Defend The Resistance

Don Johnny and his minions have only two responses to truthful criticism: Ignore and downplay it or try to criminalize the act. The latter is a clear act of tyranny.

And in the face of it comes Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. Speaking in New Hampshire Sunday, he unleashed an anti-Trump call to arms that should be resounding from coast to coast. Pritzker spoke of "mass protests" and "disruption." Republicans certainly heard it, and responded predictably, using words like "inflammatory" and "inciting violence."

That's the problem with Republicans. Everything that sounds even vaguely like criticism immediately starts collecting labels meant to inflame the public. There's certainly nothing vague about Pritzker. He goes straight for the jugular. And so he should. 

Right now he is the only orator of significance standing straight up and telling truth to America. Republicans will do all they can to stop him, and they must not be allowed to succeed. 

Of course there are other voices. Bernie Sanders speaks out regularly and forcefully against Trump and his policies, usually from the Senate chamber. Bernie does it well and makes excellent points, but he's no longer the firebrand he once was.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz makes occasional appearances, but too few. He's not quite the orator that Pritzker is, but he sells the message. They must be heard and we must protect them.

This is a beginning, but there are other powerful voices that need to be heard, that need to bring the message of truth against Trump and MAGA and for the United States, its Constitution and its people. Kamala Harris, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, and Mitt Romney--yes, three of them are Republicans--are nonetheless able to bring out the anti-Trump message, and they could do it powerfully.

So call out your most effective speakers, your organizers, your core of support, and let's get this resistance moving.

La lutte continue!

---Diogenes, 29 April 2025 

Not About Tariffs

 In October of last year The Atlantic ran an article by Charlie Warzel with the lead "I'm Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is."

The subject was the appalling number of Americans who were believing and buying into disinformation and conspiracy theories. And still are. Ask anyone you know who is not so afflicted, and there is a high probability they will tell you they know someone who is.

The phenomenon is one of the great conundrums of our time. When it started to make the news, I, like many other elitist snobs, assumed that anyone who could possibly believe such rubbish was a knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, uninformed lowlife of questionable mental capacity. But when I discovered that people I knew and respected were buying into such nonsense I was forced to change my mind.

My first response was shock. I had to ask them, "How can you possibly believe this crap?" I never got a credible answer. The answers I did get were mostly in the line of "Well, everybody says so," and when I asked "Who's 'everybody'?" the responses tended to be vague, ranging from the Internet to YouTube to TV personalities (mostly on Fox News; no surprise there.)

The "Everybody says so" line is of course one of DonnyJohn's favorite means of trying to establish credibility for his outrageous lies and overstatements.

One reason we at Vox Populi have been quiet the past several days, is that we've been researching the nature of conspiracy theories and the people who believe in them. It's been maddening. After reading several studies by sources that I trust* the only positive results have been that I'm vindicated in the kinds of questions I've personally asked of conspiracy theorists. And I've learned a new word: "conspiracist."

One graph** I analyzed was an ambitious attempt to conflate results from several studies about conspiracy theories into one package based on the number of theories individuals believed, sorted by 53 sociodemographic definers. I decided to look only at the median response set where slightly more than half of all results landed up. According to my thoroughly unscientific analysis, the majority of people who are very susceptible to belief in conspiracy theories are either Black, Hispanic, or White men or women aged between 18 and 55, without college degrees, and earning a household income lower than or equal to the national median. As with all studies of this sort there were a few outliers: some Black and Hispanic individuals had higher than median income and some Hispanic individuals had college degrees. No gender was specified for the outliers.

The nature of conspiracy theories is easily stated: "an attempt to explain harmful or tragic events as the result of the actions of an unknown powerful group that may or may not be affiliated with government."  

I may be way off base here, but that definition strikes me as being very similar to the generally accepted reason why early humans invented gods: as a means to explain and rationalize natural phenomena.

Let's look at two hypothetical events.

A conspiracist hears that the stock market has crashed. They say, "Well, there's those blasted deep state manipulators at work again." 

Then let's rewind to--say 70,000 B.C.*** Lightning strikes a nearby tree, creating a huge blast of thunder. Kush, a nearby witness, shaken, says, "Dang! There's the lightning god Mawa trying to spear me again." 

How are these different? Both ascribe fearful incidents to a shadowy party believed to have control over worldly events. Conspiracists blame the mythical deep state. Kush blames Mawa. Is it not the same urge to take control by giving the things we fear a name?

But from where does the urge stem? Conspiracy theories aren't new--I first remember hearing some when I was in fourth grade. Of course we didn't call them that then because most of us took them as gospel, but there they were. In my school I think the source was older siblings or just older kids who told us credulous children those "facts" for fun. In the adult world we call that disinformation.

Since then I've heard some strange things that I simply ignored. But remember that definition above? Conspiracy theories arise to explain "harmful or tragic events." There was a spike in them after the JFK assassination, and as our heroes continued to fall and the Vietnam War continued on its horrid way, conspiracy theories surrounded us, but settled down as the war came to an end and no one else was assassinated.

Then came 9/11 and a spike in conspiracy theories, which ultimately played out. Of course the world was still sane then. When COVID-19 hit, after Americans had suffered through three years of insanity, presidential gibberish, and conspiracy theories flowing from the government itself, the floodgates opened and have not closed.

Like most fabulations, conspiracy theories are based in part on fact. Let's look at the widely believed notion of "chemtrails." A great many people are convinced that contrails--those white cloudlike streamers that follow jet aircraft--contain toxins that are meant to brainwash the population, or change the weather selectively, or implant seeds of alien growth, or … fill in the blank with your favorite phobia.

Fact: Jet aircraft leave contrails, which are nothing more than water vapor that condenses around jet exhaust.

Fact: Governments have used aircraft to disperse a variety of materials from fire retardant to Agent Orange, a known carcinogenic and mutagenic chemical.

Consider: Jet aircraft leave contrails in the atmosphere; Aircraft are known to spray harmful chemicals; therefore Contrails are harmful. 

It's a nice syllogism. A is true; B is true; therefore C is true. The structure is at the heart of many if not most conspiracy theories. The argument is false because of the disjunction between A and B, but good luck telling that to a believer.

Let's have some fun making up our own conspiracy theory. I thought I had invented this one but it was hitting the Internet before I could blink. Here's the argument:

Fact A: JD Vance had an audience with Pope Francis about 11:30 a.m. Easter Sunday, 20 April 2025.

Fact B: Pope Francis died of an apparent stroke about 7:35 a.m. the following day, Monday, 21 April 2025.

Both facts are true. Therefore, …  {draw your own conclusion}

 ---Diogenes, 24 April 2025 

 

* Including The Pew Research Center, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Carsey School of Public Policy, UNH, Nature.com, and Statista.com.

** I am intentionally not naming the project or the publication. The conclusions I draw from it are valid for our purposes here, but are superficial and simplified, and do no justice to a broad, complete, and highly nuanced study.

*** The established date of the Blombos Cave Engravings of South Africa. No one knows when language developed, but the appearance of art suggests the pre-emergence of language. 

 

 

George and Don Redux

For the first time since we established Vox Populi in early 2017 we are repeating a post with very slight, but immensely important, emendations.

This post comparing the grievances of the colonists against George III to those of Americans today against Donald Trump has been updated by the inclusion of two additional paragraphs from the Declaration of Independence. We held off including them until we were certain they were factual. They appear in italics below.

 "A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."--The Declaration of Independence

 We all know that Donny John is a criminal, a crook, and a thug. We also know that he aspires to be another Vladimir Putin, i.e. to be ruler of his country for as long as the people let him get away with it. 

We say here, we will not allow him to get away with it. 

In 1776, when the American colonists were fed up with being bullied by King George III of Great Britain, they sent him a long letter defining how he had offended them. Then, ever so politely, they told him to piss off. We call that document our Declaration of Independence.

To get a little perspective on the nature of two tyrants, George III and DonnyJ, this post offers some comparisons.

From the Declaration, not in order, and in the original language:

1776: "He (George III) has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance."

NOW: DOGE.

1776: "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us."

NOW: Beginning 1/20/21 and intermittently thereafter.

1776: "For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent," and "For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world."

NOW: Reckless imposition of tariffs, which are in effect taxes on the American people, and have a dampening effect on international trade.

1776: "He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers."

NOW: This is admittedly a bit of a stretch, but relates to DJ and his minions denying election results and ignoring laws they don't like.

1776: "He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries."

NOW: Not yet, but he's working on it.

1776: "He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation."

NOW: Elon Musk.

1776: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: and
         For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

NOW:  Rendition of many people including American citizens to El Salvador and other places of imprisonment and inhumane treatment. (Added 11 April 2025)

And today we add our own list of grievances.

He (DJT) has elected to govern by fiat, arbitrarily and unilaterally using executive orders rather than adhering to properly debated and ratified legislation.

He has usurped the authority of Congress by arrogating unto himself the powers given to that body by the Constitution.

He has, on unnumbered occasions, openly and brazenly broken his oath to support and defend the Constitution.

He has appointed, contrary to custom and legislation, a foreign national to reduce the federal workforce haphazardly and brutally, without plan or reason.

He has, in violation of the Constitution and laws of this nation, worked to demonize and generally mistreat Americans whose race, color, culture, national origin, or sexual orientation are different from his own.

Having neither religion nor faith himself he criminalizes those who hold non-Christian beliefs.

He has robbed American women of the right to reproductive freedom.

He continues to attempt to overturn sections of the Constitution that guarantee equality and freedom for all.

He works to make the judiciary a tool of the Executive Branch in violation of the Framers' intent.

In clear violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution he has ordered symbols of Judaeo-Christianity to be placed in public school classrooms.

He attempts to make the education of American children a mission of the Executive Branch as a means of inculcating future generations into his cult following known as MAGA.

The Declaration has the last (slightly amended) word:

"The history of the [47th president of the United States] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

"When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government."

--- Diogenes, with an assist from Thomas Jefferson et al.,  3 April 2025