Freedom To Think, Part 1

The freedoms guaranteed to Americans in the First Amendment are usually referred to as freedoms of expression: to worship as we choose, praising whichever deity we revere; to speak freely on any subject, and to publish our words and ideas without fear of censorship or reprisal; to gather peaceably together whenever and wherever we wish for any reason; and to approach representatives of the government freely when we have a complaint.

We take these freedoms for granted; and why not? They have been the foundation of our society all our lives, and for all the lives of our American ancestors for generations.

Using his own country as an example, Winston Churchill succinctly described the difference between democratic and totalitarian governments: “In England, everything is permitted except what is forbidden. In [Nazi] Germany, everything is forbidden except what is permitted."

The rhetorical question "It's not illegal to think, is it?" pops up frequently in crime shows, usually when a person is feeling undue pressure from police. In point of fact, in some regimes it is technically forbidden to have ideas the rulers perceive as a threat.

As far as the public knows, police and other investigative agencies haven't developed mind-reading techniques. But profiling, close watching, and electronic surveillance are the next best thing. In totalitarian societies those techniques are routinely applied to everyone. A few innocent unusual acts, an "inflammatory" word uttered, a chance meeting with a stranger, and a citizen of North Korea, Syria, or Uzbekistan might find themselves arrested on suspicion of being an enemy of the state; and suspicion is sometimes all it takes to make a person disappear.

It's not exactly thought control, but when every person in a country is automatically under suspicion of subversion and only a misstep away from arrest, it might as well be. All expression except that in praise of the government is throttled, and eventually no one but extreme revolutionaries dares to think anything else.

There are individuals in this country, many of them in power at the state or federal level, who would prefer to see such a condition in the United States. Happily for us, that would be very difficult to achieve.

But not impossible. Edmund Burke* wrote that "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Rights are like muscles. If not exercised, they atrophy. We the people of the United States owe it to ourselves, our ancestors and our descendants to exercise our rights, letting the present administration know our extreme displeasure with it.

Let your voice be heard. It's the most powerful weapon you have. Speak truth to wannabe tyrants in blogs, tweets, letters to editors and to your senators and representatives. Use any medium available to voice your resistance to encroaching tyranny, because you have the right to think, to speak, and to protest.

Please check in tomorrow for some thoughts on the process of protest.


--- Diogenes, 4/30/20


*The statement is attributed to Burke, with some uncertainty.

There Are None So Blind As Those Who Will Not See

The proverb in the title continues, "The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know." The biblical saying first appears in English in 1546, in "The Proverbs of John Heywood."

In the early 1860s a political movement called the Know-nothings emerged in the United States. Their philosophy was in fact not one of ignorance. The name stemmed from their desire to keep the party more or less secret; when a member was asked anything about it he would respond "I know nothing."

The phrase, however, resounds in a tendency in this country to value ignorance.

I have lately been contemplating a pair of epigrams that encapsulate our ambivalence toward learning. On one hand we say "Knowledge is power," but on the other, "Ignorance is bliss." The dichotomy is difficult, if not impossible to reconcile.

Don't we all seek power in some form? We are a competitive species; we seek to overcome others in school by getting better grades; in sports by scoring more points; in business by making more money or having a more prestigious office location. Each of those requires knowledge and understanding, whether of an academic discipline, a playbook or a corporate strategy.

But don't we all also seek bliss? We scrimp and save for Fantasyland vacations, we spend thousands on computer gaming and virtual reality systems and dream of winning the lottery, all to the end of shedding stress, relieving ourselves of work related concerns and trying, as The Beatles sang, to "turn off your mind, relax and float down stream."

Such scenarios, however, do not in themselves imply ignorance. Indeed, we have to work to earn money to get a little bliss, and working implies knowledge of something.

Who, then, can achieve bliss through ignorance? Let's define ignorance. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary it is "lack of knowledge, education, or awareness." Blissfulness results from not having to worry; if one knows nothing, one has nothing to worry about.

If bliss is the absence of worry and stress it follows that there is also absence of thought, as worry and stress are byproducts of thought. Having no thoughts implies the inability to think, which I doubt sounds blissful to most of us.

Still, there are some among us who are able to achieve a bliss-like state not through absence of thought but through wholesale denial of reality. They believe that problems will go away if they don't think about them; they deny their existence then deny the denial; they flout rules that they don't like; they operate outside normative behavior, and they answer to no one. 

They are Heywood's "most deluded people . . . who choose to ignore what they already know."

And they are in charge of this country.


--- Diogenes, 4/28/20

Donald John Trump: an overview and the last Trumpcentric post for a while.

Ethnicity: German/Scottish/American; Trump's grandparents were German immigrants. His mother immigrated from Scotland. 
Education: High school: New York Military Academy; B.S., Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. 
Profession: Real estate developer. 
Marital status: Married, twice divorced. 
Current Occupation: President of the United States of America.

Consider the facts, starting with the fact that he is only a third-generation American, a newcomer. Yet he led the "birther" challenge against Barack Obama. This might suggest more than a bit of hypocrisy if it weren't such common knowledge that the attack was racially motivated.

Given his family's short tenure in the United States and his mixed blood, one wonders why Trump is so rabidly xenophobic. Foreign-born though they were, Trump's ancestors appear to have been exclusively white. His phobia of Mexicans and dislike of Orientals suggest a deep-seated problem with persons of color.

The New York Military Academy uniform was the only one Trump ever wore. Presidents without military experience are no longer rare, but this one never served his country in any way prior to running for its highest office.

A bachelor's degree in economics is the extent of Trump's education. Yet he routinely challenges medical doctors and other highly trained professional experts.

A boor and a bully, Trump has routinely paraded facts of his failed marriages and sexual conquests through the press, victimizing his wives and partners and soiling himself with the filth of his ego and libido.

He must be brought down and cast out.


---Diogenes, 4/26/20

Presidential Qualities

Things a president of the United States of America should be:

• Intelligent
• Respectful of the Constitution
• Empathetic
• Good listener
• Patriotic
• Considerate of others
• Circumspect
• Leader by example
• Even tempered
• Honest

Qualities the current president has: None of the above


Things a president of the United States of America should not be:

• Rude
• Racist
• Xenophobic
• Reckless
• Misogynistic
• Disrespectful of others
• Snide
• Vindictive
• Liar
• Belligerent

Qualities the current president has: All of the above


---Diogenes, 4/25/20 

On Maturity

As children, when we say we like something, we're also declaring it to be good. Conversely, what we don't like is bad. Use the phrase "good for you" trying to convince a child under a certain age that a food they don't like is healthy, and they're likely to respond "no, it's not." The child isn't arguing the point that the food is healthy, but simply restating her preferences because the modifier "for you" doesn't register.

As we mature we begin to understand distinctions between absolute descriptors like "good" and conditional ones like "good for you." Some things do not change, however. When we say we like vanilla ice cream we will always mean "it's good," because the gustatory experience is completely sensual and completely subjective.

In other areas we learn there are different ways of seeing most things. Objective and subjective perception, for example, which as children we conflated into like= good and dislike=bad, are very different. Most experiences and encounters in life can be objectively measured and evaluated, either by intrinsic qualities, such as a work of art, or by social and/or cultural norms, by which we define relationships and behaviors.

As adults we are able to discern those distinctions. We comprehend that it is entirely possible to dislike something that can be shown logically to be intrinsically good, and we can like something that is flawed. We have learned to apply reason. We say we like/dislike something for aspects of its existence. Our reasoning is no longer "I like that and therefore it's good," but "I like that for these reasons . . ."

There are some people whose development never quite got to the point of making the subjective/objective distinction, who remain locked into the pattern of things they like being good and things they don't like being bad. If this is sounding familiar it's because many of those people are afflicted with a mental condition I discussed in my April 17 post, Narcissism.

The condition was named for the mythological Greek youth Narcissus, who lay for so long gazing into a pond admiring his own reflection that he took root and turned into the flower named after him.

We are burdened with a president who is afflicted with an extreme case of the condition. It is evident in a number of ways, including his speech habits. Select almost any of his public utterances at random and you will find the like=good, dislike=bad equations.

The concerning thing about this is not the grammar; it's the fact that these are totally subjective expressions. It's true that he does occasionally use the first person plural, but it's unclear whether he's referring to a team or using it in the royal sense.

The point is that the unpresident frequently speaks in the fashion of a monarch--or a tyrant. He is prone to unilateral action and should be watched closely for evidence of instability.

---Diogenes, 4/24/20

Happy Birthday, Will

Today is Shakespeare's birthday, which Diogenes always takes off to contemplate the Bard and read a few of his plays and maybe a sonnet or three. Aloud, of course.

Back tomorrow.

The Power of Money

Since the mid-1980s Donald Trump has been a party to or has been named in an estimated 3,500 to 4,000 lawsuits.

Take a moment to wrap your head around that. Excepting divorce, the vast majority of us never encounter a lawsuit, and when we do it can be a traumatic experience. Yet the president of these United States is involved with approximately 100 a year which leave him unscathed because using the courts as a tool is just a part of doing business.

Yes, Trump is above all a businessman, and the number and kinds of the businesses he controls are frequently involved in litigation; nearly half the cases involved his casinos, some of which are known to have attracted major crime figures.

Still, an in-depth study conducted by USA Today found that "the number of cases in which Trump is involved is extraordinary. For comparison, USA TODAY analyzed the legal involvement for five top real-estate business executives: Edward DeBartolo, shopping-center developer and former San Francisco 49ers owner; Donald Bren, Irvine Company chairman and owner; Stephen Ross, Time Warner Center developer; Sam Zell, Chicago real-estate magnate; and Larry Silverstein, a New York developer famous for his involvement in the World Trade Center properties.

     

"To maintain an apples-to-apples comparison, only actions that used the developers' names were included. The analysis found Trump has been involved in more legal skirmishes than all five of the others — combined."*

"Knowledge is power," wrote Sir Francis Bacon, but for the obscenely rich such as Trump, money is power, and it is used as a tool and a weapon. Commanding a host of attorneys, he effectively employs the legal strategy of counterpunching. Larry Schwartz, ghostwriter of "The Art of the Deal," described the process: "So somebody comes after him and says that he’s done something nefarious and horrible, and he just goes back at them with all guns blazing — you know, boom, boom, boom. And admits nothing, never admit anything, never say you made a mistake, just keep coming."**

The offenses for which the unpresident has been sued range from real estate fraud to racial prejudice. He has no mercy. Opponents, whether wealthy players or persons of color seeking affordable housing, receive the same devastating response. 

Trump does not understand the concept of respect, because that would require him to acknowledge the worth of other individuals. He will lie, cheat, use the law as a bludgeon when he can; he will insult, defame, ridicule and slander anyone at the slightest provocation, and later deny it.

He has respect neither for the law nor for the courts that administer it, manipulating them as tools to attain his ends. By extension he has no respect for the Constitution, the foundation of our law, even though he has sworn to preserve, protect and defend it. For that alone he should be charged with perjury.

And this is the president of the United States of America.

---Diogenes, 4/22/20


*https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/01/donald-trump-lawsuits-legal-battles/84995854/
**https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/opinion/campaign-stops/donald-trumps-playbook-for-smearing.html

Rocks and Hard Places

Our language contains several colorful adages that use dilemmas to describe being in a difficult situation: being between a rock and a hard place; between the devil and the deep blue sea; and, harking back to when the classics were included in education, between Scylla and Charybdis.

Here is a new one for our times--a dilemma that affects every American, strains the fabric of society, tests our resolve to be decent, and sets us unnecessarily against one another: we are between Trump and truth.

Fact-checking journalists and others who value the truth estimate that Trump has lied to the American people approximately 16,240 times since being elected president. That works out to slightly more than ten lies a day that are passing the presidential lips.

Of course the Liar-in-Chief denies every one, turning the blame to journalists who he claims lie about him--one of the behaviors we discussed in our recent series about Trump's mental state. He currently has active libel suits against the New York Times and The Washington Post, which he will not win, because as journalists say, "It's not libel if it's true."

Nonetheless, such cases are costly to defend. Trump doesn't mind losing them--his goal is either to bankrupt the defendant or to make it so expensive to tell the truth about him that the media will back off.

Trump has made it clear that one of his goals, if re-elected, is to "reform" the libel laws in favor of plaintiffs. And that my friends, would begin the erosion of the First Amendment rights of free speech and a free press.

Thence our dilemma. This man is our elected leader. But how can we, in any conscience, follow a leader who has no interest in our welfare, who lies to us as a matter of habit, who routinely disregards the Constitution he has sworn to uphold and defend, and whose energies are dedicated solely to being re-elected?

--Diogenes, 4/20/20

Denial and Deflection

This was written Saturday, 4/18/20; publishing was delayed by technical issues.


Denial: psychology: a defense mechanism in which confrontation with a personal problem or with reality is avoided by denying the existence of the problem or reality. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary online)

Deflection: Psychological deflection is seen as a narcissistic abuse tactic used to control the mind and emotions of others. Nevertheless, psychological deflection is not only a narcissistic tool but also a coping mechanism strategy. Individuals who use it seek to mask their own impulses by denying their mistakes and projecting them on the people around them. (https://www.learning-mind.com/psychological-deflection/)

This is the third in a daily series of posts about apparent mental disorders displayed by Donald Trump. The quotes are from the transcript of a presidential COVID-19 press briefing held April 13, 2020. It is old news now, but I use one briefing for these commentaries to provide a snapshot of the president's behavior at one point in time.

Some excerpts mention a video. The president played a campaign-style video about 5 minutes long, featuring several governors praising the president.

The excerpts are not continuous. A double space between paragraphs signals a break in continuity. I have not altered the text. I have removed elapsed-time markings and other non-text material that could impede smooth reading, used italic text to emphasize salient phrases, and inserted a few explanatory words in brackets.

The entire transcript can be read at
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-press-conference-transcript-april-13.

Diogenes---4/18/20


R=Reporter  T=Trump


DENIAL AND DEFLECTION--in italics

T: This is reported by CDC, confirmed by the news, which doesn’t mean anything to me, because they don’t tell the truth. But CDC reported, January 31st not one person has died.
      
T: And so the story in the New York Times was a total fake. It’s a fake newspaper and they write fake stories. And someday, hopefully in five years when I’m not here, those papers are all going out of business, because nobody’s going to want to read them, but now they like them because they wrote about me. [Uncertain reference].


T: Anthony [Fauci] said I saved a lot of lives by doing that [banning China travel]. I mean, am I correct? I don’t want to put words in Anthony’s mouth, by the way, and I like him. Today I walk in, I hear I’m going to fire him. I’m not firing him. I think he’s a wonderful guy. I retweeted somebody, I don’t know. They said fire, doesn’t matter.
R: Did you notice that when you retweeted it?
T: Yeah, I notice everything.
R: So you retweeted it even though it said time to fire Fauci?
T: Well, no, that’s somebody’s opinion. All that is is a opinion.
R: But you read it, and you elevated it.
T: Well, I was called about that. I said, “I’m not firing.” In fact, if you ask your friends in the public relations office, I was immediately called up on that, and I said, “No, I like him. I think he’s terrific.” Because this was a person’s view. Not everybody’s happy with Anthony. Not everybody’s happy with everybody, but I will tell you, we have done a job the likes of which nobody has ever done. The mobilization, getting of equipment, all of the things we’ve done, nobody’s ever done a job like this. We have 50 governors and territories, by the way, people don’t ever mention that. We have territories.

R: What did you do with that time that you bought? The argument is that you bought yourself some time. You didn’t use it to prepare hospitals. You didn’t use it to ramp up testing. Right now, nearly 20 million people are unemployed.
T: You’re so disgraceful. It’s so disgraceful the way you say that. Let me just, listen. I just went over it.
R: Tens of thousands of Americans are dead. How is this [crosstalk 00:35:57] or this rant supposed to make people feel confident in an unprecedented crisis?
T: I just went over it. Nobody thought we should do it, and when I did it-
R: But what did you do with the time that you bought? The month of February. That video has a gap, the entire month of February.
T: You know what we did? What do you do when you have no case in the whole United States?
R: You had cases in February.
T: Excuse me. You reported it. Zero cases, zero deaths on January 17th-
R: January, February, the entire month of February.
T: I said in January.
R: That video has a complete gap.
T: On January 30th-
R: What did your administration do in February for the time that your travel ban bought you?
T: A lot.
R: What?
T: A lot, and in fact, we’ll give you a list. What we did, in fact, part of it was up there. [Referring to the video.]
R: It wasn’t. Your video had a gap.
T: We did a lot. Look, look, you know you’re a fake. You know that. Your whole network, the way you cover it is fake, and most of you, and not all of you, but the people are wise to you. That’s why you have a lower approval rating than you’ve ever had before times probably three.
R: 20 million people are unemployed. Tens of thousands are dead.
T: And when you asked me that question, let me ask you this, why did Biden apologize? Why did he write a letter of apology? [Also a lie. There was no apology].

R: I don’t think anyone in this room cares about why Joe Biden didn’t apologize to you.
T: No, that’s very important. Why did the Democrats think that I acted too quickly? You know why? Because they really thought that I acted too quickly. We have done a great job. . . . The problem is the press doesn’t cover it the way it should be.
 

Lies, Blame and Paranoia

Faithful readers: I know a series like this can be tiresome to plow through, but as we all know, these facts have to be shouted from the rooftops many times before anyone will take notice. Thank you for your attention and any action you have taken--sharing, discussing, anything.

This is the fourth and final post in a series about apparent mental disorders displayed by Donald Trump. The quotes are from the transcript of a presidential COVID-19 press briefing held April 13, 2020. It is old news, but I use one briefing for these commentaries to provide a snapshot of the president's behavior at one point in time.


Blame shifting: "In part, people are reluctant to admit they have failed because of a general desire to avoid negative social evaluation and disapproval from others. Thus, to save face when things go wrong, people will sometimes shift blame away from themselves by bringing attention to external causes, attempting to obscure their role in causing misfortune." (Lozano, Elizabeth B. and Sean M. Laurent,  "The effect of admitting fault versus shifting blame on expectations for others to do the same." PLoS One; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213276).

Paranoia: "The paranoid personality-disordered person is suspicious of others—this individual thinks that others are out to threaten, betray, exploit, or harm. . . . People with paranoid personality disorder are not normally grounded in reality, nor do they admit that they have negative feelings about other people. They distrust people so much that they will not discuss how they feel, and harbor suspicions for lengthy periods of time."  (Psychology Today online, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/paranoid-personality-disorder)

Some excerpts mention a video. The president played a campaign-style video about 5 minutes long, featuring several governors praising the president.

The excerpts are not continuous. A double space between paragraphs signals a break in continuity. I have not altered the text. I have removed elapsed-time markings and other non-text material that could impede smooth reading, used bold text to emphasize salient phrases, and inserted a few explanatory words in brackets.

The entire transcript can be read at
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-press-conference-transcript-april-13.

Diogenes---4/19/20

R=Reporter  T=Trump
 
If you search "trump lies" you will find a wealth of material from sources ranging from the Boston Globe to YouTube, all documenting falsehoods this president has presented as truth to the American people. Here are just a very few.


LIES IN YELLOW

T: When on January 31st, I instituted the ban, Joe Biden went crazy. He said, “You don’t need the ban.” He didn’t go crazy. He didn’t even know what the hell the ban was, so he didn’t go crazy. But he did call me xenophobic, wait a minute, he called me xenophobic. He called me a racist because… He has since apologized and he said I did the right thing.

T: No one who has needed a ventilator has not gotten a ventilator. Think of that. You know, you heard all about ventilators, ventilators, we need ventilators, because they didn’t have them, because the states should’ve had them. No one who has needed a ventilator has not gotten a ventilator. No one who has needed a hospital bed has been denied a hospital bed.

T: And I’ve been asking from the beginning, “Why can’t we sterilize and sanitize these masks?” And it turned out we can, and there was a great company in Ohio. They sent us some great equipment and they’re doing that now, and now we’re going to have more than 33 million N95 masks per week will be cleaned, decontaminated, and it’ll be great. It’s something that frankly, I think people should have thought of a long time ago. [Mask sterilization has been in use since early in the outbreak, but is advised only in crisis situations of shortage. Only three reuses are allowed.]
  
BLAME PROJECTION--subject of blame in italics

R: [News about] Theodore Roosevelt has died. Have you decided the status of Captain Crozier?
T: Well, that’s going through the Navy as I understand it. The Navy is going to be making decisions on all of that, and they had a break in. I don’t think the ship should have been stopping in Vietnam when you have a pandemic to be honest with you. I don’t think the captain should have been writing letters. He’s not Ernest Hemingway, as I said before, and he shouldn’t have been writing letters. I don’t know who gave the orders to stop in Vietnam, but they stopped in Vietnam, and all of a sudden they get on and now you have over 500 sailors and people on the ship that are affected. I don’t know whose idea that was, but that wasn’t such a good idea in the middle of a pandemic.

T: And what we did last time is unprecedented. We literally rebuild tests. We rebuilt a whole industry because we inherited nothing. What we inherited from the previous administration was totally broken, which somebody should eventually say. Not only were the cupboards bare as I say, but we inherited broken testing. Now we have great testing.

T: Remember, and you saw the stories, I inherited this administration, Mike [Pence], myself, the whole administration. We inherited a stockpile where the cupboards were bare. There was nothing, and I say it and I’ll say it again, just like we didn’t have ammunition, we didn’t have medical supplies, we didn’t have ventilators, we didn’t have a lot of things that should have been had, and you can read your own stories on that because you know what happened. They didn’t want to spend the money, but we did.



PARANOIA--in yellow

R: What is the status of the funding for the World Health Organization?
T: I’m not happy with the World Health Organization. Not happy with the World Trade Organization either. We’ve been ripped off by everybody. We have, this country, for so many years, has been ripped off by everybody, whether it’s the World Health or World Trade. They’re like, I call them, the Bobbsey Twins. They look at our country, for years and years, we had people that did nothing about it. We’re doing a lot about it.

T: I’ve been brutalized [by the press] for the last four years. I used to do well before I decided to run for politics, but I guess I’m doing okay, because to the best of my knowledge, I’m the president of the United States despite the things that are said.

R: But just to be clear, this [video] was produced by government employees, by people here at the White House, this campaign-style video here?
T: I wouldn’t use the word produced. All they did was took some clips, and they just ran them for you. And the reason they did is to keep you honest.