Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Occam’s Razor and Trump
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=32329

Andrew Sullivan’s post is far better than this one; read his instead:

Andrew Sullivan: The White House Mole

As far as I can tell:

1. About 100% of liberal pundits think Trump’s a buffoon

2. About 100% of moderate pundits think Trump’s a buffoon

3. About 50% of conservative pundits (and more of the elite ones) think Trump’s a buffoon

4. Some conservative pundits think Trump’s being unfairly maligned.

I’m not opposed to contrarian positions; I’ve taken them myself (as in my view of the Fed’s role in the Great Recession.) But monetary policy is a highly specialized field, and popularity contests aren’t of much use when evaluating the truth of propositions related to the liquidity trap, or the many worlds interpretation of QM.

But while most people are not well informed on arcane economic issues, they are hard wired to be pretty good at reading their fellow human beings. You didn’t need a PhD in psych to notice that Jimmy Carter was more honest than Richard Nixon.

Many of my commenters are ignoring Occam’s Razor, and are making a highly improbable claim. They seem to think that the small number of conservative pundits who respect Trump are the only ones not blinded by ideology. Liberals are blinded by bias and moderates are blinded by bias and me and George Will and Jonah Goldberg and all the other right of center people who see Trump for what his is are simply “hallucinating”. That’s certainly possible; people who hallucinate don’t know they are hallucinating. But think about what your claim means. If it’s possible for me to hallucinate and not know it, then it’s equally possible for you to do so.

I’ll go with the simpler explanation; the few pundits who don’t see Trump for what his is are the one’s with a “bias” problem. After all, did 100% of conservative pundits and 100% of moderate pundit and 50% of liberal pundits think Obama was a buffoon?

I didn’t like the guy’s economic policies, but he seemed no worse than the run of the mill politician in almost any given human attribute, and better in some (like ability to speak). So I’ll go with the simplest and most logical explanation for why so many pundits think Trump is a buffoon, until I see evidence to the contrary.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Late Night’s Best Jokes About Trump’s Instantly Infamous Press Conference
http://www.vulture.com/2017/02/seth...-late-night-jokes-trump-press-conference.html

President Donald Trump held a lengthy, impromptu press conference yesterday morning, giving the nation’s late-night hosts precious little time to come up with an angle or approach or really just words to convey their feelings about a truly fascinating spectacle. However, unlike you, America’s hosts can’t just sit silently, dumbfounded, for a whole hour, so here are some of late night’s very best lines on that instantly infamous press conference.

[Videos at link]

Seth Meyers: “What president hasn’t had to say, ‘I’m not ranting and raving’? Who doesn’t remember Lincoln’s tirade at Gettysburg or FDR’s fireside meltdowns? And of course, Reagan famously saying, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, if you don’t tear down this fucking wall, I’m gonna lose my shit?’”

Trevor Noah: “If you can’t trust your president to get the right information on a Google-able fact, then can you really trust him with the harder stuff? Which, by the way, is everything else the president of the United States has to deal with.”

James Corden, discussing Trump’s claims of a historic Electoral College win, a falsehood Trump defended by claiming he’s “seen that information around”: “Around? He saw this information around? What, like it was tacked to a bulletin board next to guitar lessons and a picture of a lost cat? ‘Biggest election ever? Wow. Amazing.’”

Jimmy Kimmel: “The tone of the press conference was like if your dad found a pack of cigarettes under your mattress.”

Stephen Colbert: “How presidential. It reminds me of Harry Truman, who so famously said, ‘Look, I don’t know where it’s supposed to stop. I was given that buck.’”

Jimmy Fallon: “President Trump’s press conference today lasted an hour and 15 minutes, though an hour of that was just scanning for a reporter who wouldn’t ask a tough question. ‘Yes, the gentleman from Highlights Magazine. Not Goofus, Gallant.’”

Fallon’s Trump: “Thank me. Thank me, and buckle up, because this is gonna be a crazy one. Daddy came to play.”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Bret Stephens delivered the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture this week at the University of California, Los Angeles. Read the full text of his remarks below:

I’m profoundly honored to have this opportunity to celebrate the legacy of Danny Pearl, my colleague at The Wall Street Journal.

My topic this evening is intellectual integrity in the age of Donald Trump. I suspect this is a theme that would have resonated with Danny.

When you work at The Wall Street Journal, the coins of the realm are truth and trust — the latter flowing exclusively from the former. When you read a story in the Journal, you do so with the assurance that immense reportorial and editorial effort has been expended to ensure that what you read is factual.

Not probably factual. Not partially factual. Not alternatively factual. I mean fundamentally, comprehensively and exclusively factual. And therefore trustworthy.

This is how we operate. This is how Danny operated. This is how he died, losing his life in an effort to nail down a story.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Trump’s comments on Sweden during his rally in Melbourne, Florida, spawned headlines in newspapers all around the world. The American president later clarified on Twitter, saying that he was referring to a segment on Fox News about a film by filmmaker Ami Horowitz. But the policemen who were portrayed in the movie say that they were misrepresented by Horowitz. ”He is a madman”.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed—in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical—and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular fonn of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions.

UPON CLOSER OBSERVATION, IT BECOMES APPARENT THAT EVERY STRONG UPSURGE OF POWER IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE, BE IT OF A POLITICAL OR A RELIGIOUS NATURE, INFECTS A LARGE PART OF HUMANKIND WITH STUPIDITY. IT WOULD EVEN SEEM THAT THIS IS VIRTUALLY A SOCIOLOGICAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL LAW. THE POWER OF THE ONE NEEDS THE STUPIDITY OF THE OTHER.

The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent.

In conversation with him, ONE VIRTUALLY FEELS THAT ONE IS DEALING NOT AT ALL WITH HIM AS A PERSON, BUT WITH SLOGANS, CATCHWORDS, AND THE LIKE THAT HAVE TAKEN POSSESSION OF HIM. HE IS UNDER A SPELL, BLINDED, MISUSED, AND ABUSED IN HIS VERY BEING. HAVING THUS BECOME A MINDLESS TOOL, THE STUPID PERSON WILL ALSO BE CAPABLE OF ANY EVIL AND AT THE SAME TIME INCAPABLE OF SEEING THAT IT IS EVIL. THIS IS WHERE THE DANGER OF DIABOLICAL MISUSE LURKS, FOR IT IS THIS THAT CAN ONCE AND FOR ALL DESTROY HUMAN BEINGS.

Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what “the people” really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from peoples’ stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), 9-11.

Repeat ...

Although he was in power for only a handful of years, Hitler and his Nazi government slaughtered millions. One of the more well-known victims of that slaughter was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed on April 8th, 1945, a few short weeks before Hitler’s own death.

Unlike many of Hitler’s victims, Bonhoeffer was not a Jew, but a Lutheran minister, scholar, and theologian who boldly spoke against Hitler’s policies. Bonhoeffer landed a position in the German government during WWII and subsequently used that position as cover for assassination attempts against Hitler.

While awaiting execution, Bonhoeffer recorded a number of his thoughts in a work we now know as http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1506402747/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1506402747&linkCode=as2&tag=intelltakeo0d-20&linkId=Z4P2FU2YLIABLITK (Letters and Papers from Prison). One of these essays, entitled On Stupidity, records some of the problems which Bonhoeffer likely saw at work in Hitler’s rise to power:

“Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. … The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”

Americans today might do well to heed Bonhoeffer’s warning.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

IOW, FU ...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Rightwing snowflakes are offended by everything from Kermit to holiday greetings and Starbucks cups.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[MassTurk]

Will do, driving atm

Very powerful propaganda. I wish I knew about the documentary, before I paid 15.99$ for the book . Anyone who support Mr Trump should absolutely watch this documentary. This way even if you agree with his rhetoric, you will understand what they want to accomplish while in power. They don't believe America will be great again until, something big like a world war happening again for years to awaken the
"generation Zero".......

Liberal or conservative, you have to watch Mr Bannon's world view to see what really going on!! Beauty is they are not hiding it. That's why the courts push back, media push back and we the people push back. I don't believe in a society that looked like the 50's. We evolved and accomplished a lot for the little guy to give it all back to white supremacist ideology.

All Trump supporters Read it or watch their manifesto so we can talk about what's really going on!!!!


Thank you @Michael Scally MD

 

[MassTurk]

https://popularresistance.org/trump-revolution-ends-in-a-whimper/ (Trump Revolution Ends In A Whimper)

The hope that Trump would bring an element of sanity to US foreign policy has now been extinguished. The so called “Trump Revolution” has fizzled out before it ever began.

In contrast, the military buildup along Russia’s western flank continues apace.