Fear breeds evil: Trump is only a symptom of much worse to come

"It is fear that brings misery, fear that brings death, fear that breeds evil."

Swami Vivekananda

Vivekananda, the Indian, patriot-saint, whose teachings inspired Mahatma Gandhi, spoke about fear breeding evil in the late 19th century. This was long before a massive wave of post-defeat inflation, which destroyed the savings of its middle class, caused a terrified Germany, home of Goethe, Hegel, Meister Ekhart and Einstein, to hand over its destiny and the lives of many millions of Europeans to an insane, failed water-colorist, ex-corporal, from Vienna... all with the blessing of Germany's "one-percent".

The lesson being, if the corrosive, poisoning effects of fear could cause that nightmare to happen in one the world's most educated and civilized nations, it could happen anywhere and that certainly includes today's United States of America.

Fear as Vivekananda said, "breeds evil". You could say that fear weakens the "political immune system" of a nation and that a "symptom" of an acute failure of that political immune system might be the sudden appearance of the bizarre, massively unqualified figure of Donald Trump as a serious candidate for the US presidency, with its capacity to turn the world into atomic ashes, something which in political terms could be compared to the spectacular Kaposi sarcomas which in the early 1980s announced the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.

Or if you prefer even racier metaphors, The Donald could be a sort of wacky "John the Baptist" for the Anti-Christ...

Imagine, though, a different figure, someone with Mr. Trump’s callousness but without the thin skin, lack of self-control and fragile, oversize ego. Imagine, in other words, a demagogue who embodies the dynamics of America’s pervasive commercial atmosphere, but who is smart, cunning, self-aware and self-disciplined(...)We had better prepare for such a person. In business, Mr. Trump might be called a beta test, or a “proof of concept.” To that end, he has already succeeded. Lee Siegel - New York Times

Mark Twain said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes:

The troubled psyche requires a scapegoat. For Hitler, it was the Jews, among others. Today scapegoats are sought everywhere for the widespread feeling that something is amiss: that jobs are being lost; that precariousness has replaced security; that incomes are stagnant or falling; that politicians have been bought; that the bankers behind the 2008 meltdown got off unscathed; that immigrants are free riders; that inequality is out of control; that tax systems are skewed; that terrorists are everywhere. Roger Cohen - New York Times 

What is the objective reality behind the fear that so many people feel today?

When (some economists and technologists) peer deeply into labor-market data, they see troubling signs, masked for now by a cyclical recovery. And when they look up from their spreadsheets, they see automation high and low—robots in the operating room and behind the fast-food counter. They imagine self-driving cars snaking through the streets and Amazon drones dotting the sky, replacing millions of drivers, warehouse stockers, and retail workers. They observe that the capabilities of machines—already formidable—continue to expand exponentially, while our own remain the same. And they wonder: Is any job truly safe?(...) The share of prime-age Americans (25 to 54 years old) who are working has been trending down since 2000. Among men, the decline began even earlier: the share of prime-age men who are neither working nor looking for work has doubled since the late 1970s, and has increased as much throughout the recovery as it did during the Great Recession itself. All in all, about one in six prime-age men today are either unemployed or out of the workforce altogether.   The Atlantic

Andrew McAfee, associate director of the MIT Center for Digital Business at the Sloan School of Management,(…) despite his obvious enthusiasm for the technologies, doesn’t see the recently vanished jobs coming back. The pressure on employment and the resulting inequality will only get worse, he suggests, as digital technologies—fueled with “enough computing power, data, and geeks”—continue their exponential advances over the next several decades. “I would like to be wrong,” he says, “but when all these science-fiction technologies are deployed, what will we need all the people for?” (emphasis mine) MIT Technology Review Magazine

"I love the poorly educated"

Donald Trump

When we say, "We the people"... Who exactly are "We"? Who are the winners and the losers going to be in our "brave new world"?

Here is a graph to show the spread of intelligence (hint: most well paying jobs in the future will go to the light purple to red IQs on the right side of the graph)

Credit http://www.archure.net/

Lets clarify even further what "average" means:

The average IQ of the population as a whole is, by definition, 100. IQs range from 0 to above 200, and among children, to above 250. However, about 50% of the population have IQs between 89 and 111, and about 80% of the population have IQs ranging between 80 and 120, with 10% lying below 80, and 10% falling above 120.(emphasis mine) hiqnews.megafoundation.org

Here is a chart that shows what you can do with the following IQs:

Table 1 - Practical Significance of IQ - hiqnews.megafoundation.org

IQ Range	Frequency	Cumulative Frequency	Typical Educability	Employment Options
Below 30	1%	1% below 30	Illiterate	Unemployable. Institutionalized.
30 to 50	1%	1% below 50	1st-Grade to 3rd-Grade	Simple, non-critical household chores.
50 to 60	1%	1.5% below 60	3rd-Grade to 6th-grade	Very simple tasks, close supervision.
60 to 74	3.5%	5% below 74	6th-Grade to 8th-Grade	"Slow, simple, supervised."
74 to 89	20%	25% below 89	8th-Grade to 12th-Grade	Assembler, food service, nurse's aide
89 to 100	25%	50% below 100	8th-Grade to 1-2 years of College.	Clerk, teller, Walmart
100 to 111	50%	1 in 2 above 100	12th-Grade to College Degree	Police officer, machinist, sales
111 to 120	15%	1 in 4 above 111	College to Master's Level	Manager, teacher, accountant
120 to 125	5%	1 in 10 above 120	College to Non-Technical Ph. D.'s.	Manager, professor, accountant
125 to 132	3%	1 in 20 above 125	Any Ph. D. at 3rd-Tier Schools	Attorney, editor, executive.
132 to 137	1%	1 in 50 above 132	No limitations.	Eminent professor, editor
137 to 150	0.9%	1 in 100 above 137	No limitations.	Leading math, physics professor
150 to 160	0.1%	1 in 1,100 above 150	No limitations	Lincoln, Copernicus, Jefferson
160 to 174	0.01%	1 in 11,000 above 160	No limitations	Descartes, Einstein, Spinoza
174 to 200	0.0099%	1 in 1,000,000 above 174	No limitations	Shakespeare, Goethe, Newton

If these charts are correct it means that 90% of America's population is at the very best intellectually fitted for nothing more than then AI vulnerable jobs like "manager, teacher, accountant" and only 15% could even aspire to that. 75% are between 89 and 111.  All of those jobs from manager on down to caregivers and perhaps even sex workers are vulnerable to the rapid advances in artificial intelligence.

And don't imagine that China, often the villain of American job loss, is any different. The Chinese are leading the world in Robitics.  The loss of industrial jobs for "average" people is a world problem and the Chinese, like the Japanese, or Europeans for that matter, at least have the excuse that their population is rapidly aging.

However:

Largely as a result of higher fertility rates and immigration, America’s population, while ageing, is nonetheless likely to remain distinctly younger than other developed countries. Oxford Journals

It seems obvious that there is a critical mass of American citizens/voters who have every right to feel afraid and as Vivekananda said, "It is fear that brings misery, fear that brings death, fear that breeds evil.". This is the stagnant pool where demagogues like Donald Trump swim and flourish.

What  or who created good jobs for people with average intelligence in the first place?

Henry Ford

A good symbol of the economy that is disappearing would be Henry Ford and the philosophy behind that economy and American's legendary prosperity could probably be summed up by these two quotes of his:

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs 

Paying good wages is not charity at all - it is the best kind of business 

Those two ideas, making complex things cheaply and paying basically  low-skilled workers well, changed the world and created a stable, property owning, comfortable, middle class life style for millions of Americans with only a high school education or less, and gave the United States a political stability that was the envy of the entire world. That stability is disappearing/has disappeared as of today and fear... and the evil fear brings are the result. And soon even highly skilled workers and people with graduate degrees will probably be finding themselves facing the same realities as the poorly educated do today... if they aren't already.

Henry Ford's Detroit factory today

As we try to predict the future of the few winners and many losers of today's technological revolution, it might be useful to consider the fate of the losers (and they lost big) of  Ford's technological revolution.

This is what big city traffic looked like before Henry Ford made cheap automobiles ubiquitous.



This film was shot in London, but it could just as well have been made in New York or Chicago.

What is shown in 1890s London that is missing from today's city streets?

Horses.

The streets then, the world itself, was full of horses, millions and millions of horses. For thousands of years horses had accompanied humanity and done them great service. The word for horse in Spanish is "caballo" and the word for gentleman is "caballero". Our relationship was once that close:

Due to its natural companionship with man in both work and art, the Horse easily wins a special seat in history, ranking high marks of honor, reverence and symbolism. Serving man in war, mobility, productivity, agriculture, development of all kinds, the Horse is by far one of the largest contributor to the enhancement of civilization. Avia Venefica

Then...

When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked. Elon Musk

In a very short time a much loved symbol of the "enhancement of civilization" almost disappeared simply for economic reasons.

What sort of "jobs" are the few horse left doing? What sort of insight could this give us to the future of the masses of today's humans who wont be relevant in tomorrow's new technological environment?

Well, a horse that is very fast or very beautiful, plays polo, does tricks or is very "good with children" still has a place in today's world of the wealthy and the chance of a comfortable, pleasant life. Other less desirable "careers" might be that of a "trail horse" in a summer camp... or participating actively in steak tartar.

But you say, "this horse metaphor is ridiculous, horses are animals and people are well, 'people' ... human beings, 'endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights' and so forth". But what this really boils down to, is that horses couldn't vote and unlike so many Americans today didn't possess fully automatic assault rifles with banana clips.  In short eliminating horses from American life because they were no longer needed or profitable had little or no danger or political cost.

So leaving aside the precedents of certain 20th century figures like Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot, we can safely assume that Americans with average  to low IQs are not going to be physically eliminated. 

Where are we headed then?

If we want to be optimistic we can see ourselves looking at the problem as Michael Littman does:

We can turn machines into workers — they can be labor, and that actually deeply undercuts human value. My biggest concern at the moment is that we as a society find a way of valuing people not just for the work they do. We need to value each other first and foremost. Make it clear that the machines that we're talking about are machines to benefit everybody and not just the people that have them. Michael Littman, computer scientist at Brown University - Tech Insider

A skeptic might imagine one of the "great and the good", a "one-percent-er" reading that and thinking, "how much is all that going to cost?" and saying, "not by raising my taxes" and then contributing heavily to the campaign funding of any politician or media group dedicated to fighting Littman's point of view.

What will the future AI/robotic America probably look like then?

You won't need much of an imagination to envision where we are going. Think of a big country, thickly peopled, rich in natural resources with a first class scientific and cultural establishment and many mega-billionaires... and enormous masses of desperately poor people... Say, Brazil or India

In short, in the foreseeable future, or the United States of America is  going to turn into a nightmare of human misery something like the slums of Calcutta, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro or today's Detroit and the South Side of Chicago, or the elected representatives of the millions of “unneeded human beings” are going to have to fund the  massive government expenditures that are going to have to be made in public education, social support, socialized medicine, day care centers and public “make work” projects of all kinds. This is what libertarian billionaire, Peter Thiel probably meant when he said that freedom and democracy are incompatible. He surely means that in a democracy his freedom to do what he and other billionaires want to do with their money would be severely curtailed.

In short, American big money will be as cool with this nightmare scenario as their Indian and Brazilian counterparts and like a boxer tying up his opponent in a clinch, will happily finance every nutcase and corrupt politician they can find to avoid this future sacrifice of their power, wealth and privilege. DS

Donald vs. Hillary: the winner gets the atomic bomb

The festive celebration of elderly, white-American andropause held in Cleveland Ohio drew to its close without bloodshed. For this we can be truly thankful. Coming next, the coronation of Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia, the "city of brotherly love".   It has been commented that Donald Trump is the only Republican that Hillary Clinton could defeat and that Hillary Clinton is the only Democrat that Donald Trump could defeat. 

The winner gets the atomic bomb.

For me that is the decisive fact. Hillary Clinton is not very honest and her judgement is questionable, but she is not mentally ill. Donald Trump is neither honest nor trustworthy, either, but on top of that, I seriously doubt his sanity,   The idea of Donald Trump in possession of the atomic bomb is unacceptable. For me it is that simple.

This campaign for the presidency of the United States of America shows every sign of becoming the ugliest, dirtiest one in American history. With my mind already made up and as a matter of elementary mental hygiene, I don't want to follow it blow by blow, wading in the filth.  These coming months, not being able to retire to a cave in the Himalayas, I hope to find other things to write about. DS

Cleveland, America's "glasnost" moment?

Thoughts for the day:

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

Benjamin Franklin

 "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

John 8:32 - King James Version

"Freedom? For whom? To do what?"
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov

"To whom much was given, of him much will be required"
‎Luke 12:49 · ‎Luke 12:47 · ‎King James Bible

Understanding the world today would be much simpler if we conceded that gradually after WWII and picking up speed dramatically after 9-11, the United States has evolved into a corporate-military-security state... in short a "regime";  and like our old,  Cold War opponents, the Soviet Union, (which was also a corporate-military-security state-regime), we need to wrap our realpolitik in millenarian ideology... "We are building global democratic capitalism comrades". The "end of history" and all that... while we force-feed political prisoners in our Guantanamo gulag, kill American citizens without trial, etc, etc.

America’s post-September 11th national-security state has become so well financed, so divided into secret compartments, so technically capable, so self-perpetuating, and so captured by profit-seeking contractors bidding on the next big idea about big-data mining that intelligence leaders seem to have lost their facility to think independently. Who is deciding what spying projects matter most and why? The New Yorker 

Here are two examples of who we say we are: 

Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2006 "None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available pursuant to this act shall be obligated or expended to finance directly any assistance to any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree."  109th Congress Public Law 102

So we face a historic opportunity.  We have the chance to show that America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator.  There must be no doubt that the United States of America welcomes change that advances self-determination and opportunity.(...) And now we cannot hesitate to stand squarely on the side of those who are reaching for their rights, knowing that their success will bring about a world that is more peaceful, more stable, and more just. Barack Obama - May 19, 2011

Followed by an example of who we really are:

On 3 July 2013, Egyptian army chief General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi led a coalition to remove the only democratically elected President of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, from power and suspended the Egyptian constitution.(...) The US refused to describe the action as a coup.(...) Ensuing protests in favour of Morsi were violently suppressed with the dispersal and massacre of pro-Morsi sit-ins on 14 August 2013, amid ongoing unrest; journalists, and several hundred to a few thousand protestors were killed by police and military force. Wikipedia

A clear example of our reality might be the contrast between Obama's Cairo speech in 2009 or the public encouragement of the "Arab Spring" and then supporting the military coup d'état in Egypt, that soon followed their first free elections in history (while because of 109th Congress Public Law 102, denying it was a coup) where an army that literally lives off American aid (in exchange for not troubling Israel) massacres the supporters of a legitimate, democratically elected government that they have overthrown manu militari, without the White House even giving them a sharp tug on their leash... impossible for anyone, anywhere, to believe that the USA hadn't colluded in it...  Perfectly comparable to the Soviets invading Prague in 1968  to "defend 'real existing socialism'"... All of this brings us face to face with our hypocrisy... rubs our noses in it really.

Perhaps hypocrisy is to be preferred to cynicism though, because as La Rochefoucauld famously said, "Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue", which means that if good didn't exist, bad people wouldn't have to pretend to be good... Which is probably the best you can say about America's present performance on the world stage.

Sort of the "Soviet Union Light".

What was it that brought the mastodonic Soviet superpower crashing to oblivion, the straw that broke the camel's back?

What finally caused the USSR to unravel was the simple free movement of information, it was merely allowing Soviet citizens full, free access to the ordinary photocopying machine. That is what brought down the Soviet system.

Could it be a vulnerability that both superpowers might have somehow in common?

What could be America's version of the USSR's Xerox-Achilles heel.

Today facing the security state we have the ubiquitous cellphone video camera connected to Facebook and Twitter, plus a population armed to the teeth, in a country where in many places "open carry" is legal. This is a combination whose dissolvent effects on public order we are just beginning to sample.

In Dallas, the police's use of an exploding robot also gives a sinister hint of the militarization of America's police forces that the establishment feels might be "necessary" if that public order were to be severely endangered. 

What sort of endangerment? Where could this be leading? 

We might find out very soon.

How about this for a possibly historic clusterfuck? Armed to the teeth Black Panther activists slipstreaming the Black Lives Matter movement go to the Republican convention is Cleveland Ohio, to protest Donald Trump's racism, where they will meet white power Trump supporters also armed to the teeth. This in a state (Ohio) where a black child carrying a toy rifle could be shot by the police. 

The New Black Panther Party, a "black power" movement, will carry firearms for self-defense during rallies in Cleveland ahead of next week's Republican convention (...) Several other groups, including some supporters of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, have said they will carry weapons in Cleveland.(...) Officials in Ohio have said it will be legal for protesters to carry weapons at demonstrations outside the convention under that state’s "open carry" law, which allows civilians to carry guns in public. Reuters

The ingredients for anarchy are all there. If not now, when?

If something dreadful doesn't happen, we might take it as a sign that America's famous luck has not quite run out... yet

Where could the combination of all of these ingredients be heading?

A wise old fellow once said something to the effect that the present cannot judge itself, anymore than we can judge a person by what he thinks of himself... that time alone will be the judge of our present affairs, but that old man also said that the present is always pregnant with the future and in time it will be clear that everything that is to come tomorrow was present in some form today, right now, under our noses waiting to come to fruition. 

Sobering thought that. DS

November 2016... tick tock...tick tock

If you are an American living abroad, as I do, you are naturally very conscious of the world's opinion of the USA. The question now sometimes asked directly and often implied is: How can a country of over 300 million people, the richest and most powerful in the history of the world, one that, once upon a time, produced Jefferson, Lincoln, the two Roosevelts... even Truman, Eisenhower and LBJ, end up having nothing better to choose from now than Trump and Hillary?

Donald Trump appears like a nightmare product of a poorly digested meal... I find myself much more worried by the masses of people who would support him enthusiastically than by the Donald himself. When he has gone back to his golf courses these people will remain and perhaps, someone more subtle and even more evil than Trump will find many more effective ways to exploit them.

That leaves Hillary

I don't like Hillary Clinton, I never have... or Bill for that matter, although he may have been the most naturally gifted politician ever to sit in the White House, he may have also been the cheesiest too. That odor of ripe Camembert follows the Clintons wherever they go. 

Obama too has been quite a disappointment for me, I agree with Cornell West, that he is a "Rockefeller Republican", having said that, he and his family have had a very beneficial effect on America's image around the world. "Elegant" is the best word to describe Barack and Michelle Obama. As to his "legacy", he will probably be remembered as much for what he hasn't done, like not sending ground troops back to the Middle East, as for achievements like Obamacare, which is pitiful when compared to any European country's public health system.

For me the choice between Trump and Hillary is clear

Hillary Clinton may reek of Camembert, but Trump reeks of sulfur.  

The biggest danger now is that many of the supporters of Bernie Sanders, among whom I am numbered, dislike (loathe) Hillary even more than Trump supporters do and if, as is nearly certain, she is the Democratic candidate, many Sanderistas may either stay home on election day, or go out and vote for a third party candidate or... even vote for Trump.  In sufficient numbers this fugitive vote might end up putting a renegade villain escaped from a Marvel Comic into the White House.

The third-party option is the one that worries me most. Remember: this sort of bickering leading to Ralph Nader's votes in Florida was what brought us George W. Bush... and next to Trump, Dubya, is Joan of Arc. 

The American system has been so constructed as to be very resistant to change and it is a two party system. At this moment the Republican Party seems about to commit suicide and it would be a shame if the Bernie supporters did anything to impede their Trump-led, self-destruction. After the Republicans destroy themselves in November and the Democrats take back both houses of Congress... then would be the time to split the Democratic party to left and right, not now. DS

Are Freedom and Democracy Incompatible? Peter Thiel thinks so

Peter Thiel is the creator of PayPal, also the first major investor in Facebook and he sits on the Facebook board.

Peter Thiel
Wikipedia

Peter Thiel wrote, on April 13, 2009, in the Libertarian 'Cato Unbound' blog, “Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” In the same article, he also wrote, "Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron. (emphasis mine) Wikipedia

How does Thiel define "freedom"?

"I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives”   Peter Thiel - The Education of a Libertarian

Thiel thinks his freedom is incompatible with democracy. How is democracy normally defined?

democracy ‎(plural democracies)

1. (uncountable) Rule by the people, especially as a form of government; either directly or through elected representatives (representative democracy).  
2. (countable, government) A government under the direct or representative rule of the people of its jurisdiction.  
3. (uncountable) Belief in political freedom and equality; the "spirit of democracy".

"Democracy" then, means the rule of the "demos". Who are the "demos"?

demos ‎(plural demoi)

1. (political science) The common populace of a state, the people. Wiktiionary

Where and how is Democracy incompatible with Peter Thiel's freedom?

It's all quite simple, let Bernie Sanders explain:

This is an economic model developed by the economic elite to benefit the economic elite. We need real change.(...) We need to end the international scandal in which large corporations and the wealthy avoid paying trillions of dollars in taxes to their national governments. Bernie Sanders - New York Times

Where is Thiel-style freedom leading?

McAfee, associate director of the MIT Center for Digital Business at the Sloan School of Management, (...)despite his obvious enthusiasm for the technologies,  doesn’t see the recently vanished jobs coming back. The pressure on employment and the resulting inequality will only get worse, he suggests, as digital technologies—fueled with “enough computing power, data, and geeks”—continue their exponential advances over the next several decades. “I would like to be wrong,” he says, “but when all these science-fiction technologies are deployed, what will we need all the people for?” (emphasis mine) MIT Technology Review Magazine

Obviously. from Peter Thiel's personal point of view, democracy and his freedom are incompatible.

In Thiel's defense we should be grateful for his forthrightness, because Peter Thiel is rather innocent in his sincerity. The crafty Koch Brothers, for example, would never come right out and express themselves so frankly, but everything they actually do expresses the same view of democracy as Thiel's.

And they are not just sitting on their hands, they are up and doing something about it.

The House approved a bill Tuesday that would bar the IRS from collecting the names of donors to tax-exempt groups, prompting warnings from campaign-finance watchdogs that it could lead to foreign interests illegally infiltrating American elections. USA Today  

USA Today’s Fredreka Schouten reported that the bill is openly supported by Charles Koch, the older of the two “Koch Brothers,” fossil fuel billionaires whose deep pockets hold a notoriously outsized influence on American politics. Kit O'Connell - Mint Press

This is nothing new. The democratic state, (government of the people, by the people, for the people) has always been the only possible defense of "the People" facing the powerful, who wish to dominate and exploit them.

Again, knowing who the Thiels and the Kochs of this world are, who are "the People"?

The mass of a community as distinguished from a special class (elite); the commonalty; the populace; the vulgar; the common crowd; the citizens. Wiktionary

How long has this struggle between the "Thiels and Kochs" and "the People" been going on?

Aesop: A Lion used to prowl about a field in which Four Oxen used to dwell. Many a time he tried to attack them; but whenever he came near they turned their tails to one another, so that whichever way he approached them he was met by the horns of one of them. At last, however, they fell a-quarreling among themselves, and each went off to pasture alone in a separate corner of the field. Then the Lion attacked them one by one and soon made an end of all four. Moral: United we stand, divided we fall.

This struggle is nothing new and it has no end. DS

Brexit or the wages of frivolous stupidity

What an irony it would be if the Leave vote led the U.K. to break up before the E.U. does. But after a remarkable night and morning, that didn’t seem beyond the bounds of possibility. Very little did. John Cassidy - The New Yorker

British Prime Minister, David Cameron's totally gratuitous decision to convoke a referendum on Britain's remaining in the European Union, Brexit, is a perfectly amazing example of the effects of frivolous stupidity. The rest of us are to be helpless witnesses and perhaps direct victims of his decision for years to come. 

David Cameron, the British prime minister, has no one to blame but himself. In 2013, besieged by the increasingly assertive anti-European Union wing of his own Conservative Party, Mr. Cameron made a promise intended to keep a short-term peace among the Tories before the 2015 general election: If re-elected, he would hold an in-or-out referendum on continued British membership in the bloc. But what seemed then like a relatively low-risk ploy to deal with a short-term political problem has metastasized into an issue that could badly damage Britain’s economy, influence the country’s direction for generations — and determine Mr. Cameron’s political fate.  New York Times

If you like reading history, you'll come across many examples of such frivolity and stupidity doing massive harm to millions of people.  George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq is a textbook example. Millions of people have lost their homes or lives and one of the world's most critical regions is in the process of disintegrating.  

Could Cameron's Brexit have an effect in any way comparable to Bush's opening the gates of hell in the Middle East? 

Knock-on effects are about cascading disasters. The world's economy is still shaky after the crash of 2008 and in today's globalized finance everything is interconnected. How could Brexit set off a chain of disasters?

An example: UK capital, London, is today the world's most important financial center:

London has swapped places with New York to become the world’s leading financial centre, according to a detailed study of 86 cities. Financial Times

It is axiomatic that money hates uncertainty:

One of the only things we can say for sure after the Brexit decision is that the U.K. and Europe are entering a period of great uncertainty. The New Yorker 

It is easy to imagine the knock-on effects of a major disruption of the intricate and intertwined activities of a place where the good and the great of the entire world go to trade currencies, bonds, shares, privileged information, launder and store their money, you name it. 

One likely outcome of negotiations is that banks and financial firms in the City of London will be stripped of their lucrative EU “passports” that allow them to sell services to the rest of the EU. The Guardian

You can't imagine the knock-on effects of disrupting such a place? Think Lehman Brothers just for starters. If one major financial institution starts to unravel, the entire shaky recovery of the world economy could collapse.

Leaving Financial Armageddon behind, the ordinary human effects of  Britain's leaving Europe are worth describing: British young people will now find it difficult to reside or work in EU countries or study in their universities and talented young Europeans will find it difficult to do the same in the UK. This will have significantly negative effects on generations to come.

The future of  Britain's young people is finally the greatest victim of Brexit, but not just the young.

Here is an example of the sort of micro-tragedies that can befall elderly British people here in Spain, where I live. Thousands of British pensioners on retiring have sold their homes in grey and rainy Britain and with their life savings bought homes on the coasts of Sunny Spain, where as members (till now) of the EU, they have a right to residency, socialized medical care and even get to vote in municipal elections. Imagine their distress as they watch all of these rights disappear and even the value of their investment sink.

All this disruption because of what the President of the European Parliament Martin Schultz, calls "a whole continent (being) taken hostage because of an internal fight in the Tory party”. DS

Muhammad Ali: An American Genius gone to waste

Wikipedia

"Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up."

“They don’t look at fighters to have brains. They don’t look at fighters to be businessmen, or human, or intelligent. Fighters are just brutes that come to entertain the rich white people. Beat up on each other and break each other’s noses, and bleed, and show off like two little monkeys for the crowd, killing each other for the crowd. And half the crowd is white. We’re just like two slaves in that ring. The masters get two of us big old black slaves and let us fight it out while they bet: ‘My slave can whup your slave.’ That’s what I see when I see two black people fighting.”

"It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up."

Muhammad Ali

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What modern athlete, much less one at Ali’s level, has ever talked with such political complexity, ambiguity, or engagement? David Remnick - The New Yorker

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Muhammad Ali, a symbol of how racism wastes human potential

If I had to find one example to illustrate how deep racism and social injustice is in America's culture, it would have to be that someone as highly intelligent, brave, resourceful, serious and charismatic, with such a massive power of communication as Muhammad Ali, had to end up semi-illiterate with his brains beaten out in the prize ring... while a second rate, B-picture actor like Ronald Reagan or an immature blockhead like George W. Bush could end up as presidents of the United States or that today someone as weird, mean-spirited and grotesque as Donald Trump could be seriously considered for that job.

"But things are much better today for young African-American men than they were when Ali was a boy growing up in Jim Crow Louisville Kentucky in the 1940s and 50s", you say.

Are they? In the booming economy of the 1950s, Muhammad Ali like many young black people back then grew up in a stable two parent family, with a live-in father, where both parents worked, where his family lived in their own home in a safe, if segregated, neighborhood. How many young black men raised by a single mother in the ghetto neighborhoods of today's USA enjoy those privileges in our present leaky, creaky, drug and gun infested, economy. 

"But what about President Barack Obama?" you reply. To which I would humbly suggest that it is quite different to be raised in Hawaii, where there are practically no African-Americans, than to be raised in Jim-Crow Louisville; quite different to be raised in a prosperous, white, college educated, middle class family and attend an exclusive Hawaiian private school, than to attend a segregated school in Louisville Kentucky... or one on the South Side of Rahm Emanuel's Chicago today, for that matter. 

This is not a criticism of our president, he was fortunate of have his enormous potential recognized early and lovingly nurtured. When that happens, that is the result. Few Americans, white or black... certainly not many African-Americans had that opportunity then or have it now. Ideally, all children should receive that treatment

In short, if you wanted to analyze the dysfunction, injustice and waste of America's human resources, you could begin by meditating upon and answering at length the following riddle. 

Why could George W. Bush graduate with a C-average from Yale and a man who could say, "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger."”, someone who was that intelligent and amply talented enough, who under the right conditions, could have been or done anything, had to have his brains punched out of his head entertaining the "sports fans" he so lucidly described? 

I think you know why, so do I, but today I'm just too sad to answer that question. DS

To Explain Spain: Madrid - 2

To begin with, I have come to believe that simply learning why Madrid is where it is, is the key to understanding thousands of things about Spain, the key to understanding the past, present and future of one of the European Union's most important countries, with deep ties, linguistic, cultural, political and financial to all of the United States of America's southern neighbors.

There are masses of "facts" about Spain on the Internet: just reading what Wikipedia has to say about it could keep you busy for quite awhile. I'm not going regurgitate all of that here. What I'd like to do, within my limited abilities, is to give you some sort of feel for the place, a point of view to take with you before you get immersed in all the multitude of facts and cliches about Spain's culture and history. So if and when you really do begin to study, all that you learn might fall more easily into place.

What do I mean by the "feel" of the place?

When Spanish people who are going to the States ask me what they should see or do there, I tell them that the USA is more or less like it appears in the movies (except there are no subtitles), that American food is the same junk you can get on practically any street corner of the world and that the only thing they can't get from the films or McDonald's is the feeling of America's unbelievable size and distances. What I tell them to do is to spend a week or two in a Greyhound bus crossing "fly over America". The fatigue in their back muscles and the pain in their nether regions, combined with the conversations they will have with their continuously changing and almost always chatty seat mates... while crossing the Great Plains, day after day, will teach them more about America than reading dozens of books, or more correctly, help them make some sense of all that they read.

This, their own private "road movie", will make them "feel" America.

Short of that sort of direct experience of Spain, my readers will have to make do with what follows:

Getting Started

In the first chapter of this series we looked at a map of the population density of Europe, where we saw that the greater part of Spain and nearly all of its center is as sparsely populated as the outback of Sweden or Finland or the forests and western Steppes of Russia... or the Alps.  And we saw that floating in that emptiness, like an asteroid, is a city of over three million people with a population density comparable to London or Paris.

To put that emptiness into physical context, lets look at a relief map of Spain. Madrid being the tiny, red, dot in the middle of it all.

Relief map of Spain - Madrid, the Red Dot in the Middle                   

Looking at the relief map, the sparse population of the center of Spain makes sense, what is hard to understand is why there is this huge city in the middle of what looks like a moonscape. 

Also going there by land is uphill all the way. 

Examine this list of European cities by elevation over sea level.

1-Kruševo, Macedonia 1,350 m (4,430 ft)
2-Andorra la Vella 1,023 m (3,356 ft)
3-Madrid 667 m (2,188 ft)
4-Pristina 652 m (2,139 ft)
5-Sofia 580 m (1,900 ft)
6-Bern 542 m (1,778 ft)
7-Munich 519 m (1,703 ft)
Wikipedia - List of European Cities by Elevation 

Today's Spain is crisscrossed with modern superhighways and high speed trains, but this is a very, very recent development, even as late as the 1970s getting to Madrid from abroad or even from the Spanish periphery by car or even express train... any way except by air was a tedious ordeal.

Imagine during the centuries of Spain's imperial splendor, with no navigable river in sight, what it was like getting to Madrid on horseback, by stage coach or even on foot!

So then, the question arises: why is a city of over three million people and the political, cultural, communication and financial capital of a country of over forty million people and once the capital of one of history's largest empires, so high up in the middle of nowhere? DS

(To be continued)

To explain Spain: Madrid - I

I'm so sick of writing about Donald Trump that I've decided to write about the country where I live, Spain. I usually don't do this in my English language blog, because what knowledge of Spain I may have achieved by now is very long learned and intensely personal, with plenty of "skin in the game", and I would be loathe to do a superficial, touristy travelogue for English speaking day trippers; coyly loaded with bulls and flamenco and tips on where to dine, etc. That sort of thing makes me squirm.

However, I can imagine that I might have some things to say about Spain that someone genuinely curious to learn about one of Europe's oldest and most historically rich and important countries might find useful. 

To begin with, forget about all the classic cliches about Spain, from Bizet to Mérimée to Hemingway, and take a close look at this map:

European population density

You'll notice that most of the center of the Iberian Peninsula has a population density similar to the outback of Sweden or Finland or the forests and western Steppes of Russia... or the Alps... and you see that smack dab in the middle of that vast yellow emptiness on the map, floating like an asteroid, there is a blue star-shaped blob called Madrid (where I live). This is a city with a population of 3.165 million people.

According to the map's legend, the blue color of the blob shows that Madrid has a density of population similar to Paris or London. Spain has a total population of 46.77 million, while France has 66.03 million, Britain 64.1 million and Germany 81.1 million .

More or less one out of every 15 Spaniards lives in the blue blob in the middle of nowhere.

Madrid is not only the largest city in Spain, it is also the political, financial, cultural and communication capital of the country. To put this into an American context, try to imagine if Washington, New York and Los Angeles were all in one city... located somewhere in Montana.

If you now move your attention to the right toward the Mediterranean coast you'll see a large, long and narrow area with a brick-red color similar to most of Germany and the dynamic northern region of Italy around Milan.

At the top of the red patch sits Barcelona, the capital of the Catalonian region of Spain which produces some twenty percent of the Spanish GDP.

So without any knowledge of the history, culture and languages of the blue blob and red patch, separated as they are by a great expanse of yellow, it's easy to imagine the tension that might exist between the blob and the patch.

My next post on Spain will be about why the blue blob got to be where it is. DS

Obama and Trump... The Hillary Connection

It would be practically impossible to imagine two more different human beings than President Obama and Donald Trump, but it occurred to me that they do have one thing important in common: they both chose to make their move and go for the presidency when their prime opponent was most probably going to be Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Clinton is now viewed unfavorably by 55 percent of the electorate, according to the HuffPost Pollster average, (...) Only 40.2 percent of people view her favorably, according to that average.(...) The historic comparisons are stark. At this point in the 2008 presidential cycle, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was seen favorably by 62 percent of voters and unfavorably by just 33 percent. (...) In the most recent Gallup poll, released late last month, her unfavorable number was 53 percent versus only 42 percent who saw her favorably. The Hill

Most observers agree that however different they may be in every other way, one thing most successful people have in common is that eye for "the big chance", the instinct to catch an opportunity that perhaps only comes once in a lifetime, and I would argue that both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, if nothing else, share that instinct.

Obama has been a successful president and his only stumbling block to having been an even better one has been his inability to deal with the catastrophic obstructionism of the Tea Party infected, Republican legislators. That was always going to be very difficult, but I would argue that Obama could have been even a more successful president if he had spent a few more years in the Senate, learning the ins and outs of how that institution works and building personal relationships with its key members. But if he had stayed, he probably would never have become president. 

The moment to run against Hillary would have passed.

Donald Trump has been fondling the idea of being President of the United States for the longest time.

Establishment Republicans have watched the rise of Mr. Trump’s presidential bid this year with shock. And yet, Mr. Trump has been telegraphing his presidential ambitions for decades, including when the ever-confident businessman told Oprah Winfrey in 1988 that he would probably win the presidency if he ever competed for it. Wall Street Journal

Seeing an amazingly lackluster Republican field of what the British would call "odds and sods" and waiting for him and at the end of that rainbow... Hillary Rodham Clinton. 

Every fiber of his being must have shouted, "go for it".

We can only hope that he will have less luck with it than Senator Barack Obama did. DS

The Trump voters' message

The Trump voters' message to America and the world could possibly be contained in the two words: "Fuck + You", or then again their message might be described as "nihilism".

Nihilism: a doctrine or belief that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility. Merriam-Webster

I'm sure I'm not alone in not finding Trump interesting, but I have to admit that I am fascinated by the people who are fascinated by Trump.

When you come down to it, what is truly amazing is that Trump's speech is so contradictory as to be utterly meaningless... and that is the message and the key to his success. The only constant is his aggressiveness, his offensiveness. 

Nate Silver, one of America's most insightful political analysts, who admits having constantly "misunderestimated" the Donald, in analyzing his own puzzlement, sums up the heart of Trump's success.

Trump’s main differentiator was doubling down on cultural grievance: grievances against immigrants, against Muslims, against political correctness, against the media, and sometimes against black people and women. And the strategy worked. Nate Silver - FiveThirtyEight

Who is moved by this? Who is it working for? Where will it lead?

I know I shouldn't quote myself, but a couple of months ago I wrote:

We are looking at exasperated, paranoiac, xenophobic, racist nastiness, in short a fascistic mentality of crippled personalities in reaction to changing mores and a failing economy. All the unhappiness and frustration are searching for moral absolutes. Moral absolutes are what allow people to kill each other... if only in their imagination. All this hateful speech and dippy ideas are pregnant with death, they are about to give birth to a monster, but the Republicans are only the midwives... They are helpless in the face of the spirits they have invoked from the country's inner darkness. It is that darkness not any individual like Trump that should worry us, something very, very nasty is cooking in it.

In short I'm saying that if Donald Trump is not the genuine old Nick, could he be some sort of dark mirror "John the Baptist" for the very Devil himself? 

That what is really important is not Trump himself but the forces he invokes.

But returning to the present, aside from Trump's aggressiveness his only other constant is "making deals". At this he is an acknowledged master. 

Something that has been rolling around my mind for some time. Does he really want to be President of the United States or is he putting together the deal to end all deals?

For at this moment, for a deal maker, the Donald is in a very sweet if dangerous spot. 

Back in February I wrote:

Lets look at what's on the table. 

The Republican Party controls both houses of Congress... for the moment, and a Supreme Court that could mark the ideological slant for a generation is up for grabs. 

If Trump runs as either the Republican candidate or as an independent, all poll projections predict an Armageddon for the Republicans, with not only the loss of the presidency, but loss of majorities in both houses  of Congress, perhaps even in state houses too. 

Has the moment finally come for doing a "deal"?
It seems to me that Donald Trump is now holding the family jewels of some of the most powerful people in the world in his tiny warm hands and is squeezing them rather hard. We are talking about a political party that now controls both houses of Congress and represents the interests of the top 0.01% of the American economy. What laws could they write for him (which I'm sure Obama, as a patriot, would be quick to sign)? Or how much would, say the Koch brothers, or all the conservative super-PACs, be willing to cough up to kiss him goodbye 

The shape of a deal?
What are the Republicans still in a position to offer Donald Trump between now and the convention, something which would be more attractive for him than losing the presidential race by a historic margin and destroying the Republican Party in the process... in which case they could give him nothing?

I should have said "in which case they could give him the same medicine as was given to Jimmy Hoffa". 

Donald Trump has already made some of the most powerful people in America his blood enemies in exchange for what seems to be a slim chance of winning the White House.  

Is he insane? 

Is he not insane? 

I admit I don't know which of the two is the worse alternative. DS

The Nightmare of Clinton versus Trump: Hillary is not a shoo in

Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?   

"The River" - Bruce Springsteen 

The failure of the economy to deliver real progress to middle-class and working-class Americans over the past 15 years is the most fundamental source of public anger and disaffection in the US.  BBC News 

Forty years of hurt has driven some people to answer Springsteen's question, that the American dream is something worse than a lie, and from that bleak answer they are looking for a political leader who echoes their anger. So my answer to presenters' questions whether Trump can win, is now and was before the primaries started: "Yes."  Michael Goldfarb - BBC

As of Today

In this the strangest of presidential election years, a poorly flushed Donald Trump pops up out of the backed up drains of the American psyche and the only thing standing between him and the Republican nomination is Senator Ted Cruz, who could pass as Boris Karloff's baby brother. 

Republican debate has now moved from the size of Mr Trump's penis to whether the evangelical Mr Cruz sleeps around. And this, far from hurting Trump, is fattening his lead in the polls

Mr Trump has succeeded in breaking down the boundaries of political debate. He has drained all civility from politics and licensed a discourse that elides bigotry with patriotism, is derisive of women, scornful of minorities and permissive of racism. The Republican primaries have become a contest in which it is acceptable to throw a punch at those who happen to disagree, to threaten to muzzle the freedom of the press and to make jokes about those with disabilities. Mr Trump has tossed overboard any idea that politics and public service can serve a moral purpose. Philip Stephens - Financial Times

If The Donald wins the nomination, which as of today, seems probable, he will, unless a kind providence intervenes, end up facing the most soiled politician in America... except for her husband, of course: Hillary Clinton.

For no one, not even Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, has objectively done more to turn Bruce Springsteen's dream into a lie than the Clintons.

Here is how Thomas Frank lays it out:

Ukraine is considered the most corrupt nation in Europe

After the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000, the corporate scandals of the Enron period, and the collapse of the real estate racket, our view of the prosperous Nineties has changed quite a bit. Now we remember that it was Bill Clinton’s administration that deregulated derivatives, that deregulated telecom, and that put our country’s only strong banking laws in the grave. He’s the one who rammed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through Congress and who taught the world that the way you respond to a recession is by paying off the federal deficit. Mass incarceration and the repeal of welfare, two of Clinton’s other major achievements, are the pillars of the disciplinary state that has made life so miserable for Americans in the lower reaches of society. He would have put a huge dent in Social Security, too, had the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal not stopped him. If we take inequality as our measure, the Clinton administration looks not heroic but odious. Thomas Frank - Salon

The Skinny

Assuming, as now appears most likely, that Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination and that either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz becomes the Republican nominee, the general-election ballot is set to feature a choice between two candidates more negatively viewed than any major-party nominee in the history of polling. Ruth Marcus - Washington Post

The only thing standing between such a nightmare choice for American voters is Bernie Sanders.

No two human beings could be more different than Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump and the most fundamental difference between them is that Trump is a very bad man and Bernie is a very good man,

However what they both have in common is that their campaigns are both propelled by the passionate anger that so many Americans feel at the failure of the "American Dream" and their mounting distrust of the "Establishment", Wall Street, the media and of course the government itself.

Hillary Clinton's basic problem is that no one incarnates that Establishment so much as she does.

If it's Hillary versus Trump, America and a watching world will be treated to probably the dirtiest, most depressing campaign imaginable and with the probable, massive abstention of grossed out voters of both the left and traditional conservatives too and therefore with a result infinitely more unpredictable than anyone can now imagine.

However if Bernie Sanders manages to pull off an upset and the race is between him and Trump, the world will be treated to an all-American, Hollywood-esque spectacle of good versus evil, Batman pitted against The Joker, Saint George kicking the dragon's ass.

Not only would it change America and the world, it would be tremendous fun.

Probably the most fascinating, indeed endearing thing about the USA is the "let it all hang out" transparency of such a huge beast. What is missing today, unfortunately, is someone like Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis or Norman Mailer to write about all of this. DS

Republican Primaries: The Voyage from Eisenhower to Trump

"Oppressed beneath the weight of their own corruption and of military violence, they for a long while preserved the sentiments, or at least the ideas of their free-born ancestors."  Edward Gibbon, "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"

I think people are making a mistake if they treat the Republican primaries as serious politics. They obviously aren't, but at the same time it seems to me that they are a more than serious symptom of levels of unhappiness, frustration and confusion among the citizenry that border and frequently cross the border of collective insanity.

Under Richard Nixon's guidance the Republican party executed the "Southern Strategy" and took know-nothing, racist-populist America to its bosom and began to win majorities sufficient to implement policies that have led that same voter base of know-nothing, racist-populist Americans to even greater degradation.

Now the Republicans are trapped in a nut house of their own creation.

Just as an exercise of political science fiction, try to imagine Dwight D. Eisenhower in the midst of these Republican primaries, try to imagine him on Fox news. 

Impossible, right?

When I was a boy the Republicans that lived around me were mostly pallid, though vigorous, high church Episcopalians, solid, smug types who struggled mightily with golf and sedately clipped stock coupons. As to the younger ones, crew cuts and white bucks, energetically embalmed in stifling, Pat Booney squareness come immediately to mind.

I cannot think of a better bellwether of America's malaise then that of the party of the formerly priggish, self-contented, self-righteous, self-satisfied, conventional and sensible becoming the party of the paranoiac, the exasperated and the kooky

A century from now, the years between Eisenhower's and today's Republican party will seem a brief interlude and I'm sure that Chinese historians will puzzle over the swift deterioration of America and its institutions in that time frame.

I am neither Chinese nor a historian and I am puzzled as hell. I was a kid when Ike was president and I am an old man now... Blessed with an extremely good memory, I have trouble associating the America I was born into and the America that withers before my eyes today, as if it were being struck down by a wasting disease.

I would think it important to separate this new "conservatism" from the traditional variety. Remember the American vice is to use language to hide meaning. 

One of the most disturbing things about America is the incoherence of American language, the endless euphemism-laden double talk. American terminology is confusing and perhaps the confusion is deliberate.

For example, everywhere but in the USA, “red” is the color of the left, but in America, the term, “red state”, means one that is right-wing and “blue”, which is a color that in most countries is associated with the right, to ultra-right, in the US is used to label what Americans call “liberal”, which in the USA means the left, but which everywhere else is used to label the economic right-wing… These examples are just the tip of a semantic iceberg.

This brings us to the word, “conservative”.

The new conservative is, in plain English, in fact, a neo-fascist and the personality traits we observe on the American right these days are those of a fascist.

What is the difference?

If a person is born into a well to do, stable family, where the parents respect and perhaps even love each other and treat the child kindly and his/her exposure to traditional religion is benign. He/she is likely to accept the family’s traditions and values unquestioningly.

From that point his/her attitude will be one of prudence, of not spoiling  (for him/her and his/her family) a good thing… and his/her attitude toward the less fortunate than himself/herself may even be benevolent and paternalistic and be expressed in contributions to charity and other good works.

What we are seeing in the Republicans now, has little or nothing to do with that kind of conservatism. We are looking at exasperated, paranoiac, xenophobic, racist nastiness, in short a fascistic mentality of crippled personalities in reaction to changing mores and a failing economy.

All the unhappiness and frustration are searching for moral absolutes. Moral absolutes are what allow people to kill each other... if only in their imagination. All this hateful speech and dippy ideas are pregnant with death, they are about to give birth to a monster, but the Republicans are only the midwives... They are helpless in the face of the spirits they have invoked from the country's inner darkness. It is that darkness not any individual like Trump that should worry us, something very, very nasty is cooking in it. DS