Social Darwinism

In a country gone nuts, providing facts is as effective as bailing a boat with a salad fork. Nevertheless, patriotism and decades of doctoring compel me to try.

What spurred this particular holler into the wind was learning of anti-vaxers who need blood transfusions, demanding they come from unvaccinated donors. Because, you know, human embryonic cells. Or microchips. Or altered DNA. Turn them into "mutants," Alex Jones warns.

Because they care about humanity, people who donate blood are likely to be vaccinated. When I’ve ordered transfusions, the victims were usually mid-exsanguination. “Ten units,” I’d order. “O-negative, stat!!” No preference-polls taken. Also, blood is scarce nationwide. Would they rather die? They’ve said so, vaccine-wise. So, good luck. 

It’s true that development of the Covid-19 vaccines employed a fetal stem cell line, used in research around the world ever since it was cultured in the Netherlands. In 1973. It’s unclear whether that line came from one of countless abortions induced by God – aka “miscarriages” -- or by doctors. More importantly, whereas the vaccines’ safety was initially tested utilizing cells from that venerable line, their production neither uses nor contains them.

Or microchips. And, as anyone with eighth-grade science education knows (this may exclude people who were taught science in certain red states, or here whose parents convinced them to disbelieve), there’s absolutely no way vaccines alter recipients’ genetic material. Zero. Zip. Nil. Nada. None. Convinced? Dumb question number one.

Refusers do, of course, expect all the benefits of their rejected medical science when they get sick. Imagine that.

After five decades toiling in operating rooms, wearing masks for hours, I attest to their safety. It’s our global adversaries and Trumpists (difference?) who, wanting to divide us, spread the lies. Who would equate demanding common sense and common purpose with oppression? Pal Putin, for one. And Trumpublican leaders, and Trump, and rightwing media inciters, all of whom require a steady supply of enraged followers.

Which they have, in a decades-old, in-house-designed, carefully-maintained line of medical-strength, unquestioningly malleable adult humans. Sharing characteristics with that half-century-old embryonic cell line: Lab-tested; reliable; behaviorally predictable. Only the latter, though, was intended to benefit humanity.

Nikki Haley, once and future Trumpublican star, just injected more pretense into the body politic. About President Biden pressuring the Taliban to not interfere with departing US citizens and Afghans who’d helped them, she opined: “Negotiating with the Taliban is like dealing with the devil.” Inexplicably, she didn’t burst into flames.

What a brazen example of expecting stupidity. Trump “negotiated” (stretching the definition) with them bigly, gave them everything, bragging all the way. Pressured Pakistan to free the imprisoned criminal who may become Afghanistan’s new leader; forced the Afghan government to release five-thousand more, now among the takers-over. Got empty promises in return. As with his other favorite tyrants, he still praises them. Does ex-ambassador Haley believe Trumpists are that ignorant? (Me: no comment.)

As he fantasizes “presidency” 2.0, the last thing Trump wants is President Biden succeeding in anything, including the pandemic. So effective was his previous dissembling that, when he half-heartedly suggested vaccination to Alabama rally-goers last week, they booed. They’ll continue dying. Even after ingesting deworming cow paste, which, helplessly Trumpofoxified, they trust over vaccines.

To the same end, Trump continues shoveling his big election lie. Which, even after witnessing the feathery explosion of Pillow Mike’s promised, irrefutable, reinstatement-inflicting evidence, the cult fervently believes. In a country gone nuts.

Across the land and here in Snohomish County, parents storm schools in anti-mask anger, physically attacking teachers, pulling off their masks, hurling racial insults, threatening more violence. Made to believe deliberate falsehoods, from which they’ll never extract themselves. Uncaring who gets infected, including themselves and their children.

It’s conceivable they don’t intend to become killers. Without question, though, some will. The kindest explanation is endless Foxotrumpian lies, leaving them defenseless. Otherwise, it’s that they’re dangerously dim. Or, worse, that they’re inherently malicious.

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott, anti-mask hero and pandemic down-player, became infected after meeting unmasked (but vaccinated) with a covey of wealthy, unmasked, Texatrumpic donors. Evidently afraid of dying, he started taking Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment, indications for which rarely include people who, like him, are asymptomatic. “I will downplay the seriousness for thee,” says he, “But not for me.”

Trump and Abbott: anti-abortion (Trump, only recently, because…), anti-fetal stem cell research, taking Regeneron’s antibodies. Which – surprise! -- was developed using the very same embryonic stem cells as the vaccines.

Feel silly yet, anti-vaxer/anti-maskers? Used? Deceived? Manipulated? Dumb questions two through five. 

Clearly, they’ve been implanted with ignorance-inducing microchips.

Choice/No Choice

 

If the light-speed collapse of Afghanistan proves anything, it’s that, from day two, our involvement was a predestined failure. It did, however, make weapons manufacturers, Afghan “officials,” and warlords rich; and goosed the opium and meth industries. 

Any president would have retaliated after 9/11. Bush chose invasion. Alternatives are hard to conjure, so probably all others would have, too. Severe economic sanctions on the birthplace, funders, and protectors of al Qaeda, namely Saudi Arabia, would have made sense, had we not been addicted to their oil, nor our politicians to their cash. Only one legislator, California’s Barbara Lee, foresaw the inevitable and voted against the war.

And it was inevitable. Not for nothing, across centuries, has Afghanistan been considered the graveyard of empires. With its neighbors looking the other way or aiding the Taliban, “winning” from half a world away was exceptionalistic, neo-con hubris.

Had Rumsfeld not let bin Laden escape when they had him in Tora Bora, the US could have claimed “Mission Accomplished” and left. Maybe then, basking in victory, Bush’s Iraq invasion – and the lies behind it -- wouldn’t have occurred. But invade we did. If the die wasn’t already cast in Kabul, it was then.

Maybe if Carter and Reagan hadn’t armed and trained the mujahedeen to fight the Soviets, creating what became the Taliban, 9/11 plotters wouldn’t have had safe haven. But some say when those jihadis forced the Russians out, the end of the USSR began. So, worth it?

Twenty years, thousands of American lives, a couple trillion dollars better spent here, by Bush, Obama, Trump, and, briefly, Biden, claiming we’d created an uncorrupted, viable government there. Building, equipping (now in Taliban hands), training an army, 300,000 strong. (Far fewer, probably: audits found many more salaries paid, by the US, than identifiable people.) 

Desperate to be the one who ended the war, Trump “negotiated” an art-of-the-deal with the Taliban, committing the US to complete withdrawal, leaving out of it the Afghan government and military leaders, who called it a complete capitulation.

Declaring the Taliban future partners who’d fight terrorism, who’d magically become good guys, Trump set a date certain for leaving, bragging it couldn’t be undone. Immediately, the Taliban knew Afghanistan was theirs, and set about taking it, village by village, bribe by bribe, defection by defection, months ago. 

The final sweep confirms the one-sidedness of Trump’s “deal.” His usually fawning GOP would now like you to forget what he did. 

President Biden had two choices: after twenty years, acknowledge the obvious; or commit forever to defending a people no longer willing to defend the corrupt government we’d given them. Aware, surely, it could cost future elections, he made the tougher choice; the one previous presidents promised but never delivered.

Having planted my stake firmly in favor of pulling up stakes, I must say President Biden handled the denouement very badly. It’s understandable to have presumed that, twenty years in, our custom-built Afghan government and military would at least forestall, if not prevent collapse. But didn’t they know what the Taliban were doing? Had they no eyes in villages?

Evacuating our civilians and thousands of theirs who’d helped us at great personal peril should have had the highest priority. Chaotically, frightfully, it’s happening now. Hopefully, not too late.

Biden’s Monday speech was forthright; explaining his decision, taking responsibility for mistakes. Was it a compelling counter to hypocritical, CYA (see above) screams from the right? Does a bear use public restrooms?

Facing Republican gerrymandering, voter suppression, brilliantly effective distraction and disinformation, Democrats can’t afford mistakes. They’re already fighting amongst themselves instead of producing a coherent, resonating message.

If ever messaging should be easy, it’s now. Republican leaders and refusers are wholly responsible for the resurgent pandemic, uncaringly making it worse, even as their ICUs fill with younger and younger victims. Outside hospitals, corpse-cooling trailers have reappeared.

They’re pretending the January insurrection was a pleasant winter picnic, and – the law and order party – claiming the arrested, felonious perpetrators are “political prisoners.” Heroes. Trump all but literally called for violence against the defenders. Only the irredeemably Trumpofoxified aren’t appalled. 

Fast as they can, they’re legislating voting obstacles for non-Trumpists. Threatening election workers. Blocking aid to Americans in need. And still, while heatstroke kills, fires rage, glaciers melt, electric grids fail, acidifying oceans rise, sea creatures die, and water from the Colorado River is rationed, denying climate change. All to keep wealthy investors and corporate polluters on board. At whatever cost to everyone else.

Professionally-thickened skulls are impenetrable. For America to endure, in people and parchment, thoughtful citizens must vote in enormous numbers: the antipode of a sure thing. Maybe we should invade Grenada again. 

Death At Death's Door

           [Take your pic pick. Couldn't decide.]

A doctor friend working in a Texas hospital foretells rationing ventilators, as Covid-19 patients overrun their ICUs. Who, he asks, should be denied? Vaccination refusers? Other than being partially-innocent victims of well-organized lying, their primacy on the rejection list is compelling. The brainwashed don’t know they’re brainwashed, but, as ubiquitous evidence makes persisting ignorance indefensible, sympathy wanes.

They sent a Covid patient to North Dakota for care. Needing a ventilator for non-Covid illness, another Texan had to be airlifted 150 miles; prior to which he required approval by a team husbanding the scarce resources. It’s Sarah Palin’s death panels, incarnate; necessitated by people made unable to process information. Unlike the stuff of her disordered mind, this is real. Texas’ Trumpicly irresponsible governor now begs smarter states to send help.

Why it’s happening is obvious. Trump’s pandemic ignorance and lies and inattention showed Republican leaders a winning strategy: To keep people distracted from their pre-failed economic agenda, and sending money, make it about “freedom,” or “communism.” Or, a perfect exemplar of effective disinformation, believing “Critical Race Theory” is taught in K-12 schools. Hint: It isn’t.

“Unmasked, Unmuzzled, Unvaccinated, Unafraid,” say their T-shirts. Translation: “Uninformed, Uneducated, Unreachable, Uncaring.” “I do my own research” – a claim that refutes itself. 

So successful is it that, dismissing massive contrary documentation, Trumpublicans still believe vaccines and masks are ineffective and/or dangerous; liberal “wokeness” signifiers. Had Trump, Trumpophile governors, and their media heroes urged their victims to pitch in, as Americans amidst crises always have, this Delta-variant siege wouldn’t have happened. Viruses spread -- and mutate -- among the unvaccinated. Deeming it acceptable collateral damage, Trump’s party has become a killer party. Why? Consider who benefits.

As their media stars pound rare breakthrough cases among the vaccinated, widespread deaths and deathbed regrets of anti-vaxers are ignored. Consumers only of Trump-approved news sources may have missed these data from the CDC, current as of July 31:

Of the 164m fully vaccinated in the U.S., 99.9% have NOT tested positive for Covid-19. Breakthrough cases represent .077%. Hospitalized: .004%. Died: .001%.

In contrast, 99% of those hospitalized and/or dying of Covid-19 are unvaccinated. A Florida church just lost six parishioners in ten days; four under thirty-five. Previously healthy. Unvaccinated.

Given those numbers, who of right mind refuses vaccination and masks? Trumpists. Among whom, because of disturbingly easy and successful mass deception, it appears no right minds remain. Killing thousands, manipulated and abandoned, for the most cynical of reasons: payola for bankrollers.

For decades, having nothing else to offer, Republicans created a human variant disinterested in truth; not changing course even as their voters are endangered. Only in a killer party could that be considered leadership.

On fawning media, Trump blames President Biden for the resurgence. Unlike Trump, he made vaccination widely available, fast, and urged it. Biden’s fault, says Trump, while his blinded flock refuse vaccination and masks, enabling Delta’s rise.

What hope is there for a county in which millions of such zombified people exist? (Bad analogy. They’re not eating brains, they’re offering their own to their leaders for lunch.) Evidence, mounting hourly, is ignored. And, no: evolving recommendations don’t validate their disbelief. It’s science: seeking and remaining open to new information. Why has that become “conservative” anathema?

Proving the point is a quote for our times, forced from lungs filling with Covid-19, spoken by a 31-year-old man in Branson, MO: “I was strongly against getting the vaccine,” Barker said through labored breathing. “Just because we’re a strong conservative family.” That’s Trumpofoxification in the mortifying flesh. What Trumpian acolytes have done is criminal. Murder most literal.

That poor guy is a victim of Trumpism. This one isn’t: a smug, bullying, attention-seeking, taxi-driving avatar for all of Trumpworld, who refuses masked or vaccinated passengers. Patriotic. Heroic.

For needed karmic relief, Texas Republicans provide: Covid-19 has derailed (temporarily, no doubt) their determination to suppress Democratic votes; the only way they can keep winning.

There are much worse and deadlier issues, though: Whereas the pandemic might end up killing only a million or two Americans, the latest IPCC report shows climate change on a trajectory to kill far more.

Unlike his pandemic dereliction, Trump’s climate denial isn’t wholly responsible. But he and his party did less than nothing about it: deregulating, dissembling, deceiving. Departing accords. All for fossil-fuel money. And to “stick it to the libs.” If that’s both murderous and suicidal, their reactionary inaction on climate change is pan-humanity genocidal.

Unconvinced by heatwaves, drought, acidifying oceans, dying reefs, wildfires, starvation, dried-up rivers and reservoirs, melting glaciers and methane-spewing tundra, Trumpists continue to laugh it off.

Against such radical resistance to reality, what can thoughtful citizens, actual patriots, do? Minimize energy use. Make it green as possible. And, since Trumpists are irretrievably uneducable, stop electing them. Until Texas, et. red, make that impossible, too.

The Enemy Next Door (not the movie)

Yes, I will be taking a break, but this is too good to pass up, a local example of fake news extruded onto the internet by people too lazy or ill-equipped to recognize it. Or purposefully. In any case, this one involves me.

Perhaps the reader is aware of the information-exchange website, “Nextdoor.” It’s nationwide, with regional subsets of local groups (“Everett Conservatives,” in this case) and neighborhoods, like “Nextdoor Boulevard.” A better name would be “Nextdoor Nosy,” as there’s a surfeit of complaints about loud cars, unkempt yards, teenagers, dogs, and warnings of people walking funny.

A few days ago, I was sent screenshots from a thread on the site, asking for my thoughts. It was approximately hilarious, but definitely sad. Not for myself, but for what passes for information on right-wing sites nowadays. 

Informant Jan writes, “You can google Sid Schwab and you’ll arrive at a writeup written by him. [She surmises.] He entitles himself as Doctor Schwab. He claims he received his surgery training in San Francisco but doesn’t name the institution… Then practiced for five years in Salem. Where in Salem? … 20 more years at the Everett Clinic. As what? He also said he was a flight surgeon in Vietnam during the war. How does he confirm that? … I think the Herald should vet his credentials.”

Co-conspirator Amanda chimes in: “I think I just watched his story a few days ago. A really bad doctor who maimed and killed his patients. I really did just watch a documentary that sounds a lot like this guy.”

To which Jan replied, “Amanda, I’m going to write the Herald re this creep. Think you should, also.” Then, “The Herald did not publish my letter re Sid Schwab… I will not renew The Herald.”

“Creep” was a nice detail.

There followed input from a lady who’d actually looked into it – something the outrageously outraged had chosen not to; placing, it must be assumed, righteous indignation above truth. The nicer lady posted easily-found documentation and verifications, which seems to have brought the “discussion” to a close.

Lacking admission to “Everett Conservatives,” I'd guess there were posts that preceded what was sent to me. Whatever documentary rattled around between Amanda’s ears can’t have “sounded like” what Jan said, if that’s where the deliberations began. It didn’t seem especially creepy, nor had she cited maiming and killing, the avoidance of which I’ve always considered kind of a personal credo.

The point is not to argue I am who I am, or to suggest I’m not a creep, because, well, the definition is admittedly squishy. It’s to point out how easy it is for online ill-wishers and/or the uninformed to spread falsehoods, deceive those lacking critical minds, trash reputations, and, tragically, propel narcissistic incompetents into high office.

Brewing in a “conservative” coven, it’s probable the exchange arose from enough intellectual residua to have secerned my subtle misgivings about Trump. Likely, it went no further, but it’s instructive nevertheless. Someone saw something she assumed was written by me (the publicist for my book, more likely) which didn’t include the address of UCSF or The Salem Clinic, or proof I served in Vietnam. Therefore, suspect. Also, I was born in Kenya.

A co-conspirator saw a “documentary,” which she concluded was about me. Really? Was the subject unnamed? Had he been in SF, Salem, and Everett? Otherwise, we must conclude not all bulbs in Amanda’s chandelier are LED.

Charitably, I’ll assume it wasn’t deliberate dishonesty, but just the lazy credulity Russian and other foreign entities count on when they plant their pro-Trump propaganda. 

Which is perfect fodder for homegrown grift, too, like Trump’s calls for “stop the steal” donations and scammers selling suckers overpriced “Freedom Phones.” 

And it mirrors what people who value truth are up against: a malignant mélange of mendacity, gullibility, sloth, and skillfully-cultivated inability to recognize falsehood. Or preference for it. Especially if it supports inaccurate beliefs that are more comfortable than accepting hard reality.

Whether I lied about Vietnam (wanna see my DD214 or Purple Heart Medal, Jan? Email your address and I’ll drop by) or being a doctor (I’ll bring my degrees, too), is minuscule solanum tuberosums compared to whether the election was stolen, climate change and Covid-19 are real, or Trump is a sociopathic liar. But, on a smaller scale, it validates the confidence of those who, capitalizing on strategically-produced right-wing ignorance, spread misinformation to the willing, to maintain power and wealth while hurting the very people they’ve deceived into voting for them. 

It’s hard to see a way out of it.

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They're Nuts. CPAC confirms.

CPAC. Once a year, it allows us to witness, compressed and packaged, the degeneration of a formerly rational political party. Lucky us: twice, this year. Time was, the acronym stood for “Conservative Political Action Conference.” Now, it’s gotta be “Christians Perverting Actual Christianity.” What a lineup of lies, victimhood, ignorance and hate. Hate for their fellow humans; for the poor and needy, for immigrants, for teaching and truth. Everything, in other words, the Bible tells us Jesus loved. Died for, briefly.

Perfectly presenting the direction their party is headed – namely, electing and showcasing nasty, dishonest, uninformed, anti-democracy, pro-autocracy, conspiratorial demagogues -- it’s more sorrowful every year. Attendees actually cheered for low vaccination rates among Republicans. “It’s horrifying,” said Dr. Fauci. “I mean, they are cheering about someone saying that it’s a good thing for people not to try and save their lives!”

New guy Madison Cawthorn, whose preexisting dishonesty, like Trump’s, first time around, didn’t keep him from being elected, warned that the next step from bringing vaccinations to homes is coming for your guns and Bibles. This is a party bereft of ideas. Not to mention morality. It’s no exaggeration: they delight in death in order to “stick it to the libs.” 

It’s even worse than that. They cheered for ending every pro-life program our government provides. This, the party of “pro-life,” which they wave like Trump flags, shout it louder than “lock her up.” Their pretense that they’re protectors of life ends when it’s those no longer enwombed. Excepting the already wealthy.

Attendees were also treated to a 7-point plan to restore Trump to office, immediately. Among others, it included getting the Congressional Black Caucus to switch to the party that would like them never to vote; that welcomed racist Proud Boys and Three-percenters to their ghoulish gathering. Cogent.

This berserk zeitgeist is who and what they’ve become. How they got there is a complicated story, the result of decades of deliberate disinformation meant to endumb and divide. The why, though, is simple.   

Okay. Stop. This is pretty bad writing, right? Hyperbolic. Purple. I admit it. The thing is, the continuing rise of Trumpism is making me increasingly incoherent. And perpetually depressed. Seeing America crumble before my eyes; witnessing one so-called conservative after another, people so far beyond redemption, so demonstrably against everything for which America once stood, get up and spew their reality-averse vitriol to a cheering crowd, is becoming psychically intolerable. And it shows.

I’ve tried to tell myself, well, these are just the lunatic fringe. But they’re not. Trumpism – by which I mean making lies central to the message, absent anything positive but full of voter suppression, science denial, and selfishness – is now the uncontested mainstream of today’s Republicanism. 

Commanded by the most dishonest, divisive, and delusional “president” this country has seen, whom they can only have elected not in spite of but because of those attributes, they’re culling any member who stood for democracy in the aftermath of the most scrutinized and confirmed election, ever.

And, while feigning outrage at so-called “cancel culture,” they’re systematically canceling the history of America: from learning why we amended flawed founding documents to acknowledging what happened on January 6, and what caused it.

Lacking a positive agenda, they’re counting on riding a hyped-up, cynically-created culture war to victory. Said Jim Banks, R-Indiana, the “backlash against Critical Race Theory is real … We are in a culture war … we are winning.” 

Till now, America had tended to improve itself by acknowledging and repairing its flaws; so what Republicans are doing is worse than Stalinism. Stalin did his gaslighting without Fox “news” and Rush-like radio talkers. And CPAC.

The people cheering at CPAC are forever lost to rationality. Their disdain for democracy is irreversible. They’re the culmination of a long-term project to stupefy millions of people, based on the recognition that for a top-heavy, unpopular agenda to prevail in a democracy, voters need to be made ignorant. CPAC proves its effectiveness. Tennessee confirms.

Better writers than me, with far wider audiences, are making no difference. Polls show Republicans remain steadfast in their delusions, about the election, about Trump, about climate change and vaccines, about poverty, about education. Evidently, we’re at the point where carefully-crafted ignorance becomes indelible. No columnist can change it. 

America could save itself by outvoting idiocy. But that’s like bailing a boat with no bottom: red states are attacking education and voting rights faster than efforts to stop it. Trumpists would only awaken, if at all, when they comprehend the damage being done to them and our country, by cynical manipulators. By then, it’d be too late. I think it already is. I need a break. Again. 

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Break From Politics. Almost.

Soccer. I was barely aware of it until college, where I watched a game for the first time; mainly because “we” were playing Harvard, which featured a legendary player named Chris Ohiri. Somehow, I’d heard of him, even though I knew approximately nothing about the sport.

Ohiri had come to Harvard from Nigeria, where he’d been a record-breaking decathlete and an Olympic soccer star. As a freshman, he’d scored thirty-six goals in nine games, which, now something of a soccer aficionado, I find all but unthinkable. In his three years on the varsity squad he scored forty-seven.

The game I saw was perhaps the only one in which he didn’t, because we had a player whose speed matched his and whose only job was to dog him. Chris said after the game that our guy, Larry, was the best American he’d played against. I played rugby with Larry, who’d often run to the sidelines to suck on a cigarette and quaff a beer before rejoining the game. It was a club sport. Further comparisons to follow.

(Checking on Ohiri for this column, I discovered that shortly after graduation, then enrolled in Harvard Business School, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and went home to Nigeria to die. Because the ruling government saw his returning-hero status as a threat, he was arrested on arrival, and died in custody.)

I came to appreciate soccer when our son took it up, eventually becoming a striker on a championship select team. I knew I qualified as a fan when they attended an invitational tournament in B.C. Having been on call the night before, I’d missed their match against the Canadian U-17 national team. A dad told me it was the best they’d ever seen: a 0 – 0, or, as we like to say, nil - nil tie. Only true fans can say that about that.

I bring this up because I’ve been binge-watching Euro Championship and Copa America games. At its best, soccer is, indeed, “the beautiful game.” The skills required are, not to sound creepy, unnatural. For example, the first time our son received a kicked-off football, in middle school, he ran it back for a touchdown. Running with an air-filled, ovoid leather-like sack tucked under one’s arm is natural. Same with tossing a spherical object through a circular ring. Not everyone can, but our bodies are designed for it.

Dribbling with one’s feet at full speed, however, maintaining control while making balletic moves around opponents, able to fire off an accurate shot, wasn’t engineered into the blueprints. Nor was precision-controlling a ball flying at you from afar. With a shoe, not a glove.

Also, soccer is ridiculous. Because it’s very hard to score, a team can dominate play in all ways and still lose, by virtue of one sort of fluke or another. It’s not rare. Worse is that the higher up the professional ladder you go, the more the players are inclined to fake injuries, to extract a penalty call from the referee. Hurl themselves to the ground, theatrically; flail as in the agonal throes of death, though touched in the most innoxious of ways.

In my rugby days, there were no substitutions. Contact was full, forceful, and free of padding. If a player went down, it was likely for the count, helped or carried off the field, leaving his team to play a man down. Or two. Or three. Otherwise, we soldiered on, bleeding into bandages, bones poking through skin (if memory serves).

By contrast, footy-fakers pound the ground in unbearable pain, roll like British cheese-chasers, waiting for the referee’s call. If none is forthcoming, they bounce up, limp once or twice for effect, and resume playing. It’s a medical miracle, really. Homeopathic, almost. 

These rules could make the game less annoying:

1. If a player rolls more than once, he (women don’t flop) must leave the pitch for five minutes per roll, with no substitutions allowed. 

2. Players may pound the ground twice. Each additional whack triggers two minutes off the field. If the player pops right up, the minutes are doubled.

3. Faked damaged limbs will be quick-dry casted for the remainder of the game.

4. Political candidates must explain corner kicks, penalty kicks, and the off-sides rule; any that votes to prohibit teaching about racism may never use the term “cancel culture.”

5. While watching replays of consecutive nil-nil soccer games nonstop for twenty-four hours, people who believe Trump will return as “president” in August must locate the Constitution’s Reinstatement Clause and speak in public to explain it.

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Under The Hoax Dome

Hoax enough for ya? In Seattle, workers watered roads that were buckling in the hoax. Because their cables were over-hoaxing, Portland’s trolleys were shut down. Olympic trials in Eugene paused as athletes succumbed to hoax-stroke. For those of us fortunate enough to have air-conditioning, going outside was like walking into a solid wall of hoax.

If it was hoaxer than Hell around here, there’s some good news on another front: The hoaxcines have been hugely effective against the coronahoax. Numbers of new cases in our state have dropped dramatically. Here and across America, 99% of people now dying from the hoaxus are unhoaxinated. And, because so many of us have understood the need and the science, those who still refuse the hoaxine because of Hox “news” are increasingly unlikely to fall ill. “See?” they’ll say. “Told you so.”

Also, we’ve learned the January 6 hoaxurrection wasn’t orchestrated by Antifa or BLM or AOC after all. It was the FBI. Ask Trump’s rally-goers.  

Seriously, foax: why are Republican leaders so committed to making and keeping their voters stupid? That they’re doing so and are surpassingly good at it is uncontroversial. And whereas it’s not hard to understand why they do it, what’s shocking is how easy it’s been. To wit: Critical Race Theory. Letters to the editor bemoaning the “fact” that it’s taught in our schools. That’s high-class, low-information, full-frontal Hoaxification.

The question answers itself. Republican leaders need stupid voters in order to regain and retain power. Smart people wouldn’t let them. Why? Because that party has become devoid of ideas, other than tax cuts to keep their bankrollers wealthy, even as it means ignoring America’s most dire needs. Because only stupid people stand by while, in order to win elections in the absence of helpful policy, Republicans surgically neuter democracy in states it controls. Only stupid people continue to believe, undeterred by overwhelming contrary evidence, that such measures are justified, because the last election was “stolen.”

It’s not smart people who’ve put #ucker Carlson at the top of cable “news” and kept him there, even after he called the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “stupid” and a “pig” for saying well-informed troops are more effective. Ante-upper Laura Ingraham, #ucker’s ovarian equivalent, called for defunding the military, while Matt Gaetz did the same for the FBI. Makes “defund the police” – admittedly the most stupid and self-destructive meme up with which the liberal fringe has ever come – seem almost charming, doesn’t it?

But let’s leave calling people “stupid” to #ucker. Henceforth, we’ll substitute “uneducated” and “misinformed.” The point is that educated, well-informed people understand the deathly danger of climate change. They see that ignoring it any longer is beyond irresponsible. And Republican leaders understand dealing with it would mean they couldn’t sustain the unbalanced tax structure that keeps their donors happy. They understand that most of their voters, fed the right propaganda, can be made resentful enough of changing demographics to vote their way no matter what else is at stake – even when it’s life itself. Education, then, is their gravest enemy, to be attacked unrelentingly.

So they dredged up “Critical Race Theory,” a fifty-year-old legal/academic concept, taught mainly in law schools, proposing that race is a social construct, and that America’s justice system doesn’t deal fairly with racial issues. Ask a generic Trumpist, they’ll say it’s taught in grade schools, to make all kids hate America and white ones hate themselves. How stu… sorry … misinformed. 

Should children know American history? Does it include racism? Can we learn from it? Might that make America better? Only st… oops … uneducated people would argue otherwise.

Trumpists conflate CRT with teaching children to be empathetic and to recognize unfairness where it exists; which, unlike CRT, is taught, and should be. Except in Texas, Florida, and, soon, all red states. PACs have even been created to get Trumpists on school boards, to keep teachers from discussing racism. Perhaps they’ll explain why they shouldn’t. And why banning it isn’t the “cancel culture” they’re encouraged to rage about.

Having supported an actual hoax while in office, the former one-term president’s Attorney General now confirms he and other advisers knew Trump’s election claims were bullstuff. He said Mitch McConnell asked him to call it out, because he, Mitch, couldn’t. Because to win Georgia they needed to keep voters st… dang! … misinformed. McConnell corroborated Barr’s statement. 

Which ought, finally, to help Trumpists recognize what’s being done to them, and why; and, for their own self-respect and our country’s future, to work to become better informed, rather than staying, well … stupid.

#ucker Carlson, FBI, And Italian Gates

"Unindicted co-conspirators." Makes a person think. If by "think" one means "completely mischaracterize the concept." When used in a DOJ report on January's insurrection, it made Tucker Carlson "think" of the FBI. "Incredible bombshell," he called it. After which, several Republican loonies in Congress gobbled it up like orange wedges at a kids' soccer match.

To Tucker “Starts-with-T-but-there-are-alternatives” Carlson, the term could only mean Trump’s anti-American insurrection was an FBI operation. To people able to maintain contact with reality, though, it more likely refers to seditionists who laid plans but for which there’s currently inadequate evidence to indict; or to those who stoked anger to murderous levels on the morning of. Mo Brooks, Rudy Giuliani, Ted Cruz, for examples. And, of course, the outvoted “president.” That’s how Nixon was described, after all, back when gates stopped being just things that open and close.

To rationalize their anti-democracy voter suppression laws (because fair elections would doom them, R senators just blocked even discussion, much less a vote, on the For the People Act), Republicans must keep alive the myth of massive election fraud. To keep the lie Trumpophilically credible, they’re morphing the murderous insurrection it engendered into something innocent; or created by deep-state agents, or liberals; or which never happened at all.

What other explanation is there for the Republican representatives who voted against honoring the capitol police? If they didn’t honor them, it didn’t happen. If it didn’t happen, there’s no complicity for those peddling Trump’s big lie.

As to Tucker, they come for the conspiracies and stay for the lies. Who doubts that millions of the Trumpofoxified are buying his FBI connivance, after he repeated it, repeatedly?

Which raises an interesting question: if Tucker’s like-mindless Congress-dwellers believe his deep state confabulation, why vote against a commission to investigate? Wouldn’t they ride the wave of revealed, awful truth to perpetual power? To which the answer can only be, they don’t.

What they do believe, then, is that Trumpublicans can be convinced of anything; so they keep them hot, bothered, ignorant of, and distracted from their real, deep six agenda. By what evidence can anyone say they’re wrong?

They’re not. One needs no more proof than “ItalyGate,” their most recent gate swinging off its hinges, pushed, among others, by a woman sitting for an interview while squatting, unknown to the owner, in a thirty-million-dollar mansion she claimed was hers. Not far enough off, though, to prevent Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, from asking the DOJ to look into it.

Because who wouldn’t believe an Italian defense contractor collaborated with the US Embassy in Rome, to beam advanced (alien?) satellite technology into voting machines, stealing millions of Trump votes. Totally real. Real as hacking into machines that aren’t online. From outer space. Real as Jewish space lasers combusting California’s forests. 

But not as real as how close Trump brought us to losing it all. Because behind the noise, the deliberate drum of disinformation dispersed by devious deceivers, are disturbing details. Whether getting the Department of Justice to spy on members of Congress and reporters and even his own people, or pressuring it to find non-existent election fraud, he did his best to make the DOJ and, it’s being reported, even the FCC, his personal investigatory and punishment agencies. Like the KGB, Stasi, Gestapo, and OVRA, used by the dictators he so admires to keep their subjects in line and living in fear.

How close? Attorney General Barr willingly mischaracterized the Mueller Report, squelched prosecutorial investigations into Trump’s criminality, resumed the domestic data-gathering at which even Jeff Sessions had finally balked, and let Trump’s criminal enablers, like Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, off the hook. But lying about manifestly absent election fraud was evidently an abridgment too far, even for him, despite his prior eagerness to politicize his department. After failing to confirm Trump’s big lie, he was gone. His successor, pressured by Trump to appoint special counsels to find it, slow-walked it. That close.

As Trumpists keep believing conspiracies egested by their favorite fabulists, and as unscrupulous pushers of them keep getting elected, there are ever fewer people on the right with the integrity and rationality required to protect the Republic. No matter how long he’s been “gone,” Trump’s treachery lives on. Thanks in no small part to Tucker’s anti-American, self-enriching shtick, Vladimir Putin polls higher than President Biden among Trumpists.

First, Russia had Trump. Now it’s Carlson. As he and his believers tear down America, in the Kremlin it’s high fives all around. We're left to wonder if #ucker is in on it.

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God And Mitch (maybe not in that order)

On Monday, Mitch McConnell unlimbered himself of the following bit of oracular wisdom: "I think it's highly unlikely — in fact, no, I don't think either party, if it were different from the president, would confirm a Supreme Court nominee in the middle of an election." He should know. In a rational world, his picture would appear in every dictionary in every language of every country on Earth, next to their word for “hypocrite.”

I’m told there are differences of opinion on the existence or nature of a creator of this universe; and, if there is such an entity, whether he/she/it/they resemble the God of the Bible or any of the thousand or so other gods and godettes in which people believe around the world. I’m not about to weigh in on the matter; however, there’s one compelling piece of evidence against the Judeo-Christian version: Mitch McConnell has not yet been rendered into ash by a bolt of lightning. Not even as he uttered those words. It’s not dispositive, but it does make a person think.

For Mitch, politics is a zero-sum game. Any lie, any eye-popping example of unabashed hypocrisy, any full reversal of a previous declaration is justified in service of his only goal: preservation of power. What’s best for our country is of no importance. If he has his way – and, with the help of Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, he most likely will – President Biden and Democrats won’t be able to pass any significant legislation of benefit even to his own constituents. No matter if – or, maybe, especially BECAUSE – a significant majority of Americans want it enacted.

If there’s any philosophical consistency to Mitch’s behavior and that of his party, it’s unwavering commitment to preventing a Democrat-led government from succeeding. In the states, it’s preventing a Democrat-led government from happening at all, no matter by what margin Democrats outnumber Republicans within their borders. Because, generally speaking, what comes from Democrats has always been good for the majority of Americans: child labor laws, workplace safety, health care, Social Security, and, were they to get their way, laws protecting equality of the franchise and rebuilding infrastructure.

The list is longer. Much longer than what Republicans have produced, ever since Saint Ronnie told us government is the problem. Were enough people to come to realize it, and if it came to pass that they understood what Trumpublicanism (even before Trump) has prevented or taken from them, voters would relegate that party to a historical anomaly.

So confident are Mitch and other leading lights the Republican Party of their success in befuddling and distracting their voters that they feel free to demean their greatest enemy: democracy itself. Openly. That's where we are: today’s Republicans, as far from their origins and historical icons as they could possibly be, are actively denouncing democracy while doing everything they can to eliminate its most sacrosanct protector; namely, fair elections.

Too strong? Here’s Senator Mike Lee of Utah, Tweetle-deeing: “Democracy isn't the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are. We want the human condition to flourish. [Really? Then how about some healthcare and anti-climate change legislation? How about helping people in poverty to flourish?] Rank democracy can thwart that.” RANK?? What does that even mean? Functioning? One in which the majority prevails?

Yep. Exactly. We know that because, not long after, along came Tweetle-dumb: “The idea of democracy and majority rule really is what goes against our history and what the country stands for.” Doctor (how embarrassing!) Rand Paul. Is who had that to say. And more: "The Jim Crow laws came out of democracy. That's what you get when a majority ignores the rights of others." It doesn’t get wronger than that. Like the voter suppression laws sprouting in red states like MAGA hats and Q flags, Jim Crow legislation was an attack on democracy, its absolute opposite, springing from fear of – what shall we call them? – RANK elections. Just more obvious and clumsy than modern efforts to protect monotone against a rising and inevitable tide of polychrome.

Much smarter and far more subtle than Trump, and still in power, Mitch McConnell understands the future of his party depends on finding ways to keep the “wrong” people from voting, and to keep “his” people from accepting the results when the majority prevails. He knows his efforts, and those of red state leaders, to disenfranchise citizens who hold the power to run them out of office will eventually find their way to the Supreme Court.

Which makes the reasons for that statement, above, as clear as those patches of empty lawn on the National Mall, January 20, 2017. 

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Meating Of The Minds

Not all Trumpublicans are brainwashed. Some are the ones doing it. It’s a question of which came first, the chicken or a horse of a different color.

Many scientific studies have confirmed that liberals and conservatives process information differently: reactions to tense situations; response to facts that disprove beliefs; which parts of the brain light up on scans when seeing stressful images. Consistently, they show that liberals tend to respond more rationally, more evidence-based.

Published in “Science Advances,” titled “Conservatives’ susceptibility to political misperceptions,” the latest such study summarizes, in part, thus: “… Results confirm that conservatives … perform worse at distinguishing truth and falsehoods. This is partially explained by the fact that the most widely shared falsehoods tend to promote conservative positions, while corresponding truths typically favor liberals…” [think climate change, election fraud, adenochrome, vaccines, “fake” vs. fake, BLM.]

Only hardcore science and statistics nerds will plow through it. Even more improbable is that people who should see it, will; much less give it serious consideration. But, by methods careful and transparent, the findings are well-supported. Given the unabashed preference for spreading and receiving falsehoods that characterize today’s Republican Party, tightly bound to Trumpism, the findings aren’t unexpected. It’s doubtful they’re remediable. Which makes trying for “bipartisanship” a fool’s game. 

An intriguing enigma remains: is this democracy-threatening dupability the cause or effect of nonstop disinformation? Did the decades-ago founding purveyors of it, like Gingrich aping Goebbels, deliberately create gullibility by bombarding their followers with so much untruth that they became unable to distinguish it? Or, like Karl Rove, did they recognize the preexisting defect in certain conservatives’ judgment, then exploit it for power and wealth?

Maybe it doesn’t matter. But if this blindness is connate, not created, reversal is fantasy. Either way, with deception being prevalent for so long, enlightenment seems unobtainable. Weirdly, the optimistic view is that what we’re witnessing, namely the majority of Republicans believing Trump’s election lies and other laughable but unfunny falsehoods, sprang from intentional manipulation by unscrupulous, democracy-rejecting, lower-sphincter-adjacents. At least that would suggest the possibility of rehabilitation.

Among other doubtful occurrences, though, it’d require old-school, honest conservatives regaining ascendency in their party. It’d require more Republicans (and two pudding-brained senatorial DINOs) choosing country over clout. And it’d require enough Trumpists to recognize that every piece of legislation beneficial to them is being blocked by the powers behind their own party. Which, in turn, would mean overcoming their mysterious inability to discern lies. Not likely. 

For today's Republican leadership, still prostrate before Trump, afraid of the radicalized, conspiracy-believing base they so painstakingly created, there’s too much at stake to let it happen. Because they have no positive agenda, and, given Trump’s failures, particularly with but not limited to his response to Covid-19, they’re determined to change the subject, by manipulating the aforementioned vulnerability. The insurrection wasn’t. Or was liberals in disguise. Or, as described with a knowing smirk by “President” Putin, to whom Trump consistently kowtowed, the insurrectionists were simply “making political requests” for which they’re being unjustly prosecuted. Right. Putin, Trump, Fox, OAN, and Newsmax.

Because a party without policy needs diversionary scapegoats, Dr. Fauci is their latest Hillary Clinton. He, not Trump, bears responsibility for America’s nearly six-hundred-thousand pandemic deaths. Waving the fascist playbook like Trump’s Lafayette Square Bible, Junior Trump joked about murdering him. Trump himself said there’s worse coming. Let’s not only forget Trump’s lies and inattention, his mismanagement, his mockery of people who cared. Let’s also erase his pulling CDC experts out of China before the pandemic, as part of his ineffective “tough on China” posturing.  

Another example: Because President Biden’s rescue plan actually decreased economic stress and food insecurity by forty percent, Republicans have supporters focusing on people still not working. How can such unquestioning acceptance of misdirection be overcome? 

Resurrecting his “Shower Me with Adulation” claimbakes for the wool-eyed, Trump, when not lying about the man who defeated him sound and certified, teleprompted these words last weekend: “The survival of America depends on our ability to elect Republicans at every level, starting with the midterms next year.”

He’s right. If, by “America,” he means the country where not all citizens have equal access to voting. Where the needs and political preferences of the majority are quashed. Where the means of escape from poverty are repeatedly blocked, lest taxes be raised on people who never experienced it and don’t care. Where lies are truth and the mysterious inability to divine the difference is explicitly employed, by their leaders and media stars, to benefit the wealthy few who control Trump’s Republican party. 

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Prepping For The Final Exam

Pop Quiz. No time limit. Links to answers attached to each question. For purposes of self-assessment, don’t look before answering. Fair warning to Trumpic and/or Foxified Republicans: Have adult beverages handy, for you risk the shock of factuality by following the links. If none other, at least follow the first one. PLEASE. And may enlightenment shine upon you and bring you peace.

(Note for blog-readers only: you probably already know what's at the links, but click anyway. Some, you might find amusing. Also, the Herald version is moving to Fridays, I'm told.)

1. Intentionally creating distrust in elections by repeatedly lying about non-existent fraud, then forcing laws to “restore trust,” is an unprecedented, existentially dangerous attack on democracy. From within. Discuss. (Link)

2. Define Critical Race Theory. Explain its origins. Indicate where it’s being taught and where it’s not. Write a paragraph to refute its central tenets. (Link)(Link)

3. What is the 1619 Project? Explain its origins. Indicate where it’s being taught and where it’s not. Write a paragraph to refute its central tenets. (Link)(Link) 

4. Define communism. Give examples of where, in its pure form, it’s ever been implemented in a country. Have any countries referred to themselves as communist when, in fact, by strict definition, they weren’t? Do any official policies of the Democratic Party fit the definition? Which ones? Be specific. (Link)

5. Define pure socialism. Have any countries referred to themselves as socialist when, in fact, by strict definition, they weren’t? Do any policies of the Democratic Party fit the definition? Which ones? Be specific. (Link)

6. Define Democratic Socialism. (You may refer to it as Social Democracy.) Give examples of countries whose governance currently fits the definition. Is there a spectrum? If so, does the US belong somewhere along it? Compare happiness indexes and poverty levels. (Link)

7. In Social Democracies, government programs that provide education, health, and economic security for citizens, especially the workforce, enhance and strengthen capitalism. Refute. (Link)

8. True or false: In a fairly constituted democratic republic, the minority of voters should have a voice but the majority should prevail. Defend your answer. (Link)

9. Does gerrymandering, which allows a party to control state legislatures while receiving fewer votes than the opposition, lead to fair public policy? Is it consistent with the fundamentals of our democracy? Why or why not? (Link)

10. If an insurrection occurs in a democracy, successful or not, the intent of which is to overthrow a constitutionally certified, multiply-recounted and adjudicated election, and which results in deaths and destruction within the nation’s hallowed Capitol and which overtly threatens the lives of legislators of both parties, should the roots and carrying out of that insurrection be investigated? Why or why not? (Link)

11. If one party blocks a bipartisan investigatory commission, the composition of which included all the demands of that party and mirrors the framework of the 9/11 commission, is it fair to conclude they wish to hide self-incriminating facts from the American people? (Link)

12. If the Senate leader of that party demands his colleagues block it “as a personal favor,” what’s the “personal” part? What constituents does he fear? Do they reflect the opinion of most Americans regarding an investigation? Show your work. (Link) 

13. Discuss: The filibuster leads to bipartisanship. Give examples from recent years. If sixty to seventy percent of Americans favor certain legislation, should forty percent of senators, representing forty million fewer voters than senators of the other party, be able to block it? Why or why not? Does our Constitution mention filibuster? Does it square with original intent? (Link)

14. What is original intent? Would the founders agree that the mass murders occurring almost daily in the country they created are simply “the price of freedom”? In writing the Second Amendment, should they have specified, unambiguously, what they meant by a “well-regulated militia,” and what they intended as its purpose? Was slavery involved in any way? Support your answer. (Link)(Link)

15. The First Amendment was written when news spread on horseback. Would the founders have anticipated media sources with instant and worldwide reach, using lies and dishonest editing as a business plan? If not, are there arguments for updating the amendment? (Link)

16. Trump hired “only the best people,” and none were corrupt. Defend. (Link)

17. Reports say Trump believes he’ll be reinstated as “president” by August. Explain: (Link)

18. Who’s tougher, rugby players like your columnist once was, or soccer players? Provide examples. (Link)

19. MAGA Republicans prefer selecting leaders by coup or overturning elections. Refute. (Link)