Bernie or Bust

The speech given by Michelle Obama at the Democratic convention was much praised and rightly so.  But the three most on-point words spoken during the first day of the event were these:  “You’re being ridiculous.”  As is now well known, they were said by comedian/actor Sarah Silverman to Bernie Sanders obsessives who were being, in fact, ridiculous – and, as is their wont, childish, boorish, and self-indulgent.  Their threat – in keeping with their insufferable self-righteousness and moral superiority -- to hand over their vote to the ignoramus Donald Trump in order to indulge their irrational, over-the-top hatred of Hillary Clinton, is truly astonishing.  A few points for them to consider:

1.Hillary Clinton is the nominee, not Bernie Sanders. That’s over with, and no amount of acting out will change it.

2. The overwhelming majority of Democratic voters – and for that matter, the overwhelming majority of the American people – do not know what the Democratic National Committee is or what it does or why it exists or if it exists, and are not influenced in any way by its internal machinations, including snarky email traffic among its functionaries about Bernie Sanders.  Sanders lost by millions of votes and that had nothing to do with the DNC or any election shenanigans of any kind by anyone else.  It had to do with the will of the voters. Period.  The nomination was not stolen from Sanders.  It was lost by him.

3. The jeering and the booing and the weeping and the long-suffering eyes-to-the-sky gazes betray a remarkably juvenile understanding of how the electoral process is supposed to work in a democracy, and how the two-party system is supposed to work within that process. The idea here is to  select a person whose view of the world is most like ours to run for office against the person whose view of the world is least like ours.   It’s not a team sport where we root-root-root for our side in the service of an uncritical emotional attachment to it and fall desperately in love with its star player.

4. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are politically much more alike than they are different, and they are both vastly different from Trump.  That’s what this election is about.  What it’s not about: Your failure to get every single thing you want, exactly as you want it, or you will stomp out of the room in a fit of pique.  The big picture here is that the Sanders-Clinton side is about inclusiveness and a reverence for the democratic process, and the Trump side is about divisiveness and authoritarianism, even fascism.  Get over yourselves and your petty disappointments and your haughtily judgmental verdicts regarding the sins of Hillary Clinton and get some perspective about who and what she is and is not.

Here is what the history books will say about fascist America: It came about because a group of disgruntled Democrats swung the election to Donald Trump by voting for him to show their anger over the failure of their candidate, Bernie Sanders, to win their party’s nomination.

Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?

In the aftermath of Donald Trump's odious remarks about a "Mexican" federal judge, House Speaker Paul Ryan can circumlocute until the cows come home but what he has said amounts to this: “Donald Trump is a racist ignoramus.  I think he should be president of the United States.”  How’s that for a profile in courage? If Trump were not the GOP nominee, Ryan and other prominent Republicans – John McCain, Marco Rubio, Bob Corker, et. al. -- would think of him, if they gave him any thought at all, as an aging crackpot, a sort of Scrooge McDuck, harmlessly tweeting racist rants and cuckoo ideas from his Trump Tower aerie. As it is, however, they see the enacting of the GOP agenda, not to mention the preservation of their own jobs, as important enough to back for president a person they would otherwise see as a card-carrying member of the lunatic fringe.  Particularly pathetic in all of this is McCain, who has declared his support for a man who mocked his 5 and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

Meanwhile, in the rich and varied menu of misstatements, lies, and delusional assertions that have come out of the mouth of Mr. Trump, it’s easy for any one of them to more or less disappear into the gloaming – to get lost in the crowd, as it were. But one of the assertions he has made -- one that his followers presumably accept and that generated some pushback but not the gasps of incredulity it should have – is surely among his most demented. That would be the one that claims unemployment in the U.S. is currently in the vicinity of 20-percent. In the great scheme of things, acceptance of this idea by Trump folks is in keeping with the overarching belief on their part that everyone but their man is lying and only he sees through the lies.  But good grief, Trumpalators, when it comes to unemployment in America, do you not believe your own eyes?  Where are the bread lines and soup kitchens?  Where are the Hoovervilles?  Why is no one selling apples on street corners?  Where are the caravans of Okies headed west in a desperate search for economic salvation?  Because I assume you’re aware (aren’t you?) that in the worst year of the Great Depression, 1933, unemployment was about 24-percent. Trump’s assessment (which, of course, is based on nothing whatsoever), puts us right there, right now.

Holy smokes! If we are to take your guy at his word – that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has been compiling data on employment and calculating the unemployment rate the same way for over 100 years and through twenty-plus Democratic and Republican administrations, is now lying – we have to conclude that unemployment is at Great-Depression levels.  This despite any tangible evidence in the world around us of mass unemployment; despite the fact that consumer spending recently hit a six-year high; despite more than 30 consecutive quarters of economic growth; despite the fact nobody you know is involuntarily unemployed; and despite the fact that the automotive industry is enjoying its best years ever – ever – in no small part because of robust sales of the vehicles of choice for many of those supposedly out-of-work Trumpistas: pick-up trucks.

And where the heck is the Wall Street Journal when you need it? I know, I know, WSJ is part of the mass media establishment; but it is no fan of the Obama administration or of Democrats in general or, especially, of the party’s economic agenda and overall philosophy.  One would think it would be indefatigable in its quest to dig out the truth if it suspected that unemployment was four times higher than that which is being reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  But no!  Not a peep out if it, or out of any of the other right-leaning media outlets.  Or for that matter, any other media outlets at all.  Not one of them is onto this. Not one of them has reported what would be the story of the century – that unemployment is at depression levels and nobody knows it.  Except, of course, his Donaldness.

No, wait. Actually, thousands of people know it.  They would be the green-eye-shade types who work at the BLS and assembled the employment numbers.  They know the facts, but were sworn to secrecy at a mass meeting in a cave somewhere.  “I know you all know the truth – that unemployment is at about 20-percent,” President Obama said to the assemblage, “but I’m asking you to tell everyone that it’s 5-percent.  Okay?  And don’t tell anyone I said this.  Mum’s the word.”

In Trump fantasyland, Fergusom is among the world’s most dangerous places; muslims  danced on TV to celebrate 9/11; a giant wall is going to be built; millions of people are going to be rounded up and deported, the Clintons killed Vince Foster and Ted  Cruz’s father killed JFK; the government is going to “negotiate” the redemption of U.S. Savings Bonds; and there will be a 45-percent tariff on Chinese goods. And unemployment is at 20-percent.  However, here on planet earth, the U.S. unemployment rate is at 4.7-percent.  Just like the labor department says.  You could look it up.

Clinton Haters

Leaving aside for the moment the relative merits of the candidates, I would submit that there’s a special place in hell reserved for Bernie Sanders obsessives who would switch their vote to Donald Trump rather than give it to Hillary Clinton, the candidate whose real and imagined shortcomings they are so fixated on (like most Republicans are) as to have elevated her to comic book arch-villain status. Voting for Trump instead of Clinton would be beyond irrational – an act of petulance that would betray a stunningly juvenile willingness to abdicate responsible citizenship in favor of self-indulgence. It is akin to a suicidal 14-year-old envisioning, with a delicious mixture of self-pity and glee, how sorry all of his tormentors are going to be when he’s gone.

For all I-didn’t-get-my-way stompers out of the room as Sanders withdraws, a few important points…

• Clinton didn’t win this thing because of voter suppression or voter manipulation or a rigged system, or other sorts of skullduggery, or because various media players conspired to help her. She won because more people voted for her than for her opponent, by multiple millions. 
• Like all candidates for public office – like all people -- Clinton has pluses and minuses. But she is not corrupt, at least no more so than politicians generally are, and she is not the horror show some people have convinced themselves she is. She is a middle-of-the-road politician who, yes, has some mistakes to answer for but who is more like Bernie Sanders than unlike him. It’s one thing to disagree with her policy ideas and to not vote for her on that basis. But this over-the-top anger and hatred is bizarre. And inexplicable, except on some dark and deep-seated psychological level that has nothing to do with her qualifications or her ability to operate effectively as head of the executive branch of our government. Turning this irrational anger into a vote for the buffoon Donald Trump is unpardonable. Elections are not about which candidates are more or less deserving, and only people with an over-inflated sense of moral superiority think otherwise.  Elections -- and this one more than most -- are about which candidate is right for the job.  Period. 
• Sanders himself has said this: “I will do everything in my power to make sure that no Republican gets into the White House in this election cycle.” In other words, the man for whom some would commit harikari is vowing not to abandon Clinton for Trump, or anybody else, and to support her in the general election, just as Clinton enthusiastically and very publicly supported Barack Obama after losing to him in a bitter primary fight. Sanders, an intelligent man and a serious public servant, would never, ever align himself with Donald Trump nor place Hillary Clinton in the same category as him
• Finally, and most importantly for the purposes of this discussion, Clinton has not said/done the following: Characterized Ferguson as one of the most dangerous places on earth; called for negotiating with mom and pop on the repayment of their U.S. savings bonds; said her tax returns are none of our business; imagined that she saw thousands people on TV celebrating 9/11; made weirdo phone calls bragging about herself while pretending to be someone else; married and discarded glamour models and made sexually suggestive remarks about her offspring; favored starting a trade war and a worldwide recession by slapping an astronomical tariff on Chinese goods; called for the creation of a Gestapo-like government force to undertake a massive, years-long round-up and deportation of undocumented families; believes members of one religion should be put under surveillance and possibly put in camps; thinks Mexican people are rapists and wants to build a staggeringly expensive 2,000-mile wall that would be the largest infrastructure project since the interstate highway system; believes American soldiers should kill the  innocent children of suspected terrorists; run a fake “university”; mocked a war hero who was shot down and imprisoned for five years; ridiculed the disability of a newspaper reporter; referred to disliked members of the opposite sex as fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animal and inferred that Megyn Kelley asked about those characterizations only because she was menstruating; threatened to crush anyone who criticizes her in print through libel lawsuits; questioned Barack Obama’s country of birth and lied about his birth certificate; acquired her foreign policy expertise by “watching the shows;” accused Ted Cruz’ father of complicity in the murder of JFK; mplied the Clintons murdered Vince Foster And on an on.

This is a person you would rather elect to office than Hillary Clinton?  Can you possibly be serious?The numbers are implacable: Trump cannot win this election without help from Democrats. That some Democrats would give him that help in a fit of pique over not getting their way is repugnant. Get over yourselves and lose your insufferable moral superiority.

True Believers

I read recently about a pro-Trump person who said this: “There is nothing you can say that will make me not vote for Trump.” That was her cheerful response when she was presented with a litany of the candidate’s misstatements, lies, and assorted idiocies She was doing what Trumpists do: Putting her hands over her ears and humming loudly when confronted with the facts. What these folks are hearing from Trump has nothing to do with facts and is coming to them over a different frequency, like a dog whistle. It has everything to do with the none-too-subtle permission he grants them to blame their problems and failures on others and to see themselves as victims. It also has to do with a you’re-not-the-boss-of-me streak of childish resentment and stubbornness which essentially says this: I’m doing what I’m doing not because I think it’s right but precisely because you don’t want me to. This is what we’re up against as we try to stop this man who would be king from smashing our democracy.

And then we have the Bernie Sanders true-believers, with their loose talk about “revolution” and their adolescent demonization of Hillary Clinton. It is not unreasonable to support the political candidacy of Sanders, an intelligent and experienced politician with a good heart, while still having reservations about the wisdom and/or viability of some of the things he advocates. It’s another thing entirely to obsess over him – to worship at his altar to the point of believing that his candidacy will save the country and another’s destroy it. Some Sanders supporters who express rabid antagonism for Clinton – a middle of the road, not-insane politician who comes from pretty much the same place on the political spectrum as Sanders – are now making noises about voting for Donald Trump if they don’t get their way. Down this path lies a what-was-I-thinking moment, as President Trump attempts to make good on his bizarre promises and nonsensical ideas 

For now, though, we have the empty-headed musings of the actress Susan Sarandon, in which she suggested that a lot of Sanders people would be unable to bring themselves to vote for Clinton and would vote for Trump instead, because Trump “will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in then things will really, you know, explode.” Here is New York Times columnist Charles Blow:

“What was Sarandon talking about with her coy language? ‘Bring the revolution’? Exactly what kind of revolution? ‘Explode’? Was the purpose to present this as a difficult but ultimately positive development? The comments smacked of petulance and privilege. No member of an American minority group — whether ethnic, racial, queer-identified, immigrant, refugee or poor — would (or should) assume the luxury of uttering such a imbecilic phrase, filled with lust for doom. Be absolutely clear: While there are meaningful differences between Clinton and Sanders, either would be a far better choice for president than any of the remaining Republican contenders, especially the demagogic real estate developer. Assisting or allowing his ascendance by electoral abstinence in order to force a ‘revolution’ is heretical. This position is dangerous, shortsighted and self-immolating. This is not a game. The presidency, particularly the next one, matters, and elections can be decided by relatively small margins. No president has won the popular vote by more than 10 percentage points since Ronald Reagan in 1984. There is no true equivalency between either of the Democratic candidates and this man, and anyone who make such a claim is engaging in a repugnant, dishonorable scare tactic not worth our respect.”

Note to Sanders fanatics/Clinton demonizers: You are way too far down in the weeds here. Take a breath and see the bigger picture.  You know the idea that Donald Trump would be better for the country than Hillary Clinton -- something a good many Republicans inexplicably continue to believe, or at least say they believe -- is ludicrous.  Shake it off.

At Long Last

It was during the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954 that the Army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, rebuked unrepentant demagogue and relentless smear artist Joe McCarthy with these words: “Senator; you've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” There has been no shortage of information on the foolishness and demagoguery of Donald Trump. He has been fully exposed, and we know that he has no sense of decency. But what about his followers? What do they see in him? Who are these people who have so much admiration for this uninformed egotistical blowhard who trades in hatred, resentment, and fear. We’re a ways into this political season and the Trumpists have been steadfast and growing in number. At long last, have they no sense of decency?

An important clue is in the free-floating hostility they proudly harbor (and angrily express) toward everything and everybody they perceive as being aligned against them; which, apparently, is everything and everybody. It is to Mr. Trump they look to vanquish these ghostly tormentors, and their faith in his ability to do it appears to be based entirely on his swaggering, kick-ass attitude and carriage. It certainly can’t be based on anything he actually says because every word that has come out of his mouth so far has been either impenetrably vague, completely incomprehensible, or simply wrong. They live in a fantasyland of imagined enemies and armchair pugnacity.

A characteristic that true believers of every political persuasion have in common is the tendency (need?) to sanctify their candidate and demonize their candidate’s opponents. Their guy, they believe, will make everything all right. The other guy will make everything all wrong. They are, they seem to think, electing a king or a dictator, and not merely the head of the executive branch within a representative democracy in which making good on the wild promises one makes in a campaign setting is extremely (and deliberately) difficult. In fact, it is now clear that Trump and his people are quite impatient with democracy and its processes, and would prefer an office-holder who can make everything right for them by executive decree. Government by and for the people? Nah. We just want our daddy to tell us what to do, and make it all better.

Whatever “it all” is. In some quarters, followers of Trump are characterized as being perhaps wrong-headed in their embrace of Trump but having grievances that are legitimate, involving the changing economic and employment landscape of recent years. If that’s the case, there is an exquisite irony here, as these folks – staunch advocates of small government, free markets, individual responsibility, and rugged independence – whine about everything government hasn’t done for them lately.

You would think that they’re an army of the unemployed. In fact, these people are not, for the most part, unemployed. As for the economy in general, it has created 14-million private-sector jobs since 2010, dropping unemployment to under 5 percent. Housing and construction are strong, the auto industry is thriving, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has more than doubled in the last eight or so years. So things are actually pretty good and the problems and conditions that have steam coming out of these folks’ ears are largely illusory.

No, chalking up their anger and frustration to economic dislocation gives them far too much credit. Because what they’re really about is bigotry, The message they get from Trump comes in the form of permission to hate – to believe in the existence of, and to blame their problems on, the hated “other.” Trump legitimizes the antipathy, the latent distrust, that this largely white, male, blue-collar constituency has for various groups – blacks, religious minorities, women, etc. They pine for the good old days when you could put these groups down without fear of violating “political correctness.” And, like the acolytes of demagogues everywhere, they are certain that whatever is missing from their lives is somebody else’s fault.

Whiner Leader

The people who revere Donald Trump are routinely characterized as “angry,”and their anger is often characterized  -- even by those who think Trump a buffoon – as justifiable or at least understandable.  An editorial in the Washington Post put it this way: “The grievances they speak to are real: a sense that the economy has left too many people behind, that globalization and technological change are helping the few while stranding the many.”

Please.  Or to put it another way, globalization-schmobilazation.

These people are not angry.  What they are is whiny. If there is a whinier, more put-upon group of people than Donald Trump’s followers I don’t know who it would be.  They hold these two ideas to be sacred and self-evident: (1) They are unhappy; (2) It’s somebody else’s fault that they are unhappy.  They love their victimhood, and they relish the prospect of Trump vanquishing their tormentors.  They do this even as unemployment is at historical lows, interest rates are miniscule, inflation is non-existent, and more of the vehicles of choice for these folks, pickup trucks, are being sold than have ever been sold in the history of the world.

And yet, they say they are angry. Foot-stompingly, sneeringly, smoke-coming-out-of-their-ears angry. What is their problem?

In a previous post, I wrote: “Normal people are mystified by the way Donald Trump can repeatedly say bizarre, even irrational things – he witnessed something that didn’t happen, he thinks members of one religion should be kept out of the country -- and his poll numbers go up. It’s as if a light bulb goes on over the heads of these newest Trump converts: ‘Wow. I knew he was a blowhard and a bigot, but now I see he’s also delusional. I’m voting for him!’ Unexplainable, seemingly. But, of course, what his people see in him isn’t about any of that. It’s about his promise to ‘make America great again.’ And by ‘great’ what his mostly white male followers understand him to mean is a time when people who looked like them had all the good jobs; when there weren’t all these weird non-Christian religions around; when blacks, Hispanics, and women knew their place; when political correctness didn’t prohibit decent white folks from putting down racial and ethnic minorities.“

Meanwhile, if you needed further proof of how utterly clueless the Donald Trump true believers are – proof that includes all of the above plus his belief in a mythical giant wall, his affinity for throwing tens of thousands of people out of the country, his call for the murder of women and children in the Middle East, his calling an opponent a pussy for not embracing water boarding, and on and on -- his remark about shooting people provided it. This is a perfect double whammy: (1) When he said “I could shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters” he was absolutely right. His followers wouldn’t care if he committed such an act because they are oblivious to everything he says and everything he does, and respond only to the persona he projects, the one that does such a good job of playing to and nurturing their many resentments and imagined grievances; (2) They don’t get that when he said that, he was making fun of them. He was telling the world that his posse is so dense, so zombie-like in their adoration of him that he could do anything and they wouldn’t care. To be a blind follower of an intellectual and moral lightweight, and to not understand that you are being told by that person how blind you are and being ridiculed for it – that’s clueless.

Dear Trump peeps: If you are unhappy with the circumstances of your life you are absolutely free to improve on them. Nothing the government is doing or not doing is stopping you. Same with Wall Street big shots, the mainstream media, Muslims, immigrants, the Chinese, minorities, and so on. Your problems are of your own making, and so are the solutions. Electing your man to the presidency (or congress or the governorship or the school board) won’t make it all better. You won’t all of a sudden get the job of your dreams or get along better with your spouse. Your guy keeps telling you you’re being “ripped off,” something you clearly love to hear because you’re so fond of seeing yourselves as victims. Perhaps you can explain how you’re being ripped off. He can’t. Please be specific. Otherwise, you’ll just have to accept the New York Daily News’ characterization of Trump’s win in New Hampshire: “Dawn of the Brain Dead”.

The Villain Stan Kroenke

I was a follower and fan of the St. Louis Rams and I enjoyed their company while they were here.  I rooted for them to win, and, like everyone else, was exasperated when they played poorly which was, as we all know, most of the time. I will miss them. Having thus established my bona fides in this regard, I will say this: The demonization of Stan Kroenke and the outpouring of vitriol against him – the foot stomping, the insult hurling, a lawsuit for cripes sake, and an undoubtedly very expensive Super Bowl ad by a local personal injury lawyer -- is misplaced and comes across as childish and provincial. I don’t know Kroenke and have no interest in defending him, but the crimes with which he has been popularly charged, singly and in combination, seem to have been borne of anger and disappointment but not rationality. To wit:

Kroenke callously blew off St. Louis and should be ashamed.  Kroenke is in the entertainment business.  He owns a show.  And when you own a show, whether it’s a football team, a tent revival, or the ice capades, you’re going to locate it where you think it will attract the most customers and generate the most revenue.  That’s your job and it’s certainly your prerogative.  Where you grew up has nothing to do with it.

Kroenke betrayed the people who “supported” the Rams all these years.  People
who say that make it sound like folks donated their money to the enterprise – that they didn’t want to buy tickets to and attend Rams’ games but did so out of a spirit of generosity or civic duty. They were doing Kroenke a favor. In fact what they did was hand over money in return for which they were granted admission to and given a seat at a football game.  Quid pro quo.  They did what they wanted to do and they got what they paid for.  As for so-called emotional support, I’m not entirely sure what that means but it doesn’t sound like something grown-ups ought to bestow on a sports team.  Enjoy your team’s victories, mourn (for an hour or so) its losses, and understand that emotional entanglements are not adult-appropriate

Kroenke put an inferior product on the field.  It was an inferior product for the most part but I don’t see how you can make the case that it was because of anything Kroenke did or didn’t do.

Kroenke lied. Well he did say at one point he’d try to keep the team in St. Louis.  Maybe he didn’t really mean it.  Or maybe he changed his mind.  Or maybe he lied.  So what? People lie, and they certainly don’t always tell the whole truth.

Kroenke has enough money and shouldn’t be trying to get more by moving the team. Not your call.  How much money someone has and wants, whether it’s Stan Kroenke, your next door neighbor or your co-worker one desk over, is none of your business.

Kroenke took cynical advantage of a dumb stadium lease clause. He did, indeed; “dumb” being the key word here. The stadium’s proprietors signed on to the ridiculous idea that the team could get out of the lease if the stadium failed to reach a certain level in stadium tier-dom, and Kroenke used it to get what he wanted.  You would, too.

Kroenke’s move is a blow to the region’s economy. In reality, it will have almost no effect on the region’s economy.  What football fans, in their anger and disappointment, have a hard time getting their heads around is that they are in the minority. The majority is in one of these categories: (1) Might check the Rams’ score Monday morning but never attend or watch games; (2) Are only dimly aware of the existence of the Rams; (3) Are only dimly aware of the existence of football.  Only hard-core fans see this development as a tragedy.  Nobody else does and the regional economy will shrug it off.

Watching and rooting for the home NFL team is fun.  Many, many other things are also fun.  We should quit worrying about Stan Kroenke, a guy we never even heard of until about five years ago.

Is It Good For You?

Release recently of the federal government’s latest diet guidelines reinforces, once again, what an exercise in futility it all is, as foods continue to get kicked off the list and then reinstated. . If we’ve learned anything from the relentless discussion and study of food over the decades, it’s that what we know for certain about the relationship of diet to health and longevity is next to nothing. The expertise various people claim is a stew of superstition, old wives’ tales, conventional wisdom, pseudo-science, and charlatanism. Study after study refutes the findings of the one that came before and is refuted by the one that comes after, even as the media, which never met a study it didn’t like, reports breathlessly on the latest “findings,” caring not in the least if the study has any scientific validity or if the numbers it reports have any actual meaning. Is there a subject that has more junk-science jabberwocky associated with it than that of diet?

My theory is that since everyone wants to postpone for as long as possible (or maybe even eliminate) the inevitable catastrophe of death, they’re eager to embrace the notion that something as relatively simple and controllable as what they put in their bodies in the form of food is a major player in that process. Eat this, live long and prosper. Don’t eat that, live long and prosper. If only. There doesn’t seem to be any real science behind any of it, but that doesn’t stop people from asserting unequivocally that food A is “good for you” and food B is not. What science there is – the interminable revolving door of “studies” – routinely reverses conclusions about the healthfulness of individual food items, food categories, food chemistry, and food properties, and then reverses them again.

Eggs could be exhibit A in this phenomenon. Leaving aside the whole business of the relationship of blood cholesterol to heart disease – a relationship that is now being characterized as not very well understood – there has been a 180-degree reversal of the thinking on how dietary cholesterol affects blood cholesterol. It doesn’t, the experts now tell us. So go ahead and eat eggs, the yolks of which contain a lot of cholesterol. You’ll recall that not so long ago, it was understood that egg-eating should be limited because of the cholesterol they contain; and not so long before that, they were to be strictly limited if not eliminated from the diet altogether; and not so long before that, they were nature’s most nearly perfect food. Which they are again. Oh, no, wait. That was milk, the full fat version of which, thought to be something akin to poison for decades, has now been rehabilitated, even as the entire business of fat in the diet has been completely rethought. (Fat, the substance, was equated with fat, the condition, and Big Food made billions, and still does, by peddling stuff as low-fat or fat-free.)

The list goes on and on. Various vitamins had certain effects and then they didn’t. And then they did again. Food fiber prevented bowel cancer, until it didn’t. Fish oil was a major player in good health and then, not so much. Red meat was good, then bad, then good, then bad. (I think it’s good now. Or at least pretty good.) Protein, carbohydrates – good, bad, good, bad. Dark chocolate, red wine are good for the heart because of the resveratrol they contain, say various studies. Then various other studies say we’d have to ingest 73.5 lbs. of resveratrol a day (or some such thing) for it to have any effect. Coffee. Beer. Good. Bad. Good. Bad. A study shows something-something reduces the risk of heart disease by 17-percent. But what does that mean? That I will have a heart attack at age 81 and 15 days instead of age 81 and 14 days?

An interesting sidebar topic to all of this is “fast” food, a category that is generally ranked somewhere between unwholesome and poisonous in the popular culture The problem: No one really knows what the term means. Is it that the food is cooked fast? Eaten fast? Both? Or that it’s produced and sold by large chain restaurants that have drive-through windows. What difference does it make? Answer: None. It’s just food. The typical fare – beef, cheese, and bread – is served up in diners, fancy restaurants, and homes around the world, daily. There is zero true scientific evidence that people who refrain from eating these things are any healthier or live any longer than anybody else. The demonization of “fast food” is completely irrational.

Bottom line: There is a good deal of knowledge – science – out there about the properties of the food we eat, but not much about how those properties, individually and in combination, relate to health and longevity. “Good for you” and “not good for you” are not science or knowledge-based concepts and are therefore essentially meaningless. Same with the term “healthy diet.” It appears the only thing we know with any degree of certainty about eating’s relationship to good health is this: Don’t do very much of it.

Black Lives Matter

Recently, a young black woman who worked at a food concession in a Chicago zoo lost her job after grousing on Facebook about “rude-ass white people.” What the woman doesn’t fully grasp is that rude is rude, and there’s no reason to specify the race of the offenders. It’s true that most of her customers were white, but it’s also true that if most of them had been black, she would experience rude behavior from about the same percentage of them. In short, mentioning race here added nothing to the validity of her complaint. Saying “rude people” as opposed to “rude white people” would have served her purpose just as well.

To which black folks across America would be fully justified in responding: “Welcome to my world.” In that world, race is always mentioned by white people, whether or not it has anything to with anything, even in the most benign of contexts:

“I ran out of gas and this black guy stopped and gave me a lift.”

“There was a huge black woman in front of me in line.”

“A bunch of black teenagers came into the grocery store.”

“An old black gentleman was having trouble getting out of his car.”

In none of these statements does specifying the race of the actor affect what is being communicated. And, importantly, in none of them would race be specified if the actors were white. No white person would say “a white guy stopped and gave me a lift,” or “a huge white woman in front of me...” And so on.

The days of the most egregious and obvious race-based affronts to justice and morality, as typified by Jim Crow laws and customs, are long gone -- laws and customs that openly segregated public facilities of every kind, right down to the minutiae of drinking fountains; customs that, for example, forbade professional black athletes from eating in the same restaurants and sleeping in the same hotels as their white teammates; laws/customs that kept white and black kids from going to school together, or that systematically kept blacks out of most colleges and all the professions. We’re past all that, and many young people are aghast when they learn that such an era ever existed. As condescending as it may sound, it is fair to say that many young black people – with that era as a backdrop – don’t realize how good they have it.

That is not to say they have it good. The residue of Jim Crow that they’re left with is a more pernicious and subtle form of racism that is all the more infuriating to blacks because of white blindness to it. The consensus among most white people regarding the goings-on in Ferguson, for example, was that the protests were, at the very least, an over-reaction; that the sleights and injustices about which so much anger was expressed were overstated or even imaginary; that the protesters, while having some legitimate grievances, would be better off if they’d stop complaining and get on with their lives. In short, most of my white friends and acquaintances were unable to empathize. This, despite the virtual certainty, in my opinion, that these people, being intelligent folks with healthy egos, would be among the most virulently militant about the subtle and not-so-subtle indignities they would routinely experience if their faces were to turn black. My guess is they wouldn’t be so dismissive of the anger and frustration felt by a grown man or woman who gets pushed around -- figuratively and sometimes literally – and treated like a recalcitrant child, by a young white policeman.

Which brings us to “black lives matter,” a slogan and sentiment that many white reactionaries now characterize as an aggressively racist “movement” aimed at raising up blacks and putting down whites – a sort of latter-day Black Panthers thing. Their counter-slogan – which they believe to be a piquantly effective one – is “all lives matter.” The problem with that: the fact that all lives matter has never been in question. That black lives matter has been – in a thousand ways both subtle and overt – and is in need of re-affirmation in a way that the importance and value of lives in general is not. That all lives matter is a given. That black lives matter isn’t. People justifiably feel the need to re-affirm that blacks, just like whites, are individuals with strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears, goals and aspirations. They are – like whites – short and tall, meek and bold, smart and dumb, athletic and ungainly, wise and foolish, industrious and lazy, pretty and ugly, strong and weak. They are not interchangeable. Racial stereotyping renders them interchangeable, and says, in effect, that their individual lives don’t matter. And that’s what the black lives matter idea is pushing back against.

Black Lives Matter should not be understood as a threat, although it will undoubtedly be employed in an aggressive way here and there, but as a plea for understanding and compassion and a reminder that even in this era of comparative racial enlightenment, a subset of the population struggles daily with indignities that range from subtle put-downs to flagrant injustices because of the color of their skin. Advice for white people: (1) Don’t indulge in racial stereotyping, even when it’s thought to be benign; (2) Have empathy for those who face it every day of their lives.

Political Correctness

It has become a favorite dodge of some folks to characterize themselves as victims of political correctness when they are called out for the mean-spirited, dumb, or simply wrong things they say, and to characterize themselves as forthright and courageous for saying utterly mindless things in defiance of this PC trend.  In the good old days before political correctness took hold, they seem to be saying, a person could, for example, insult great swaths of society -- blacks, Jews. women, etc. -- openly and without remorse or reprisal.  That was before people got so persnickety about this stuff.

War on Christmas

“Nation’s Oppressed Christians Huddle Underground To Light Single Shriveled Christmas Shrub”

That’s a headline in the satirical newspaper The Onion, taking dead aim at the incessant whining of a segment of the body politic about how put upon they are by secularism, the “mainstream media,” non-Christians of various persuasions, and their all-time favorite bugaboo, political correctness. By way of reassuring these folks during this holiday (Christmas) season, I offer up the following: Between now and December 25th the words “Merry Christmas” will be spoken 1 bazillion times (that’s just a round number, of course). Hundreds of millions of person-hours will be spent in churches of various denominations, observing the “true meaning” of Christmas. There will be as many nativity scenes around town as there were in 1953; Christmas trees will be put up all across the land. Millions upon millions of Christmas presents will be opened. Glasses will be raised, lights will be strung, lavish meals will be eaten, movie classics will be watched, many of which have the word “Christmas” in their titles, like “A Christmas Carol,” “A Christmas Story,” and “White Christmas,” and Christmas music will be played and sung to distraction.  All of this, and more, will be done out in the open without any interference (or criticism) from anybody. Hello, war-on-Christmas worriers: There is no war on Christmas. If you wish to participate, no one is stopping you. If other people don’t wish to participate, that’s none of your beeswax.

What Trumpists really want

Normal people are mystified by the way Donald Trump can repeatedly say bizarre, even irrational things – he witnessed something that didn’t happen, he thinks members of one religion should be kept out of the country -- and his poll numbers go up. It’s as if a light bulb goes on over the heads of these newest Trump converts: “Wow. I knew he was a blowhard and a bigot, but now I see he’s also delusional. I’m voting for him!” Unexplainable, seemingly. But, of course, what his people see in him isn’t about any of that. It’s about his promise to “make America great again.” And by “great” what his mostly older white male followers understand him to mean is a time when people who looked like them had all the good jobs; when there weren’t all these weird non-Christian religions around; when blacks, Hispanics, and women knew their place; when political correctness didn’t prohibit decent white folks from putting down racial and ethnic minorities. You just know – because he is unable to restrain himself – that Jews will be his next target, as he explains, using “just common sense,” that they control the media, Hollywood, and the banks. This is a turn of events that in a sane world would bring his candidacy crashing to earth in a ball of fire. But it will probably just end up recruiting a whole new wing of the slack-jawed to his bandwagon. Meanwhile, it’s worth remembering that the poll numbers Trump is garnering can be a little bit misleading. Recently, those numbers showed he had 35 percent of Republican primary voters in his corner. But Republican primary voters were just 38 percent of the people interviewed in the New York Times/CBS polling. Thirty-five percent of 38 percent is about 13 percent of the electorate.

Is it terrorism? Does it matter?

A recent trend is for members of one segment of the political spectrum to accuse others of bowing to political correctness by refusing to identify terrorism as terrorism. The thought is that this refusal stems from the fear of offending members of a religious minority. But it’s important to understand the actual meaning of terrorism. This definition comes from the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies:

“Terrorism is defined as political violence in an asymmetrical conflict that is designed to induce terror and psychic fear (sometimes indiscriminate) through the violent victimization and destruction of noncombatant targets (sometimes iconic symbols). Such acts are meant to send a message from an illicit clandestine organization. The purpose of terrorism is to exploit the media in order to achieve maximum attainable publicity as an amplifying force multiplier in order to influence the targeted audience(s) in order to reach short- and midterm political goals and/or desired long-term end states.”

In other words, terrorism needs to be understood as a tactic for changing the internal politics of a country, or even conquering that country, when it’s impossible to do so by more conventional means. Not every murderous act qualifies. But for the folks who routinely call others out for refusing to call a spade a spade, the only qualification necessary is that the act be committed by a Muslim. If the act is committed by a Muslim, it’s a terrorist act. If it’s committed by a non-Muslim, it’s something else.

To the folks who say gun laws are of no use in preventing “terrorist” attacks: When a member of the unhinged stockpiles guns and thousands of bullets and uses those things to kill and injure scores of innocent people – and anyone who would do that is a member in good standing -- their reasons don’t matter. Pick one: They heard voices through their tin foil hats; they’ve pledged allegiance to the grand wazier of ISIS; they hate all members of the you-name-it minority group; they like the smell of cordite in the morning. These peoples’ thought processes are off the rails, whether or not their acts are defined as terrorism. They can’t be allowed to have guns. There’s every reason to believe that if procuring an arsenal was more difficult and involved than it is, the mad plan of the San Bernardino murderers would have been abandoned or sniffed out in advance.













T

Guns, Part 4: Conclusion

From an organization called the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence we get these statistics:

In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings.  This is the equivalent of more than 85 deaths each day and more than three deaths each hour. 73,505 Americans were treated in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal gunshot wounds.2Firearms were the third-leading cause of injury-related deaths nationwide, following poisoning and motor vehicle accidents.3Between 1955 and 1975, the Vietnam War killed over 58,000 American soldiers – less than the number of civilians killed with guns in the U.S. in an average two-year period.4In the first seven years of the U.S.-Iraq War, over 4,400 American soldiers were killed. Almost as many civilians are killed with guns in the U.S., however, every seven weeks.5

These numbers are (one would hope) eye-opening.  And distressing.  They can’t be explained away by bumper-sticker sloganeering, as in “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” (Unless there are dramatically more of the types of people who kill people in the U.S. than there are in, say, Canada, the UK, France, or Germany.)  The problem of firearm injuries and deaths is clearly related to the immense number of guns out there and their relatively easy accessibility.  That’s not the only reason for the ridiculously high injury/death rate – sure, people do kill people – but it seems certain that the rate would be reduced, perhaps dramatically, if it weren’t so easy for people who kill (and injure) people, accidentally or on purpose, to get guns.

A big part of the problem is what has come to be known as the “gun culture” – a disturbingly large subset of the population that has a weird fascination with these implements – a fascination that borders on love or even worship, and one that appears to be borne of equal parts paranoia and fantasy:  We are always in mortal danger and we will be the hero of any scenario that develops when that danger manifests itself.

And so, according to reliable statistics, there are 88 guns for every 100 people in the U.S. The result of the ubiquitousness of these instruments whose primary reason for existence is destruction: Huge numbers of injuries and deaths that have nothing to do with protecting oneself or one’s loved ones from predators.

Let us be the first to acknowledge, however, that this is a complicated, multi-faceted problem for which there are no obvious (and/or easy) solutions.  The banning of guns in private hands, something that’s advocated by a sizeable number of presumably well-intentioned people, is a non-starter. – politically impossible, constitutionally questionable, and probably unnecessary.  Better to narrow the focus to steps that can actually be taken and that can be expected to significantly ameliorate if not fully solve the problem.

• Find a way to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.  This is not a solution for all the different ways people get killed or hurt by gunshot – suicide, accident, street crime, gang activity, etc. – but it would put a dent in one of the most appalling: the slaughter of innocent people, en masse or otherwise, by people with unhinged thought processes and revenge fantasies.

• Close the loopholes in the gun laws we do have, by which buyers and sellers can avoid background-check requirements by way of private and gun show transactions.

• Make guns safer – devise and employ technology that makes it impossible to discharge a firearm accidentally.

• Abatement of gun crime by swift and severe punishment.  This may include creation of a special docket in the courts dedicated to weapons offenses -- specified judges handling bail, trial, sentencing, and supervision of offenders. Proposed legislation to create such a docket has called for such measures as minimum cash bonds of up to $50,000, and swift and meaningful consequences for people who violate probation for weapons offenses. 

Responsible members of the National Rifle Association should disavow the leadership of this organization and publicly repudiate its role as lobby and mouthpiece for gun and ammunition manufacturers. 

People who own hand guns for protection should carefully think through the need they perceive for that protection and ask themselves if theft of their gun and/or its use in an accidental death or injury is more likely than the use they imagine for it; viz., thwarting an assault.  Private gun ownership is an important contributor to the tens of thousands of annual gun deaths and injuries.  Fans of concealed carry have their own particular danger-and-fantasy demons to deal with.  Fans of open-carry cannot be reasoned with.  Fans of the need to have and use guns to defend themselves (and the country) from their own government and/or from any number of other shadowy conspiracies can’t be reasoned with either, and need to be carefully monitored.  It appears they are mostly talk, paranoia, and swagger, but they  have the potential to be every bit as dangerous to the homeland as foreign terrorists.

As for the constitutional right to bear arms, I will leave it to legal scholars to parse out and argue over the wording of the 2^nd amendment and the meaning(s) that wording was intended to convey, and suggest only this:  The motives of gun-enthusiasts who wrap themselves in the flag and position themselves as courageous defenders of the constitution are suspect.  Those folks would be more persuasive on this point if they were as passionate (and knowledgeable) about other parts of the constitution as they are about the gun part.

Guns, Part 3: Government Conspiracies

In Part 2 of this multi-part discussion of guns, the focus was on the fantasy component of hand gun ownership and concealed carry:  People envision using their guns -- and rationalize the keeping of guns -- to defend themselves and their loved ones in circumstances that almost never occur in real life. The cost of the widespread nurturing of this fantasy is injuries and deaths by gunshot – many thousands a year -- that are largely unintended.  So widespread gun ownership – an “armed citizenry” – instead of deterring criminals as its proponents argue will be the result, has the real-world effect of increasing exponentially the number of opportunities for tragic gun-related accidents.

Another corner of gun fantasyland altogether – one that makes a significant contribution to the culture of gun worship and the proliferation of guns in America -- is typified by the reaction from a tiny but vocal minority to something called Operation Jade Helm.  Jade Helm was a thing that came and went this past summer without most Americans being aware of its existence let alone bringing about the gun-confiscation and martial law apocalypse that wing-nuts in Texas and elsewhere had said was its hidden purpose.  In fact, Jade Helm was the name of a seven-state Army command and control mission – an otherwise obscure military training exercise – that right wing conspiracy theorists said was part of a plan to impose martial law and “population control.” Others said it was a plan on the part of the federal government to “invade Texas.” There was some stockpiling of guns and ammunition, at least one quasi-militia was formed to keep track of Jade Helm troop movements, and, incredibly (and shamelessly) the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, ordered the state’s national guard to keep an eye on things – to make sure that the U.S. Army wasn’t, you know, invading Texas. Also promising to look into the matter, thereby giving some patina of credibility to the whole ridiculous theory, were members in good standing of the very government supposedly employing Jade Helm to ruin our lives, including U.S. Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) and Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. A particularly interesting and remarkably delusional (even in this world, where delusion is the stock in trade) component of the theory was that closed Wal Mart stores were to be used as FEMA detention centers, or as places for the military to stockpile supplies for Chinese troops who would be arriving to disarm Americans. 

For this corner of fantasyland, the one whose inhabitants believe the government plans to take away their guns, impose martial law, and take down the democracy, and that they are going to heroically fend it off with their six guns, I would offer this from turn-of-the-century commentator and contrarian H.L. Mencken:  “Communism, like all religions, consists mainly of prophesy.”  Replace “communism” with “gun-government conspiracy” and you pretty much have it.  The government never actually does this thing.  It is always going to do it.  Thus the great takeover is repeatedly and forever pushed into next week, next year, or some dystopian future.  Nor do they worry too much about the logistics of such a massive nationwide undertaking.  Would the U.S. Army participate in this?  The FBI?  Local police?  Or is there a secret (but necessarily gigantic) gun-confiscation force (possibly being housed and trained in the basements of closed-down Walmarts) that is poised to start knocking down doors, confiscating guns, and imprisoning citizens – quite an undertaking in that it would require billions of dollars, many years, and tens of thousands of people willing to participate in such a thing and  able to keep quiet about it until launch day. Gun conspiracy and perpetual danger religions, like all religions, consist mainly of prophesy.  Thus the true believers never have to be held accountable for the up-in-smoke fate of their nonsensical predictions.

For a complete rundown of the most current right-wing conspiracy theories, all of which are related in one way or another to the perceived need for gun ownership, see “Margins to the Mainstream,” an article in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s publication “Intelligence Report.”  It covers in detail Jade Helm and other conspiracy magnets such as Common Core, Agenda 21, the North American Union, Shariah Law, FEMA, money manipulators, secret Muslim training camps, and the homosexual agenda.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2015/margins-mainstream

Another astonishing idea, equally loony but far more reprehensible, is one in which armchair tough guys blame the victims of mad dogs with guns for their own injuries and deaths.   They should have defended themselves – rushed the shooter and taken him down.  Each should have been willing to sacrifice his or her own life for the sake of the rest, as they, the courageous purveyors of this theory, assure us they would have done. All people have to do is be willing to take one for the team and throw themselves at the muzzle of a blazing assault rifle.  By gad, that’ll put a stop to this mass shooting nonsense; there’s no reason to keep guns out of the hands of crazed shooters by limiting their availability.  Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson is leading this particular confederacy of dunces.

Another idea we’ve seen lately from the gun-obsessed is one that could be dismissed as simply cockamamie were it not so objectionable: that German Jews could have and would have prevented the holocaust had they not been prevented by the government from owning guns.  Or, to put it another way, had there been no gun restrictions, the Jewish people of Germany and occupied Europe, a significant percentage of whom were women, children, and the elderly, all would have had pistols and rifles and would have used those pistols and rifles to do what various countries’ armies couldn’t do and what it took the U.S. and the Allies many years to do – thwart the vast war (and “final solution”) machinery of the Third Reich.  The sheer reprehensibility of this appallingly stupid idea stems not just from its blame-the-victim overtones and its blind disregard for the facts, but also from its attempted use of the wanton murders of six million people and the devastation of the survivors and their progeny to advance a political agenda and pet cause. 

Of note: People who have advanced this theory have cited the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 as evidence of what can happen when would-be victims get their hands on guns.  What did happen: About two-dozen Nazis were killed.  All who participated in the uprising – some 750 people – were killed by the Nazis and some 50,000 people were sent to concentration camps.  As incredibly brave and courageous as those who rose up were, their procurement and possession  of guns did not do what latter-day gun enthusiasts apparently believe it did, and makes no case for private gun ownership as a defense against predatory government forces. The uprising was, in relatively short order and mercilessly, crushed.  Guns or no guns, it never had a chance.

There’s a more detailed discussion of the “if-Europe’s-Jews-had-guns” theory in this Huffington Post article…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/did-gun-control-prevent-jews-from-stopping-the-holocaust_n_2635989.html

Earth to gummint conspiracy theorists:  The United States government is not planning to confiscate people’s guns.  There is no plan afoot to declare martial law or to dismantle our democracy or to become part of a world government or to poison our children’s minds with socialist propaganda in the public schools.  There are no secret Muslim training camps or FEMA-sponsored concentration camps, and Muslims are not trying to overthrow the government and impose Shariah law.  There is no need for you to prepare to take pot shots from your kitchen window at forces trying to make these things happen.  Beat your guns into plowshares and find employment that makes you happier.