Reality Is Experience

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/

A likely important article that I may return to and dig deeper into. Apparently, the physical universe can be replaced with "a conscious entity" and at least this new model "still works".

As a conscious realist, I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world. I’m claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm. The experiences of everyday life—my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate—that really is the ultimate nature of reality.

"Ontological" -- being ... what IS.  The territory "real" as opposed to the map ... those being words like virtual, representation, metaphorical. This computer analogy gives a good idea why seeing "what is the most useful to the designer, or random chance" makes more sense than the "most realistic detail".

There’s a metaphor that’s only been available to us in the past 30 or 40 years, and that’s the desktop interface. Suppose there’s a blue rectangular icon on the lower right corner of your computer’s desktop — does that mean that the file itself is blue and rectangular and lives in the lower right corner of your computer? Of course not. But those are the only things that can be asserted about anything on the desktop — it has color, position, and shape. Those are the only categories available to you, and yet none of them are true about the file itself or anything in the computer. 

They couldn’t possibly be true. That’s an interesting thing. You could not form a true description of the innards of the computer if your entire view of reality was confined to the desktop. And yet the desktop is useful. That blue rectangular icon guides my behavior, and it hides a complex reality that I don’t need to know. That’s the key idea. 

Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. They guide adaptive behaviors. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know. And that’s pretty much all of reality, whatever reality might be. If you had to spend all that time figuring it out, the tiger would eat you.

It's always intriguing to me that a super intelligent guy, so non-traditional he is willing to question the MOST fundamental aspects of the nature of existence, still finds "evolution " as somehow a worthy explanation for how we came to be (or maybe "not **BE** as in being physical", but rather "be" as experience only) in this non-physical reality. It is always possible that the computer desktop "just evolved" after all. Actually, if you are an evolutionist, the development of the computer and the desktop metaphor is simply evolution still operating in what we have no doubt mistakenly labeled "consciousness", meaning "something special", but in evolutionary "reality", just more evolutionary adaptive algorithms.

 (column author) But if there’s a W, are you saying there is an external world?

Hoffman: Here’s the striking thing about that. I can pull the W out of the model and stick a conscious agent in its place and get a circuit of conscious agents. In fact, you can have whole networks of arbitrary complexity. And that’s the world.

So, a mathematic attempt to understand consciousness replaces "the world" with "a conscious agent" and it all works ... and it doesn't give him any inking that God would fill that "conscious agent" role quite nicely?

The discoveries of quantum mechanics, the mystery of consciousness and things like the insane small amount of information that seems to be coming in through our optic nerves for us to create what we are "seeing" all point to some fundamental misconceptions about what "reality" is -- if it "is" (ontology again) at all! 

"I think, therefore I am" was always tenuous -- perhaps, a universal consciousness is reality, and "I" am an illusion. Perhaps when God speaks to Moses and says "I am that I am" he was really de-referencing the THAT!  (C++ programming, the "this pointer" is the pointer to the object itself) "I'm THAT" I am" ... the ultimate base of existence.  You (Moses) are another "I am", created in my image.

Roger Scruton has covered this philosophically quite well. 

HuffPO, Overturning Elections

Hamilton v. Trump: The Case That Could Save America | The Huffington Post:

My my there was a lot of hand wringing when the Dems were sure they were going to win and Trump suggested that he would accept the result if Hillary had a "clear victory".

Where is the outrage? When the enormity of Watergate and its direct threat to the American system of government became clear, many Republicans joined with Democrats in denouncing Mr. Nixon and “All the President’s Men.” Yet now, as we face an even graver threat to our institutions—must we term it “Putingate”?—even most Democrats, let alone Republicans, seem to lack the courage and patriotism to stand up to the forces that threaten to invalidate the will of the voters, violate the clear intent of the Founding Fathers, and undermine the Republic they established.

Wow, the left showing situational respect for the founders, guys they have dismissed as dead white racists for years! They must REALLY care about BOistan! They feel it is "threatened"!

That paragraph shows us why Hillary needs to be put behind bars and then hopefully pardoned.

 Watergate was a 3rd rate burglary that Nixon covered up. Nobody died, and no national secrets were compromised -- it was all about the cover up and the fact that Nixon swore on the tapes. That, believe it or not, was "not presidential" back then.

We let Slick Willy stain the office both physically and symbolically. The lying was worse, the cover up was worse and illegal acts were committed by the president himself in the oval office.  Sexual harassment is a crime, and there is NO SUCH THING as "consensual sex" between a superior and subordinate at the office. In fact, although I guess it must be surprising to many BOistanis, sex with anyone at the office tends to be a firing offence. The Democrats yawned.

Hillary has been a noxious skid mark since the day she showed up in DC. She presided over the disaster of Libya from breaking it, to losing our Ambassador and three Navy Seals, to lying about it being "caused by an internet movie", to uttering "What difference, at this point, does it make?". The Clinton Fund -- cash, for Clintons, shows what the public version of organized crime looks like. Her abuse of national secrets requires punishment -- lest the idea that "some are above the law" be enshrined to an even greater degree than it is today.

When Republicans were willing to remove Nixon from office, they believed in principle over politics and assumed that Democrats had the same high ideals. The 50 years since Watergate have shown that they held their opposition in much too high esteem. To date, Democrats have been unwilling to ever place principle and respect for the Constitution, the nation, or even common decency over pure politics. I can only assume that they thought this because they never envisioned a time when all branches of government and the vast majority of state governments were in the hands of the other party.

They clearly lacked imagination.

We need to "book end" Watergate, or Democrats will keep bringing it up FOREVER! Prosecute Hillary, whose crimes make Nixon's pale in comparison, let her eat off a tin tray for a few weeks -- something like Scooter Libby, who suffered the fate for the crime of "perjury" for not remembering events in a proper date order. Hillary has turned perjury into an art form!

Then pardon her, as Nixon was pardoned. If Trump could put together a good speech that says something like; "we have closed the books on a sad period of American history where respect for the Constitution, the nation, history, our institutions and even truth itself was sacrificed for political gain. Let us resolve to move forward, together, rather than spinning in an ever tightening circle of recrimination" ... or something like that.

We have always known which side it is that seeks the abyss by not recognizing elections, using riots and violence as a tactic, and being willing to be utterly shameless in their inconsistency of using the Constitution for toilet paper when it suits them, then turning around and claiming to be defenders of the founders, tradition and sacred institutions like the Electoral College when it suits their quest for illicit power.

See, "reasonable Republicans" would hand the presidency to Hillary and John Kasich as a "unity government". What could be more "reasonable"?

That could open the way for patriots from both parties to come together and formulate a modern version of the Compromise of 1877 that would create a National Unity Government, for which the state delegations in the House of Representatives would be urged to vote in January. Such a Compromise of 2017 might include a President of one party and a Vice President of the other, both of whom meet the Framers’ goal of being competent and not beholden to a foreign power (perhaps Hillary Clinton and John Kasich, or Mr. Kasich and Joe Biden), a pledge by both not to run in 2020, a division of Cabinet posts between the parties, and agreement on certain policies to be enacted, including some of those that attracted voters to Mr. Trump, such as a massive infrastructure program to provide jobs and “draining the swamp” of influence peddling in Washington (which Mr. Trump plainly is not doing).

Republicans have played Charlie Brown to the Lucy ever since Watergate. It is time to close the books on this game!

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BO Says Trump A Job Magician

BO has always been certain that he is the smartest guy in every room. Here he is declaring that Trump would have to have a "magic wand" to keep jobs like the Carrier jobs in the US.

It is great to see an endorsement of Trump's ability to work magic by such a brilliant man! Look at that smiling lady in the background!

BOcare, Throwing The Patient (and Doctor) Out

The one thing missing from the debate over Obamacare, according to a top doctor - The Washington Post:

The headline should win some sort of award for being misleading. Sort of like "Great Funeral Only Leaves out One Thing" ... and then finding out it was "the corpse".

Noseworthy argues that the Affordable Care Act that expanded access to health insurance to millions of Americans did so without nearly enough input from the patient — or the doctor.

Actually, leaving out the doctor and the patient at one time would have been considered a  bad thing ... but hey, it was done by BO, so it HAD to be good! The WaPo and the head of Mayo didn't want to be called "racists" for opposing his stenchfulness prior to the election.

One of the biggest weaknesses of the Affordable Care Act, in Noseworthy's view, is that it expanded access to health insurance — in part by creating barriers to health care. Health plans have successfully controlled costs by restricting which doctors and hospitals patients can use and by shifting the upfront costs of care to patients through high deductibles.

Many of us Deploreables have harped on this for nearly 8 years -- our actual healthcare costs SKYROCKETED under BOcare, and our ability to go to the doctors needed to treat conditions was blocked. If the WaPo and the head of Mayo are able to speak freely now, perhaps the spell of BO really is broken.

Noseworthy is now willing to say that BOcare essentially needs to be scrapped -- and the WaPo is willing to print it!

The fact that access, which is pretty important to patients, is now being jeopardized and patients are feeling it — that has to be fixed. That’s really where the voice of the patient matters. The other, of course, is the unsustainability of the rise of the premiums for the middle class. 

Most Americans are paying more for health care, and they’re kind of figuring it out now. They’ve had the Affordable Care Act for a while, but they didn’t realize what high deductible health plans really were until they got sick. And they said, “Wait a minute — I have to pay the first $1,000, $5,000, $10,000? I don't really have insurance unless I have a catastrophic illness.”

He is also willing to admit what doctors and nurses have been saying is their biggest effect from BOcare -- PAPERWORK!

The Affordable Care Act and the changes that have come along with that have created a very stiff regulatory environment. It’s been very, very hard for health care professionals. And if you’ve been a patient or studied health care, you know that in today’s world, the patient is no longer at the center of the room. The physicians and nurses are spending a lot of time documenting the situation, rather than asking about and listening to. And that removes a lot of professionalism and joy of the work. 

For every hour a doctor spends with a patient, the doctor spends two hours documenting the one hour encounter. So the balance is off, and that’s created a huge threat to the profession.

This has all been known since before BOcare was "approved" by 51votes using "reconciliation" -- surprise surprise, it was a scam from the start and now that BO is about to leave office (oh happy day!) people can  admit that in public without being labeled "racist" -- Trump has already had a hugely positive impact on freedom of speech!


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Governor Goofy Has A History Fit

Dayton’s stormy Tuesday | Power Line:

Looking at Dayton's eyes makes one glad that a governor has very little authority to do violence to others. Storming out of a meeting over Civil War paintings is indicative of the kind of "leadership" that at least managed to put both the MN House and Senate in Republican hands.  We can thank him for that.

He doesn't like Civil War paintings in "his" ceremonial governors office at the capital because they don't represent "all Minnesotans",  and when his hand picked "commission" voted against him, he stormed out to make his level of maturing clear.

The left generally hates history. It shows "heritage", it gives a sense that everything might not be about today, and the promised future "progressive" utopia. Civil War history is even worse -- it seems to document hundreds of thousands of white people giving their lives to abolish slavery while preserving a nation that was the precursor to BOistan. Best to forget both the war and that old flawed nation.

I covered Gettysburg by Sears here, and by Coddington here. I also read Pale Horse at Plum Run but failed to blog on it -- the story of the 1st MN at Gettysburg. Without the 1st MN, it is very likely the South would have won -- it could be the reason Dayton is pissed, the South was Democrat after all!

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Attack By Racist Trump Supporter Injures Ten

Attack by Somali immigrant puts 10 in hospital | Power Line:

We all understand that had the Ohio attacker been even marginally a Trump supporter we would be besieged with media reports of a horrible "hate crime", and how Trump has caused a rise in hatred in the nation,  no matter the mental state or history of such an attacker.

Any possible "incident" of obnoxious Trump support gets in the headlines, like this guy, filmed on a flight using profanity and claiming that "Trump was the president of everyone on the plane". He was banned from flying Delta for life for making such outrageous claims.

Or this woman, who got irate in a store and happened to be a Trump voter. I understand that anybody that is not in an approved discriminated against group -- blacks, hispanics, women (oops, LIBERAL women), gays, trans, Muslims ..., MAY NOT feel "discriminated against". Everyone knows that all human feelings spring entirely from reason, so the idea that some Trump voter could possibly feel like they are being discriminated against beggars the imagination.

Trump voters clearly need to accept that they are an irredeemable basket of deploreables and keep very still. The woman that won the popular vote gave them that label to simplify their lives -- it is pretty hard to wear a button that says "racist, homophobe, denier, misogynist, poorly educated, Islamophobe, Transphobe ..." The print just gets too small, and it takes too long to explain who you are.

I'm not going to go back and point out lists of anti-Bush or pro-Obama / anti-Republican rants from all sorts of sources -- stages of award shows, athletic fields, etc that have gone by the boards in the past 16 years. Do I "like"  obnoxious Trump supporters? Of course not, they are EXACTLY like obnoxious Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, Code Pink, kneeling NFL players, anti-Trump college demonstrators ... etc, etc? No,  they come with living in a free country -- one which, at least for now, seems to have obnoxious people on both sides of the political spectrum. I tolerate them.

The point is that the Ohio attacker turned out to be Somali with a long Muslim name, so his motive is a complete mystery. "Workplace violence" seems likely. Oh sure, in some backwater conservative source we may find out in a few weeks or months that he was "radicalized", but the story is already gone. It is COMPLETELY wrong to draw any conclusions about any Muslims because they are Muslim.

OTOH, the MSM is chomping at the bit to get any story it possibly can to can on "violent and dangerous Trump supporters" -- and if they can't actual violence, they will put up drunks on planes or disgruntled customers and call them "dangerous". They have already stereotyped and labeled appropriately. All that is needed now is for a deplorable to step forward and REALLY do something seriously evil!

Hopefully the Ohio officer doesn't end up prosecuted for shooting a black man who was ONLY armed with a knife!



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Politics That Makes Me Cry

10 Reasons Left-Wingers Cut Trump Voters From Their Lives - Dennis Prager:

I don't think there is a Christian or conservative parent that doesn't live in fear of the contents of this article if they have non-Christian children. In America, the nation I grew up in, the idea that children would keep their parents from their grandchildren over politics was unthinkable. In BOistan, it is very real.

In my current line of work I deal with people who were abused by parents with mental illness, substance abuse, and other issues. Forgiveness is not always possible -- but it is recommended, and with a lot more scientific backing than even global warming. If you don't forgive, you are letting the person who you don't forgive live rent free in your brain -- as bad as you may hurt them, you are hurting yourself worse. We live in a broken world, and we all know it has gotten FAR more broken in the last eight years (look at suicides, addiction and crime numbers).

For a Christian, we know it is a hurt that will live on for the prodigal in eternity if they cannot heed the yearning to come home. I know God will wipe my tears away some day, and I also know that I will continue to cry and pray a lot in this vale of tears.

Just go and read it ... it makes me weep for how we allowed our schools to be totally destroyed and created a system that indoctrinates fragile minds rather than building them into mature lifelong learners eager to be independent, caring,  discerning adults. A sample ...

9. The left tends toward the totalitarian. And every totalitarian ideology seeks to weaken the bonds between children and parents. The left seeks to dilute parental authority and replace it with school authority and government authority. So when your children sever their bond with you because you voted for Trump, they are acting like the good totalitarians the left has molded.

Prager happens to be Jewish, conservative, and a model of erudite intellect. Anything he writes is well worth the time to read. This one is way short and WAY worth it!

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Replace Manly With Mature

Trump Apologies: Why the Media Goes Crazy | National Review:

The linked article needs to do a "replace all" of "manly" with "mature". One of the items sadly lacking in modern discourse is the idea of "maturity'. I used to hate that word -- because I was immature.

Maturity has a lot of aspects that used to be understood. The ability to recognize and deal with emotion, while at the same time being able to moderate it with reason and logic.

Perspective is another critical aspect. It isn't all about "me", or even "my group/tribe" -- there are ALWAYS larger issues. One of those issues is time. "The good" and "the moral" is timeless -- they apply a hundred years (or even a thousand) years in the past or in the future, and they apply NOW.

Trump seems to understand this, but the media don’t like forgiveness. It has that icky association with traditional morality, and it leaves the dirt, the most sensational parts of the story, in the past.

It brings to mind a quote from Mahatma Ghandi: “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

The dominant elite is built on weakness -- so they desire to use force to achieve their means. It is very dangerous for the weak to use force, but they tend to not understand that until it is too late.

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Setting The Clear Election Victory Bar

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/442503/hillary-clinton-2020-because-america-hasnt-suffered-enough

Other than giving Jill Stein the most media coverage she has ever had, the biggest thing the recount effort does is set a new bar for "honoring a clear victory". It used to be that an electoral college landslide like what Trump pulled off would silence the most obtuse of election critics.

For a little history:

Recounts also typically don’t change the margin by an amount that would be large enough to affect the result of this year’s presidential election. The mean swing between the top two candidates in the 27 recounts was 282 votes, with a median of 219. The biggest swing came in Florida’s 2000 presidential election recount, when Al Gore cut 1,247 votes off George W. Bush’s lead, ultimately not enough to flip the state to his column.

So if these recounts were to have an effect, they would need to flip multiple states, all won by at least ten thousand votes -- more like 70K in Pennsylvania.

Trump was roundly chastised for saying that he wold "recognize a clear victory". Formerly, that would be something like a couple K votes in one state based on the Gore precedent.

No longer. What is a "clear victory" now? Clinton (or Stein, or Soros, or whomever) would need to flip MULTIPLE states, each with margins well outside the old high water mark.

But never mind. There is now a new bar for "honoring an election".

Oh, and which side is it that claimed prior to losing that "fraud is not a factor in US elections"?

There is NOTHING but politics and "spin" for "standards" in BOistan, and the wages of that is Trump.

Imagine how much the Democrats are going to enjoy the precedents they set by passing BOcare with "reconciliation" so they only needed 51 votes and establishing "The nuclear option" in the Senate for everything but SCOTUS during the reign of Harry Reid.

What goes around does indeed come around. Since Trump's margin was not a "clear victory", there really is no future standard for what a candidate can legitimately cry foul on.

Sailing The SS Mondale

Officials Behind $500 Million Vikings' Stadium Subsidy Get Free Luxury Box Tickets for Family and Friends - Hit & Run : Reason.com:

The only thing surprising here is that the Star Trib actually did an article on this little boondoggle.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that the six members of the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority (MSFA), the quasi-government agency created in 2012 to oversee the public subsidies for the building of U.S. Bank Stadium, get free tickets to two lower-level luxury suites for all events held there. Even though taxpayers covered more than half of the cost of the $1.1 billion stadium, which opened earlier this year, the public is being kept in the dark about who occupies those 36 seats and the adjoining luxury suites during Vikings home games and other events.

We are all rent seekers, and we ALL like to get paid. Nothing unusual there -- most of us don't get Vikings luxury boxes in payment, but then very few of us are named "Mondale" or descent from Wendy Anderson!

There is zero surprise that Ted Mondale would figure that a $20K+ a year benefit is highly deserved -- as he says, "he works hard on game days", and so it is important to have some of his family and friends share in those difficult times. I know my family and friends always enjoyed coming into IBM to help me work on a severity 1 problem! My brother in law pumps 50 million gallons of hog manure a year -- the family and friends are always fighting for a better spot to help out when a ripe new shed is all set to go!

The Vikes stadium us a glass $1.1 billion representation of a Viking ship. Glass is a good metaphor -- it is a lot like an NFL offense with no O-line.

The Star-Tribune says they were given the names of 12 current and former public officials who attended and paid for suite tickets to NFL games. After the initial request for information was made, several other officials—including the mayor of Minneapolis and her husband, several state commissioners, Minneapolis' city attorney, and city council members—also wrote checks reimbursing the board for the tickets they had apparently used.

I wonder why they wrote those checks? No doubt they had just "forgot" and finally got around to it.

The article is well worth the read -- one can only imagine how hard Ted worked on getting the multiple billion dollar light rail that covers a full third of it's OPERATING cost each year!

It's really all OK ... he's a MONDALE!

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A Real Terrorist Exposes George W Bush (WaPo)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-horrifying-look-into-the-mind-of-911s-mastermind-in-his-own-words/2016/11/28/bf5827a8-b575-11e6-b8df-600bd9d38a02_story.html?utm_term=.50a741a7b9c3

Hee we have it right from the mouth of KSM, one of the honorable muslims falsely tortured by the Bush administration.

“Then he looked at me and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’” Mitchell writes. “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.” He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.”

America certainly had more coming that just 9-11, and there you have it! W and his violent measures prevented the "justice" that KSM and his Muslim brothers were intent to carry out. Thank goodness the left and our media rose up against W, or the whole justifiable terrorism industry might have been wiped out entirely like the USSR. Who knows what horrors a strong America might be capable of! Heck, they might even be able to put in a pipeline on their own land!

Nothing very new at all here for readers of my blog, just corroboration that when Islamic terrorists say "We want to convert you to Islam or kill you", what they mean is that they want to convert us to Islam or kill us. I understand that is hard for leftists who keep saying "we want freedom", but keep trying to jail people for trying to be free to bake a cake or not bake a cake to understand, but sometimes people DO actually mean what they say. (another hard to understand concept for the left)

But perhaps the most riveting part of the book is what KSM told Mitchell about what inspired al-Qaeda to attack the United States — and the U.S. response he expected. Today, some on both the left and the right argue that al-Qaeda wanted to draw us into a quagmire in Afghanistan — and now the Islamic State wants to do the same in Iraq and Syria. KSM said this is dead wrong. Far from trying to draw us in, KSM said that al-Qaeda expected the United States to respond to 9/11 as we had the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut — when, KSM told Mitchell, the United States “turned tail and ran.” He also said he thought we would treat 9/11 as a law enforcement matter, just as we had the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the USS Cole in Yemen — arresting some operatives and firing a few missiles into empty tents, but otherwise leaving him free to plan the next attack.

Strange, al-Qaeda expected the US to behave has they had behaved before.

KSM explained that large-scale attacks such as 9/11 were “nice, but not necessary” and that a series of “low-tech attacks could bring down America the same way ‘enough disease-infected fleas can fell an elephant.’ ” KSM “said jihadi-minded brothers would immigrate into the United States” and “wrap themselves in America’s rights and laws” until they were strong enough to rise up and attack us. “He said the brothers would relentlessly continue their attacks and the American people would eventually become so tired, so frightened, and so weary of war that they would just want it to end.”
“Eventually,” KSM said, “America will expose her neck for us to slaughter.”

Did the Russians hack the CIA and tell Donald Trump that Islamic refugees were a danger to America or something? Well, no -- anyone that talked to a few Muslims from the middle east would know that KSM is just being honest. Just because Hillary is evil and lies all the time doesn't mean that everyone who is evil always lies. Many Muslims honestly believe in what they are doing and believe it should be done openly. They are proud of what they are doing. It would be like the 5 or ten proud Hillary supporters (if you could find them).

Are there any "liberals" that think like that? It seems obvious that "liberals" don't actually believe in "freedom" nor "democracy" since they are doing crazy recounts and talking about the Electoral College voting in someone other than Trump.

It's a shame that W and company waterboarded KSM, broke his resistance, and got him to work with us ... otherwise there could have been some more really exciting attacks like 9-11 that folks like BO's old pastor Wright could point to and let us know how much we deserved them!

KSM also described for Mitchell many of his as yet unconsummated ideas for future attacks, the terrifying details of which Mitchell does not reveal for fear they might be implemented. “If we ever allow him to communicate unmonitored with the outside world,” Mitchell writes, “he could easily spread his deviously simple but potentially deadly ideas.”

Trump The Sociopath

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/opinion/the-sociopaths-diary.html?WT.mc_id=2016-KWP-AUD_DEV&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=AUDDEVREMARK&kwp_0=198245&kwp_4=773630&kwp_1=388657

During the BO administration I speculated on wether BO may be a psychopath, the author of the column seems to think that Trump is a sociopath, but I'm pretty sure he is just mixed up.

Sociopaths have a hard time hiding their sociopathy from those around them -- they have a hard time having an inner circle of people that really like and admire them. Like BO and Hillary for example. From what we know about Trump, he isn't a sociopath, if he is anything, he would be a psychopath.

My speculation on BO was in 2014 after he had been president for 6 years. It is nice to see the NY Times being fair minded and diagnosing Trump prior to him taking office. Campaigning and governing are often different (they weren't for BO), campaigning always looks a little psychopathic.

The standard psychopath would be "smooth, no drama, very cool, always the smartest guy in the room". That sounds like someone we have had experience with -- but not so much like Trump.

But Trump certainly COULD be a psychopath -- anyone that wants to be president (or brain surgeon, or NFL QB, or fighter pilot ...) certainly has many characteristics that are going to at least border on narcissism and even psychopathy. Both pathologies lack empathy for others, lack much emotion at all, see themselves as "all there is" and lack any sense of conscience". One of the huge markers of the psychopath is that they are ALWAYS going to "get even", and they ESPECIALLY like it if it is in a way where only THEY know that they accomplished it. It isn't really very hard to look at BO relative to Hillary and wonder on that front.

What IS interesting about the column is look at what supposedly Trump thinks of BOistan:

Never had a problem with the press. They don’t get it. I’ve crashed the system. I’m using the press, every one of them! Schwartz did have one phrase I really loved in my book. He said “I play to people’s fantasies” by using “truthful hyperbole.” What he meant is I make stuff up. 

Sure. Nobody cares. They want to dream. They want a spectacle. They want gold and towers. They want me to get tough. Fact-checkers! Is that even a job?

I completely agree. The press constantly creates false narratives, and Trump used that against them -- he is using it now. The press is supporting recounts against Trump based on no evidence of any reason for a recount, so Trump counters that millions voted illegally with no evidence. If the name of the game is "no evidence required", if one side can base actual actions on the no evidence, then the other can certainly make claims without evidence! "Facts"? Get serious.

Both our leadership and at least parts of our press used to ascribe to actually being educated and caring about ACTUAL truth -- not "97% of scientists" polling sorts of "truth", but Biblical, Platonic, Classical historical TRUTH. The mass of people have always wanted to "dream, have spectacle, gold and towers" -- since Babylon, Rome with "bread and circuses". What the author of the column pokes fun at is actually the known truth of history and human nature, but he fails to realize it.

That’s easy. I know what Americans want. They don’t want truth. They want excitement, disruption. They want to be led. They want authority. They want victories. They want parades. They want a wall at the Mexican border — so let them think I really might build one! You think they’re happy with Obama’s managed decline? Give me a break!

When you take away truth, culture, values the sacred, the Constitution, the separation of powers, that is EXACTLY what you get -- raw unvarnished human nature, and it wants "excitement, disruption, authority, VICTORY"! Promise them they will have an extra $2,500 a year in their pockets and be able to keep the healthcare they have now, or promise them a wall on the Mexican border.

So as I've pointed out, we are in a dangerous place. Our "elite" doesn't know the difference between sociopath and psychopath, and is unwilling to even look it up. If the elite cared about truth, culture, history, the sacred, etc, we would have never had BO and Bill Clinton would have been impeached.

Our founders well understood the dangers of what kinds of leadership one is likely to get in an office like president, so they produced a written constitution, separated the powers and LIMITED government so the possible mischief was as contained as possible.

Over the past 100 years we have shredded that document and the separation and grown a leviathan government so massive it makes Godzilla seem like a gerbil.

Yes, we are in grave danger -- but we have been there since at least 2008, and we DID pick the only option that we could guarantee would be heavily opposed.

The True Believer, Eric Hoffer

https://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Movements-Perennial/dp/0060505915

The subject book is a classic published in 1951 by a rather interesting gentleman who was once homeless as well as being a longshoreman, self taught, read massively, and went on to win the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983.

He believes that all mass movements are interchangeable in that they are driven by the same human needs. He considers the Roman Empire, Christianity, Islam, the Reformation, the Puritans, the US revolution, the French revolution, the communist takeover of Russia, and others to be "interchangeable".

...the vigor and growth of a mass movement depend on it's capacity to evoke and satisfy the passion for self-renunciation. When a mass movement begins to attract people who are interested in their individual careers, it is a sign that it has passed it's vigorous stage. 

He argues that mass movements depend on the "frustrated". Those that see their lives as somehow "spoiled" and they crave a "new life", a "rebirth". The mass movement let's them lose their spoiled selves in a cause.

"Those who clamor for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society."  

"Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority. Equality without freedom creates a more stable social pattern than than freedom without equality" 

In the old USSR there was a lot of "equality" and the small cadre of the "elite" had freedom. Here, at least in BOistan, the constant cry of the supposed mass was for "equality", while the "elite" like Hillary were able to be free from even the law.

"The poor who are are members of a compact group -- a tribe, a closely knit family, a compact racial or religious group -- are relatively free from frustration and almost immune to a mass movement." 

Therefore, those trying to move the mass into their column attack the family, the church and the community and attempt to balkanize races and other identity groups so people are "all alone" except in relation to the mass movement.

"The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority of the middle."

By "best" he doesn't mean "morally best" -- he means powerful, educated, those with resources. "The elite". The elite are "true believers" because they will get the power, the poor are the "true believers" because the elite have promised them the spoils. The "silent majority" are a bunch of stooges still working hard, trying to keep their families together in the face of attacks by the elite, often going to church. You know them -- "The Basket of Deploreables".

"The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole -- the church, party, nation -- and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in loose and relatively free society". 

.... when the frustrated congregate in a mass movement, the air is heavy laden with suspicion. there is prying and spying ...  

The surprising thing is that this pathological mistrust within the ranks leads not to dissension, but to strict conformity. Knowing themselves continually watched, the faithful strive to escape suspicion by adhering zealously to prescribed behavior and opinion. Strict orthodoxy is as much the result of mutual suspicion as of ardent faith.   

I could go on quoting at length -- it is full of them. He was writing assuming that communism was likely implacable and would nearly certainly "win", but as always (in his mind), it's success would breed complacency in it's upper ranks which would finally be detected as weakness by the masses and result in a new mass movement.

Hoffer considers mass movements to "just be" -- Luther, Hitler, Stalin, Cromwell, George Washington, Jesus, Mohammad -- all "merely mass movement leaders". Sorting out the details on "good or bad" is not his real purpose -- just pointing out that the "active phase" as the movement is growing is "messy", maybe even "evil" (one could think of it like childbirth), but what comes after varies a lot.

I think it is clear that the left in this country has been on a sputtering attempt to create a mass movement in the US since at least FDR, and probably Wilson.

The most decisive for the effectiveness of a mass movement leader seem to be audacity, fanatical faith in a holy cause, an awareness of the importance of the close-knit collectivity, and above all, the ability to evoke fervent devotion in a group of able lieutenants. 

 The biggest thing missing in Bill Clinton, Obama and Hillary was "fervent able lieutenants".  There were simply none to name. It is ironic that Nixon, Reagan and W all had their "fervent able lieutenants", but lacked a "holy cause" and certainly any concept of "close knit collectivity".

Trump? Well, it remains to be seen -- "Make America Great Again" isn't exactly 99 theses!

The book is a classic of political philosophy. As an atheist, Hoffer naturally discounts the idea that "Jesus is different", but as mass movements go, Christianity has been around a LONG time, and actually encourages it's adherents to be worthless but redeemed with infinite worth in Christ. They can "lose themselves" in Christ who is fully God and fully Man, without having to lose themselves in some "mass movement" -- rather than "suspicion, prying and spying" (definitely a factor in hyper fundamentalist sects), they can be blood brothers, watching carefully for the log in their own eye, and being redeemed without losing themselves in some earthly "perfection".  It's only 170 pages long, and more meaty than I can cover in this blog length.

Well worth your time, highly recommended.

Krugman -- Coup Vs Just In Case

Paul Krugman Illustrates The Damaged Political Psyches Of The Left:

Conservatives (me included) have a terrible problem understanding how absolutely blatant and direct inconsistency is not disqualifying.

Got that? When a Republican challenges the results of an election, it’s a “coup.” When the loser is a Democrat, however, such a challenge is absolutely necessary, “just in case.” The next four years are not going to be kind to Paul Krugman and to people like him: they are going to discredit themselves even more thoroughly than they already have, all under the auspices of an insufferable, smarmy intellectual superiority. Can you imagine what it will be like for them when Trump wins a second time?

I'm certainly not ready to predict Trump will win in '20 -- it is not hard at all to imagine that he will have had enough of the pounding he is going to take and will retire to his towers, mansions and resorts. While the Clinton's grasp and claw for their next 100 million, and BO embarks on what I predict to be a money grab that will make the Clinton's seem frugal in comparison, even the lowest estimates of Trump's wealth put it in billionS plural. Obviously, given the "Clinton Fund", one of the big things the Clinton's were in the political game for was financial gain. Trump could be too -- but he as a bigger base to start from.

Former Enron advisor Paul Krugman is no stranger to massively incongruous positions. Any deficit under W was an economic disaster, a horrible example of incompetence and malfeasance, while under BO, all deficits -- even the 1.6 Trillion, were "much too tiny".

The point I disagree with on the article is that somehow gross inconsistency will suddenly become obvious to the masses and their positions will be discounted as a result. Based on past history, not likely.

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Hypocrisy? Not A Liberal Possibility

Trump portrays Clinton as a hypocrite for recount effort - POLITICO:

I love the headline. THE GALL! Calling a "liberal" a hypocrite ... it can't be done! They are already certified to have no standards whatsoever, they are absolutely immune to charges of hypocrisy!

Then the article lists all the times that Hillary talked of the horror of questioning election results (as the Democrats did in '00 and '04), how she has already conceded, including saying in the concession speech that; "We have to accept the results and look to the future, Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead."

The recounts are of course NOT about changing the outcome of the election. They, and the meaningless "Hillary won the popular vote" stories are about casting a pall over the Trump presidency before he ever takes office. This is the way that "The Party" (TP-D) plays -- they don't accept ANY results, not even MASSIVE defeat in state races, congress and the senate.

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