Month: June 2019

The Peril of Outrage Exhaustion

evenabrokenclock102 Comments

3 dollar bill

I’m afraid we are suffering from outrage exhaustion. Even when we think his inhumane policies (like family separation) were ended due to the outpouring of criticism a year ago, we now find out that the practices are still continuing due to the strict interpretation of family. Only genetic parents and their children are considered to be a family. A young child in the company of an older sibling, or an aunt or uncle or grandparent, is not considered to be part of a family, and thus is separated from the only people he or she knows. What’s worse, due to the increased influx of those seeking asylum, the facilities being used to warehouse these children are totally inadequate. And no one working in the system seems to be concerned about either the physical or mental health of these innocent victims of Trump’s war on brown people. Only when a photograph of a father and his daughter washing up dead on the shores of the Rio Grande do we see any evidence of empathy emerge.

Meanwhile, a respected magazine columnist recounts her lingerie department moment with a younger but still randy Donald. I can just hear the old elevator attendant say, “Fourth floor. Ladies intimate apparel and sexual battery. Watch your step.” We hear yet another person with incredible credibility recount the story of her debasement by a certain real estate developer back in the ’90’s. I’ve seen posts showing how 4 of the New York boroughs accounted for most of the popular vote margin nationwide for Hillary Clinton, and saying that in no way can the leftist enclave of New York City represent the will of the nation. What I see in his home city’s repudiation of its native son is the revulsion felt by the people who knew this charlatan the best. Those who lived over the stretch of decades with the headlines and antics fomented by Trump were the ones who voted by an 85% to 15% margin against him. The rest of the nation, who knew him only through his carefully crafted public persona, and aided and abetted by the culture of celebrity worship we suffer through, were taken in by this con man. So it is no wonder that one more accusation of illegal sexual contact is shrugged off by so many. For those who are and were against him, it is outrage exhaustion. For those who are with him, it is just more of that unjustified harassment and criminal persecution of the man. “Why can’t they just let him do his job?” they ask.

The problem, for those of us paying attention to his actual job performance, is that in every way we see how his incompetence, flavored with his brand of illogical beliefs and personality quirks, is unraveling the fabric of the standing of this nation in the world’s eyes. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the mess in the Persian Gulf. We were apparently minutes away from launching a significant military response after our drone was shot down, when seemingly at the last moment, it was brought to the President’s attention that a significant number of Iranians would die in the attack. He stated that he did not feel the number of casualties would be proportionate to the downing of the “unmanned” drone. But a few days later, when questioned about his plans on Iran, he exclaimed “You’re not going to need an exit strategy. I don’t need exit strategies.” We’ve known for some time that having Donald Trump in charge of our military forces could provoke an existential crisis. Now we see the evidence of his personality and lack of basic knowledge drawing us up to the precipice, only to stand down. If he continues in office, one day he won’t stand down, and we will be engaged in military conflict that could result in the release of the nuclear genie from its containment flask.

I will always remember the statement of a former member of our church choir made the week before the 2017 inauguration. He said, “At last we get to have an alpha male in charge again.” Why he said that to me, I will never know, but I quickly made him aware of how little I thought of this supposed alpha male. I’ve known alpha males, those who are able to lead by their force of personality. They were not bullies. They were not insecure, constantly seeking reinforcement by their inferiors subordinates. They could see through attempts to gain their approval through flattery. They are the antithesis of the thin-skinned, narcissistic ego-maniac running roughshod over every norm of civility we have developed over the course of human civilization.

So many followers of Donald Trump still fervently believe he is working diligently on their behalf, working behind the scenes to dismantle the deep state conspiracy exercising dominion over their pitiful existence. Any day now we will see the hordes of agents coming to arrest those who ran the child trafficking ring out of the nonexistent basement of the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant. Q will attain cult-like status much like Deep Throat did decades ago in Watergate. Meanwhile, one person (Jeffrey Epstein) who did use his money and influence to game the legal system and get a sweetheart deal from the Justice Department, his former prosecutor is now Secretary of Labor. When will the hordes who believe in Comet Ping Pong conspiracies turn their anger against someone who really did let one of the evil people preying on children, off the hook. Given the extreme credulity shown by many of Trump’s followers, my guess is never.

Outrage exhaustion is a dangerous condition. It means that we are growing numb to the ever-increasing instances of deviant behavior shown by this administration and those held under its cult-like influence. We should have known what we were in for when we saw the display of supreme sycophancy shown in that cabinet meeting in June of 2017. Person after person giving extreme unctuous praise to the supreme leader, who sat with his arms folded in his posture of insecurity. Since that time, it has only gotten worse. The President feels emboldened to contradict statements he made only days ago, insisting the only version of the truth that matters is what is coming out of his mouth this very minute. All evidence to the contrary, including video of him saying the opposite, is hereby decreed null and void. Yet still his adoring postulants shout hosannas of support each time he gathers them together for yet another Nuremburg-styled rally.

We must avoid outrage exhaustion. We must never let the actions and attitudes of this aberrant leader become the norm for future political discourse. We must call out the despicable nature of his intentions, and we must enunciate each example of incompetence in the execution of his policies. More than any of these though, we must present an opposing viewpoint, one that replaces fear and loathing with a desire to aspire to make the future better than the past. Only then will we have a chance to Make America Great!

Hiding In Plain Sight

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Trump's world

Now the evidence is in front of the world. The first response that came from the unhinged mouth of Donald Trump in response to the questioning of George Stephanopoulos reflected his true thoughts. Yes, he would accept information from a foreign source if he believed it would benefit him in his electoral quest. And his FBI director was wrong if he claimed that such activity was illegal. Even though his answer has been spun by others in his sycophantic circle as being not as bad as it appeared, and even though Donald Trump has qualified his answer with a claims that of course he would contact the FBI if approached by foreign actors, it is obvious that his first statement reflected his true belief. The laws concerning foreign interference in US elections are invalid, no one follows them, and everyone else is doing bad things. The belief system of Donald Trump was laid bare for all to see.

Except that a sizeable fraction of the US population refuses to see this. What seems to have happened is that amorality has taken hold of the American psyche, and enough people believe the ends justify the means to ensure that the abomination in office retains enough political influence to prevent his being removed from office. How is it that the party of the moral majority has become the party that accepts rampant corruption, moral depravity in its leader, and a foreign policy that is governed by how well a country is able to flatter this insatiable narcissist?

The problems that were supposed to be addressed by this President have instead grown worse and festered. Meanwhile, problems created by this President (pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal) or made worse by this administration (increased deficits in a time of relative economic strength), are sapping the strength of this nation and eliminating the willingness of the rest of the world to support our actions. Instead of increasing the respect for the US, the actions of this administration have caused our standing within the international community to be drastically weakened.

Still, a significant minority of this nation cling to the mantle of this toddler who holds the reins of power. They are still under the delusion that he is fighting for them, and cannot see the reality of his failed faux populism. Are there cracks in the façade? Perhaps. Even his stalwart broadcast partner Fox News has deigned to offer reality in their programming, providing polling results showing his trailing in the early race results. Of course, the Denier-In-Chief claims that he is leading in all of the polls in battleground states, but he doesn’t use polling very much. Still, he’ll fire his pollsters for good measure.

Well, it is far too early to place stock in the horse race aspect of the next election cycle. There will be ebbs and flows on the Democratic side, with prognosticators breathless in their analysis of whether the Democratic party is heading towards either socialist heaven, or staying smack dab in the centrist position, depending upon those all-important polling results. Unfortunately, no one seems to be addressing some of the major problems we do face as a nation. Instead of a credible plan for rebuilding our infrastructure, we will argue over the morality of college debt forgiveness. Instead of serious discussion about ways to reduce our ongoing deficits, we will only be talking about paying reparations for slavery and/or a basic income for all. Instead of discussing the crisis in the breakdown of ecological systems, we will argue over progressive ideals.

Look, I want someone to come out publicly and lay to bed the supposition that employer-provided health care is morally superior to that of government supported health insurance. I want someone to describe the existing subsidy that the tax codes provide already for employer-provided health care. The thousands of dollars already given to employees and their employers from the government due to the failure to consider insurance premiums as income, that is nearly as much of a government subsidy as are the subsidies given in the Affordable Care Act. Yet what do we have for this largess from the government? A system where the insurance middlemen serve in the role of death panels keeping recommended treatments away from the individuals who need them. A system where we pay almost twice what most other nations do in per capita expenditures and still suffer from horrendous deductibles that prevent usage of our morally superior insurance.

Yet so many of Trump’s supporters still are invested in the myth of his working for them. They cannot see the chaos of his personality cult spilling out into inchoate international interactions, where unintended actions will sooner or later result in military action. The conspiracy theory believers refuse to accept the evidence of their eyes and ears, since they stopped listening when he told them to not believe what they see from anyone except the President. The personality cult has proven effective at closing the minds of so many of the President’s followers. How can you effectively refute anything that goes against this administration when his follower’s eyes and ears are closed? I saw an interview with someone who had finally heard someone enumerate the acts of obstruction laid out in the Mueller report. She admitted to having listened to only conservative media, and had never heard any word about the report other than it exonerated the President. You just cannot reason with people who are members of a cult.

It may just take military conflict with Iran to bring home the reality that this toddler is beyond his ability, and this incompetence will cost the lives of thousands or millions of lives. When the blood flows unnecessarily, the images of bodies mangled by ordinance – on both sides – just may convince Trump’s diehard supporters that continuing their support could actually result in their dying hard.

 

Exponential Decay Curve Revisited – Trump Tweet Effectiveness Over Time

evenabrokenclock102 Comments

It’s a puzzlement. How is it that the same set of facts can be perceived in diametrically opposite ways? How is it that some folks can see the Mueller investigation laid out credible allegations of behavior by the President and his administration that not only skirted the law, but often trampled it in the dirt? At the same time, other folks believe that since no indictments are proceeding directly from the investigation, it represents a total and complete exoneration of all of the behavior seen from this administration?

Meanwhile, the behavior of the tweeter in chief has not significantly changed from the behavior seen during the campaign and in the transition period leading up to his inauguration. One of the first posts in my blog was on the exponential decay curve, and how it applied to the effectiveness of Trump’s tweets. I am reprinting it in this post, as this one post keeps getting people reading it long after I posted it in March 2017. I am bringing it up again because we are seeing evidence that the decay curve for the effectiveness of Trump’s tweets is performing as predicted. I just thought that the rate of decay would be much greater than it has been. But recent publications have shown that indeed, the effectiveness of Trump’s tweets has decreased in a manner very similar to the exponential decay curve in my post. See this post on Axios from May 26 of this year:

https://www.axios.com/president-trump-tweets-engagement-4c6067a8-734d-4184-984a-d5c9151aa339.html

Here is the chart that the post references. It shows the percentage of those who retweet or like a particular tweet as a percentage of his followers. Note how closely the graph follows the exponential decay curve shown in the original post.

Trump tweet effectiveness

Assuming that retweets and likes are reflective of the effectiveness of his posts is a verifiable measure of the impact that any individual tweet has. Sometimes it is good to see that a prediction you make is coming true, even though we have all had to suffer a great deal in the intervening period. The one correction I would make is that it seems like the half life of a Trump tweet is about 14 months, not the 2 months I originally predicted. I was too optimistic at the start of this administration.

 

The following post was put up on March 28, 2017. You can link directly to it here:

Exponential Decay Curve in Politics

Today’s topic concerns exponential decay curves. This is what happens when “something” declines over time. A classic exponential decay curve is shown here:

 

decaycurve

Exponential decay curves are often found in nature. The classic one that is taught in classrooms concerns radioactive decay. For a given radioactive isotope of an element, the half-life of the isotope determines the shape of its decay curve. A half-life is defined as the amount of time for 1/2 of the radioactive decay for an isotope to have occurred. This can vary among isotopes from fractions of a second, up to 4 billion years in the case of Uranium 238. Half-lives are very important when calculating the potential radiation exposure to a radioactive isotope. Isotopes like Cobalt 60 are powerful radiation sources that are used industrially to examine welds and metals for defects. They provide plentiful gamma rays since the half life of this isotope is only 5.3 years. That is why there is concern about the use of this isotope in a dirty bomb, since the radiation from an explosive dispersal of Cobalt 60 would cause significant exposure to high powered gamma radiation.

Exponential decay curves may be found in other natural and also artificial systems. A new example of an artificial system that appears to be following an exponential decay curve is the Presidential tweet. The response to a Presidential tweet appears to be following a typical decay curve function. It is too early to get an accurate measurement of the half-life of tweet effectiveness, but a preliminary estimate is that the half-life of the response to a Presidential tweet is about two months.

Since this system of Presidential tweets is an artificial system (one not normally found in nature), it is uncertain as to what the response of the originator of the Presidential tweets will be to an ongoing decrease in tweet effectiveness. Most observers believe that the originator will greatly increase both the frequency and objects of tweets so as to continue to receive a total response to the tweets that approximates the effect of the first tweets.

However, it is nearly certain that since the effectiveness of any individual tweet will continue to decline, eventually the response to all Presidential tweeting may approach zero. There is a school of thought though, that maintains the belief that we may begin to see an inverse function develop for the tweet response. That is, instead of receiving a positive response to tweets, each subsequent tweet may result in a negative response. It is possible that the magnitude of the negative response may increase with additional tweets, so that Newton’s third law may be given a test in the political arena. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Observers of politics will be watching this process with rapt attention.