Is anything else happening in the world?

Keeping up with the anti-Trumpism is pretty exhausting, but how can you resist, really?

A few random thoughts:

*  as a customer, I would not be impressed if Trump turned up in the restaurant I was eating in.  Would you trust an undocumented waiter not to take a stab at him, or turn the gas on and leave pronto?  But, it seems, he had a few well wishers at 21 Club, and given a burger there costs $36, you can just tell that this was a audience which would get this benefit from his policies:

When our meal ended, we wandered over to the front bar room. An hour later, people lined up to see Trump and his family exit. (An NBC video would show him saying “we’ll get your taxes down” as he made his way out.) Only one or two people among the dozens clapped. Many of the others were frantically snapping pictures with their smartphones. One man nearby shouted “Thank you, Donald.”

 *  What's irritating about the Trumpkins complaining about the nation wide protests is that they would have to be fooling themselves (well, they already have, but go with me here) if they were to deny that if the shoe was on the other foot - Trump had lost but with 1,000,000 + of the popular vote - the pro-Trump protests would have been full of armed wingnuts in the streets fully primed by Trump's pre-election "the system's rigged" rhetoric.     The situation would have been a thousand times scarier.

*  There is, however, due to Trump's lack of transparency re taxes, business arrangements, and exposure to foreign lending, some added legitimacy to the campaign to not just wave him into the White House.  If ever there were people with damaging disclosures to be made about Trump in any respect, now is the time to make them.

*  I've noticed quite a few tweets in #Trump by people saying in response to Megyn Kelly's "Trump bullied me" line words to the effect "Hey you started it by bullying him with that rude first question you asked."   We're not dealing with normal people here, to put it mildly:  protective of their hero getting asked a clear and direct question about his history of extreme sexism is "bullying".  Dimwits.

*  Vox has an interview with a social scientist about why social media is so bad for democracy - a favourite theme of mine - and large parts are worth reproducing here:

Jonathan Haidt

... I’m a fan of the political scientist Karen Stenner, who divides the groups on the right into three: The laissez-faire conservatives or libertarians who believe in maximum freedom, including economic freedom and small governance; the Burkean conservatives, who fear chaos, disruption, and disorder — these are many of the conservative intellectuals who have largely opposed Trump.

And then there are the authoritarians, who are people who are not necessarily racist but have a strong sense of moral order, and when they perceive that things are coming apart and that there’s a decrease in moral order, they become racist — hostile to alien groups including blacks, gay people, Mexicans, etc. This is the core audience that Trump has spoken to.

That’s not to say that most people who voted for him are authoritarians, but I think this is the core group that provides the passion that got him through the primaries...

Sean Illing

What you’re describing sounds like an expansion of the culture war. Is it your view that culture wars have subsumed all of our politics and that policies are just props in this broader battle?

Jonathan Haidt

Yes, that’s right. There are existential questions at stake, and this election has felt really apocalyptic for both sides. The right thinks the country is crashing into a void and that Trump, while crazy, is our only hope. The left thinks Trump will bring about a fascist coup, a war with China, or a betrayal of our alliances.

So there is an apocalyptic feeling here. Sacred values are at stake. There really can be no compromise between these two visions....

Ok here's the part about social media:

Jonathan Haidt

We haven’t talked about social media, but I really believe it’s one of our biggest problems. So long as we are all immersed in a constant stream of unbelievable outrages perpetrated by the other side, I don’t see how we can ever trust each other and work together again.

I don’t know what we’re going to do about social media. I’m hopeful that future generations will learn social media responsibility and somehow manage to communicate without demonizing the other side.

We have to recognize that we’re in a crisis, and that the left-right divide is probably unbridgeable. And if it is, we’ll have to give up on doing big things in Washington, and do as little as we possibly can at the national level. We’re going to have to return as much as we can to states and localities, and hope that innovative solutions spring from technology or private industry.

Polarization is here to stay for many decades, and it’s probably going to get worse, and so the question is: How do we adapt our democracy for life under intense polarization?

Sean Illing

There are some who think we’re not quite as polarized as it seems. The idea is that what often appear to be deep divisions are really just products of people living in echo chambers, and that this amplifies differences and obscures commonalities. I’m not terribly persuaded by this, but perhaps it’s worth considering.

Jonathan Haidt

There’s certainly a debate among political scientists about this, but I’m a social psychologist, so I’m not looking at people’s views about policy; I’m looking at their views about each other. And if you look at any measures of what people think about people on the other side, those have become vastly more hostile. That’s what concerns me.

In the 1960s, surveys asked people how they’d feel if their child married a Republican or an African American or a Jew, and back then some people really didn’t want their kids to marry someone of a different ethnicity, but a different political party wasn’t as big a deal. Now the opposite is true.

So I’m quite confident that there is affective polarization or emotional polarization in recent years.

Can't she even Google?

So, Judith Sloan seems to be completely unaware that Prince Albert of Monaco has a conservation foundation in his name, and has taken particular interest in recent years in ocean conservation.

Now look, that information wasn't exactly in the forefront of mind either (although I have a vague idea I had read about his conservation activism before), but at least I know to Google a topic before shooting my mouth off.

Or does she just see words about conservation and immediately go "Bahh...what rubbish"?

With the Trump election, Right wing rudeness combined with ignorance must be at some global high watermark at the moment.

Update:   tone and style is the speciality of some of the women who comment at that blog:

It's like Australia's special little 4chan for people over 65 of both sexes.

Pretty much what you would expect with a Breitbart transition team

Career civil servants should not serve in the Trump administration.

After that article was written, the big news is that Eliot Cohen, a Never Trumper who was on the Douthat side of the "should good people serve Trump, or not" argument has now changed his mind:

A topical article

Can Steve Bannon and Breitbart News Be Both Pro-Israel and Anti-Semitic? - Israel – Forward.com

Short answer:  yes.  From the article:

Breitbart News isn’t the only place where anti-Semitism and Zionism
go hand in hand. Anti-Semitic attitudes abound in Poland, for example,
even as Poland has a strong diplomatic relationship with Israel.

This duality is a central component of “Trumpism,” said Yael
Sternhell, a Tel Aviv University professor of history and American
studies. Though Trump has flip-flopped on the Middle East, he has
professed an ultra-right view of Israel that would seem to outflank even
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also has a Jewish
son-in-law, and a daughter who converted to Judaism. At the same time,
many of Trump’s followers spout anti-Semitism.

“As long as Jews are in Israel fighting the ‘good fight’ with the
Arab world as a bastion of American ideals and values in the Middle
East, then they are very useful and admirable allies,” said Sternhell.
“Once they are home demanding a multi-cultural democracy, demanding that
the country accommodate their religion, their belief and their custom
that is a different story.”

And more:

Some on the alt-right, the emerging group of racist activists who
support Trump, oppose the close U.S.-Israel relationship as part of a
broader critique of U.S. interventionism abroad. Yet they admire Israel
as a “model for white nationalism and/or Christianism,” according to the
right-wing online encyclopedia Conservapedia. Some also see Jewish
immigration to Israel as helping their cause of a Jew-free white
America.

The coexistence of anti-Semitism and right-Wing Zionism “in Trump’s world
make sense,” said Todd Gitlin, the Columbia University sociologist and
cultural commentator in an email to the Forward.


“Anti-Semitism and right-wing Zionism are varieties of ultra
nationalism, or, to put it more pejoratively (as it deserves to be put)
tribalism. They both presume that the embattled righteous ones need to
bristle at, wall off, and punish the damned outsiders. They hate and
fear cosmopolitan mixtures. They make a fetish of purity. They have the
same soul. They rhyme.”

Yes, pretty stupid

Group of U-Va. students, faculty ‘deeply offended’ by Thomas Jefferson being quoted at school he founded - The Washington Post

Talk about playing into the hands of the Trumpian anti-political correctness overreaction.   Although, as someone in comments says, the university does have 20,000 students and "only" 469 signed the letter; so is it a case of the media playing up university level immaturity?  To an extent, probably; but there were faculty members signing too....  

Mary Beard on the Trump election

Her article about how she missed the late night drama of the Trump election is both witty and serious.  Her last paragraphs:

Trump and Trump’s policies are truly ghastly, but you have to face the fact that a very large number of people actually voted for him. What is more, resentment at “the elite” has morphed into a proud contempt for truth, expertise and knowledge – not unlike Michael Gove’s jibe at “experts” before the Brexit vote. And in the broader context of political rhetoric, the idea that he won’t be as bad as he claimed is more, rather than less, worrying. I thought that the conciliatory speech was the worst thing I had heard all evening. The idea that he could be thanking Clinton for her service to the country (“I mean that very sincerely”) and be speaking of “binding the wounds of division” – when only the day before he’d promised to impeach her and poured salt into the very wounds he was now promising to heal – beggars belief. It has nothing to do with being “gracious” (as the television pundits had it), and everything to do with words not meaning anything. It was precisely what ancient rhetorical and political theorists feared almost more than anything else: that speech might not be true, and the corrosive effect of that on popular power.

So if we have a big job in a Trump (and Brexit) world, it is not simply to limit the damage. It is also to restore the place of knowledge as necessary for the political process, and not as something that merely reeks of privilege – and to revalue the nature of rhetoric, from “Crooked Hillary” to “taking back control”. Politicians may always have lied, but at least the Greeks and Romans worried about that. We have come almost to take it for granted.

Swamp not drained - actually being replenished with filthier water

Donald Trump’s Great Bait and Switch - The New Yorker

Obama's right

I just saw a clip on the new of Obama saying regarding Trump something close to this:  "I don't think he's ideological, really.  He's more of a pragmatist, which can be a good thing.  It depends on the people he surrounds himself with.  Am I worried about his administration - of course I am."

Yes, it's Obama being generous, and assessing Trump right.  I mean it's abundantly clear, the number of times Trump contradicts himself, that he has no well thought out ideological positions.  He tells the audience what he thinks they need to hear in order to advance his own self interest. 

To take a skerrick of "looking on the bright side" on Trump*, there is a case to be made that a Cruz presidency would have been more dangerous, because you can't imagine him ever changing a position based on pragmatism winning over ideology.  He would be absolutely impervious to contrary advice.

The crucial thing with Trump, though, is that with the appointment of Bannon as adviser, and a likely cabal of ideologically driven AGW deniers/lukewarmers and economic Laffer-ites around him, there is virtually no reason to believe he will get sound advice.

* although this may end up being as fruitless an exercise as asking whether Mussolini, if he were German, would have made a better leader for pre-war Germany than Hitler.

About banking regulation

Trump Should Repeal Frank Dodd - And Replace It With Obama And Clinton's Sensible Alternative

This isn't a topic I devote time to studying, but news of soaring bank stocks due to their anticipation that they'll be less regulated under Trump should, I would have thought, make anyone with more than a goldfish memory when it comes to financial crises a tad nervous.

Tim Worstall makes a reasonable sounding suggestion here, but it involves a new tax, and what hope is there that the GOP would run with that?

Update:  I was just looking at other columns by Worstall, and noticed in comments to one in which he sites a "ridiculous EU regulation" story, it is noted that he is a UKIP supporter.   I had overlooked that before.   His credibility just took a large hit.

Wow. Filipino crazy leader more reasonable than the GOP

Philippines to ratify climate pact

The Philippines will ratify a global pact aimed at taming climate change,
President Rodrigo Duterte said Monday, reversing his opposition to the
historic United Nations agreement he previously dubbed "crazy".
In announcing the decision to sign up to the Paris Agreement, Duterte said he still
had misgivings but his cabinet members overwhelmingly disagreed with
him.

"After so much debate, the climate change (agreement), I will sign it because it was a unanimous vote except for one or two (in cabinet)," Duterte told reporters.

What's it say about the Republicans that nutty and dangerous Duterte accepts this better than they seem able to?

The Sun is cooler, but not the Earth

Record heat despite a cold sun  - RealClimate

An important post here at Real Climate, showing how the temperature is going up despite the sun being slightly cooler.

Make sure you read to the end, where you can read of the failed predictions of Australian skeptic Archibald in 2009.

Interesting conflicts

The massive conflicts of interest in Trump's business empire

Reasons I find it hard to blame Hillary Clinton for her loss

It's not that I am exactly a fan of Hillary Clinton, but I couldn't really see the aged Bernie Sanders doing well in this election either; and I don't really know why the Democrats could not come up with a third, younger alternative.   But all of this post election analysis makes me feel sorry for Clinton when people start pointing the finger at her, for the following reasons:

*  as people now realise, the vote for Trump was not huge - it just happened in the right States;  

*  when it comes down to a matter of 100,000 or so votes in 3 states, then Clinton probably can plausibly site the Comey late intervention as a key factor - it clearly did influence polls close to the election; it may well have energised the turnout for the Trump vote, and suppressed the turnout for Clinton, just enough to swing it Trump's way;

*  by election eve, the near universal media opinion that, despite the FBI situation, Clinton was going to win may also have suppressed her voter turnout just enough to swing the election, too.  Why vote if she looks a certainty anyway?

*  it's not Clinton's fault she came down with mild pneumonia, sufficient to give the Right wing conspiracists video with which to run their ridiculous "she's about to die" propaganda.  The effect of Right wing media/social media information bubble is so important to where American politics are at the moment, and no one really knows how to overcome it.

*  the "deplorables" comment was not as bad as it was made out to be when the full context is read.  It was a mistake, but I find it hard to condemn her for it, given that the true argument is really only over the exact percent of deplorables in the Trump camp.

Things you probably didn't realise about the white female vote in the US

White Female Voters Continue to Support the Republican Party - The Atlantic

The flood of post-election analysis we are seeing is turning up some interesting stuff - such as the point made in this article that no one should really be surprised that white women didn't rush to support Hillary.  The fact is, as a group, they've been leaning GOP for a while now.

An interesting bit of activist journalism here

Do You Have Information About Abortions Trump May Have Paid For? Let Us Know.

Many people read Trump's non- answer to Maureen Dowd earlier this year as strongly indicating he has paid for a girlfriend, or wife, to have an abortion.  If he has, and a huge slab of his voting base were vehement pro-lifers, I think we have a right to know whether he has or hasn't, especially in light of his policy to now assist the restriction of abortion.

I suppose his dimwit followers might just forgive him, just as they have his history of adultery and fornication.  But Democrats forgive sexual indiscretion in politicians, too.  Maybe both sides take hypocrisy on abortion more seriously?

Krugman predicts

Interesting to note that Paul Krugman warns, as he did with Brexit, that people should not expect the US economy to tank in the short term just because of the Trump election.   In the long term - yes, sure, his policies are terrible in virtually all respects. 

But it can take a while for bad decisions to fully kick in with their economic effects.

So easily swayed

What a ridiculously gullible fellow Adam Creighton proves to be.  Heaps of empathy for women too, obviously.  (It's not the first time I've noticed his empathy issues, too.)

He's most interested in the one about the 11 herbs and spices...

Donald Trump is about to learn all of America's 'deep secrets'



(I bet I didn't get to make that joke first.)

Needs more analysis

I see that Right wing sites, and conservative Catholic blogs are crowing about Trump doing well with Catholics, although the current analysis is based on exit polls which, I thought, had been shown up again as not that accurate.  Anyway, this is despite evidence from before the election that Trump was not doing well with Catholics.

The Tablet provides a little bit more perspective - pointing out that Trump did well with white Catholics:

Actually, he did as well as Romney did with the white Catholic vote - something that I hadn't realised before.

But Hispanics - still a long way to go to convince a majority of them.

The Tablet also notes in another article that, when it comes to "liberal" referenda which the Church was against, they were still nearly all passed, which suggests that the power of the conservative Catholic vote is  not what Conservative Catholics think it's cracked up to be.

So, there is this ongoing difficult question of whether this Catholic vote is coming from mere "cultural Catholics", or actively practising ones.   There is strong evidence, of course, that a small minority of even Mass attending Catholics adhere to the Church's teaching on reproductive health;  despite pockets of Conservative Catholic leadership (Cardinal Burke has announced his pleasure at Trump's win, for example), there is a pretty good case that the congregations are quite liberal.   But it is not that easy to find research which differentiates between types of Catholics.

Hence, I would be interested to see more research on this topic. 

And on a final note:  look how consistent the Jewish vote is for Democrats in that graphic above.   Jewish neighbourhoods in the States are not going to be happy at the moment.  

A more modest suggestion for some on the electoral college

So, some on the Left seem to think they have a chance of convincing the Electoral College to not vote in Trump.  Vox explains in detail why this just won't happen - well, short of Trump doing his long mooted  shooting of a person in the street, I suppose; even then, who knows?   If it was a protester, his followers would probably forgive him.

Anyway, instead of trying to convince Electoral College members to refuse to vote him in, perhaps the Left should try to convince them of something less dire, but important to transparency in government.  That is, withhold their vote in the college unless he has first disclosed his tax returns.

Still pie in the sky;  but slightly less pie in the sky than what some want now.