The Dark Side of So-Called Charm

It's the anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre, which happened 44 years ago today, in 1978- a yearly reminder to be cautious when choosing who to worship. 

November 18, 2022

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I bought arthritis cream yesterday after playing racquetball and I set it on the bathroom counter. While I was taking a shower I heard both my daughters laughing like crazy. When I got out of the shower I saw that someone taped a piece of paper on the box of arthritis creme that said "weiner cream." Emma did it for their amusement. It was the funniest thing that ever happened in their lives.

November 17, 2023

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I visited the New Holland Historical Museum today. They had a picture taken about 100 years ago of the view on South Railroad Avenue looking north toward Main Street. When I left I tried to recreate it for a juxtaposition. This is about a 3-minute walk from where I grew up.

November 18, 2023

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Ali Velshi started the show tonight talking about Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile, and saying that Stacey Abrams was going to be his guest. In a flash I knew exactly what he was going to say! I've meant to write it myself for a while now.

He was going to say that although nobody thought passing that threshold was even possible, a month later someone else did, and then two people did in the same race. After then it was broken routinely. Some of the limitations we believe we have, are only in our mind. Biden flipped Georgia this election, largely due to Stacey Abrams' work, and perhaps that would awaken more states in the south to vote for the Democrats. Part of Bannister's training was visualizing is success in both mind and body. The only reason they don't win in the south is because they think they won't. 

Well it turns out I was wrong. Ali only mentioned Roger Bannister because while running the race he thought he wasn't going to make it, but then he did. So jokes on me.

November 18, 2020

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If I text and drive and kill somebody, and you text and drive and don't, we committed the same crime, but I will be haunted forever about what I did and you will not pay one more second's attention to what you did. That's the concept of moral luck in a nutshell. 

Think about how that applies to the pandemic. If 100 people hosted parties in April that lead to no infections, but you hosted a party where there were 10 infections, which led to 20, which led to 40, and so on, your party in April might have led to thousands of deaths. Pretty bad, but you didn't do anything different than anyone else. You just got unlucky. 

The fact that we don't even know how many people die as result of our actions, means we don't even know how unlucky we were, and how horrible we should feel. 

We need to recognize that when we are doing things that we shouldn't do, we should share in the grief of being personally responsible for causing a certain percentage of the deaths.

November 18, 2020

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I sent an article to the paper to see if they'll run it. We'll see.

Faith vs Reason At the Dawn of a New Era

If this fraud foolishness feels like feckless and factless folly, the reason might be faith.

Here's a fact- Trump lost. He simply lost, like Hillary in 2016. Yet many of the faithful are not convinced. Trump claims fraud, therefore there's fraud. 

Two groups of international observers see no evidence of fraud. Republican secretaries of state see no evidence of fraud. Election boards see no evidence of fraud. Same with legal experts. 

Ask yourself, if good evidence existed, why would Chris Christie direct this at the president? "Show us. Because if you can't show us, we can't do this. We can't back you blindly without evidence."

Trump's own National Security advisor said that "obviously" it appears that Biden won. If the best fraud evidence hasn't materialized, good evidence doesn't exist.

Imagine if Biden was still clinging to some hope that Trump didn't actually win the electoral college, and Obama came out and said it was time to give it up. The cognitive dissonance from those pressing forward would be off the charts.

Is it really that unbelievable to think Philadelphia would vote for Biden 90/10, the Democratic mail-in votes vastly outnumbered Republican ones (after Trump told Republicans to not vote by mail), and that it takes longer to count mail-in votes? Forget about rocket science, this is less complicated than dropping a Mento in Coke. 

Trump keeps throwing spaghetti at the wall, biding time while they look for their new "Benghazi," the buzzword that can substitute for a reasonable debate. It might have materialized– "Dominion." Read about it, if you like. There's nothing there except insinuations. There's an allusion to facts that will "come out at some point." Those pesky facts always seem to be just about ready to come out, but they are never here in the moment. 

Here's a fact in the moment- Trump's own Department of Homeland Security said it was the most secure election in history. So Trump fired the director. For Trump, the narrative matters, i.e. fraud, and facts are irrelevant. To paraphrase The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance- until the narrative becomes fact, repeat the narrative. How far will he go with these narratives? Well you could argue that we're less safe today because he fired the director of Homeland Security.

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For many, there will never be a realization that there is no evidence. It will forever be believed that we simply didn't find it, yet. These are the same people who believed the president at his word that either he wins, or the election was rigged. They effectively believed Biden had a zero percent chance to win legitimately. I engaged with hundreds of people trying to convince them of the simple fact that Biden had a nonzero chance to win. Few agreed. Nonsense at every turn.

The key is to sow endless doubt. You can hear Trump thinking, "Protect the brand at ALL costs- can't be a loser, even though I lost."

Many of his supporters keep saying that the courts will bring everything to light. Yet he keeps losing lawsuit after lawsuit. It's been over two weeks and no court has bought any of his arguments, and you have to believe that they started with their best arguments!

McCarthy acolyte and early Trump mentor, Roy Cohn, taught Trump this approach decades ago. He said, "Don't tell me what the law says. Tell me who the judge is." Sue, sue, sue until you get a "sympathetic" judge. The argument doesn't matter, just power.

I'll say it again- Trump lost. He lost by the same landslide he claimed over Hillary.

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This might sound absurd, but many believe that Trump was anointed by God himself. The fact that facts don't factor in to their fallacy is flat-out flim-flam.

FAITH that somehow Trump is literally God's gift to the country, substitutes for any possible facts. So to many, even now, after he lost, to be against him remaining in power is to be against God. Those against God are evil.

In this example, God trumps democracy. God trumps national laws. God does not trump Trump though- God and Trump are hand-in-hand. I can visualize the cover of the comic book.

It's just more nonsense, quite literally non-sense, outside of the realm of our senses. Our eyes and our ears can tell us exactly who the guy is, and we know he's nobody we would want our children to emulate. 

We we want our children to be thoughtful, generous, gracious, kind, intellectually curious... stable, at a minimum. We want them to have a strong sense of morality and justice. We want them to prize substance over superficiality. Trump was the owner of beauty pageants, picked cabinet members based on the way they looked, and do I need to remind you to just look at the guy? It's like the concepts of artificiality, vanity, and absurdity somehow had a baby.

Would we want our kids to grow up driven to put their name on everything, or is it best to live with a little humility? Trump abounds in all of the worst qualities, the opposite of what we want for our children.

It's amateur moral philosophy that one should act, and expect others to act, in a way that intentions and actions could become general rules. How far removed are we from that, if we wouldn't even want our children to act like Trump? He thinks that he's the exception though, and many along with him, such an exception in fact that when another person is elected president, and starts acting like it, that person is out of line.

Often his supporters want to overlook his character flaws, believing we should look at his actions instead. We should all be able to admit though that he does have a grandiose sense of self-worth, superficial charm, he lies pathologically, he's conning and manipulative, has a lack of remorse or guilt, and a need for stimulation with a proneness to boredom, he's quick to anger and callous with a lack of empathy. Fair?

Fair, based on a slew of statements from his inner circle all painting the same picture, and our own eyes and ears. One problem though. That's a list of traits used to determine if someone is a psychopath. I didn't even include promiscuous sexual behavior, a parasitic lifestyle (how about bragging about being let out of a $280 million loan?), early behavior problems, impulsivity, failure to accept responsibility, many short-term marital relationships, and on and on.

Do they also sound like traits of the devil??? (You know, if you believe in that sort of thing.) THIS is the guy that people have put their faith in? The guy who has been credibly accused of sexually assaulting 26 women? That's getting into Bill Cosby territory. If he's the guy that their God wants them to support, what does that say about their God?

Many of the same people who believe it's a sin to mislead, looked the other way right off the bat when Trump told us to ignore our own eyes, and believe that his inaugural crowd size, of all the ridiculous things, with bigger than Obama's. He followed that up with 22,000 other well-documented lies. 

In 1984, George Orwell wrote, "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." Seems applicable.

On the subject of faith, Christopher Hitchens wrote, "Faith is the surrender of the mind, it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other animals. It's our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. ... Out of all the virtues, all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated."

I remember in the 2016 Republican primary wondering whether I wanted Trump to get the nomination or Cruz. For a while I wanted it to be Trump, because I thought Cruz would rule strictly according to his personal belief in God above the Constitution, while Trump seemed 100% godless on the surface. I changed my mind though, because I realized Trump is not godless, he's one of the most ardent believers. The problem is- Trump believes Trump is God! 

And those who see him as infallible, beyond criticism, have bought into it too. They do not see Trump as the president per se, they see him as the godhead of the state. The worse he is, the more the media reports it, and ironically, they just think the media is worse. Similarly, the worse he loses the election by, just becomes evidence of even more fraud.

Some admit Trump is flawed but that he's improving in character. They can overlook his history of sexual assault (and bragging about it), if they are the type who would do that, but "I win or the election is rigged," is current, anti-democratic pabalum and should be condemned no matter who said it. Realize that he fires anybody who investigates him, or even contradicts him! Clear evidence that the guy is corrupt to the core. His job is to execute the law, but he seems to be using the wrong definition of "execute."

When you believe the leader is the godhead of the state, and fail to condemn his anti-democratic garbage, you quite literally prefer a theocracy to a democracy. Democracy is nothing without the peaceful transfer of power. That is not something that simply happens by being a member of a democracy, it happens because the members of a democracy require it of themselves.

I study genealogy and of the 600 graves I've found of my direct ancestors, all but 12 are buried in Lancaster County. Going back nine or ten generations, they all immigrated here to escape religious persecution, and now we're talking about our leaders being anointed by God?

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It's a real mess! How do we get out of it? 

A first step would be holding the virtue of reason above the supposed virtue of faith. Did we get to the moon on faith? Do we develop vaccines on faith? We have the entire catalogue of human knowledge at our finger tips, and we didn't get it through faith. 

Should we sacrifice our first born to God on faith? No, and it doesn't matter if God Himself asks us to! If it was wrong for the lady in Texas to drown her kids in her bathtub because she thought she was following the voice of God, then it's wrong for God to ask the same thing of Abraham. Faith can quite clearly cause us to act abominably, when we should know better.

Did we accept the results of the 2016 election on faith? No. I thought Trump was destined to be a catastrophic failure, and that his malignant narcissism mixed with his anti-intellectualism, was a recipe destined to cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Nevertheless, facts were facts, and at 9:45 on Election Night I called it for him.

Do we need to accept the 2020 election results on faith? Absolutely not. If Trump has been anointed by God, and therefore should be given the election, show me the proof. Or if faith is the answer, give me a reasonable argument as to why a reasonable argument is insufficient to just believing something for the sake of it. Sometimes our deep feelings end up being wrong.

Don Quixote chased windmills the same way Don Trump is chasing this election. (And he happens to be doing it the way of Don Corleone.) Much like Don Trump's proclamation that windmills cause cancer, there's no basis of fact for any of this. It's been said that myths are an attempt to reconcile an intolerable contradiction. Windmills are just windmills, and sometimes elections are over, and to believe otherwise is to quixotically sacrifice your sanity.

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We might not only sacrifice our sanity, we might sacrifice our safety too. Have you ever heard the phrase, "God, guns, and country?" I follow some far right groups to keep an eye on them, see some are posting "Give Violence a Chance" garbage. 

Don't think these people aren't serious. They feel disenfranchised and believe the left's policies will literally lead to the deaths of tens millions. Somehow I don't think a moderate like Biden is firing up the printing presses for his little red books, but others feel it in their soul. Follow their line of thinking. How far would you go if you thought the same thing?

Remember what Voltaire wrote, "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."

In the run-up to the election, a friend from Rwanda asked me if I was nervous about a potential American Civil War. I told him I expected some violence if Biden won but that I was not worried because it would be too small of a percentage to turn into something lasting.

I asked him what he thought. Coming from Rwanda, he knows something about Civil War. He said:

"What I think it's that you elected the worst president of the US history and as he is unpredictable, a liar, and very mean. I think he is able to do or make something very bad happen. I don't see Trump as smart enough to put his interests aside before the nation's. I think he acts like a kid and everyone is ashamed and sorry for the US."

I'm starting to think twice. My previous complacency was based completely on a perceived low percentage that would resort to violence, but with Trump endlessly casting himself as the victim, perpetually provoking people baselessly into believing that they were disenfranchised, that they had their power stolen by the sinister left, blind and obedient support for him only grows. Isn't there a law about screaming fraud in a crowded country?

I'm still not worried, and I don't like even bringing up the subject of violence because it has a tendency to normalize the possibility and give it credibility, but neither should we keep our heads in the sand. It's been said that denial is a mechanism of the immature mind, because it conflicts with the ability to learn from and cope with reality. Let's face the possibility.

Speaking of denial, the president recently tweeted, "I won the election!" Let's hope it's just the first stage of grief that he is going through. I don't know though, I get the feeling that if the president starts executing people on 5th Avenue many will be certain they must have deserved it. Have you known Trump to have limits or any guiding principles?

I would encourage everyone to read about the Milgram Experiment. To put it succinctly, in the late 60's, Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments to see how many of us would administer a shock of electricity to a person they could hear but not see, while having every reason to believe it would kill them. The experimenter, and the person supposedly getting shocked were in on the experiment, but the person shocking them wasn't.

The shocks would start light, as a result of the other person getting questions wrong, but they would rise in intensity. People would administer shocks based on nothing more than the authority of the person conducting the experiment. If the person doing the shocking protested, the experimenter said to please continue. If they protested second time, same thing. After they protested the third time, they were let out of the experiment. 

What percentage of the people being experimented on do you think administered a strong enough shock that they thought would kill somebody- one in a hundred, a quarter?

Two-thirds administered the shock they thought would kill somebody, based on nothing more than the experimenters authority, saying simply to please continue. This experiment was repeated a variety of ways and the results were always the same. We all think that we wouldn't have done it, but the fact is that two out of every three of us would have. We have the capacity for genuine evil in us.

To ignore facts, reason, logic, evidence and truth, and to put our blind faith in a McCarthy-style demagogue craving unlimited power (while paradoxically shunning responsibility) is to go back to a pre-Enlightenment time of human development. All of our advances have come from our clear vision- from the very beginnings of agriculture to the quest to vaccinate ourselves against the Coronavirus. 

If we're going to move forward together, let's have a reasonable debate. This is the way. The other way is violence.

We're at a crossroads and have the opportunity to sell the soul of the country. Draw a line in the sand and let's make the right decision.

November 18, 2020

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Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting- "The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. There, the novel has no place."

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You hear people making the case that attempted bribery isn't bribery. Actually soliciting a bribe IS a bribe. There's no debate on this, it's the definition. But what I'd really like to know is whether the same people think attempted murder isn't a crime. As someone said, that's the Sideshow Bob defense:

"Convicted of a crime I didn’t even commit. Hah! Attempted murder? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry? Do they?"

November 18, 2019

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Clinton accused Trump of being obsessed with her. He clearly is, he brings her up every day or two, but it's not something he must be proud of... his obsession with her. How should he respond? Anything he says is extra evidence her statement is true. How will he respond? However his id tells him to respond. He puts the id in president.

November 18, 2017

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Here's something I bet you don't think about too often. When you use a public restroom and wash your hands, immediately after they're clean you touch the dirty knobs of the sink, and then on top of that you touch the dirty door knob, which was also touched by everybody who didn't wash their hands. You would think if they had another sink for you right outside the bathroom that would solve the problem, but you would have the same problem of the dirty sink knobs. Basically there's nothing we can do. Consider this a Public Disservice Announcement.

November 18, 2017

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Good times at the pet store.

November 18, 2017

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Just went to the shoe store with Gretel and Zuzu to buy new racquetball shoes. Reminded me of the first line of Bukowski's Post office- "It began as a mistake." I'd prefer play for the rest of my life with two paper plates duct taped to my feet than endure one more minute of that mind-scrambling experience.

November 18, 2017

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Apparently Jeff Sessions said that the KKK was fine with him until he found out that they smoke pot. Let me play Devil's Advocate, if he meant that legally they can't smoke pot but they can belong to the KKK under the First Amendment, then he's fine. So there you have it, I just advocated the devil.

November 18, 2016

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Zuzu's first smile came on this day in 2015.

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There's a little baby next to me whimpering in her sleep, seems like she's dreaming about crying. Ahh, the dreams of children.

November 18, 2013

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God damn it Ken Burns you did it again! There's only word I can think of to describe his movies- holy.

November 18, 2012

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At the gym I just saw a guy try to take his sweatpants off while running on a treadmill. They got stuck down at his ankles and he had to run like Fred Flintstone so he wouldn't fly off. This went on for about 30 seconds until he got tired out and had to start hopping as fast as he could. Inevitably he ran out of steam and shot off. Me and the rest of the people on the bikes couldn't stop laughing.

(OK, I did see this at the gym, but one of the TVs was playing America's Funniest Home Videos.)

November 18, 2012

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Who's has your vote for fifth horseman of the apocalypse?

November 18, 2010

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Drawing by Jean-Claude Götting

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Susan B. Anthony and 14 other women were arrested for voting illegally in the United States presidential election on this day in 1872.

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United States President John F. Kennedy sent 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam I want to stay in 1961. Reminds me of what Gore Vidal said about him.

"I liked him tremendously, and I hang his picture in my library, not as an icon, not as a memory of Camelot, not as a memory of glorious nights at the White House or in Bel-Air; but never again to be taken in by anybody's charm. He was one of the most charming men I've ever known, one of the most intelligent, and one of the most disastrous presidents I think we've ever had."

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Long-time Phillies manager, Gene Mauch, joined us on this day in 1925.

"Losing streaks are funny. If you lose at the beginning you got off to a bad start. If you lose in the middle of the season, you're in a slump. If you lose at the end, you're choking."

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This is a ridiculous baseball tidbit. Jamie Moyer was born on this day in 1962, and there was only one other major league baseball player with the last name Moyer- Ed Moyer, who died on the same day! No relation.

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Kevin Nealon joined us on this day in 1953. He said that he enjoys going to church because he pretends that he's Jesus and everybody's talking about him. He thinks, "Yeah I could take this for another hour."

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Alan Moore, writer of Watchmen, joined us on the same day.

"The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory.

The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control.

The world is rudderless."

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Marcel Proust left us on this day in 1922.

"Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination."

No word on what his wife thought of that.

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Niels Bohr left us on this day in 1962.

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."

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Yahoo News- It's a Wonderful Life' Sequel Coming in 2015

My scoffer is set to maximum.

http://movies.yahoo.com/news/wonderful-life-sequel-coming-2015-213200658.html

November 18, 2013

Postscript- Thank fucking Clarence this abomination never saw the light of day.

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Gawker- Heartbreaking Craigslist Missed Connection Demands a Happy Ending

This Craigslist missed connection is better than most novels.

http://gawker.com/heartbreaking-craigslist-missed-connection-demands-a-ha-1466733676

November 18, 2013

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Cracked- 6 Ways Your Brain Is Programmed To Keep You Happy

There's real insight into how the brain works in this article. I highly recommend it. (Instead of satisfied pig vs. unsatisfied Socrates, better to be a satisfied Socrates, of course.)

http://www.cracked.com/article_21744_6-ways-your-brain-programmed-to-keep-you-unhappy.html

Nov 18, 2014, 4:27 PM

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New York Times- Transcript of Mitt Romney’s Speech on Donald Trump

Feel like insulting Trump, but can't quite find the words? Just quote Romney, he's said it all, and recognized his threat early on. I'm fascinated by Trump considering him for Secretary of State. I actually think it would be a good move. But how could he get over this blistering diatribe??? This isn't policy differences, he has little respect for him as a human. Here's a doozy, imagine publicly saying this about your future boss!

"Think of Donald Trump’s personal qualities. The bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third grade theatrics. You know, we have long referred to him as “The Donald.” He’s the only person in the entire country to whom we have added an article before his name, and it was not because he had attributes we admired."

or...

"There is a dark irony in his boasts of his sexual exploits during the Vietnam War. While at the same time, John McCain, whom he has mocked, was imprisoned and tortured."

or...

"Now, I’m far from the first to conclude that Donald Trump lacks the temperament to be president. After all, this is an individual who mocked a disabled reporter, who attributed a reporter’s questions to her menstrual cycle, who mocked a brilliant rival who happened to be a woman due to her appearance, who bragged about his marital affairs, and who laces his public speeches with vulgarity."

or...

Oh just read it if you like.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/us/politics/mitt-romney-speech.html

November 18, 2016

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The Haunting of Hill House- All the Ghosts You Missed

If you haven't seen The Haunting of Hill House, you're missing it. It's a scary as can be, and taking a quick glance through this article before watching it will cause it to be even scarier for you.

https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/the-haunting-of-hill-house-hidden-ghosts.html

November 18, 2018

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Someone asked a question online, a good question in my opinion.

"I have a questions... In the Universe there are billions of stars, so why is space so dark?"

Some smart ass responded, a good response in my opinion.:

"Because whatever darkness is it seems to move faster than the speed of light."

Haha

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Oscar Wilde- "To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable."

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Campbell- "I don't have to have faith, I have experience."

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Manson- "The mind is endless. You put me in a dark solitary cell, and to you that's the end, to me it's the beginning, it's the universe in there, there's a world in there, and I'm free."

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Sagan- "The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space."

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Aristophanes- "Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever."

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Marcus Aurelius- "If it's endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining.

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Rod Serling- "Someplace between apathy and anarchy is the stance of the thinking human being; he does embrace a cause; he does take a position, and can't allow it to become business as usual. Humanity is our business."

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Vonnegut, Mother Night- 

"You hate America, don't you?"

"That would be as silly as loving it,' I said. 'It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will."