (55%), followed by Colleges and Universities (51%) and Professional Sports (32%).
Millennial men remain more optimistic than Millennial women, although the clear majority of both genders think the country is headed in the wrong direction:
- Men are nearly twice as likely to believe that the country is headed in the right direction (33%) as women (17%).
- Hispanic men and black women are the most optimistic group within each gender, with 41% of the former and 27% of the latter believing the country is headed in the right direction.
So the $64 question is: How to win the vote of Millennials? E&Y says that economic uncertainty greatly influences Millennialsâ political priorities. They found that Millennials are looking to politicians to alleviate their financial insecurity:
- 64% of Millennials believe public education should be a top priority for federal tax dollars, a consensus that crosses party lines.
- Social Security and Medicare were their second priority (46%), while National Security was third at 45%.
- 47% of Millennials identify as independents.
Finally, as a crib sheet for debate prep, E&Y have this checklist for Millennial hot-button issues:
Politicians always play to a checklist. Trump mentioned every battle ground state in the last debate, but fell in the polls. And playing generational politics can result in the candidate seeming completely inauthentic. That has been Hillary Clintonâs problem with Millennials. Al Gore tried it with Social Security in 2000 vs. GW Bush, and it did not work.
Polls show Clinton running far behind where she would hope to be with Millennials. She is winning just under half of Millennial votes, while Obama got over 60% in both of his campaigns.
As we have said, Hillary is not Bernie, and doesnât stand for what Bernie stood for. So while millennials loved him for it, Hillary will not do as well with them.
Wrongo is concerned about how many young people are considering voting for Gary Johnson. Johnsonâs libertarian views are far worse for their interests than anything Hillary stands for.
Johnson certainly would never support the government doing anything with student debt. Yet apparently, many young people will be voting for him, with no apparent concern about how it might help elect Donald Trump.
Perhaps Millennials and the rest of us need to have a busload of faith to get by between here and Election Day in order to survive. Here is Lou Reed live on Letterman in 1989 with âBusload of Faithâ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNZm89wLaBw
True to Lou, he sang about a busload of faith, minus the bus, and minus the faith.
Those who view the Wrongologist in email can see the video here.
Sample Lyrics:
You can’t depend on your family
you can’t depend on your friends
You can’t depend on a beginning
you can’t depend on an end
You can’t depend on intelligence
ooohhh, you can’t depend on God
You can only depend on one thing
you need a busload of faith to get by
Trump â Change
Despite being the presidential candidate of the Republican Party, Donald Trump has positioned himself as the candidate of change in the 2016 election. During the first debate, he tried to hammer home his call for sweeping political change. From Reuters:
Some of Trump’s strongest moments at Mondayâs debate were when he categorized Clinton, a former secretary of state and US senator as a âtypical politician,â accusing her of achieving nothing in her years in Congress and government.
Polls show an electorate hungry for change, with a majority believing the country is on the wrong track. In fact, Reuters/Ipsos polling shows that 64% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. That number includes 87% of Republicans and 44% of Democrats.
When Reuters asked voters to pick the first word that comes to mind when thinking about the country, the most popular choice was âfrustration,â (49%) followed by âfearâ(15%) and âangerâ(13.8%).
With an electorate once again yearning for change, as they do every four years; who will they turn to in 2016? Many pundits have said that Hillary Clinton is the voice of the status-quo, while Donald Trump is the candidate of change, that she represents incrementalism, while he represents big ideas.
Bill Clinton ran and won on change. Barack Obama ran and won on âchange you can believe in.â
But, as Jeff Jarvis says: (brackets by the Wrongologist)
I ended up voting for Barack Obama, but while he was in a [primary] race against Hillary Clinton his campaign slogan drove me to distraction. âChange we can believe in.â What change exactly?
Jarvis makes this point:
âChangeâ is an empty word, a vague promise. Obama promised âchangeâ and it was a vessel into which his supporters poured their dreams…The proper word is not âchangeâ but âprogress.â
But the term âprogressâ has been devalued and given different meanings by both the left and the right, making it less useful to describe what is required in next stage in our political and social evolution.
Jarvis thinks the key word should be âimprovementâ: Based on her web site, Clinton will work to improve health care, college costs, infrastructure, criminal justice, mental health, national security, the environment, taxation, campaign finance, and the status of women and minorities.
In this context, Trump â change. He promises little improvement. In fact, his basic message is one of regression: Letâs return to an earlier time in America when many of his supporters feel they had more control over their lives. They say that they have lost their cultural and (possibly) their economic position due to changes they could not control, changes they resent, changes that broadened American opportunity, making it available to others, some of whom are outsiders. Trump is promising to stop these kinds of change.
Change can be of the revolutionary or evolutionary kind, but other than the American Revolution, are there examples of successful revolutionary change in the past 300 years? China, maybe? The French Revolution? Iran? All of these revolutions were accompanied by bloodshed. In our current environment, with instant global communication, evolutionary change is likely to be more successful.
And when you think about what evolutionary change involves: Understanding a problem, preparing and planning for the required change, building a supportive coalition, implementing and sustaining it in law and action, what about Donald Trump suggests to you that he could be an effective change agent?
Alternatively, Clinton presents a vision of a country headed basically in the right direction, but one that needs to address income and other forms of inequality. She is boxed into a position of running against ârealâ change, because of her career as a member of the establishment, and in part because she wants to run on Obamaâs record. She would also like to bring his coalition along with her, but by temperament, she isnât Bernie.
Still, she has cataloged the many tweaks and changes she hopes to make to policy. They are available online for those who have an attention span longer than it takes to read 140 characters.
This is in contrast to The Pant Load, who values tweets, conflict and personality over substance.
Three AM Tweet Storms are not change, they improve nothing. He promises nothing, and we are letting him get away with it.
Living With Muslims
Wrongo recently read a first-person article in the June 24th edition of Maine’s Portland Press Herald by Allison Hodgkins. She is an assistant professor of security studies and conflict management at the American University in Cairo. Hodgkins lives with 20 million Muslims for 10 months a year, returning to Maine for the summers. Her point is that they are not so different from the rest of us. Here is a long excerpt from her article: (brackets and editing by the Wrongologist)
The assumption undergirding the presumptive Republican presidential nomineeâs proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States is simple: More Muslims equal more terrorism and a less secure United States. And while there is utterly no evidence of a relationship between increased Muslim immigration to the US and increased rates of domestic terrorism, as many as 50% of Americans support at least a temporary ban, one poll has found.
The question that no one is asking is: Why? Why would half the US electorate think that banning nearly one-quarter of the worldâs population from entry is a good idea? Are we just a country of bigots?
No, we are not. As the push for marriage equality demonstrates, we are actually very tolerant â once we get to know the group or the idea. But thatâs precisely the problem with relation to Muslims: We donât really know many.
Muslims are only 1% of the US population, and theyâre disproportionately concentrated in a handful of urban areas. A 2011 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute showed that 40% of respondents had never spoken to a Muslim and 24% had done so occasionally. Only 6% reported speaking with a Muslim daily.
What these numbers lay bare is that for the average American, their only reference points for Muslims are the occasional glimpse of a foreign-looking woman in a veil and, well, the likes of [domestic terrorists] Omar Sadiq Mateen, San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook or the Boston Marathon bombers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
/snip/
Since we barely know the 3.3 million already here, we have no idea what it could mean to live with 3 million, 4 million or 5 million more.
Well, I do. For 10 months out of the year, I live with 20 million Muslims…Since accepting a position at the American University in Cairo, I have lived cheek by jowl with Muslims. Cairo, an urban megalopolis of 22 million to 24 million, is just plain teeming with them… From the moment I open my door in the morning until I close it at night, there are Muslims at every turn. The family down the hall from me is Muslim, as are four of the five families on the floor below. The crossing guard who scolds my son for not looking twice before crossing the street is a Muslim, and so are the guards checking IDs at the entrance of his school. I sit next to Muslims on the bus to work and gripe with them about the traffic.
/snip/
In an environment where being Muslim is the common denominator, it is absolutely certain that the person committing an act of terror will be an adherent of the faith. But Muslims are also the victims, the police coming to investigate, the reporters covering the event, the people queuing to give blood and the leaders charged with devising the best policy to counter what they and their constituents know is radical extremism promoted by groups of extremists.
/snip/
And when you live with 20 million Muslims, you hear them talk about this danger to their lives, their nations and their faith every single day.
Ms. Hodgkinsâs point is we should assess the risks of Muslim immigrants to our homeland. Maybe get to know a few facts about Muslim involvement in acts of domestic terror, and meet a few Muslims before we ban all Muslim immigration.
You can hear the argument from the Trumpeteers: Of course the vast majority of Muslims are good, peace loving people who want the same for their families as the rest of us. But we canât tell the good ones from the bad ones, so NO Muslim immigration until we get better vetting, screening, monitoring in place.
We couldn’t tell the good ones from the bad ones: That was the logic that led us to the internment of American Japanese in WWII.
OTOH, nearly all Americans agree that the vast majority of gun owners are good, peace loving people. But, since we canât tell the good ones from the bad, how about banning all sales of guns until we get better vetting, screening, monitoring in place?
Sorry, we willingly accept the risk that American shooters will kill Americans. Since we are Second Amendment absolutists, those deaths are just collateral damage in the fight to protect our gun rights.
But if there is one death by a Muslim immigrant, the terrorists win.