Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

What are we to make of Vladimir Putin’s first year in the White House? How has he done?

I’m only slightly kidding. Or rather I’m just channeling a CNN interview earlier this week with James Clapper, former director of National Intelligence. Here’s what Clapper said: “I think this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is. He knows how to handle an asset, and that’s what he’s doing with the president […] You have to remember Putin’s background. He’s a KGB officer. That’s what they do. They recruit assets. And I think some of that experience and instincts of Putin has come into play here in his managing of a pretty important account for him, if I could use that term, with our president.”

Clapper clarified his statement by saying he was being figurative, rather than literal. So let’s just ask a figurative question, shall we? How successful has the Kremlin’s figurative investment been this past year? Pretty damn impressive.

Look first at Putin’s domestic goals. His core concern, as with any despot, is the legitimacy of his pseudo-democratic autocracy - which means, in turn, discrediting the very different features of the liberal democracies of the West. And in this, he must be scarcely able to believe his luck. After decades of the West’s championing of liberal democracy, the American president has spent his first year attacking it. Trump has exhibited contempt for a free press, describing the bulk of Western journalism as “fake news,” words that have gladdened the hearts of dictators across the planet. He has minimized Putin’s assassination of critical journalists, saying that America has no moral standing to criticize. He has treated the judiciary either as instruments of loyalty — hence his packing of the federal bench — or as pests to be slandered or dismissed. He prefers total loyalty from law-enforcement officials to the actual rule of law. For good measure, Trump has legitimized Putin’s core model of governance — that of a benevolent cult hero of the nation, shored up by religious reactionaries — by plagiarizing it. As for the other critical aspect of Putinism — the looting of the treasury by oligarchs — I give you the latest tax bill. It even carves out special goodies for real-estate investors.

...

No American president in history has ever given Russia so much in so short a time. Congrats, Vladimir. You’ve achieved what no Soviet dictator ever managed to. Your asset in the White House, figurative or not, has given more than all the British and American traitors in the history of the Cold War.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

More than a year after President Donald Trump won the election, there are still some questions about what drove him to victory: Was it genuine anxiety about the state of the economy? Or was it racism and racial resentment?

Over at the Washington Post, researchers Matthew Fowler, Vladimir Medenica, and Cathy Cohen have published the results of a new survey on these questions, with a focus on the 41 percent of white millennials who voted for Trump and the sense of “white vulnerability” that motivated them. The conclusion is very clear:

Contrary to what some have suggested, white millennial Trump voters were not in more economically precarious situations than non-Trump voters. Fully 86 percent of them reported being employed, a rate similar to non-Trump voters; and they were 14 percent less likely to be low income than white voters who did not support Trump. Employment and income were not significantly related to that sense of white vulnerability.

So what was? Racial resentment.

Even when controlling for partisanship, ideology, region and a host of other factors, white millennials fit Michael Tesler’s analysis, explored here. As he put it, economic anxiety isn’t driving racial resentment; rather, racial resentment is driving economic anxiety. We found, as he has in a larger population, that racial resentment is the biggest predictor of white vulnerability among white millennials. Economic variables like education, income and employment made a negligible difference.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

If this is America, with a cabinet of terrorized toadies genuflecting to the Great Leader, a vice president offering a compliment every 12 seconds to Mussolini’s understudy, and a White House that believes in “alternative facts,” then it is time to “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.”

If this is America, where the Great Leader threatens allies who do not fall in line, retweets the anti-Muslim racism of British fascists, insults the Muslim mayor of London, dreams up a terror attack in Sweden, invents a call from the Mexican president, claims the Russia story is a “total fabrication,” then you will have to “bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools.”

If this is America, less than a year into the Trump presidency; yes, if this is still America, where Representative Diane Black, Republican of Tennessee, thanks the Great Leader for “allowing us to have you as our president,” and Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, says Trump’s will be the greatest presidency “maybe ever,” and the Great Leader celebrates a tax cut that saves his family millions but he allows CHIP — the Children’s Health Insurance Program, covering nearly nine million kids — to expire, then you must “force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone.”

If this is not Turkmenistan, nor yet the land of Newspeak, but our America after all, where the curiously coiffed Great Leader of childish petulance accuses all media dissenters of distributing “FAKE NEWS,” and attacks the judiciary, and adores an autocrat, and labors night and day for his wealthiest cronies in the name of some phony “middle-class miracle,” then you must “hold on when there is nothing in you except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ ”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Technically, the Ninth Circuit ruling is not a final decision, but merely upholds much of the preliminary injunction issued by the trial court. However, the court's opinion makes it very clear that they would almost certainly rule against the administration in any final decision on the merits.

The injunction will not go into effect until the Supreme Court either rules on the case or declines to review the Ninth Circuit's decision, because the Supreme Court, on December 4, issued a ruling staying preliminary injunctions against Travel Ban 3.0 until such time as one of those events occurs. Some commentators have argued that this ruling indicates that the justices are likely to uphold the travel ban when and if the case gets to them. They could be right. But there are a number of other possible interpretations of the Supreme Court's actions.

In any event, we may well soon see what the justices really think. Both the Ninth Circuit ruling and the expected Fourth Circuit decision on the religious discrimination question are likely to be appealed to the the Supreme Court. The legal battle over Trump's travel ban is likely to return to the Supreme Court soon - an outcome I thought likely ever since the Court dismissed as moot the cases involving Travel Ban 2.0, after that order expired.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

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[Michael Scally MD]

The Marine Corps commandant told about 300 Marines in Norway this week that they should be prepared for a “bigass fight” to come, remarks his spokesman later said were not in reference to any specific adversary but rather intended to inspire the troops.

“I hope I’m wrong, but there’s a war coming,” Gen. Robert Neller told the Marines on Thursday, according to Military.com. “You’re in a fight here, an informational fight, a political fight, by your presence.”

Neller was visiting a Marine rotational force near Trondheim, about 300 miles north of Oslo. The Marines have been stationed there since January. Their presence in Norway is intended to support operations by NATO and the U.S. European Command, as well as to help the Marine Corps facilitate training in cold weather and mountainous conditions.

But Neller and other Corp leaders told the force they should be prepared for a change in their peacetime mission, should the need arise. In particular, Neller predicted the Pacific and Russia to be the focus of any conflict in the future outside of the Middle East, Military.com reported.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The lower your social class, the ‘wiser’ you are, suggests new study
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/lower-your-social-class-wiser-you-are-suggests-new-study


Brienza JP, Grossmann I. Social class and wise reasoning about interpersonal conflicts across regions, persons and situations. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 2017;284. Social class and wise reasoning about interpersonal conflicts across regions, persons and situations

We propose that class is inversely related to a propensity for using wise reasoning (recognizing limits of their knowledge, consider world in flux and change, acknowledges and integrate different perspectives) in interpersonal situations, contrary to established class advantage in abstract cognition. Two studies—an online survey from regions differing in economic affluence (n = 2 145) and a representative in-lab study with stratified sampling of adults from working and middle-class backgrounds (n = 299)—tested this proposition, indicating that higher social class consistently related to lower levels of wise reasoning across different levels of analysis, including regional and individual differences, and subjective construal of specific situations. The results held across personal and standardized hypothetical situations, across self-reported and observed wise reasoning, and when controlling for fluid and crystallized cognitive abilities. Consistent with an ecological framework, class differences in wise reasoning were specific to interpersonal (versus societal) conflicts. These findings suggest that higher social class weighs individuals down by providing the ecological constraints that undermine wise reasoning about interpersonal affairs.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]