Three Kinds Of Learning And Politics

There are some people who need to burn their hand on a hot stove before they learn.

Above: My idea for a t-shirt logo.

Many years ago, I wrote about the three kinds of learning.  It seems that most people have to put their hand on the hot stove before they figure out that (a) stoves get hot, and (b) hot things can burn you, which hurts.  Today, we are seeing this on a national scale, in real-time.

Sadly, it seems that until a lot of people get personally hurt by Trump's economic and political policies, not much will change.  As I noted in that earlier posting, not many people can learn indirectly - by seeing someone else burn their hand on a hot stove - and thus realize that putting their own hand on the stove is a bad idea.  Fewer still will every advance to projected learning - and postulate that since they know that stoves get hot and hot things burn, putting your hand on a hot stove is a bad idea, even if they never experienced this firsthand or saw it happen to others.

On the run-up to the election, those who were above cave-man mentality were warning of what would happen - that tariffs would tank the economy and that the government would devolve into fascism and oligarchy.  Funny thing, I met a fellow who was "concerned" by what Trump was doing ("he is hurting the wrong people!") but barfed up a Fox News Talking Point - that just because historically tariffs have caused economic chaos, doesn't mean it will happen again  Economists beg to differ.

Trump and like-minded Republicans pine for the gilded age before the income tax, where a starved national government had few programs, a tiny military, and no foreign entanglements.  When we went to war, it was against weak, opportunistic opponents, such as Spain's overseas colonies.  Dynastic, generation-spanning wealth was possible for a privileged few, and the rich built white-elephant mansions staffed by dozens of servants.  Today, many of those mansions, such as the Biltmore in Asheville, NC, are museums, or like Dungeness on Cumberland Island, lay in ruins.

What changed? The income tax for starters - and the Gifts and Estate tax (called the "death tax" by Republicans).  Both taxes have been in the gunsights of the GOP for ages.  These taxes made it harder - but not impossible - to accumulate dynastic wealth.  It made it harder - but not impossible - for rich people to pass on their estates intact to the next generation.  But as I noted in another posting, the simple mathematics of inheritance mean that each generation divides up the wealth more than the previous.  When Elon Musk dies, his estate will be divided by spouse(s) and children (11 at the last count) and the wealth inherited will dissipate rather quickly.  Now you know why, in Jolly Ole England, the oldest son inherited everything and the other kids got bubkis.

But I digress.

Trump's theory is that we can abolish the income tax entirely and rely instead on a national sales tax (what they call a VAT or Value Added Tax in Europe and the UK) and tariffs.  Indeed, tariffs were one of the major sources of income for the fledgling United States government in the 1800s - and helped promote domestic industry in an era where we relied on England for most of our manufactured goods.  Being a Republican in the Lincoln era meant you stood for "God, Country, and the Tariff!"  A lot has changed since then.  Today, Lincoln would likely be a Democrat.

So that's the plan.  Abolish all social welfare programs, including Social Security and Medicare. Shrink the military and cut ties with our allies.  Shrink the government so much that you could "drown it in a bathtub" as Grover Norquist once quipped.  How do I know this?  It is what they said they would do.  Sell off government lands, including national parks, and use the money to buy cryptocurrency.  What could possibly go wrong with that?

Of course, there may be another strategy.  Declare tariffs on Monday - after your rich friends have shorted automaker stocks - and then suspend them on Tuesday (after your rich friends went long on the same shares).   But crypto cheap and then declare you will start a national crypto fund.  OK, so it doesn't always work the way you want it to.  But these regular sea-saws of policies do swing markets and it is a great way to manipulate the market.

So that is always a possibility - that "Project 2025" was never a serious proposition, but just a way to create chaos and profit from it.  Either scenario is disturbing.

But getting back to our main point, nothing will change until a number of Republicans start to realize that Trump policies are bad for business and thus bad for their pocketbooks.  Traditional Republicans - business owners and investors - don't want to see major disruptions in the marketplace, unless, as I noted above, they can profit from them.  GM, Ford, and Stellantis don't want to see tariffs one day and then none the next.  You can't plan a business when conditions are changing on a day-to-day basis.

The MAGA Republicans - mostly working-class people - haven't seen these policies affect them - yet.  We are starting to hear some MAGA-heads becoming alarmed when they lose government contracts or government jobs, or lose business deals due to tariffs (or even the threat thereof).  Many are starting to question their support of Trump, but alas, like the Cybertruck owner whose car has been in the shop for 60 of the 90 days they've owned it, they "Still love the truck!"

It will take real pain to get through to these do-do heads.  But even then, MAGA-world has a built-in set of excuses.  It was all Biden's fault.   Obama's fault.  Hillary.  Bill.  Jimmy Carter.  Anyone but their infallible orange God!

But it's not a cult and doncuforgetit!

Even today in Germany, there are those who celebrate Hitler's birthday and secretly profess an admiration for a man who destroyed their own country and killed millions of people.  There will always be idiots, it seems, and there will always be MAGA-heads, even decades from now, once we emerge from the smoldering wreckage of what once was the US of A.

But that does not mean change won't come.  Enough people will turn away from Trumpism once they realize it hurts them, their neighbors, their friends, the country, and the world.  It won't take much, either.  Trump won with a small majority of those who voted, which makes up less than a third of the population of the United States.  The House and Senate are held by the GOP by slim majorities - a few seats one way or the other could change things dramatically.

Even the Supreme Court has its limits - lifetime appointments tend to mellow justices, Clarence Thomas notwithstanding.  You can get Amy Barrett to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade as it was a technically challenged decision ("Are abortion laws unconstitutional?  Yes, and let me give you a three-trimester outline as to how it should all work!")  but getting her to void basic contract law?  That's a lot to ask of a former law school dean.  "Yea, the government can simply void contracts for work already performed, on a whim - that works!"

So maybe the tide will turn - but not before a lot of people get hurt.  And it sounds mean to say this, but no one seems to have much sympathy for the Trump voter who gets his dick caught in the wringer, crying "you were supposed to hurt the other guy, not me!"  Maybe he'll learn from his hot stove experience.

Probably not, though.  And I don't feel sorry for him, either.

Drug Use and Fascism

If you are wired on drugs, it is easier to deny reality.

There has been a lot of talk about how Trump and Musk are on some sort of drugs.  Both are accused of taking Ketamine, a drug prescribed for depression, or Adderall, a drug prescribed to attention deficit disorder.  Others have accused Trump of using cocaine, particularly during the disco era.  Reports have come in saying that the White House, under Trump, was awash in stimulants and sleep aids, not only for Trump, but also his staff.  A woman alleges that Musk used to do LSD and even asked her to get into a three-way sex orgy at the time.  And of course, Musk is famous for his junior-high-school giggles involving "420" references.

The use of drugs, legal and illegal, to alter perceptions and behaviors is well-known.  During World War II (and presumably other wars since), armies would hand out "little white pills" - amphetamines - to soldiers to keep them awake for long periods of time during battles - and also make them more aggressive and more prone to risk-taking.

Hitler, of course, was infamous for his drug use - uppers and downers and God-knows-what-else.  It takes a wired mind to think you can still win a war when the enemy is literally overrunning your country.

Mood-altering drugs - the name itself is telling - alter your mood.  Alcohol is a drug, and it will make you depressed, anxious, aggressive, violent, sleepy - or even incoherent.  I remember (vividly, a sad side-effect of aging, I'm afraid) my Mother's fugue states she would enter once she had a few drinks.  Rambling, screaming, shouting, getting violent.  It was alarming how she could change from Jekyll to Hyde in a matter of  minutes.  She was not a happy drunk, a sleepy drunk, or a mellow drunk.   She went right to crazy.

Trump famously doesn't drink, but his odd behavior could be explained by drug use.  He rambles and is incoherent.  He says things and then denies he ever said them (and probably doesn't really remember saying them).  There is no way to rationalize his behaviors other than to wonder whether he is mentally ill, on drugs, or both.  Drug use seems to fit the pattern.

I wrote before about cocaine users and how annoying they are.  You do cocaine, and you start to think that everything you do is fantastic.  There is no self-doubt or any check or balance to your behavior.  You tend to stop associating with people who don't use coke, so eventually you live in an echo chamber, with your "new friends" telling you nothing but what you want to hear.  Coke heads are annoying AF.

Chronic drug use leads to chronic health problems over time.  Judy Garland was famously doped up with uppers to make her perform.  Of course, then she couldn't sleep, so they gave her depressants - the same rollercoaster of uppers and downers that drove Hitler insane, and later on, Elvis, Michael Jackson, and Prince, to name a few.  Throw in some alcohol and your liver is toast.  Lack of proper sleep can lead to other problems, such as Parkinson's.

A reader sends me this chart showing Musk's tweeting habits.  When does this guy ever sleep?

The above chart plots every Tweet made by Elon Musk from 2014 onward.  I am not sure of the provenance of this chart, and of course, he may be using bots or assistants to make Tweets for him.  But if he is indeed posting this much on Twitter - at all hours of the day - then he is suffering from severe sleep deprivation and it falls in line with amphetamine usage.

You know who else sends incoherent Tweets at 2 AM?  Yea, Trump.  Sort of fits a pattern here - rampant drug usage among right-wingers.  But of course, it is prescribed medicine so it isn't drug abuse, right?

I am taking a synthetic dopamine drug and it is interesting to observe my own behavior when the drug wears off and after I take it.  Without the drug, it is hard to do simple manual tasks like tying my shoes or putting on a jacket.  Not impossible, just time-consuming.  And sometimes, as Juan's Grandmother used to say, you have to "push through the evil" and your appendages start working, twice as fast as normal.  It is like watching a movie in slow motion and then see it speed up to 4x speed instantaneously.

But besides physical effects are mental ones.  I get irritable and impatient when low on dopamine.  I tried to navigate a cruise ship website the other day and it was frustrating as hell.  Every page wants to sell you an upgrade and the information you really want is three pages deep, and in a manner where you will never find that page again, without spending a half-hour again, trying to find it.  And no, you can't bookmark it - the bookmark will just take you to the login page.

So the dopamine kicks in and an hour later I am content as a kitten.  My own behavior has changed in a matter of minutes.

I wrote about this before - how our brains are just a bag of chemicals and electrical impulses.  Fortunately, the dopamine drug I am taking is not the one that makes you gamble uncontrollably or turn you into a cannibal hamster.

Of course, you can't just do drugs forever, without harming your body.  Although there are records of people who did massive amounts of drugs and lived a long, long time.   There are rock stars who are doing their geriatric "farewell tours" again and again, looking like dried raisins.  It is interesting that the current administration is somewhat silent on the topic of drug use - although drug laws are designed to imprison poor people, while the wealthy can hire lawyers and go free.

The only exception seems to be Fentanyl.  And maybe perhaps that is because it is poisoning the drug supply, which takes all the fun out of recreational drug use.

Myself, I kind of soured on the drug scene after a decade or so.  My sister turned me on to pot when I was 13 (pot users become evangelical drug users - believing that if everyone smoked pot, the world would be a better place).  But eventually, I got tired of it - and the marginal life I was leading.  I never did speed, of course, and cocaine seemed like a dead-end.  Now that Marijuana is legal in places, I have tried it again, but oddly enough, the desire to get high has largely diminished.  When I was a teen, getting high all the time seemed like the thing to do.  As an oldster, it is more like, "meh!"

Sad to say, but it takes a long time for a drug user to crash and burn.  It is possible that Trump and Musk may continue their Laurel and Hardy act for another four years or more.

Political Scam PACs Are At It Again?

If you get an e-mail or text from a group purporting to support Democratic candidates - ignore it.

Back in October, I wrote about a shady PAC that was sending me lots of messages asking for money.  The further I dove into it, the worse it got.  They are a PAC, just not a legit one.  They even are listed on the "Act Blue" website, and I immediately cancelled my account there.

It ain't just Donald Trump grifting off of politics these days - it is a money-making franchise.  And Democrat or Republican, you will get SPAMmed with these messages, asking you for donations that go into someone's pocket - just not the someone you are trying to help elect.

If you want to donate to a candidate, find their legitimate website and donate there.

But, I suspect there is an ancillary goal of these fraudsters - to get people to be skeptical of political groups and PACs and to stop donating.  If you are really into conspiracy theories, maybe the Russians are behind this - using the money to self-fund their own disinformation campaigns.  If so, what a brilliant move!  Get Americans to foot the bill for their own brainwashing.

Lately, I have gotten a slew of messages from various candidates, each one loaded with lines of question marks, which I assume is some sort of HTML error as my phone is so old as to not display most emojis.  This message came in today, purportedly from Governor Walz:

Hey Robert, it's Gov. Tim Walz.

A little over a month ago, Donald Trump took office and solidified a GOP trifecta that will do his bidding, alongside a Supreme Court packed with extremist judges.

???????? ??????????????????????? ???????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????? ???????????????????? ???????????????? ???????????????? ????????????????????, ??????????????????????? ???????????? ????????????????????. But here???s what I want you to know:

???????? ???????????????? ???????????? ???????????? ???????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????? ???????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ???????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????? ???????????? ????????????????????????, ????????????????????????????????, ???????????? ???????????? ???????? ????????????????.

Democratic governors like myself are fighting every day to protect our shared values. But we can???t keep up our critical work without you.

Robert, if you???re ready to fight for a future where no one is left behind and nobody gets told they don???t belong, I???m right there with you.

That???s why I???m asking you right now: ???????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ???? ???????????????????????? ???????? ???????????????????????????????? ???????? ???????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????? ???????????????????????? ????????:???????? ????.????. ????????????????????????????? Your input will be crucial in shaping our strategy for these next four years.

https://t.demgov.co/*******

Thank you,
Gov. Tim Walz for the Democratic Governors Association

Stop2End 

What's with all the question marks? Is this legit?  If so, why does it look so sleazy and link to a "survey" site which we are implored to complete "by midnight tonight" (every night is tonight, if you think about it).  Another missive claimed that I had to donate by "tonight" to defeat Republican candidates and flip the House to the Democrats.  There is a special election coming up - April 1st - but it is in two solidly Republican Florida districts.

What is t.demgov.co and why such a weird website name?  According to Scam Advisor, the site has a low score as it may contain malware.  The owner of the site has hidden their real name, the site has negative reviews, and is very young.

There is a legitimate Democratic Governors Association dedicated to helping Democratic Governors get elected. Note they have the ".org" suffix for an organization, not the ".co" for a corporation (originally for Colombia, before that country decided to rent it out).  Frankly, the whole ".co" domain sounds sketchy af.  While the DGA may be legit, it is still a better idea to just donate directly to the candidate of your choice - your dollars will go further without having to cover the overhead of a PAC.

And why is the DGA using a separate website URL for this donation/survey pitch?  I have more questions than answers.  Is the DGA even legit?  Check out this "open secrets" site which shows a paltry amount raised and little spent and notes that organizations cannot directly contribute to campaigns.  Another reason to contribute directly to a campaign.  The amount spent in the 2024 election cycle was negligible in the greater scheme of things.  Seems the bulk went to political parties.  The 2022 cycle was at least in the millions, although perhaps this is because more governor's seats were up for grabs.  Again, most money went to local political parties.  Why not donate directly?

Legitimate or not, their pitch for "Surveys" and donations has all the charm of an MLM scam.  It reminds me of the ACLU "surveys" I get in the mail regularly (and regularly throw in the trash).  Bear in mind, I get the same junk mail from Republican organizations and even candidates. They are an insult to my intelligence. Why not make the pitch for money directly from the candidate and cut out all these middlemen?

Sadly, these kinds of pitches seem to work, which is why they use them.  I scanned "Open Secrets" for everyone in my zip code and noticed that some people contributed, again and again, totalling thousands and thousands of dollars.  It's like learning your grandma is sending all her money to a televangelist!

I donated hundreds and hundreds of dollars during the last election cycle, and some of it even went to candidates.  In the future, however, I think I will be more selective in my donations - to candidates and not organizations.

And legit or not, never to these sleazy survey come-ons.  The reason they keep using them is that we keep donating!

UPDATE: In my SPAM box is a missive from "blue wave america" which has emojis in the title and exhorts me to help flip the House with all the charm of a carnival barker.  Open Secrets has little to say about this PAC.  Think I'll pass, thank you!

United We Stand, Divided We Fell

Russian propaganda isn't designed to convince us to love Russia, only to hate our neighbors.

Note:  Thanks to all the nice folks who have e-mailed me with kind words - and even writing letters!  Thanks!  However, my energy levels are not what they once were, so I may be writing less in the future.

* * *

There is so much talk today about how "divided" we are as a nation - and as a planet.  And all of this is by design, to get us to dislike or even hate one another, to the point where our country and indeed, all Western countries, are weakened and perhaps even fall.

A lot of people deny that the Russian Internet Research Agency is behind a lot of this propaganda.  To them, propaganda is something along the lines of the patriotic posters and movies of the Stalin era, where the workers were exhorted to make more tractors and harvest more wheat.  They expect Russian (and Chinese) propaganda to be as basic as "Russia great! West sucks!"   But of course, that would be stupid and people would readily see through that.  Not only that, it would accomplish nothing, even if some people believed the message (and a small minority of the far-right does, of course).

No, they are more nuanced than that.  Their goal is to divide us, get us angry at one another, to the point where our country - and the rest of the Western world - collapses from within.  Then they win without firing a shot.  It is right out of the Art of War playbook.

What sort of divisions am I talking about? Well, consider the following:

1. The War Between The Sexes:  In the last decade, we have seen the rise of the "red pill" and "incel" movements among men, with a similar backlash movement from women, who are naturally repulsed by the former. In case you have been sleeping under a rock for ten years, it works like this:  Online "influencers" like Andrew Tate, tell young men that they are entitled to the woman of their choice, who should perform sex on demand and make them a sandwich and clean house (the so-called "bang-maid") and not have a career of their own, but of course somehow have sufficient income to support their husband.

These men are taught that they can manipulate women through cheap psychology, such as "negging" - making slight derogatory comments to engender insecurity in women.  Of course, this rarely works as most women are smarter than that, and as a result, these young men become "incels" - involuntary celebrates (they claim) and become women-hating misogynists.  They are told if they vote Republican, then "traditional family values" will be forced upon the country and even women's right to vote will be rescinded.  Whether anyone actually believes this is questionable, but like the flat-earth theory, what starts out as an online joke ends up turning into a religion.

Women, of course, are repulsed by all of this nonsense.  You read about this all the time on discussion groups.  Online dating sites don't help any, with people's expectations being unreasonable and people of both sexes lying about themselves in their bios and using enhanced photos.  The net result is a host of people who are convinced that men or women are no damn good and they will never find a spouse.  Score: Puntin 1, Humanity 0.

2. The War Among the LBGTQ+ Alphabet:  In the last few years, we suddenly are hearing about transgender issues, as though they never existed in previous years.   Sure, there was Christine Jorgensen back in the 1950s and Bruce/Caitlin Jenner in more recent times (the latter, oddly enough, a staunch Republican).  It was pretty much and under-the-radar phenomenon until recently.  Trans people have always existed, but for some reason, in the last few years, we are told this is the most pressing issue of the day.

We are told we are bad people for using the wrong pronouns, or not supporting the transitioning of underage minors or even pre-pubescent kids.  Moreover, these expensive procedures are claimed to be "life-saving" on the premise that unless they are provided for free, people will kill themselves.  Real issues have been raised whether it is fair to have a transitioned person compete in women's sports, but rather than discuss this rationally, we are told to shut up.  Needless to say, this has been a real vote-getting issue for the GOP as no one likes to be told what to think or say.

On the flip side, I think trans people are being baited to become more militant and intolerant - and to shame anyone who questions any aspects of this.  We are being baited by outside forces.  Whether or not you are transgender is a serious question that should not be a part of pop culture or the latest fads or trends - and certainly not something for children to be deciding for themselves.  There are many varieties of people in this world, and not all effeminate men or masculine women are "trans" yet I think many are being pushed in that direction.

Part and parcel of this is the dicing and slicing of the various sexual minorities into an alphabet soup of self-identities.  I noted before that the great rift between gays and lesbians has been around for centuries and can only best be described as an uneasy truce.  Some gays, I am sad to say, just hate lesbians and protest when they "invade our space."  And sadly, the reverse is also true.  Divided, both groups are weaker than if they were united.

But it gets worse.  With each letter added to the alphabet mix, we are dividing into smaller and smaller subsets, and are encouraged to think of ourselves as different and not like others.  There are gays I have met who hate drag queens, and transvestites (many of whom are heterosexual) who want nothing to do with drag queens or transgender people or gays.  We have twinks, and bears, and otters and leathermen and lipstick lesbians, and so on - and never the twain shall meet, or so it seems.  Seeds of discontent and discord are spread, with the PC-talk about transgender folks only being the latest example of this divide-and-conquer strategy.

And this divisive talk is spread and encouraged online by you-know-who.

It is, of course, all nonsense.  You are not a heartless bastard for calling someone by the wrong pronoun, and the whole "preferred pronouns" nonsense, like most if not all PC-talk, amounts to reorganizing the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Only worse - as not only does it accomplish nothing, it turns people against one another.  It has a negative impact.

There is also the trolling aspect of it as well.  The Harry Potter lady likes to crack open a box of Chablis and start tweeting hateful things about trans folks.  Not a nuanced discussion of the real issues as I have noted above, but just gutter-talk and name-calling in an attempt to "trigger" people - and they respond in kind, with each new tweet setting off a firestorm on the Internet, thus distracting people from what is really going on.

3.  The Moderates Versus The Extremes:  Like it or not, most people, worldwide, are pretty politically moderate.  They are invested in the system and don't want to rock the boat.  By the time you are 30 and have a career and a mortgage, you want to work the system and get ahead - not overthrow it and start over.

But at an earlier age, it seems that the system is stacked against you - I know I felt that way at age 22, even as I was a salaried employee of GM.  Social Security?  I'll never collect that! - or so the GOP encouraged me to believe.  But by age 25, I sobered up (literally) finished my degree and in a few years, graduated from law school.  From dead broke to millionaire, in about a decade.  Needless to say, I didn't think the system was so bad at that point.

We are encouraged to be extremists.  Many young people touted the phrase "Killer Kamala" as though Democrats were somehow responsible for the war in Gaza - and that Republicans just loved Palestinians.  It was a ridiculous proposition, of course.  Yes, both parties are beholden to Israel and the Jewish vote (the latter once a lock for Democrats).  So instead of voting for the lesser of two evils, they either voted for the most evil, or a third party spoiler - if they voted at all.

And make no mistake about it, phrases like "Killer Kamala" were coined and minted in Russia.  It was a clever technique that even got some Muslims to vote for Trump - the same Trump who touted a "Muslim Ban" the last time around.

Of course, this works two ways.  While the far-left of the Democratic party was encouraged to sit out the election, the moderate independents (who make up the vast majority of the electorate) were encouraged to vote GOP by painting the Democrats as leftist extremists.  Sadly, the Democrats went along with this, trying desperately to court the far-left vote (which never would have been satisfied) while alienating moderates who otherwise would be turned off by Trump's antics.  Turning moderates against extremists and vice-versa resulted in a GOP win.

But of course, Trump is an extremist.  How did they get moderates to go along with that?  Well, the GOP was successful in convincing the moderates that Trump "wasn't all that bad" and moreover, didn't have to worry about losing the extremist vote - their "base" in every sense of the word.   The Nazis, anti-semites, racists, preppers, incels and all the other components of Hillary's well-named "basket of deplorables" would vote for Trump no matter how much he might soften his image to appeal to the moderates.  Moderates were not attending his rallies, they were watching Fox News and reading sane-washed articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

So you see, it was a losing situation from the get-go for Democrats, who tried, in vain, to get out the vote from the leftists.  Sure, they voted for Obama back in the day - but later decried him as too moderate or even conservative.  There's no pleasing those folks!  And Putin knew this.

4. Race - The Obvious Choice:  Race relations have understandable divided America since its inception.  We have racial issues in America because we have races.  It never ceases to amuse me when someone in a monocultural country tsk-tsks us for having racial problems.  Sure, the had no issues of race in blond-and-blue-eyed Sweden, or 99% Japanese Japan, or Achtung! Deutschland, as everyone was of the same race and mindset.  I say "had" as with recent worldwide migration (a natural result of overpopulation, climate change, and the power grab for diminishing resources) these once "pure" lands are now becoming a mixing pot - that often refuses to mix.

I guess I am most amused when Europeans knock us for having racial strife, when their own history is one of nearly continuous wars over the centuries, based on little more than differences in culture, language, and religion.  But more about that, later.

Turning people against each other over race has become more nuanced, as even the GOP (the better part of, at least) has denounced the past evils of slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, and the like.  But they are using more nefarious tactics to divide blacks from whites and from hispanics and Asians.  Blacks are told that it was the "Democrat Party" that was behind Jim Crow - and technically they are right.  Just as the word "Nazi" originally was an abbreviation for "National Socialism" it is a misleading argument.  Nazis abandoned whatever small pretense of socialism early on in their reign of terror.

And Democrats lost the "Solid South" when they embraced Northern labor movements.  The GOP stepped in, touting "traditional values" (a dog whistle to racists) and Nixon won election as the South flipped from blue to red in my lifetime.  But the inaccuracy - the lie - is the point.  They just want to sow division, and if they can turn even a small number of blacks to either not vote or vote Republican, they win. And of course, it only takes a little bit of money to bribe "influencers" online to go along with the party line.

Hispanics have always been divided amongst themselves and indeed, resent being lumped in together with each other.  My Cuban friend doesn't consider himself Hispanic or Latin, as everyone in Cuba is of 100% Spanish descent and donchuforgetit.  In filling out my Medicare and Social Security forms, I notices that the old "race" categories have been changed.  It used to be "White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, American Eskimo, Other."  Today, "Hispanic" is a subset of "White" and when you tick off the "White" box, you are then asked if you are Hispanic or "Other."  It is an interesting shift in terminology.

Of course, why are we asking people's races anyway?

Hispanics of various countries do not necessarily identify with one another, or with different regions.  Latin America, South America, the Caribbean - they are all different from one another and the residents don't like being lumped together.  Nor do they like being considered as default Democrats.  The Abortion issue has great currency among Catholics and most if not all "Hispanic" countries have a rich Catholic tradition.  So it was easy for the GOP to peel off this segment into their fold.  In Miami, the Cubans vote Republican, convinced that any day now, Trump will get their farms and businesses and casinos back for them.

And of course, there is a huge divide between Blacks and Hispanics - a real visceral hatred if you will.  I know some Hispanics who are more racist than Klansmen, and it amuses me that they think, for an instant, that someone with a name like Enrique Tarrio will be let into the Country Club.  We don't even let in the Irish or Italians!   My own Father had to renounce his Irish heritage and pretend to be a Scots.  Even then, he was viewed with suspicion.

The hate between Blacks and Asians is a new things and I don't understand it.  There have been numerous reports of Asians, particularly women, being assaulted in the cities.  Mentally ill homeless people have been pushing them off subway platforms.  The GOP has used this to encourage Asians to vote Republican - pushing Universities to abandon "diversity" admissions policies, which has resulted in an increase in admissions for Asian students.  Play one minority against another - divide and conquer.

They still ain't letting them in the Country Club!

5. Allies Against Allies:  The biggest success Russia has had so far has been in dividing America against the world, and Europe against itself.  With regard to the latter, it is now recognized that "Brexit" was a carefully orchestrated disinformation campaign aided and abetted by Russia.  Brits were told that they would still be able to trade freely and travel freely in Europe, while avoiding "unnecessary" regulations from Brussels and saving enormous amounts of money.  It was all bald-faced lies and now the UK is paying the price, with the last tattered remnants of their once globe-spanning empire reduced to irrelevancy.

Putin's dirty hand can be seen in the efforts of Hungary and Poland and Turkey to move to the far-right, with only the war in Ukraine being a serious mis-step on Putin's part - threatening to unify Europe once again.

In America, Trump's bluster about buying or invading Greenland is, of course, nonsense.  It would start a war with Europe and destroy the NATO alliance.  That would be the point.  Of course, he likely won't follow through on this threat - the divisiveness it has caused is already enough.

Similarly, the "51st State" of Canada is also a non-starter, as to join the Union, Canada would first have to vote to want to join and of course first be a US Territory.  Invade Canada?  There would be an insurgency that would never end.  Oddly enough, like Trump's talk of annexing Greenland, the only tangible result so far has been to unify our allies.  Not even a year ago, Canada was torn asunder by their own political divisiveness - Trudeau was boo'ed by the right, which was lead by their own Trump mimi-me, Ontario Premier Ford.

Today, Canadians are standing together - even the Quebecois, against American Hegemony.  But even so, America without Canada and Mexico as trading partners is a weakened America.  And the same is true for America and Europe.

Sadly, this has resulted in a lot of hateful rhetoric in both Canada and Europe - with Canadians boo-ing the American National Anthem, and Europeans claiming they can no longer trust "America."

But America is not Trump and Trump is not America.  Maybe 75 million people voted for him (many already expressing regrets, many more to follow) out of a nation of 330 million.  It is hardly a mandate to lead and most voters had no idea this is where it would take us.  Others simply refused to vote because no candidate reflected all of their values perfectly.  Again, divide and conquer - encouraging people to focus on the divisions between them and the party that most aligns with their values.

* * *

So, where do we go from here?  Will Trump ignore court orders - or will the Supreme Court roll over and acede to his every whim and demand?  Will the military be used to enact a dictatorship with Congress dissolved and Trump ruling by decree?

Or will it all fall apart as James Carville recently predicted? Will even Trump supporters revolt when their Grandma loses her Social Security check and millions die of Bird Flu, as hospitals are overwhelmed with uninsured patients, thanks to the cancellation of Obamacare and Medicare/Medicaid?  Carville has been so wrong about so many things before.

It is hard to say.  A special election in Florida is coming up on April 1st and could flip the House to the Democrats.  However, the two districts are staunchly Republican, and unless the Social Security checks stop coming by then, it is doubtful there will be a blue wave in the panhandle.  Besides, if bad things happen, it's all Joe Biden's fault, right?  Cognitive dissonance is a feature not a bug,

It may take a collapse to cause change.  Obama was elected because the Bush II Presidency and the wars he started were a disaster. Clinton was elected because "it's the economy, stupid!"  Roosevelt won only because Hoover drove America deeper into recession.

Maybe - just maybe - the MAGA movement will implode as people start to realize that tax cuts for Billionaires won't result in cheap eggs and that tariffs won't mean more jobs, just staggering prices and abject poverty.

It will get a lot worse before it gets better.

The Great Dopamine Shortage of 2025

People online talk about getting a dopamine hit from watching funny cat videos.  Does this explain why being chronically online is so bad for your health?

Dopamine is an interesting thing, and I think is misunderstood by most of us.  It has become a popular word to use lately, online, to describe the rush you get while waiting for your latest funny cat video or "meme" to load.  If so, it explains why, when you watch said funny cat video, you find it pleasurable, but when you show it to others, they go, "that's nice" and move on.  They didn't spend several seconds waiting for it to load.

Dopamine not only rewards addictive behaviors, but it is a key component in managing motor pathways, which is why, I guess, Parkinson's patients shuffle when they walk or shake uncontrollably.  Could there be a connection between Parkinson's and chronic online behavior?  Maybe our brains are being saturated with dopamine from constantly clicking on memes and stories online, to the point where we cannot even walk anymore.

Perhaps.  Some folks are practicing what they call "Dopamine Fasting" to wean themselves from addictive behaviors.

This got me to thinking - always a dangerous pastime - whether our addictive behaviors, particularly regarding cell phones and social media, haven't had a physical effect on our minds and bodies.  I just got back from a trip to the "Free State of Florida" (no, really, they have this on the sign welcoming you at the border).  Some free state - you pay tens of thousands of dollars each year in property taxes, hurricane insurance, and special assessments on your condo.  Oh, and gas is 50 cents more expensive than in Georgia.  Freedom isn't free they say, but geez, it makes California look affordable!

But I digress.

The point is, on long drives like this, you stop at a rest area and get out of the car and your legs feel frozen.  You walk like a zombie, shuffling your feet.  What's more, you notice everyone else doing the same thing.  At first, I attributed this to sitting a long time - the blood pooling in your legs and forming clots ready to kill you, should they break loose and give you a stroke.

But then I remembered this is what Parkinson's feels like when the dopamine enhancers wear off.   Your motor control tapers off and you, well, walk like a zombie.

Funny thing, too, lack of dopamine does weird things to your mind.  You tend to get tired, irritable, and think people are plotting against you.  Paranoia sets in, and it ain't pretty.  Mark says, "did you take your dopamine pills?" and I do and feel "normal" again.

So I wonder.  These apps on our phone and social media sites do trigger dopamine release, or so they say.  Perhaps our bodies can only produce so much dopamine before it is exhausted.  Or perhaps, like with caffeine, our receptors are blocked, and in response our brains create more receptors.  You build up a tolerance to the dopamine - which is why addictive behavior is so addictive.  You start out small and work your way up, from casual opiate user to back-alley junkie, from social drinker, to falling-down drunk alcholic.

Perhaps.  It would explain a lot.  It would explain why we are obsessed with our cell phones.  Everyone - and I mean everyone - is online all the time, responding like Pavlov's dogs to the chime of the phone.  You've got mail!  And we stop what we are doing, ignore the people we are talking to in person, and check our phones for that all-important dopamine nibble.

And the people feeding us this stuff know this and are complicit.  News outlets admitted that a second Trump Presidency would be "good for business" as it would drive up engagement to their sites as people look on in horror or satisfaction at the "latest outrage" of the new administration.  Four years of Biden was bad for newspaper circulation!

Some sites have abandoned all pretense of being news sites.  I mentioned before how Newsweek devolved from a weekly magazine (which was pretty lightweight even then) to an all-Trump outrage machine.  During the Biden years, we were treated to one story after another, about how Trump was just steps away from a jail cell, or how some "expert" or "un-named source" had a withering analysis as to why Trump will be jailed.  Now that that hasn't happened, they have shifted to a 100% outrage machine.  I long ago learned not to click on any article that linked to Newsweek.  It just wasn't worth it - no dopamine, just ads and rage-bait.

The same, of course, is true for right-wing leaning publications, many of which admit that their stance on politics is just for entertainment purposes, to rage-bait and trigger the far-right or even the mild-right.  Yes, I'm looking at you, Fox News and Infowars - both have admitted their on-air personas are just that - acts - and that their "news" is strictly for entertainment purposes.

And yet, the media on both sides of the fence have the audacity to blame us for being "divided" and "hyper-partisan" while at the same time, feeding us divided and hyper-partisan news.  All for a little dap of dopamine.  We are addicted to this shit.

As I noted in a very early post:

In Howard Stern's movie "Private Parts" there is a line that illustrates how this works. The station manager is reading the latest A.C. Nielsen ratings and says:

"50% of listeners LOVE Howard Stern and listen for an average of 1.5 hours. Reason given? They want to hear what he'll say next!"

"50% of listeners HATE Howard Stern and listen for an average of 2.5 hours. Reason given? They want to hear what he'll say next!"

Whether this survey was actually true, it illustrates the twisted genius of Stern and other "shock jock" and talk show hosts, as well as television programmers. Their goal is to get you to listen or watch, so they can sell you, like a pimp sells a whore, to advertisers.

So, what's the point?  Well, for starters, I think we'll see a big rise in Parkinson's diagnoses in the coming years, if it hasn't already.  This could, however, merely be an artifact of an aging population.   Or, as some studies suggest, the result of some chemicals in our environment.  Could be - when I was at Carrier, we had a tri-chlor tank the size of a small swimming pool, for de-greasing large machinery.  The guy who ran it was crazy as a loon, and people said it was inhaling all that tri-chlor.  Hell, we used to wash our hands in it.

Could it also be the result of decades of dopamine drain from not only social media, but from its precursors, such as cable television, radio, as well as activities like driving for hours every day?  Other than a few key operators, I doubt many were compulsively addicted to the telegraph.  But the phone?  Back in the days of landlines, we all knew of the houswife or girlfriend who was perpetually on the phone, even while doing housework.  And you recall, in the era of flip-phones, the cashier at Walmart who was on her phone the entire time she was scanning your groceries.

You know, personally, people who have their televisions on, 24/7 it seems, long before streaming became popular.  "The talking lamp" they called it.  People turned on the teevee when they woke up and turned it off only when they went to sleep, if even then.  Addictive electronic behaviors have been around a long time!

Then the internet.  I remember how addictive discussion groups were back in the 1990's.  You'd log on to see if anyone responded to your comment.  And flame wars would erupt - ensuring more engagement.  I think this did not go unnoticed.  When Facebook became a thing, well, I sensed it was a bottomless pit of engagement and backed out of it.  That is not to say I don't check my phone first thing in the morning for the latest outrage.

But maybe this will change.  Eventually, people get tired of being rage-baited and when the dopamine "hits" get smaller and smaller, people may turn away from this nonsense - and seek out some new form of dopamine addiction.

Myself, it is slowly dawning on me that my emotional energy is a finite resource and a precious one.  Squander it on nonsense online, and it leaves you with less energy to do your daily chores, succeed in your career, or just be happy.  Letting others tap into or drain this energy is just giving away a part of yourself, with nothing gained in return.

I used the term "emotional energy" back then, but perhaps today, I realize that this "energy" has a physical manifestation - dopamine - that literally drives you to do things.  Whether these are things of value to you or not, is the question.

And maybe, lack of dopamine might explain the increasingly paranoid and extreme behaviors on both radical ends of our political spectrum.  Extremist view are not only being prompted by social media and news sites, but the associated dopamine triggering is creating the propensity to get angry and go extreme.

Maybe I'm wrong about this.  Maybe not.  The only solution is, if I am right, is to turn away from these cheap dopamine pushers and spend more time in "real life."

Just a thought.