The husband of devoted Trump aide and supporter Kellyanne Conway knows exactly how this latest mass murder atrocity will play out when it comes to Trump’s response.

1. Trump will go on TV and give a speech. On paper, the speech may say some of the right things. It will look somewhat presidential. There’s an off chance it might even be good (grading on a curve).
2. But the problem will be that it was given by Trump, who’s incapable of sincere empathy. So it’ll be hard to believe that he believes the words he said. And his speech won’t address his own hateful, racist rhetoric.
3. So he’ll be roundly criticized for that. And he’ll also be criticized on policy grounds, because whatever he says on that score will not suffice for many people.
4. He’ll see and hear all this criticism on TV, and he’ll stew. And stew. He’ll grow angry and resentful that he was forced to give the speech in the first place.
5. Finally, perhaps within 24 or 48 hours, the narcissistic pressure will break the dam, and his anger and frustration will gush forward.
6. He’ll tweet, otherwise say, or do something that’ll completely undo whatever positive benefit came from the speech.
7. We’ve seen this movie before how many times?

Conway is right. Trump obviously does not care at all about the victims of his inciting rhetoric. He will only care about how people are so ungrateful for not fawning over his obviously phony gestures of sympathy.

How can the leaders of two nations who are both inveterate and known liars and backstabbers negotiate a workable deal? It is hard to make a deal if you think the other party will renege on it at the first opportunity, even to the extent of not honoring any commitment that they themselves publicly make in the negotiations.

We may soon find out.

New British prime minister Boris Johnson has been described as dissembling, dishonest, dark, and duplicitous, qualities that he shares with Donald Trump. So while there may well be a genuine ‘special relationship’ between the two of them as individuals, I am curious about how they will arrive at deals since neither party can be trusted an inch to negotiate in good faith.
[Read more…]

We have two separate back-to-back mass shootings to contend with. One in El Paso, Texas where 20 people were killed and more than two dozen injured and the shooter has been captured. The other in Dayton, Ohio where nine people plus the shooter were killed and another 26 injured. The killers both used rapid-fire assault weapons that enabled them to reach this high toll in just minutes.
[Read more…]

In my post yesterday, I quoted Michael Moore saying that nowadays 70% of the working class consists largely of women, people of color, and people between the ages of 18-35. He seemed to equate ‘working class’ with lower income workers. In a comment drken said, ” I always thought “working class” meant middle and lower-middle class people. They don’t have a lot of money, but they’re not impoverished.”

It is clear that there is no unanimity regarding the terminology to use since there are three factors that are being considered and they cut across each other: income level, nature of work, and attitude. When it comes to income classes, one can quantify the levels in terms of quintiles. Starting with lower income class, one goes up to lower middle, then middle, then upper middle, to finally upper income class. But the other two categories are not that easy to discriminate between.
[Read more…]

Politicians love to talk about how they support the working class, the people who are seen as the backbone of any nation, the ones who keep things going. But if one has a mental image of the working class, it might be that of a middle-aged, white man working in a factory or on a farm who is in the middle-income bracket, definitely not wealthy but not poor either. It is this demographic that is much sought after by politicians, and it is their supposed steady defection from the Democratic party to the Republicans, a process accelerated by Donald Trump, that is blamed for Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016.
[Read more…]

Via Aeon I came across this fascinating excerpt of a conversation held in 1971 between these two highly influential thinkers about social and political power structures and what we might seek to achieve through them.

From the Aeon description of the exchange:

In 1971, Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault met at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands for their first and only debate. Produced by the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation as a part of their International Philosophers Project, the programme featured discussions with eminent thinkers on the topic of ‘human nature and ideal society’. In recent years, their debate – the fourth and final of the series – has been somewhat overshadowed by events surrounding it. Namely, it’s rumoured that the programme’s host, the Dutch philosopher Fons Elders, paid Foucault for his appearance in hashish, and repeatedly encouraged him to put on a bright red wig to spice up the proceedings.

However, the debate itself – seen here excerpted and translated by the YouTube channel Philosophy Overdose – has appeal beyond the pleasures of watching the provocative Foucault spar with the professorial Chomsky. With the Vietnam War near its height, Chomsky and Foucault agree that contemporary power structures need to be attacked and dismantled. However, while Chomsky advocates for a system of ‘anarcho-syndicalism’ rooted in justice, sympathy and human creativity, Foucault argues that these concepts are products of the same bourgeois system that needs replacing. Probing age-old philosophical questions as well as the politics of the moment, the interview offers a revealing glimpse of the divergent styles, attitudes and outlooks of two enduringly influential thinkers.

When I was scanning the news headlines after the first night of the Democratic debate, I was surprised to see several mention Marianne Williamson as having done something noteworthy, apparently by saying that Donald Trump could not be defeated by wonky policy proposals because he can harness dark psychic forces or something. She had a similar moment after the first round of debates last month. Of course, since she eschews policy wonkiness in general and is apparently some kind of spiritual guru, this psychic forces terrain is something that she would relish campaigning on.
[Read more…]

Once again, I did not have time to watch the second night of the Democratic primary debate. To be quite honest, there was really nobody on the stage last night that I was particularly interested in, except for Julian Castro whom I’d like to learn more about. The top three in the polls of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker tend to leave me cold. I see them all as party establishment candidates, with Biden and Harris having very problematic records as well, while it is not clear exactly what Booker stands for. Booker strikes me as a charismatic, highly skilled and ambitious politician but one who will be too willing to accommodate powerful interests.
[Read more…]