politics | The Casual Blog

January 21, 2018

Eureka! On Trump’s refusal to defend the Constitution

Sally’s orchid

I thought I’d had a eureka moment last week, when I glimpsed a rock solid case for impeaching Trump sitting in plain view. Simply put, Trump has clearly violated his oath to “support, protect, and defend the Constitution” by refusing to recognize and defend against Russia’s attacks on our elections. There may be other powerful reasons for ending this presidency that emerge out of Mueller’s and others’ investigations, but this one is here now.

But I haven’t seen a bandwagon, or even a small wagon, for this idea, and I started to wonder if I’d missed the boat. So this week I did some research to make sure there wasn’t some little known legal doctrine or evidentiary issue that might require me to issue a correction and apology to Mr. Trump. So far, I’ve seen nothing to apologize for, and discovered a bit more.

Is this this too much on Trump? Perhaps. I don’t want to worry you or myself sick. I find it therapeutic to regularly step outdoors and spend some time with the beauty of nature. A walk in the woods helps, and so does a stroll around the block, which is what I did when we had this week in Raleigh. Light, powdery snow, no good for snowballs, but pleasant to hike in, and it made the trees sparkle.

While we were snowed in, I looked closely at Sally’s new orchid (which is part of nature, though also of art) and took some pictures. I used a tripod with focusing rails to make several exposures, then figured out how to stitch them together in Photoshop. It was more complicated than I expected, but I figured it out and liked the image above.

Anyhow, my legal research turned up no authority indicating that the presidential oath means anything other than what it says, which is that the President is constitutionally obliged to protect and defend the Constitution. Free and fair elections are at the foundation of our constitutional system. It’s beyond dispute that Russia interfered with our 2016 election, and we need to defend against likely future attacks.

At sunrise by the roof top pool

This is not a Republican/Democrat issue. In fact, a bipartisan group of Senators, including Republicans Rubio, McCain, and Graham, co-sponsored a bill last week to impose sanctions on Russia for its interference with our elections and military aggression. In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, Senators Rubio and Van Hollen put the issue squarely:

While the 2016 election may have left our country divided on many issues, it exposed one critical problem that should unite all Americans: Our democratic process is vulnerable to attacks by hostile foreign powers.

As our intelligence community unanimously assessed, Russia used social media channels to influence and mislead voters. It also hacked political campaign committees and local elections boards in a brazen attempt to undermine and subvert our elections. There is no reason to think this meddling will be an isolated incident. In fact, we expect the threat will grow in future years. The United States must do everything possible to prevent these attacks in the future — and lay out the consequences well in advance of our next elections.

The sanctions proposed by this new bill seem reasonable. But the President is still declining to take action. In fact, he has repeatedly attempted to divert attention from this serious problem. Over and over, he’s called it “fake news,” a “hoax,” and a “witch hunt.” He’s praised Vladimir Putin as brilliant and a strong leader. Using Stalin’s chilling phrase, he’s called the free press the enemy of the people.

This is beyond not normal. However innocent or not innocent his motives, he’s violated his constitutional oath. We should not be tolerating this.

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January 14, 2018

What can you do when the President refuses to defend the U.S. against Russia? It’s simple.

Cold canoes at Umstead Park, January 13, 2018

“Have you heard the latest from Trump?” Sally asked as I got home on Thursday, and my heart jumped. It had been a few minutes since I’d last checked the news, so it was quite possible that I hadn’t. It’s hard to keep up with the latest startling pronouncement from the White House. Just trying can wear you out, which may be part of the idea.

Even so, I found the energy to download and read some of the new minority report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee entitled Putin’s Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for U.S. National Security. The report gives useful context for understanding how Putin is threatened by democracy, and how his regime has worked diligently to undermine it using, among other malign tools, cyberwarfare, disinformation campaigns, and military force.

The report summarizes the Kremlin’s propaganda effort as involving “four simple tactics: dismiss the critic, distort the facts, distract from the main issue, and dismay the audience. . . . [D]isinformation operations seek to challenge the concept of objective truth . . . . [to subvert] the notion of verifiable facts and casting doubt on the veracity of all information, regardless of the source . . . .” (Report at 39) The effort relies on high volume — “a firehose of falsehood” — that propagates faster than fact checkers can check. (Id. at 40)

The Kremlin’s cyber arm includes carefully organized efforts by hundreds of young Russians employed as social media trolls. In the run up to the 2016 presidential election, they were “trained on ‘the nuances of American social polemics’ . . . to set Americans against their own government: to provoke unrest and discontent.” (Report at 45) They use bot networks to quickly spread disinformation. The Kremlin’s hackers also use “doxing” — breaking into networks, stealing private information, and leaking it publicly. An example was the doxing of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election. (Id. at 46)

The Senate minority report also describes how governments in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, the Baltic states, and the Nordic states have successfully responded to Putin’s program to undermine political order. This is in contrast to the U.S., which “still does not have a coherent, comprehensive, and coordinated approach to the Kremlin’s malign influence operations, either abroad or at home. Instead, “the U.S. President continues to deny that any such threat exists . . . .” (Report at 3-4) As Senator Benjamin Cardin states in the letter of transmittal, “Never before in American history has so clear a threat to national security been so clearly ignored by a U.S. president.”

This is obviously not OK, and I checked to see if it was unconstitutional. I think it is. Article II, section 1 of the Constitution requires that the President take an oath saying “I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” This is the oath Trump took at his inauguration (before an incredible crowd, in his telling). Protecting the United States is the prime directive of the President. You might try to argue that you could protect and defend the Constitution while denying and trying to divert attention from the efforts of a hostile foreign power to undermine the government. But that would not be a persuasive argument.

It would be interesting to know for sure whether the Trump campaign worked directly with the Russians during the campaign, or intended to obstruct the investigation of such efforts. But we don’t have to know those answers to chart our course. Never mind the corruption, for the time being. Leave to one side Trump’s cluelessness, shamelessness, and titanic incompetence. Once we understand that we’re targets of serious and sustained aggression by Russia intended to weaken and undermine our country, and we know that the President denies that and refuses to defend against that aggression, that President should be removed from office. That presidential failure all by itself is a violation of his constitutional oath.

In other words, it’s not only absurd that the President claims Russia’s interference in our elections is “fake news” and efforts to investigate its actions are a “witch hunt.” It’s grounds for impeachment.

So how can a member of Congress continue in good faith to support President Trump? Political expediency and self-interest are tolerable to a point, but I think we’re well past that point. Our democracy faces a serious threat from Russia, and the President’s refusal to address that threat is a violation of his constitutional oath.

If you agree, you might call your representatives and ask them (probably via their answering machine) to focus on this problem. Here are three questions you could ask. 1. Do you support President Trump’s refusal to defend the United States from Russia’s interference in our elections and other aggression ? 2. Do you think a President who refuses to honor his constitutional oath should be allowed to continue in office? 3. Do you acknowledge your oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” and do you intend to fulfill it?

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January 7, 2018

Ereading about our bizarre President in Fire and Fury, and testing my new camera

Sally’s latest flower arrangement, and her iPad Mini

Wow, is it cold out there! Raleigh didn’t get much snow this week, but was expecting to set a new record for sustained low temps. Instead of my usual Saturday walk in one of our forests, I hunkered down and worked on getting to know my new camera, and took some pictures from and around our apartment.

As I mentioned last week, due to a late night mental fog I left my iPad on an airplane, and asked the American Airlines bot to please find and return it. It has not done so so far, and I’m not feeling optimistic. It would be hard at this point to lower my expectations as to customer service from AA, so I’ll just note that they’re staying extremely low. AA bot, if you’re reading this, I promise to post an appreciative remark if you return my device.

That iPad was my primary ereader, but fortunately, I also had my current books on my larger iPad pro. I got the larger device primarily to use for downloading and reading piano music, since the larger size is helpful in reading two or more staffs covered with many notes. The big one doesn’t feel as comfortable sitting on my lap, but it certainly works.

It was an exciting week in epublishing, with the best-selling release of Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff, a whiz bang account of Trump’s first year. Jocelyn, working in ebook production at Macmillan, was part of the team that got the book out on an accelerated schedule after Trump’s lawyers sent a threatening letter. She texted me a heads up that this could be big, and after reading the published excerpts, I agreed.

You might suppose, as I did at first, that we really don’t need to read a book about Trump, since we’ve read so much, and he really is not complicated. But even for those of us who follow Trump reporting closely, there is just too much to fully take in. All those oddities, shocks, and outrages form a constant and seemingly endless barrage.

Instead of facts and logic, he emanates juvenile absurdities. It’s hard to engage his “ideas” with ordinary rationality, and so we have a lot of extreme emotions, from fear, to rage, and sometimes helpless laughter. Our heads have been getting slammed hard, like football players badly overmatched, and we have trouble getting oriented and making sense of it all.

Anyhow, I downloaded the ebook of Fire and Fury and started it yesterday. Sally, with her iPad Mini, turned out to be reading it, too. Jocelyn and Kyle, and no doubt many thousands of others, are doing the same. The right-wing propaganda apparatus is desperate to undermine Wolff, and I don’t count them out, since they’re really good at what they do.

But I expect that the book will help a lot of people who have been giving Trump a benefit of a doubt to see that that was a mistake. And perhaps the powerful politicians who, with full understanding of his unbelievable and dangerous incompetence, have supported Trump will be shamed into changing course.

These pictures were taken with my new Nikon D850. It’s a recently released FX digital camera with some remarkable capacities, like a large sensor with 45.7 megapixels, shooting at 7 frames per second, and ISO up to 25,600. These specs suggested a long step forward in photographic potential, so I stopped in at B&H in New York in early November to test the beast. I liked the ergonomics, and proposed to buy one. They kindly said they wished they could help me, but could not. It was on backorder for the foreseeable future. The same turned out to be true for Peace Camera, my friendly local camera shop.

On our balcony, a cold sunset

I finally got the D850 this week. From first impressions, the image quality is fantastic, and it has many helpful conveniences, like a large viewfinder and a vivid touch screen that folds out. It can also be operated remotely with a smartphone. It’s a complex tool and I expected a substantial learning curve, but happily, most of the controls and system menus are organized like my trusty Nikon D7100, so it’s not overwhelming. The only negative I’ve found so far is no surprise: it’s noticeably bigger and heavier than the D7100. A silver lining: it will make me keep working on my upper body strength.

Rebuilding after the big fire

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December 10, 2017

Our sexism comes out, and the campaign to stop the Trump investigation boots up

At the edge of the marsh near the Elizabeth River

Early Friday morning, I completed my hundredth spin class at Flywheel. I did not meet my goal of 300 points (285), but I made it in in the top three, and I certainly got my heart rate well elevated (low 160s). Afterwards I drove over to O2 gym for some upper body resistance work and stretching. Then I came home and fixed a green smoothie for breakfast, this time with orange juice, almond milk, kale, banana, baby carrots, celery, and blueberries. That’s a lot of health in one glass, and it was also tasty.

I’m exercising to feel good and increase the chances that I’ll still be here when Donald Trump is gone. It helps my mood, which needs all the help it can get these days. In particular, the recent flood of stories of powerful men sexually harassing women is depressing. It suggests our problem is a lot worse than I thought, and we may well have not hit bottom yet.

It’s no surprise that some percentage of males are dangerous sexual predators, and that there’s a larger percentage prone to crossing the line. What’s new is the level of tolerance for such behavior. Last year almost half the population voted for a presidential candidate who bragged on tape about sexual assault. Now a candidate in Alabama with a well documented record of molesting young teenage girls and lying about it stands a good chance of being elected to the United States Senate.

I formerly assumed that we all — Republican, Democrat, or other — would agree that it is beyond the pale for middle-aged men to sexually assault fourteen-year-old girls. That is, there are plenty of close questions when it comes to the boundary areas of sex, but there are some, like that one, that I thought were beyond debate. But apparently not.

What does this mean? I think we’re seeing something that has been right in front of our noses all our lives but seldom noticed. That is, we have a system in which women formally have equal rights, but in certain respects are regarded as unworthy. In the US, we allow women to vote, attend school, work, and wear what they want. But we also systematically pay them less, give them less authority, and accept as normal that they’ll be subject to some degree of sexual misconduct.

Ferguson and Black Lives Matter began a wrenching process that exposed a hidden strain of racism. Similarly, the disgusting and illegal behavior of Trump, Weinstein, Moore, and others may be the start of a process that shines the light on our entrenched sexism. We may expand the dialogue and expand the population that considers and treats women as fully human, and get to the point that nothing less will be tolerated.

I hope so. Meanwhile, I’m worried by the new effort to discredit and undermine the investigation of Russia’s interference in the last presidential election. The evidence of Russian assistance to the Trump campaign is already extensive, and the evidence of ties between Trump’s top aides and the Russians is growing. Now, as the plot thickens, Robert Mueller and the FBI are being accused of being partisan hacks out to get the President for no good reason.

This campaign of slime is being led by Trump, Fox, and several Republican Congressmen. There’s a good Washington Post piece on this by Paul Waldman here. There’s also an account of the House Judiciary Committee’s work along this line here.

I was sufficiently astonished by this idea that I decided to get out of my own bubble and watch, for the first time ever, an hour of Fox News.

So we saw Sean Hannity’s show on Thursday night, and it was both better and worse than expected. Hannity and his guests are very skilled at weaving together uncontested facts with unfounded speculation and outright falsehoods so that they’re hard to distinguish. The people are well-dressed and look serious and intelligent, and they all agree with each other on their key points.

Thus several people at once will assent verbally and non-verbally to a proposition like “Hillary is the real criminal.” They repeat their basic points over and over, but with enough variations that it isn’t completely obvious. Unless you bring to the table a body of background knowledge, you might not notice the leaps in their reasoning, or the lack of any supporting evidence.

So if you were to get all your news from Hannity, you might well believe that Trump is basically a good guy doing his level best and being unfairly thwarted by evil liberals. And you might end up thinking that there’s no reason to worry about Russia taking over our political process. At the same time, you might not be much concerned about electing sexual predators to high office.

Hannity and Fox are really good at big lie propaganda. Ordinary journalists can’t counter them as long as they are constrained by honesty and actual facts. Reality based reporting doesn’t always fit neatly with our prejudices, and it just isn’t as exciting.

Despite the effectiveness of Fox and Hannity, Trump’s poll numbers continue to sink. I was heartened to read last week that his support among evangelical Christians had dropped by 17 percent since February. Maybe it’s a trend.

I took these pictures last weekend when we visited my brother in the Virginia Beach area. We got out on the Intercostal Waterway and did some kayaking. The water was smooth and peaceful.

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August 20, 2017

Is it OK if our President supports neo-Nazis?

Dragonfly near Booth Amphitheater, Cary, NC, August 19, 2017

Last week it seemed like we might be ready to start a serious conversation about how to get out of our nuclear predicament, while we worried about a possible war with North Korea. Now that all seems long ago. Those hopes and worries were preempted by news feeds of marching, chanting, menacing neo-Nazis.

Of course, we always knew there were such people, but we understood that they were a small minority that posed little risk beyond being disgusting and offensive. Then the President announced that he thought neo-Nazis were OK, or at least no worse than the people opposing the neo-Nazis. The neo-Nazis were enraptured.

If you haven’t already watched the short Vice News documentary on this, you should. It brings home that these guys are real, and scary. They are not ashamed of their racism; they’re proud of it. And they are definitely not non-violent.

What is the matter with these people? There was an interesting interview on NPR last week with Christian Picciolini, who was a neo-Nazi leader as a young man. He eventually renounced the movement and founded a group to work for peace and help young people looking to get out of such groups.

In his view, all people seek three things: identity, community, and a sense of purpose. Hate groups are good at providing these. The young men who are vulnerable to being recruited by such groups generally have an underlying issue, such as psychological difficulties, or past trauma or abuse.

We can all hope that these guys get their issues addressed, but in the meantime, let’s not be encouraging them to act out! They could so easily get out of control. It is despicable that the President has knowingly inspired them.

On a related subject, what to do about confederate memorial sculptures, Trump’s commentary (suggesting they’re comparable to statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) is ill-informed, but raises interesting issues. These founding fathers were indeed slave owners, and that doesn’t fit well with our tradition of venerating them. As I’ve learned more about them and their time, I’ve found my admiration for their courage and intelligence tempered by disgust for their willing participation in the slave system.

But, obviously, individuals are complicated, and history even more so. As to the confederacy memorial statues, I didn’t learn until this past week that most if not all of those currently being discussed do not date from the generation that experienced the Civil War. Rather, these statues were put up decades later, well into the shameful era of the Jim Crow, when blacks were suppressed by law, custom, and mob violence. Those statues were not put up as reminders of beloved fallen ancestors, but rather to terrorize and subjugate living black Americans.

Maybe on the race issue, the debacle of Trump will ultimately do some good, by highlighting history that we might have preferred to forget and forcing us to grapple with unresolved problems of prejudice and inequality. But in the meantime, we need to get past Trump. He still has fervent supporters, including some who are not committed racists or otherwise crazy. For them, perhaps this latest outrage will bring home that he is a national disgrace and morally unfit to be president.

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August 6, 2017

The anti-Scout, and Dunkirk

Great blue heron at Apex Community Park, August 5, 2017

Being a Boy Scout was never cool, but I look back on my Scouting days with gratitude. It was good to go camping with friends and learn to paddle a canoe. In fact, I learned a lot of little skills that could someday come in handy, like first aid, basket weaving, and wood carving.

As a grown up, I’ve had issues with some of the Scouting lessons, like uncritical obedience, and I’ve been disappointed when Scouting’s leadership has been intolerant of minorities. But I’ve always valued the core lessons of integrity, decency, and caring for others.

And so I was dismayed when Trump addressed the Boy Scouts at the annual national jamboree. The surprise was not the content, since his once shocking dishonesty, ignorance, and vulgarity are now depressingly familiar. Rather, it’s hard to see how any responsible adult would think it appropriate to put Trump in front of Scouts. Trump is the anti-Scout, with a lifetime record of the exact opposite of Scouting ideals — not trustworthy, not loyal, not helpful, not kind, etc.

It looked like Trump had a good time giving the campaign-type speech. Perhaps his handlers and the Scouts viewed the performance as less likely to do harm than letting him sit around tweeting out attacks on the press and unexpected major policy changes. Maybe in the aftermath some Scouts and others will examine more deeply Scouting values, and their relation to political life.

Bravery of the heroic sort is not something one sees often in ordinary life, but it does exist. I was reminded of this when we saw Dunkirk this weekend. The movie was stunning. It managed to communicate some of the terror of warfare, like the possibility of dying at any moment from bombing and artillery, and the reality of death. But there were inspiring moments, like the bravery of the small boat crews and the fighter pilots. When the last fighter plane ran out of gas, I got a little misty.

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July 16, 2017

Dragonflies, On Tyranny, and the strange reverence for Putin

A dragonfly at Apex Community Park

On Saturday morning I had to drive out to Apex for a haircut with Ann, who’s been cutting my hair ever since we lived there. I asked Sally if she had any good ideas for nearby places to hike and look for dragonflies, and she suggested the reservoir at Apex Community Park. I spent an hour and a half there before my haircut, and took these pictures. It was quite hot and muggy, and with my 180 mm lens and tripod, I managed to work up a considerable sweat, as Ann noted.

This week I read On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder’s latest book. Snyder, a history professor at Yale, has a deep knowledge of the authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century, and perspectives on how they bring civic life to an end. He points up that these developments have been the product of many individual choices, including choices to quietly compromise, let go of moral principles, obey orders, and submit. His book is short and unsystematic, but full of sparky insights and practical advice on opposing authoritarianism.

Do we need such advice? Yes. I’d been starting to think once again that Trump was more a disturbed clownish bumbler than a genuine threat to our democracy. But even after several months of failures, embarrassments, and scandals, he’s still popular with conservative Republicans (90 percent of them approve, according to one poll last week), which is making me wonder.

I felt a cold chill when I read in the NY Times yesterday that there’s a prominent branch of conservative Republicans that are aligned with Trump in admiring Vladimir Putin. The Times cited several high-profile ideologues like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, and Pat Buchanan as viewing Putin as the kind of leader it would be nice to have here. Apparently they admire his “Christian” values (such as criminalizing homosexuality) and manly aura, and aren’t much bothered by his murdering of opponents, military invasions of neighbors, looting of his own country, or his subverting of elections here and elsewhere. I somehow had missed that this point of view existed, and found it shocking.

Snyder’s book shows how the personal is related to the political: authoritarian systems invade the personal realm and then undermine it. Accordingly, there is a political aspect to maintaining personal integrity and ordinary human relationships. Eye contact, smiles, and small talk have a deeper meaning and value when the government is unleashing attacks on minorities or suppressing dissent. Part of resisting is maintaining human contact.

Snyder observes that constant grandiose lying is a common thread of the successful authoritarian regimes in Germany, Russia, and elsewhere. But we now have a related problem never seen before: the internet echo chamber, filled with bots, which create and amplify illusions, and make it hard to distinguish true from false. The very concept of truth is at risk. For some, facts seem to be irrelevant. It is both ironic and scary that Trump and his minions have repurposed the term “fake news” to mean news they dislike. Part of resisting is serious reading, evaluating evidence, and applying reason.

Of course, it’s still possible that our institutions will work as intended and our traditional liberties will survive without permanent damage. The recent demonstrations of the weaknesses in our systems could teach us some lessons, and we might even emerge stronger and wiser. But it’s a good idea to do some contingency planning and worst case modeling. We may need all of our courage.

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February 12, 2017

Losing things, and joining a protest

Protest march in downtown Raleigh, February 11, 2017

It’s been almost 3 hours since I last lost something, which is a slightly sad thing to be pleased about. Lately my little things — car keys, access cards, reading glasses, my tablet device, my phone — have gone missing more than usual. I find them eventually, but the interval between losing and finding is tense and uncomfortable. It could be early onset Alzheimer’s, but I suspect the cause is Trump. With his non-stop boasting and lying, his cluelessness on every vital issue, his shameful targeting of minorities, and his general shamelessness, he’s got me spinning and oscillating with amazement, laughter, and fear. That could be what’s impairing my brain.

It may be no coincidence that I’m seeing more references to losing things. I’ve heard multiple citations recently to the famous Elizabeth Bishop poem One Art (“The art of losing isn’t hard to master.”), which is worth rereading. And there’s a beautiful, lively, and touching piece by Kathryn Schultz in the current New Yorker entitled Losing Streak. She writes of her personal losses of little things (wallets, bike locks), and big ones (her car, her father). Schultz comes up with some fun facts: the average person misplaces up to 9 objects per day, and in a lifetime will spend 6 months looking for lost things. She identifies some of the possible causes — your spouse, aliens, wormholes.

The only disappointment was that she didn’t zero in on Trump. But a new piece by David Frum in the Atlantic tends to confirm his potential for making us all losers, wondering what became of our democracy. Frum points up a critical difference between previous varieties of fascism and Trumpism: Trump doesn’t need to stop holding elections, shut down the press, and murder political opponents to achieve his primary objective: enriching himself. Modern kleptocracies grow by fostering cynicism and apathy. Corruption could become ordinary and expected here, as is already has in many countries. A possible future is the end of the rule of law.

Frum ends on a hopeful note by encouraging us to all get in touch with our Congressmen and Senators and support good laws. He seems to be of the view that resistance is not futile. That’s where I am, too. Even if it is futile, the alternative is worse.

Apropos, on Saturday morning I went to a protest in downtown Raleigh– the HKonJ and Moral March organized by the NAACP with some 200 other groups. Fayetteville Street was packed for several blocks with many thousands of people.

Being in big noisy crowds is not comfortable for me, but that said, it was a cheery noise, and a truly diverse crowd. There were signs for Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ rights, gun control, reproductive rights, immigrant rights, living wages, health care rights, civil rights, and animal rights, among many others. There were signs against The Wall, the immigration ban, HB2, voter suppression, Tweeting, and intolerance, among many others. There are so many things that need resisting that it’s hard to stay determined and focused, but we’ve got to get started.

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February 5, 2017

Dance photos, octopus minds, and engineering Islamophobia

Dress rehearsal for Petit Ballet Romantique

I took a photography lesson this week from Ted Salamone at a dress rehearsal of the Carolina Ballet. The lighting conditions were challenging, and at first I felt well out of my depth. It took some pressurized experimenting with ISO and shutter speed to get anything to work. Ted gave me some great tips, and the dancers were beautiful and inspiring.

I just finished reading Other Minds: the Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, by Peter Godfrey-Smith. Godfrey-Smith is a diver as well as a philosopher who has spent a lot of time watching cephalopods. As he notes, octopuses are aliens to us, about as far removed in evolutionary terms as possible.

Yet they have abilities and behaviors that merit the word intelligence. Their shape-shifting and camouflaging abilities are astonishing, of course, but they also solve problems and exhibit curiosity and affection. Godfrey-Smith connects them, and us, to the great journey of evolution, and to a better understanding of the nature of consciousness. There’s a good review here. l

Trying to understand non-human intelligence eventually leads to the question, how well do we understand ourselves? The question came into focus in a new way for me this week, when I read of polls indicating that a more Americans favored Trump’s new anti-Muslim measures than opposed them. I like to think of my neighbors and fellow citizens as mostly kind, compassionate, and tolerant, and mostly willing to help others in need. I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the possible alternative.

When Franklin Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” I think he meant that fear was a powerful force that could undermine us, but also that it could be overcome. The new President has a different message: the world is very scary and we need to be more fearful.

And that message seems to be having an effect. Of course, humans have always been wary of those who are different. But other forces usually counterbalance those feelings, like curiosity, generosity, and love. We seem to be losing our balance.

Dress rehearsal for The Little Mermaid

Is Trump’s demonization of Muslims a deliberate strategy? At first it just seems arbitrary and bizarre. But Amanda Taub wrote a worthwhile piece in the NY Times this week that suggested a possible method in the madness.

Taub points up that authoritarian politicians often exploit fears by targeting a politically powerless minority and creating an us-versus-them mentality. By creating artificial enemies and claiming to be protecting against them, they may increase their popularity and power. Unless such leaders are checked, they tend to expand the list of targets and dial up the level of violence.

Of course, we have a governmental system with certain institutional checks and balances. Are they strong enough? We’ll find out.

Dress rehearsal for The Little Mermaid

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January 29, 2017

Resisting the torrent of lies

Lake Mattamuskeet

This has been a Black Mirror week, starting as seeming comedy and then becoming terrifying. It’s been discombobulating to hear a President of the United States issue a nonstop barrage of falsehoods and shameless lies. It’s hard to know how to react to the proliferating falsehoods with no connection to reality, and lies so transparent they hardly seem intended to deceive.

It’s not that I’m a truth and honesty absolutist. The border areas of truth are sometimes fuzzy, and most of us sometimes bend it about a bit. But most of us recognize honesty as a core value, and truth as a meaningful ideal. People known to show no concern for truth or to intentionally deceive with lies are not ordinarily given positions of trust and authority. They are regarded with suspicion and contempt.

So we’re in unknown territory, and it’s hard to get your bearings. Do some people actually believe the Administration’s outrageous falsehoods? Perhaps supporters regard them more as pleasing and harmless works of fiction. This would be understandable, but unwise. As pleasant as it may be to disconnect from reality, there are life and death problems that must be addressed.

A great egret

Part of what’s frightening here is the sheer quantity of the falsehoods and lies. They’ve been coming in a torrent. Before we’ve processed one, there’s another, and then another. You’d hope that such constant lying would lead quickly to a loss of credibility and effectiveness.

But the torrent is exhausting. Trying to unpack all the lies takes too much time. There is no craft in these lies, no careful calculation of how to conceal reality, so they can be generated very quickly. It takes much longer to fact check them than to make them. So we can’t catch up. And it’s exhausting to try. The effort takes lots of brainpower, and leaves us with not enough time or energy to think deeply about real problems. It gets harder to think critically. Our brains get muddled.

It could be a brilliantly evil strategy to subjugate us, though more likely, there is no strategy. Either way, it’s dangerous. We could easily find ourselves losing our bearings, more and more confused, less and less sure of our facts and our values, depleted, disheartened, and unable to resist.

Tundra swans

So, we’ll need fortification as we prepare for the resistance. I’m trying to stay healthy and looking out for old and new sources of strength and wisdom. For me, friends, books, and music help. In these dark times, I particularly treasure encounters with generous spirits.

Apropos, this week I listened to an interview of Maria Popova on the podcast On Being hosted by Christa Tippett. Popova (pronounced pa-POE-va) is the creator of BrainPickings, where she shares thoughts on her wide-ranging reading. I don’t find all of her subjects equally interesting, but she’s amazingly curious, creative, and thoughtful — full of ideas and reflections. She also seemed like a person with a really good heart.

This week I’m departing from my usual custom of posting my favorite photographs from the previous week. Instead, these are ones I took a couple of weeks ago iat Lake Mattamuskeet and nearby areas in eastern N.C. As I’ve learned more about how to make a digital image sing with Lightroom and Photoshop, my standards for considering an image adequately finished have risen, and it takes more time to get there.

If you enjoy nature photography, you might like 500px.com. It’s a site where professional photographers and skilled enthusiasts use the site to share amazing images from all over the planet. I’ve been spending more time there lately just looking, quietly absorbed and getting inspired.

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Category: politics