Today was the 70th anniversary of a grand experiment. Many Jews had long wanted their own land and they fought for it. Many of them were terrorists in the cause — though you will never hear that on the television news in America. But after World War II, a Jewish homeland was founded. After all: Nazis.

I Supported Zionism for a Long Time

Not only would I have been on board then, I was on board most of my life. Even over the last decades I continued to support Zionism because I though the Jews, as a group, really did have something to fear. And they do!

Even in the US (a very Jew-friendly country), according to the FBI, over half of reported religious-based hate crimes are committed against Jews. But the fact that Jews are hated by many, I don’t support a Jewish state. Indeed, I believe that Israel has made antisemitism worse.

Israel Has Lost Legitimacy

What Israel has shown is that just because you have been oppressed in the past, does not mean that you will not turn into an oppressor yourself. Indeed, we accept on the individual level that abused children usually grow up to be abusers. So, I’m afraid, it is with countries. And so it seems to be with Israel.

It’s been clear for decades that Israel has no interest in making peace with the Palestinians. In an earlier time, Israel would have simply committed a mass genocide and taken over all of the remaining Palestinian land. (See, for example, the Old Testament.)

But with modern media, they can’t do that, so they’ve done it inch by inch — both through murder and by simply stealing land.

The American “Honest Broker” Lie Is Clearly Exposed

There is one good thing to come out of this, however. The US has moved its embassy to Jerusalem. And in so doing has shown, in a way that even the most rapid Israeli apologists cannot rationally dispute, that the US is not an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and haven’t been for at least the 37 years.

If Israel did simply march into the West Bank and killed everyone outside of all the Jewish Settlements (most illegal), the US government would report that it was provoked and a necessary step to keep the people of Isreal safe. And the media would present it that way, noting that some disagree.

Israel Has Nothing to Fear

Israel has by far the most powerful military of any country in the region. Other states may grumble about them, but they would not willingly go to war against Israel. They are the only nuclear state. And are they nuclear! They have an estimated 200 to 400 warheads.

The only threat to Israel are are rockets from Gaza. It is often reported that in the last two decades there have been thousands of such attacks. But that number includes mortars as well — which have a very short range. Still, there is a lot of firing. But they are mostly impotent. Over the last two decades, fewer than 30 people have been killed. Israel should probably worry more about people texting and driving.

And it isn’t like the Palestinians don’t have some cause. I’m not in favor of violence under any circumstances. And I think the people firing these rockets are making a tactical mistake. But it is the case that at least the attacks get covered in the US media. The countless peace protests are completely blacked-out of mainstream television coverage, and almost never covered anywhere in the mainstream press.

How Long Will the Apologetics Go On?

Regardless, the fact is that while the Palestinians kill almost no Israelis, the Israelis kill a lot of Palestinians. I wrote the following analogy on Facebook this morning:

I’m Sick of Israeli and American Disingenuousness

And that’s how I feel. And I’m sick to death of reading in the US press it would all be over if the Palestinians would just stop launching those rockets. It sickens me that Palestinian peace protests are all but ignored in this country. I’m tired of the apologetics for decades illegal Israeli settlements, clearly designed to make any peace impossible. I’m sick of it all.

Call me antisemitic if you like. That’s the great trump card of Israeli fanatics: if you are against Israel, you are against Jews. That couldn’t be further from the truth for me. And I would just refer you to the image above.

So many people have died because the US allows Israel to behave even worse than it does.

Violence Causes Fear Causes Violence

Albert Einstein never said, “It would be my greatest sadness to see Zionists do to Palestinian Arabs much of what Nazis did to Jews.” But I’ve never been that into Einstein quotes anyway. I know his science, that is enough. He wasn’t a moral philosopher. But I like the fake quote, because I think it is largely true. A great trauma was wreaked upon a group. It is not at all surprising that many of that group’s survivors would, out of fear, take on the role of the oppressor, even if they are doing it step by step rather than with the Nazi’s brutal swiftness.

I’m afraid it is long past time to have bombed Isreal’s nuclear silos. At this point, I fear that Israel is at least as likely to use one or more of its nukes as India, Pakistan, or North Korea. How can we stop this failed experiment now? I don’t know. I do know this though: the fault lies with the US, just as if North Korea kills millions with its nukes, blame ultimately belongs to China.

Afterword

I remember that Bill Maher, in his movie Religulous, interviewed a guy who believed much as the men in the picture above. Maher listened to him for a bit and then just walked out. The implication was that he was just a crazy man spouting nonsense. But even though I was a Zionist at the time, it was clear to me that he wasn’t spouting nonsense. It’s just that Maher, like the vast majority of Americans can brook no one who thinks that Israel isn’t some fragile country surrounded by powerful enemies and thus must be protected.

I didn’t agree with the guy and I don’t. Why would I. It is based on a very conservative reading of the Torah. But it isn’t an insane or stupid belief. And they are right: Israel is a highly nationalist state. It strikes me as having as much to do with Jewish roots as Utah has to do with Mormon roots. Bill Maher was so much better when he was just a comedian and before he thought he was smart.

This article is based on a Facebook post from yesterday early morning — right when I found out that Trump did what I knew he was going to do. But since Frankly Curious has a lot of smart readers (that is: they aren’t on Facebook), I’m presenting it here. I’ve edited and greatly expanded it. –FM

Yesterday, President* Trump will did another stupid and cruel thing, primarily because he just doesn’t like Barack Obama. And the world will be worse off for it. I’m talking about walking out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, of course.

But my bet is that Iran will stay in the deal with the Europeans, especially if they sweeten it. Of course, the Trump administration is now saying that they are going to start a trade war with any European country that stays in the deal. But I don’t really see that happening. I think the Europeans know that Trump is not long for political office (and maybe even life outside a cage). And Europe can hurt us just as badly as we can them.

The worst thing is that the deal completely falls apart.

If the Iran Deal Can’t Be Trusted How Could a North Korea Deal?

Of course, the bigger issue for us is that the US will show in the biggest way it ever has that it can’t be trusted. This is right before a negotiation with North Korea!

My prediction on this is that there will be a meeting, because it will make Kim Jong-un look like a major player in world politics (which he isn’t).

But there will be no deal. Why in the world would he make a deal with the US?

To begin with, I don’t think the Trump administration is capable of making a deal because their idea of a deal is that the US gets everything it wants and everyone else gets nothing.

At least when Stormy Daniels got f**ked by Trump, she got a decent amount of money. What is North Korea going to get? Since Trump is, in fact, a terrible negotiator, if a deal did manage to be made, it would be overwhelmingly in North Korea’s favor.[1]

The Iran Deal on the Domestic Front

It isn’t just the North Koreans and other countries who shouldn’t trust Trump and therefore the US.

What are struggling whites who voted for Trump getting from anything he’s done other than a sense that they are pissing off people like me? They are doing worse than ever. Trump cares about them like he does bubble gum stuck to his shoe.

Why Was Trump Elected Anyway?

I would like to think that this is just a dark period for the US. But that’s not it. The US has been a fading empire for decades. Trump is just a darker shade of black. It might get a bit better after he is gone. But not much.

The reason is that about 30 percent of Americans are rightly pissed off about things, but are mad at the wrong people; they support the very people (eg, Trump, the Republican Party) who have made their lives worse over the last 40 years.

Then about 20 percent of Americans are just idiots.

Electoral College

And finally: we don’t live in a democracy. In the US, 7 percent of presidents got less votes than the “loser.”

As CGP Grey has noted, “Would anyone tolerate a sport where, by a quirk of the rules, there was a 7 percent chance that the loser would win? Not likely!” Then why do you put up with it in the much more important issue of presidential politics?

I’ll tell you this: if it had been Democrats who won two recent elections while getting fewer votes, Republicans would demand a change.

And Democrats — being somewhat rational and having a sense of fair play — would go along with it. But since it is helping Republicans, they are against changing it. Although their voters were for changing it — right up to the point that Trump “won.” Then they flipped. The Republicans are no longer a political party; they are a cult — and I’m not just talking about Trump.

We Continue the Struggle, But I Fear It Is Hopeless

I’m sad and embarrassed by my country. “Take Back Our Country,” indeed! (Where did they get the idea that it was theirs and not ours?) Our country is being destroyed by the people who use that phrase.

[1] Here’s a little advice: if you are negotiating with someone who talks about what a great negotiator they are, all you need to do is flatter them and you will get an unimaginably good deal. Trump is the ultimate example of that. Remember: Trump would have far more money today if he had simply put his inheritance in an indexed mutual fund. This is what’s known as an opportunity cost. If you have money, it isn’t hard to make more. The question is whether you are making as much as you could elsewhere. Trump has been a huge failure economically, even though his cultists believe otherwise.

When I was very young (less than 10-years-old), I loved game shows. I know why: I was good at them. Even into my teens, I wanted to be on Tic-Tac-Dough because I would have been on there for months. Then I just wanted the money and I couldn’t believe how ignorant the contestants were. But why do mature people like game shows?

And I don’t just mean the traditional game shows. Almost all “reality” shows are game shows. Dancing with the Stars is a game show. I find them mind numbing. But most people love them!

Watching the Money on Game Shows

And I know why. It was all explained at the end of the movie Quiz Show. Dan Enright (played by David Paymer, who you’ve never heard of but have seen everywhere — 233 credits on IMDb) gives the best speech of the film:

“Reality” TV Show Forged in Fire

My father loves a game show called Forged in Fire. In it, these guys with forges make swords and compete.

If I didn’t hate these kinds of shows so much, I would find it funny. The judges are so serious and make out that they are such experts. But they are really more like sports “color” guys who are constantly repeating the same things.

And the format is entirely typical: most of the show consists of interviews with the sword makers. First they interviewed before their swords are judged. Then they interviewed after the swords are judged.

The show runs 42 minutes, but if you cut out all the repetition, fluff, and ridiculously long dramatic pauses by the judges, you might have 5 minutes of material. That’s a lot of nothing to sit through to find out who wins the $10,000.[1]

It’s Probably All Fake

Last night I asked my father about the show. Because all my life I have lived on the outskirts (and sometimes right in the middle) of the construction industry. I’ve never met anyone with a forge. Now I know: it is probably one of those situations where if you know anyone with a forge, you know ten. They are a tight group.

But there isn’t a huge demand for swords and other things made in a small forge. Yet the show has had 66 episodes with 4 contestants on each. That is 264 people with forges who are willing to go on the show. I don’t buy that for a minute.

Andy Kaufman was on The Dating Game three times as part of his effort to become a successful entertainer. I won’t be at all surprised if one of the 264 people who was on Forged in Fire turns out to be a successful actor.

It Might Have Been Real at Some Point

I have little doubt that when the show started, they were using real people. But as time went on, they couldn’t find people. So they hired actors and had other people make the swords. At this point, I’m sure the entire show is scripted (in the same way professional wrestling is — not exact dialog, but everyone is told what to say, and it comes from some guy like me who doesn’t mind writing crap anonymously if the money is good enough).

When I mentioned this to my father, he pushed back. You could see their forges! Yeah, and one well designed set could be made to look a million ways by a professional art director. Did my father think the forge in Army of Darkness was a real one? No. He yielded the point.

But he will continue to watch the show. It makes no demands of him. And it gives him the ultimate American thrill: watching an absolute win and three absolute losses.

The Black and White of Competition

Of course, even if the show is for real (and I don’t think it is), it’s just one competition.

It reminds me of something I heard someone say about Major League Baseball (roughly): “Each season, every team will win 50 games, lose 50 games, and its the last 50 that determines who does well or who does poorly.” (MLB now plays 162 games a year, but you get the point.) Similarly, it is often said of the National Football League, “On any given day, any team can beat any other.”

I like those quotes because they talk about reality. The truth is that there are thousands of great baseball players who are roughly as good as each other.

But Americans like things clear. That’s why soccer has had such a hard time here: most games end in a tie. (Or at least they used to. I don’t care enough to look it up.) Americans hate that kind of thing because there must be a winner who celebrate far too much and a loser who we criticize far too much.

Life Is Not a Competition

But my life and that of every human I’ve ever known is a mess of contradictions and general messiness. You never win because there is nothing to win. You just continue to live until you don’t.

To make up for the fact that you have to appreciate life at a higher level — that you have to work to find the sacred, as David Foster Wallace put it, in a crowed grocery store when you’re tired and grumpy — people make up games and pretend that life is one too.

Life Is a Process — a Struggle

The one sport I enjoy watching is baseball, because it is beautiful and subtle. But I much prefer watching amateur or minor league ball. The people in the majors make it look too easy, even though it is enjoyable enough to watch.

But I prefer to watch the struggle. Because we are all Sisyphus.

It doesn’t matter our wins or losses. To quote John Maynard Keynes, “In the long-run, we are all dead.” And in the short-run, I’d rather do something more edifying.

I’m not Capital One, so I’ll ask the ultimate question, “What’s in your soul?” I ask it of myself first.

Afterword

None of this is to take away from people who try to excel at anything. I’m that way too. And in weird ways. I practice the clarinet each night. Why the clarinet? Because it is the most bizarre instrument known to humanity.

But there is a difference between pursuing mastery and simply wanting to win. And we live in a degenerate country where the primary motivation is winning. And you will never find the sacred in such an ignoble goal.

Oh how we need to evolve!

[1] That’s another thing about most game shows. On Tic-Tac-Dough, you stayed on the show until you lost. So you could win hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the people on Forged in Fire are setting themselves up to be humiliated for a maximum payout of what the median American makes in two months. Who would do that?! Well, idiots. Also: actors (see above).

Again and again the media makes the claim that Hillary Clinton lost the easiest election ever.

By Damon Linker (twice).  By ostensibly professional Democratic partisan Jon Favreau. Chris Cillizza of course. They often do this because they assume her campaign was terrible and she did nothing right.  They often do not explain exactly what her campaign did that was so terrible except that she did not go to Wisconsin. After all, Cheato was the worst candidate in history therefore it must be her fault.

But this isn’t true.

The Fundamentals Were Against Her From the Start

When it comes to any given election, there are a group that will always vote Democratic and a group that will always vote Republican.  The rest of voters are what need to be persuaded.  In the 2016 election many of these were individuals who had voted for Obama but were ready for something new.

This is what is called third term fatigue.  Generally, a third termer can win when the opponent is one of two things: bland and boring, or simply bad at campaigning.  History gives us three examples.

Examples

In 1940, Republicans nominated as a surprise candidate when their convention deadlocked a former Democrat Wendell Willkie.  He was a tough campaigner, but he was indistinguishable from the Democrats based on what he was proposing.  He lost.

In 1948, Republicans nominated a very bland but popular governor of New York who was an extremely lazy campaigner who did not even endorse his party’s platform.  But he was beloved by the media (sounds familiar) and they gave him all sorts of advantages in the press.  Meanwhile Truman was barnstorming the country and giving rip-roaring speeches.  In the days before real mass media like TV, he was a good in-person entertainer.  He also was the current president who in a masterful stroke, called the majority Republican Congress back into session to pass their priorities as listed in the platform.  They failed.

In 1988, Democrats nominated Michael Dukakis.  He was a passionless fellow who had a couple of problems. First, he had no passion. Second, he was governor of a state where a black guy was given a furlough and killed a woman.  George HW Bush seems like a sad old man now but he okayed using a racist ad against Dukakis and it won him the election. (Racism will return again and again in this story.)

Donald Trump Was A Formidable Candidate

Next, the fallacy that Cheato was somehow a terrible candidate.  He didn’t do what he needed to do of course. He didn’t fundraise. He only did one event a day. Trump was also extremely stupid. And he had to fire two campaign managers mid-campaign. (Lewandowski and Manafort)

Trump Was Tough — For Other Reasons

He was a formidable candidate for other reasons-he was entertaining as a clown often is. Because of that, he got almost 5 billion dollars in free advertising. Much of it was negative but all of it was free.  Hell, his podium got more airtime than Clinton even when she was making major speeches.

He had the clear assistance of Russia. From direct help in the form of stolen information, active interference on social media, and of course indirect assistance by way of pouring money into the NRA, the entity that spent 30 million dollars for Cheato’s win.

Russia is also the group that handed Wikileaks most of the non-Clinton email messages to be dropped for the media to blather relentlessly and pointlessly over.

The Primary

He was not a normal politician so didn’t care about the general election.  Remember, before the general, Cheato had to face 15 Republicans, some of whom were extremely good politicians.  Despite Rubio’s whining, he has been elected numerous times in Florida.  He even won re-election in 2016 while complaining about how much he hated being a senator.

John Kasich was no joke when he ran. Kasich is one of those smiling Republicans who gut you while you are complimenting them on how nice they seem. He won re-election in 2014 by thirty points. Even now he is above 50% as governor despite Ohio’s economy not being that great.

Ted Cruz was another major contender who had no reason to suspect he would lose.  He had, after all, been the guy who gave one of history’s biggest political upsets with his surprise win in 2012 in the Texas Republican primary. David Dewhurst, his then opponent, had what appeared to be an insurmountable lead after the initial primary in May when he got 10 points over Cruz but was flipped by the runoff election in July. That is a shift of over 10 points in two months.

Jeb Bush was always going to suck.

But with those three other opponents, it should have been simple for them to beat Cheato.  Why didn’t they?

Trump’s Lack of Care

I believe a large part of it was Cheato simply didn’t care enough to moderate his tone for the general.  Republicans had been playing with fire since 1972 and the invention of the Southern Strategy. They use racist policies that they paper over so those who have zero interest in dealing with it can pretend that no, the Republicans are not the home of white supremacy.  Their news organizations (Fox, Sinclair, and others) go to a great deal of effort to magnify racial tensions by overreacting to the slightest expansion of rights of non-whites while steeply underreacting to real world racist results.  In addition, Republican state legislatures have been openly racist for years with the North Carolina legislature being so racist a court took extreme measures to point this out.

The national politicians (including Kasich, Cruz, Rubio, and Bush) had long been playing cute, so they usually were using dog whistles to hide the racism.  2016 and Cheato blew past the dog whistles and gave the Republican base what they wanted — a racist candidate who was happy to play up all the same conspiracies that they had been fed for years by Fox News.

But wait! What about the fact that many voters voted for Obama before they voted for Cheato?  Racial resentment plays a large part in this. It is dressed up as “cultural anxiety” but it is plain ol’ racism.

“I voted for Obama but black people didn’t stop demanding things.”

A co-worker said that to me.  I don’t know why it is weird that they would demand to not be shot but then I try to actively work on my privilege.

Let’s Talk Sexism

The 2016 election was one of the ones where cultural issues hold great sway.  Why?  The economy was humming along okay, the world was mostly at peace, and there wasn’t a sense of urgency like there had been in 1992 and 2008.  Both of those years had pick ups by Democrats because the US was worried about the economy. 2008 was bad enough that a guy named Barack Hussein Obama won in a landslide.

The 800 lb gorilla in the room that is rarely spoken about except by Hillary Clinton fans like myself is the sexism.

Many People Don’t See Women as Presidents

It is extremely hard for a woman to run for President of the United States.  Here is a table of only the national party candidates who got at least on the nominating ballot at the convention.

Of the 10 women who have run for the national parties, only Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Hillary Clinton, and Carly Fiorina have been taken seriously enough to win delegates. And of those four, only one has made it to the general election.  Every other woman has been a third-party candidate who was there mostly for symbolic reasons.

Gee, looking at it like that shows it is kind of hard does it not?

Further, we have numbers to back up the fact it was sexism and not simply Hillary Clinton being somehow uniquely unlikable. We also have confessions from Republicans.

Let us look at the numbers for Hillary Clinton and her “likability”:

If she was not running for anything and was a subordinate to another person, Clinton was popular for a politician.  She hit a peak of 60% in 2011.  But then Benghazi happened, and she decided to leave office, which the media assumed was so she could run for the White House.  The Republicans, as confessed here by Kevin McCarthy, decided to abuse their power once again to try to stop her.

Note that word in there: untrustworthy.

Lies, Damn Lies, and the Truth

Clinton is not much of a liar.  She has had very few outright lies — 31 in ten years.  (I disagree with some of Politifact’s characterizations of her statements since obviously some of them were hyperbole that all politicians fall prey to but whatever.)

Barack Obama had 71 in that time frame.  Donald Trump set the webpage on fire. Mitt Romney (they stopped tracking him after 2012) had 32.

In fact, if you want honesty out of a politician, go ask a Democrat.  They usually will tell you the truth.

Why Is Hillary Seen as a Liar?

Yet she is assumed to be lying all the time.  Why?  Women tend to be more honest than men but Clinton has been called a liar since William Safire’s column on her being a congenital liar in 1996 despite her generally being honest.

Which means it isn’t about Clinton’s actual honesty.  It is about the people who lie about her.

Republicans have been doing that since she showed up on the national scene as Bill Clinton’s wife (prior to that, she was her own person but when Bill ran for the presidency, things changed a wee bit.)  The media has usually and gleefully joined in.  This has happened again, and again, and again, and again.

(A good example of this is Judicial Watch who were the ones who sought her emails from her time at State and repeatedly made up claims about them that the media swallowed whole scale. Judicial Watch is not a clean actor.  They have a vendetta against Clinton and the media has never particularly cared.)

Hillary Fought This False Narrative

Because of this, Clinton spent most of 2015 and 2016 being as precise as possible in her speaking.  She obviously failed since multiple times she had to go back and explain something when it was distorted by the press (who then distorted what she explained.)  She is still having to do that when the brouhaha flared up over her accurate statement in India about where she won and where Cheato won and why.

Yet even though she is no more of a liar then say Obama, she is treated much worse by the press. Even her husband isn’t treated as badly as she is. It is why he is at 45% and she is at 36%. Part of the reason is of course that Fox News has been acting like she is currently President despite her repeated attempts to resign as their President in Fake.

There is also some other data that show it was about sexism that is little looked at.

I have used this before to explain why Clinton lost and I think it is important to look at. Firefighters are one of the last main bastions of white masculinity. The group is mostly white, mostly male.

They voted for Obama at barely more than 50% in 2008 and less than 50% in 2012.  But they dropped to 27% for Clinton. The only thing that really explains both (since they voted for Bill Clinton at a much higher rate) is racism for Obama and sexism for Clinton.

They don’t even hide it. The president of the Firefighters Union flatly stated that they didn’t like Clinton or Democrats being focused on minorities and college educated whites instead of them.

James Comey

And finally, the last part about sexism is James Comey.  He of the impeccable reputation that somehow viewed his women bosses as less than reasonable.  First up is Loretta Lynch.  He thought she had a credibility gap.  Why? There was no reason to assume it this time. He had to use a doctored email that was thoroughly debunked by his own team to assume she was going to be discredited by the partisan press.

Yet the entire time he could have gone to Sally Yates about his concerns because he may have thought that Lynch was not impartial enough. Never went to her. Didn’t go to her again when he found out about the email messages that were on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Didn’t go to her when she was acting AG with Cheato’s behavior after the election.

(This probably should not be a surprise since the mostly male FBI has a bit of an issue with the sexism against Hillary Clinton being as obvious as the ones against Lynch and Yates:

“Besides, as one bureau official after another has made clear to me in recent months, Comey never expected Clinton to lose. He saw The Letter as the politically expedient thing to do to help bolster the legitimacy of her victory – and preserve the FBI’s apolitical reputation. “The worst-case scenario [in his mind] was she was going to be really pissed [at him],” one executive told me. “But then we’d sit her down and tell her it was her fault we were in this position.”)

Summary

The 2016 election is one that still rankles for so many reasons that we aren’t going to finish grappling with them any time soon.  There are many actors who refuse to take a hard look at their behavior. From the media refusing, almost to a person, to look at what they obviously did wrong;  to average Americans who do not want to admit they were acting in sexist and racist ways; to the lack of caring by Republicans as they have been turned into traitors for Russian money.

Even I have not admitted my errors.  While I was active online campaigning I did little in-person and even less phonebanking.  I had reasons. My loss in 2014 made physical campaigning extremely painful, but I should have done more.  That is on me.

Clinton looked at her behavior in What Happened which was a bit self-serving as all memoirs are, but she did look at what she did wrong. She admitted she screwed up.  As far as I can tell, she is the only one who has admitted their screw-ups. Amy Chozick comes somewhat close in her memoir Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, And One Intact Glass Ceiling however the excerpts posted online are extremely clueless and self-serving.

There is a great deal to be learned from the 2016 election.  Some has been with Eric Holder’s group to combat gerrymandering. DNC’s efforts to quietly help campaigns get the vote out. But the problems of racism, sexism, Russia, and the media’s right wing behavior have not gone away and will not any time soon.

Sam Harris “Debates” Ezra Klein

Sam Harris and Ezra Klein had a debate with each other for over two hours about… To be honest, I don’t know what it was about. It was supposed to be about the connection between intelligence and race. It was also supposed to be about Harris’ new BFF Charles Murray and how badly he is treated.

Let me get the elephant in the room out of the way right now: poor Charles Murray. It’s certainly true that Murray gets attacked a lot. But it really has little to do with The Bell Curve where he argued that blacks are dumber than whites, that there is nothing we can do about it, so we should just get rid of affirmative action and all those programs that try to make the nation more economically fair.

The Bell Curve was co-authored by Richard Herrnstein. He was the scientist and I believe that he was responsible for all the science in the book. He also died of lung cancer the year the book came out. So it was really Murray’s book. And like all Murray’s books, it was political. All of his books push a radical libertarian ideology. He is in favor of the universal basic income (UBI), but only because he’s a pragmatist. Like many libertarians, he’s for the UBI as a way of getting rid of all other social programs and has even said that the UBI would allow the nation to spend 10 percent less on helping the poor.

Sam Harris: Repetition Machine

What was most interesting in the debate was that Sam Harris would make a comment like, “All these people don’t want to deal with race and IQ because it makes them uncomfortable.” Ezra Klein would respond insightfully. And then Sam Harris would just repeat what he had already said in different words.

I’ve had debates with people like this. They don’t really understand the subject they are talking about at a deep level. What they think is really just emotional. So they think that if they just repeat what they believe enough, others will agree. Because they don’t actually have a rational argument. They just believe. This is hilarious coming from New Atheist Sam Harris.

The Sam Harris Cult

Of course Sam Harris leads a kind of cult. There are many young men (Yes: men!) who hang on his every word and fight with anyone who disagrees with him. So as soon as the podcast was out, I saw reddit and blog posts with titles like, “Sam Harris Destroys Ezra Klein.” Ah, no.

In fact, I had a reasonably favorable opinion of Harris before this debate. Now I think he’s kind of a dullard who within 5 years will be a conservative and frequent guest on Fox News. And it won’t matter to his cult members, most of whom now believe themselves to be liberal.

John von Neumann

I was very tickled by something that Sam Harris said about the great mathematician (among other things) John von Neumann:

The Inferiority Argument: von Neumann Edition

What he’s getting at is that just because he thinks blacks are stupid doesn’t mean he thinks they are inferior. There are many problems with this. I figure that Harris’ IQ is something in the low genius area. And that means that even though he knows he’s no von Neumann, he’s smart. He’s a guy who people look up to. He has many fans. He’s rich. Any book he wants to write will be published.

Now compare this with a black man who is also a genius. But he’s looked down on in society. If he ever got in trouble with the law, he’d probably be lucky to have a job as a janitor. He wouldn’t get all the social perks of a white man of his intelligence.

And that’s true of black people at every intelligence level. As Ezra Klein noted, black families with $100,000 incomes live, on average, in neighborhoods where the median income is $30,000. Sam Harris ignores the question.

Charles Murray Isn’t a Scientist

Harris wants to make it all about science. But it’s not about science for Murray. But it makes Harris feel good to pretend that Murray is in the business of science. Because if he is, it means that Sam Harris lives in a meritocracy. And it means that he deserves the excellent life that he has.

Of course, Sam Harris doesn’t believe in free will (I agree with him). He got lucky! But given that luck, he deserves his wonderful life.

And for the record, I do think Sam Harris is inferior to John von Neumann. Von Neumann made the world a better place and Sam Harris is making it a worse place.

By the way, Harris used that example many times in the debate. Ezra Klein ignored it because it’s stupid.

Sam Harris Doesn’t Like Neanderthals

Another of Sam Harris’ repeated examples had to do with Neanderthals. He noted that Europeans had Neanderthal genes but that Africans did not. His point was that had it been the other way around, everyone would have freaked out. This is very strange. First, Africans do have Neanderthal genes — just less than Europeans. Second, where did he get his education abut Neanderthals? The Flintstones? Neanderthals had a larger brain to body ratio than humans, indicating that they might have been smarter. What they didn’t have were well developed parts of the brain used for communication.

Now it’s true that Neanderthals as a going concern went extinct. But humans went one person from going extinct. We are all the descendants of a single woman. As I recall, the total world populations of humans got down to less than one thousand. So the fact that humans are alive today and Neanderthal are not is a simple matter of luck.

King of the Subgeniuses

I can see why all these relatively bright but not terribly bright guys love Sam Harris. First, he’s a lot smarter than they are and so can convince them with plausible but facile arguments. Plus, he feeds their prejudices in a way that allows them to think that they aren’t prejudiced — just “rational” and “scientific.”

There is no point in listening to Sam Harris. His debate with Ezra Klein showed that he has nothing to add to the public debate. He’s actually starkly closed minded. I can see why Noam Chomsky didn’t want to debate him. Chomsky would have had to stop Harris after every sentence to correct him.

If you are a Sam Harris fan, I beg you: read some real intellectuals. Harris is a pretender.

Donald Trump hates Jeff Bezos. He’s the founder of Amazon. I hate him too. And if you ask Trump why he hates Bezos, he will give you reasons that are similar to mine. For example, he has noted that Amazon has made a lot of money by screwing state and local governments out of sales tax revenue. He also says stupid things like that Amazon is destroying the United States Postal Service, when it is, in fact he and his fellow Republicans that are destroying it. (That’s the one problem with the post office that I mentioned in the title.) But what Trump says about Jeff Bezos is roughly correct.

If there is one bright spot in having Donald Trump as president, it is that he is completely transparent. Sure, Republicans and other Trump supporters like to pretend that he’s mysterious and he isn’t doing what any reasonably objective person would know he is doing. But that doesn’t change reality. Trump may be the king of liars, but American conservatives are masters at lying — to everyone, including themselves.

Donald Trump Does Care About the Postal Service

So the real reason that Donald Trump hates Jeff Bezos is because he owns The Washington Post, and that paper has been particularly harsh to Donald Trump. (Of course, if Trump really wanted to hurt Jeff Bezos, he would have gotten a tax increase on rich people, but Trump doesn’t hate Bezos enough to harm himself. So instead we got the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which will really only make the rich richer and will likely cause job losses.) So even though what I’m about to write might seem like I agree with Trump (which I have no problem doing when it’s true), I don’t. Donald Trump doesn’t care about the United States Postal Service. If he did, he would do something to help it.

The subject came up because I read an article in Vox (I know! I read it a lot!), Trump Thinks Amazon’s Destroying the Post Office. Here’s What’s Really Happening by Jen Kirby. It bothered me, however, because there is really only one reason that the US Postal Service is losing billions of dollars every year. And Kirby spends surprisingly little time on it.

The Evil Republicans Did in the 2006 Lame Duck

If the Republican Party had no power, it would be hilarious. When the Democrats are in control of the government, but the Republicans get it back in the election, the Republicans scream that no legislation should be passed because “the people have spoken.” We even have a conservative on the Supreme Court because the media was willing to accept this argument for a whole year before a new president took over. Yet when things are reversed, the Republicans go hog wild. I’ve been very concerned that they will manage to repeal Obamacare in the lame duck period, should the Democrats take control of Congress in November.

But in 2006, when the Republicans had been destroyed, they used the lame duck period to pass a law requiring that the US Postal Service pre-fund all their retirement benefits out to 75 years. As the Vox article notes, “A Post Office Inspector General blog entry from 2015 (which, of course, has a big stake in the debate) describes the prefund arrangement like this: it’s as if your credit card company estimated you’ll spend $1 million in your lifetime, so it asked you to send them that $1 million check up front.”

Virtually no real company pays for its retirement in this way, so why make the US Postal Service? That’s simple: Republicans hate the postal service. They would like to cut it up and give it to FedEx and UPS and other shipping companies that pay them money. This was a great way for the Postal Service to look like a drag on the economy that something really had to be done about.

The Postal Service Is in the Constitution!

I know what you are thinking: but the postal service is in the Constitution. And don’t conservatives love the Constitution? Don’t they masturbate to it? Isn’t it a divinely inspired document that could never be improved upon?!

Ah, Grasshopper, you have much to learn. Most conservatives have never read a word of the Constitution. The only thing they know about it is the preamble, and then only in song form:

So the Republicans want to destroy the postal service because, given all of its limits, it does a great job. For 49¢, I can send a letter to Hawaii, Alaska, or New York — and to the farthest reaches of those states. Ask the CEO of FedEx if he wants that job. Oh, no! He just wants the lucrative routes. Leave the government to deliver all the money-losing routes.

Congress Hurts the Postal Service in Other Ways

But in addition to this pre-funding of the retirement program, the Congress also stops the postal service from doing a lot of other things. The biggest I see is acting as a limited bank. The US Postal Service could put all of these payday lenders out of business overnight. And at the same time, they wouldn’t be preying on the poor. But we can’t have that. We’ve got to let the free market work when it comes to screwing the poor.

The United States Postal Service is one of the great prides of this nation. It’s unfortunate that for conservatives and the business community, it is just a bunch of money that they can steal. But let’s face it: the way things are going, the postal service probably will be destroyed, existing only as much as the Constitution requires. And given the people on the Supreme Court, that doesn’t mean much: maybe ten people and ten horses. Remember how conservatives see the Constitution they’ve never read: it never changes. So why not horses? It will only take three months to send a letter from California to New York, and only cost a few thousand dollars.

Keep Up the Fight

But we can try. And let’s start with the only problem the US Postal Service really has: the pre-pay requirement. If the Democrats get control of Congress next year, they should pass a law getting rid of that. And who knows? Trump might even sign it! He only cares about “winning!” so why not win this way?

Now You’ve Pissed Off Grandma

Visiting the March for Our Lives

The Junior Human Rights Division is a group of local high school students and they put on a demonstration for the March for Our Lives this morning. It started at 10:00 am and went until 2:00 pm. I got there at 9:30 am and the place was already pretty crowded — perhaps 2,000 to 3,000 people.

I always feel out of touch at these things. They really have just about everything I don’t like: crowds, noise, the outdoors. But I managed to stay for half of it. There were a lot of speakers, but I can’t tell you who they were because I literally could not get to the Junior Human Rights Division tent.

But that didn’t bother me too much, given that I really have little interest in political speech. But the people at the event were very attentive. From my perspective there really isn’t anything to say. As German Lopez wrote yesterday, I’ve Covered Gun Violence for Years. The Solutions Aren’t a Big Mystery. But I don’t believe anything will change in this country, because facts don’t matter in this country.

People Care

Still, it is always nice to see people who care enough to go to these things. And the crowd was good. By about 10:30 am, I talked to a police officer and he gave me an estimate of 5,000 to 7,000 people at the event. He said it was a little smaller than the women’s march. But by the time I left, it was much more crowded. That was one of the reasons I left. It was hard to move. So based upon the early estimate, and my own relatively scientific estimate, I think we made it up to 8,000 or more. And that’s pretty amazing for a town of roughly 100,000.

I guess I don’t have much more to say, so I will present some photos. In every case I got an oral okay to show their faces. I realize that wouldn’t cover me that well. But I don’t have enough money to be worth suing. And I think all the people I shot were proud to be there.

Tony Speirs

I should, however, give you an explanation of this first photo. I saw three people with beautifully rendered drawings of what I assumed were three of the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. But by the time I got to them, one of them had slipped away. Later, I saw many others. I believe the local Democratic Party booth had all 17 surrounding their tent.

Tony Speirs is from Graton and wasn’t selling them. So far as I could tell, he gave them out to people to take to the event. I was promised that he was going to be there, but as I said, it was very crowded, and even making it to tents was a difficult matter.

There drawings are of Peter Wang (15 year-old) and Gina Montalto (14 years-old). It’s hard not to cry just looking at them.

Peter Wang and Gina Monalto by Tony Speirs

The Crowd

This was crowd as I found it a half hour before the event started. There were a lot of people who cared.

Big Crowd Before the Event Even Started

Not One More

By far the most common sign was “No One More.” I am, by nature, an optimistic person. But I’ve lived six decades in this country and I know what is possible and what is not. It was possible for Australia to fix their gun problem. But it isn’t in this country. I just don’t have the confidence in my fellow Americans. Obviously we have to fight. And I do think that eventually we will fix our problems.

But we won’t in my lifetime. Americans combine staggering ignorance and stupidity with hubris beyond anything in the Old Testament. I applaud those who can imagine a world where America will deal with its gun problem now. But I’m not one of them. When 20 grammar school children were killed at Sandy Hook, we did nothing. And although this time high school students are leading and showing all of us what must be done, in the end, I’m sure nothing will be done.

As I recall, when Ted Cruz last ran for Senate, the NRA gave him the legal limit: a few thousand dollars. But they spend $5 million on “issue” adds that were really just ads for him. You think that Ted Cruz is going to do what is right for America or what is right for Ted Cruz? If you say “America,” then stop reading right now. I’m shocked you’ve mastered phonetics.

Not One More Sign

Register to Vote

It’s been clear for a long time that if everyone voted, we would have a far better government. It’s like the jelly bean test where the average of everyone was better than the best single person. But we have a system that makes it hard for the poor to vote and easy for the rich to vote. And so we end up with this country that we have.

This sign was in the League of Women Voters booth. When I was young, I thought: why women? Now I know. Women are better than men. The League of Men Voters would tell everyone not to vote because they had it all under control. And it is the men, after all, who gave us President Donald Trump, who stands a good chance of making our species extinct. Thank the men.

League of Women Voter: Register to Vote

Teachers Not Sheriffs

This was the first picture I took. I love it so much, because it pushes back against this idea teachers should have to protect their children from gunmen. What a silly idea. Isn’t it obvious that if you are asking teachers to carry guns, there is a much bigger problem the society faces? That arming teachers will not solve the problem?

But this is America! We never approach head-on. Now we don’t blame guns; we blame the mentally ill, who are far moe likely to be shot than to shoot. But maybe the problem is that white men used to be able to have a job that gave them a sense of purpose. But that would require the rich to allow unions and allow them to share in the profits. No, no, no! What does it matter if poor children die as long as their stock portfolios expand.

Teachers are saints! Let them do what they were trained for. There are two teachers in my life who who had a profound effect on my life — who made me who I am. And they don’t even know it. And the conservatives want them to carry firearms. They’ done enough.

I Have a desgree in teaching, no marksmanship!

Summary

I don’t really like events like March for Our Lives. But they are important. And I’m so glad that people care enough to show up. I suffer from agoraphobia, but I go, because it is important. And the fact that this was organized by high school students makes me very hopeful. Maybe they are better than the Americans who came before. Because there’s a war going on. The President, and the Congress, and the NRA are on on one side. And the people are on the other.

The NRA people are crazy. They think their semi-auto riffles will save them from a drone attack on their house. When Obama became president, they bought tons of weapons because Obama was going to take them all away. And what did he do? He passed one law that gave gun owners more rights. This is always the way it is with Democrats. But the ignorant NRA members always fall for the same trick.

And who wins? The gun manufacturers. That’s because they are the people the NRA really protects. And just like cigarette manufacturers didn’t care how many people they killed as long as they made lots of money, the gun manufactures are more than willing to shoot your baby in the head while it sleeps if it means more profits for them.

How is it that the NRA members can’t see that?!

Please forgive me for my mistake! This is not the first time I’ve made this mistake. I have partial face blindness. And I really didn’t want to use that picture of her smiling at what looks like a party in an article about such a serious matter. I really appreciate your pointing out the error and I’m sorry it took me so long to fix the problem. I haven’t been to the site and it was only because of a tweet that I first found out that I had totally blown it. Although this is not even close to the dumbest thing I’ve done here. And it gets harder and harder as I have so little time to put articles together. Finally, I’m so sorry to Noor Tagouri. I will attempt to make amends to her privately. Thanks to everyone who pointed out the error!

Noor Salman is the wife of Omar Mateen, the man who killed 49 people in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016. He’s dead, so we have to find someone to punish. So why not his wife? It doesn’t matter that two other recent high-profile mass shootings also involved women who were more clearly involved. They were white women. Salman is a Muslim, and so must face decades in prison.

Omar Mateen Wasn’t Targeting Gay Clubs

The main reason this case has come to be a big deal is that Pulse is a gay nightclub. And lots of false information came out when no one knew anything that indicated that Mateen picked the nightclub because it was gay. As Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain discuss in As the Trial of Omar Mateen’s Wife Begins, New Evidence Undermines Beliefs About the Pulse Massacre, Including Motive, Mateen probably didn’t even know it was a gay nightclub.

None of his searches had anything to do with the LGBT community. He was just looking for a nightclub, and the Pulse was the first one he found that seemed vulnerable.

Development of a Narrative

This isn’t to take away from the extreme villainy of what Mateen did. But I think a big part of indicted his wife (who he brutalized) has to do with this false narrative.

We now live in a world with 24 hour a day cable news that must be fed. AIt doesn’t matter if what is reported is true. And in the case when nothing is known, it is even worse. Then some reporter’s hunch becomes news.

A gay nightclub was attacked, so it must have been an LGBT hate crime. Mateen was Muslim, so he must have been a closeted homosexual.

And before you know it, there is a narrative. And the only information that gets reported is that which fits the narrative. The media are just like the police. Only smarter. And therefore more dangerous.

Leo Frank

This whole thing has made me think about Leo Frank and what happened to him. But I’m hopeful that things will work out better for Noor Salman than for him (but I’m not sure; I’ve seen too much injustice in this country for anything close to certainty).

Now most of you probably don’t know who Leo Frank was. The only reason I know about him is because when I was a kid, I saw a made-for-television film about him. And unlike the way these things usually are, further research on my part has shown that the film was quite accurate.

Who Was Leo Frank?

Leo Frank was Jewish and raised in New York. He went to college and got a degree in mechanical engineering. Afterward, he took a job as a superintendent at a factory in Georgia.

The Murder of Mary Phagan

Everything was fine until 13-year-old Mary Phagan was found murdered. The police first suspected James Conley. He was an African American janitor at the factory. In his first affidavit, he implicated Leo Frank. But it was so bad that even the police didn’t believe it.

Coaching the Murderer

But the police helped Conley work his affidavit to the point where it would sound good to a jury. Now most modern historians believe that Conley murdered Phagan. That was, after all, what all the evidence pointed to. So you would think they would just indict him and be done with it.

There was a problem, though. Sure, Conley was black and they hated them. But he was also a southerner. He was, in his limited way, one of them. Leo Frank, on the other hand, was a Jew, which means he was hated as much as a black man. Plus, he had a college degree and a good job. And then there was the fact that he was from New York! (Although he was born in Texas.)

Antisemitic Narrative

So the police and the press engaged in an antisemitic attack on Leo Frank. He was found guilty, but never officially executed. Instead, he was kidnapped and lynched.

I’m always amazed by these lynching photos with all the proud white men standing around.[1] Ultimately, it isn’t the lynchers who are to blame but the police and the journalists who whipped them into a frenzy where they absolutely knew that this innocent man was guilty.

Noor Salman and Leo Frank

I think it should be obvious why I see a connection between Noor Salman and Leo Frank. The LGBT community is still oppressed. There are people who hate them with a furiosity that is unimaginable to you and me.

America Hates Muslims

But overall, it is nothing compared to the hatred that Americans reserve for Muslims. I think this quote from the article I mentioned above says it all:

No Justice When Only Some People Are Prosecuted

It doesn’t matter how good juries decide guilt or innocence, when someone’s religious beliefs determine whether they show up in court at all. If Noor Salman were white and her husband just a white neo-Nazi, she’d be free to get on with her life.

But they were both Muslims, and Omar Mateen is dead, so we’ve got to punish Noor Salman. And don’t think that if she’s found innocent she won’t have been punished. First, she stood the chance of spending decades (or her whole life) in jail. Second, the stress of going through such a trial is worse than anything most people in this country ever go through.

What Should Have Happened to Noor Salman

Noor Salman should be happy right now. She got rid of a husband who brutalized her. But instead, she got a whole society to continue the brutalization. And all because she is an Other. She doesn’t have the right religion. And this will hang over her head for the rest of her life if she is found not guilty. If she’s found guilty, it will be so much worse.

This is another case, in a long line of cases, where we have oppressed the weak. Look at the proud men in that lynching photo. That’s us. Today.

[1] If there is one thing life has taught me that is most important it is humility. It is that I’m quite fallible. This is an issue I deal with in my family. I come from redneck stock. And so I’m always told about this or that outrage. But I’m rarely outraged, because in pretty much every case, when I research the outrage at hand, it is far more nuanced than I’ve been told. A good example was this undocumented guy who accidentally shot that young woman here in the Bay Area. I knew from the start it wasn’t the way people were saying. This guy wasn’t a psychopath just having fun killing people. He was a person with mental problems playing around with a gun that resulted in tragic consequences. It’s sad, but not every sad story has a villain. But I know it is the thinking of my family members that leads to those proud smiling faces that gather around innocent people they just lynched. I love my family, but many of them are part of the problem.

Matthew Yglesias wrote a very good article last week, Maybe Voters Aren’t as Uninformed as Elites like to Think. It’s based on an upcoming article by Vanessa Williamson, “Public Ignorance or Elitist Jargon? Reconsidering Americans’ Overestimates of Government Waste and Foreign Aid.” And it makes an argument for an idea that a lot of us have been thinking for a long time.

The idea is that when pollsters ask Americans questions about what the government spends on various programs, the people asking the questions have different definitions than the people answering them. The best example of this is the question, “What percent of the federal budget goes to foreign aid?” The “correct answer is 1 percent or less. But Americans give much bigger numbers. They’ll say 25 percent — even 50 percent.

Foreign Aid or American Empire Maintenance?

But what is “foreign aid”? Americans believe more of their government’s propaganda than the citizens of any other peer country. Despite all the nonsense about fake news, Americans accept just about everything the media and the government say. That’s especially true when it comes to foreign affairs. Like my 85-year-old father would never believe that we go to war for any reason but to spread democracy and make people free.

Now if that were true, our entire military budget should be considered foreign aid. As of 2015, the military took 16 percent of the entire federal budget. And if you don’t count Social Security and Medicare (and I don’t think you should given they are totally different programs based on their own particular tax receipts), the military is 35% of the Federal budget.

Americans Believe Government Propaganda

So the problem isn’t that Americans are wrong about how much we spend on foreign aid. The problem is that Americans believe our government propaganda that our military is just to take care of the world. You know, the whole “World’s police force”?

The United States spends approximately as much on its military as every other country in the world combined. We have this huge military so we can keep our worldwide empire going. And that empire involves about half the countries in the world.

But the media doesn’t report our military as the main instrument of our empire. In fact, the American media won’t even admit that we do have an empire.

The New Kind of Empire

This is very much like the old line about generals always fighting the last war. Since the American empire doesn’t look like the empires of a century ago when the lead country put its own people in charge of the other countries, we can’t be an empire.

But we accomplish the same thing, just in a different way. Even the British got in on the act at the end of their empire days. In the early 1950s, the people of Iran elected Mohammad Mosaddegh. He was going to nationalize the oil industry. So the US and UK had him assassinated. The Shah was put back in power, and Democracy was outlawed. But it wasn’t a matter of Eisenhower and Churchill putting in one of their men. They just used the old despot who would do whatever they wanted. This is how modern empires work.

Americans Don’t Believe We Have an Empire

But tell me: have you ever heard anyone in the mainstream media — even liberals — talk about the American empire? Of course not. They are as brainwashed as my father is.

So you can’t go around deceiving people about what our military does, and then laugh at the people for believing you. The US government is dependent on the people believing this fairy tale. So all the people who run our great death machine should praise the people for saying that 35 percent of the federal budget goes to foreign aid. Don’t you remember the Iraq War? That was to help all those people. We didn’t spend $2+ trillion on ourselves. It was all to aid the Iraqis. It was foreign aid.