Not only does he himself offer a litany of ignorance and immorality, but he has surrounded himself with the most unintelligent and/or immoral allies. Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos all have pleaded guilty to various crimes.
And let’s not forget the notorious Scott Pruitt, another Trump pal who was supposed to drain the swamp.
Trump has corrupted Congress, corrupted federal agencies, corrupted those around him, and attempted to corrupt the FBI, CIA, the courts, the Justice Department and many of the nations most important agencies.
One day, the nation will recover from Trump’s ignorance and perfidy regarding climate change (“a Chinese hoax”), and air pollution (“beautiful clean coal”), and immigrants (“These aren’t people. These are animals”) and trade wars (“Trade wars are good and easy to win.”) and the Affordable Care Act ( “We’re going to repeal and replace it.“) and women (“Grab her by the pussy“), and immigrants (“They’re rapists”), and the Wall (“Mexico will pay for it“) — the list is endless.
It’s no accident that Trump admires most, the likes of Putin, Kim, Duterte, and Erdogan. All but Kim rule over what once was an attempt at democracy that they destroyed.
So, you might wonder how something good could evolve from Trump’s evil Presidency. The answer is that he provides us with the perfect example of what could happen, even in America, when a shameless, lying, egomaniac gains power.
We now know. Trump’s name will become a description of democratically-elected leadership gone awry.
Many years ago, the name “Benedict Arnold” meant “traitor.” After World War II, the name “Quisling” similarly meant a special kind of traitor, a visible collaborator with the enemy.
Still today, if you use the phrase, “He’s another Hitler,” everyone understands what you mean.
And tomorrow, if anyone uses the phrase, “He’s another Donald Trump,” the world will recognize the reference to a stupid, lazy, boastful, bigoted, greedy, egomaniacal, womanizing, felonious, lying politician.
Trump has destroyed many of the previous norms that made America a great and admired nation. One day, after a long struggle, we will return to that time of admiration.
Meanwhile, the next time someone attempts to follow in his footsteps, you will have a reference — “He’s another Donald Trump” — to call attention to, and to draw a picture of, the danger.
Warning an American that a politician is another Hitler, or another Quisling, may not strike a chord, but “another Trump” will resonate. He’s one of ours. And that will be a blessing.
We were lucky this time.We mostly escaped the horrors that could have befallen us, though we will suffer for years.
Trump is a stupid man. If he were intelligent, like Hitler, Putin et al, he would not have made his obvious mistakes, and so been able to solidify his rule.
But he is so transparently unfit, he will lose power rather than gain it. Even the most obtuse among us, slowly are leaving him.
It could have happened here: Russia, Turkey, The Philippines, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Argentina, China, — all ruled by strongmen.
Thankfully, Trump’s stupidity will prevent that outcome. He fooled some of the people, but fewer every day.
The universe is not what it seems to be. All is illusion. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” Shakespeare. “The more precisely the position of a particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known.” Heisenberg
Do molecules have morals? Are there “bad” amoeba and “good” amoeba? Do ants have compassion? Evil wolves and kindly wolves?
We assume there are bad and good people, so at what point do we assume living creatures have a moral code?
Morals presuppose free will. You cannot be moral or immoral, bad or good, unless you have conscious control over your actions.
So, to assume people are bad and good, we must assume people have at least some modicum of control over their actions.
But is this assumption sound? Do we really control our actions?
Free Will
Previously, (here and here) I wrote to you about “free will,” or specifically the fact that despite what our intuition tells us, free will does not exist. Free will is an illusion.
Every effect has a cause. The actions of every quark, every proton, electron, and neutron, every atom and molecule and field and force, are affected by a previous chain of other quantum particles and forces, which in turn, are affected by others, going back through time.
Every effect has a cause
There is no known mechanism for your brain having free will, any more than your car, your “smart” phone or your refrigerator having free will.
Unless and until someone develops an alternative physics, in which the atoms of human brains do not respond to the other atoms in the universe, or do not direct our actions, beliefs, and emotions, we must acknowledge the physical impossibility of free will.
And this line of logic leads directly to the notion of infinitelypre-programmed time.
If at both the macro and the micro levels, every effect has a prior cause, then there is no alternative to the deterministic idea that everything that will be, already is programmed by what has been.
The past, present, and future exist simultaneously as a continuum called “time.”
You might visualize an infinitely long reel of movie film, moving by at light speed, in which the past exists in earlier cells, “now” exists in one cell, and the future exists in later cells.
The past, the present, and the future, as with a movie film, all have been written and all exist simultaneously as a continuum called “time,” immutable by any mysterious, undiscovered, non-physical, nonexistent force we refer to as “free will.”
Is that infinite “movie film” a straight line, with no beginning and no end? Or, is it a circle, where moments of a distant future blend seamlessly into a distant past — also with no beginning and no end? Does trillion-year history repeat endlessly?
Is this the shape of time?
Nature is loaded with cycles, repetitions or near-repetitions, that hint time might be something of a helictical circle (like a Slinky, with both ends attached), where cycles are adjacent points on the circle.
The helix is strangely common in nature. Is this time’s imprint on matter and energy?
Viewed that way, the notion of time travel jumps out at you, since merely moving from one cycle to a nearby cycle could take you years into the past or the future. (Wormholes, anyone?)
Yet, even a time jump, which presumably could change the future and/or the past, wouldn’t affect the idea that free will does not exist.
Nature’s omnipresent double helix hints at time travel.
Your decision to time-jump still would be pre-programmed, and the results of your jump already have been written.
I recently was asked, “If everything is pre-programmed, why should I even bother to try?”
My answer is, “You can’t help it. Your every thought and every emotion is determined by the atoms and fields in your brain, and they are influenced by other atoms and fields.
You are an actor in the movie, and your brain’s arrangement today and tomorrow already have been determined by the script.”
If all of this seems fanciful, even absurd, be assured that currently-debated, even accepted hypotheses are no less fanciful.
Many Worlds
Consider the “many-worlds” interpretation, which posits that everything that possibly could have happened — i.e. every movement by every quantum particle — actually has happened in a separate universe.
This not only requires an essentially infinite number of universes now, but infinitely more universes a tiny fraction of a second from now — far more complete universes than the number of particles in our universe.
Infinite copies of you, would read infinite variations of this post now, and that number would increase, second by second, infinitely. Fanciful?
Yet it seriously has been considered by such luminaries as Stephan Hawking and Roger Penrose — at least in my current universe. In other universes, perhaps not.
Even time travel or an infinite number of universes does not provide for free will in even one universe, even one planet, even one organism. Consider a common, sci-fi situation in which someone goes back in time and does something that alters the future.
This does not imply the person has free will, since his trip to the past, and his actions there merely would be a projection of the past. Everything has been written, like the pages of a novel.
Somehow, the original quantum particles were created and set in motion. Everything after that has resulted from that original “script.” There is nothing you or I can do to change it.
Though we imagine we can, via force of will, change the trajectory of the universe’s quantum particles, that is an illusion. We can no more change the future than we can change the past.
All is illusion, created by our brains. Hold your hand in front of your face. What do you see? Your fingers?
No, your brain experiences light photons, and converts that sensation into the illusion of fingers. Everything you see, hear, feel, smell, taste, and believe is an illusion, created by your brain’s quantum particles in response to other quantum particles.
Just as you can’t see your fingers, you can’t hear a violin, or taste chocolate, or feel an itch, or believe anything in this post. Your brain’s quantum particles create and interpret illusions.
Holograms A hologram can illustrate an object from any angle in 3-dimensional space. It is not a photographic replica, but rather its what your eyes and brain interpret as an organized picture from a seemingly unorganized group of atoms.
It would be another example of reality differing from what our intuition tells us.
Heraclitus said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
You cannot experience the same fingers, the same violin, the same chocolate, or the same itch, twice. Every second your eyes experience different photons; your ears experience different sound wave molecules; your taste buds experience different chemicals.
Your brain continually re-interprets these changing inputs into a smooth constant, not because you “will” it to, but because it must.
This leads to the question, “Why is there consistency?” Look at this page. Now look away and look back again. The page still appears to be there.
If all is an illusion, created by quantum particles that began their trajectories billions of years ago, wouldn’t they by now, have become so randomized, that each moment would appear different to my brain?
And indeed, each moment is different. The light quanta coming off your computer screen change trillions of times each second, as do the atoms of your brain, yet the illusion persists that you and the screen stay the same.
Dreams
Awake or asleep, my brain receives and recreates sensory input, from which it creates the universe you know. Thus, a dream is no less real than an awake experience. It may be different.
Solipsism says that nothing is real and everything is invented by the brain. Descartes wrote, “I think, therefore I exist,” to create a foundation of reality, but never was able to claim the nature of “I.”
The phrase not only expressed the foundation of knowledge, but the limit of knowledge. It purports to be the limit of what we can know about reality.
In summary, I exist as something. I experience a unique existence that is is an illusion created by me. I believe this illusion to be in response to all the particles and fields that may have existed in an infinite universe for an infinite time.
When these lights are flashing, it is impossible not to see them as moving back and forth, no matter how hard we try.
For me, the illusion is extraordinarily powerful. I believe with all my head, heart, and soul that I exist in a certain form, and that you do, too.
Consider railroad signal lights. You see them as moving back and forth, though you know this is an illusion. Illusions are hard to overcome.
My emotions say I have “free will,” though my logic tells me this is not possible.
I believe I decided to write this article, though I know of no scientific basis for my being able to decide anything; it all has been determined from the beginning.
I am an actor in a story, doing what I am programmed to do, neither more nor less. I have come to this conclusion because I must. There are no alternatives.
And all of this begs the question, “Who wrote the “novel?” Who/what created the original quantum particles and set them in motion?
We are limited by the imagination we have been given. We cannot imagine “always.”
For anyone harboring hopes that massive tax cuts pay for themselves . . .
Translation: “For anyone harboring hopes that taking less money from your pocket (i.e. tax cuts) will be matched by taking more money from your pocket . . .” (i.e. pay for themselves). . .
Sure, paying more taxes to pay for a tax cut is what we all hope for, isn’t it? Peter Weber seems to think so.
. . . the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has some bad news. The CBO said Tuesday that the federal deficit hit $895 billion in the first 11 months of fiscal 2018, an increase of $222 billion, or 32 percent, over the same period of 2017.
Translation: “Bad news. The federal government will pump 895 billion economic growth dollars into the private sector, in the first 11 months of this fiscal year, an increase of 222 billion economic growth dollars over the same period of 2017.”
The private sector, which requires income to grow, will receive $895 billion from the federal government, which has the unlimited ability to create dollars, and needs no income. So, why is this “bad news”?
The only “bad” part is that the amounts are too low. If instead of $895 billion, the amount were closer to $2 trillion, That would yield more economic growth and put more dollars into your pocket.
GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports. GDP cannot grow without federal deficits. Period.
The tax cuts Republicans pushed through in December plus spending increases pushed government outlays up about 7 percent while revenue grew by 1 percent, the CBO said.c
Why? Because the federal government has the unlimited ability to “print” its own sovereign currency, the dollar. It produces all the dollars it needs and uses.
No reason to ask anyone else (including you) for U.S. dollars.
The government took in about $105 billion more in individual and payroll taxes but $71 billion less in corporate taxes.
You, the public, paid more taxes, but the corporations paid less. The GOP’s new tax laws will exacerbate that imbalance, with the rich making out like bandits — yes, exactly like bandits.
Spending on interest on the public debt increased by $55 billion, or 19 percent.
This is one reason why, contrary to what you have been told, raising interest rates is stimulative for the economy, and gives you more money.
The deficit will near $1 trillion by the end of fiscal 2018 and almost certainly top it by the end of the calendar year.
That’s another $1 trillion added to the economy. The rich people want you to believe that’s bad for the economy, to prevent you from asking for federal benefits.
It’s all a gigantic con job, perpetuated, either in ignorance or intent, by writers like Peter Weber.
The myth that tax cuts, and federal deficits and debt are bad for the economy, and that your children will pay for the debt, and that we’ll become Zimbabwe and Argentina, has been foisted on you for almost 80 years, and amazingly, after all this time, most of the public still believes the lie.
The single most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the have-mores and the have-less.
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:
All living creatures communicate. Humans, of course, but much has been written about the communications of all the other primates, plus dogs, birds, insects.
And then there are the trees, grasses, and other plants that communicate by emitting chemicals into the air, water, and soil. These chemicals communicate to other plants that someone is being eaten or attacked in other ways, so that defensive measures might be taken.
There not only is intra-species communication, but inter-species communication, whereby the actions and cries of one species provide valuable information to other species.
Even bacteria communicate via many means, including “quorum sensing,” the release of chemicals that, in essence say, “There are enough of us to do as a group, a thing that individuals of us cannot do.”
Serena, 2002
And by this torturous road, we approach Serena Williams and the “f” word.
Serena is considered by many people, me included, to be the greatest female tennis player in history.
Her combination of speed, strength, guile, serving power, and her never-quit, incredible desire to win have been unequaled for more than twenty years.
So dominant is she, that had I merely referred to her as “Serena,” you probably would not have needed the “Williams” to know whom I meant.
Last night, Serena, age 36, lost to a player 16 years her junior, and perhaps that age difference alone tells much of the story.
But there is another part to the story, and that involves the “f” word.
No, not that “f” word.
Because communication is so complex and subtle, we have evolved many complex and subtle rules that differentiate acceptable vs. unacceptable communication.
For example, there is a hideous and hateful word, often and widely used in earlier times, that now is used only by the coarse and the bigoted, and even then only in coarse and bigoted situations. That word is “nigger.”
It is a bastardized version of “Negro,” which itself is considered impolitic in many settings, as is the word “colored” when referring to people, though mysteriously, “of color” is acceptable.
If we add “black” and “African American” to the list, we have a broad range of references to the same human feature. And this doesn’t include the various slang derogatory terms used to reference minorities, each with degrees of unacceptability, depending on audience and situation.
In today’s hypersensitive world, references formerly considered innocent, now are grouped under the title, “Shaming.”
Clicking the above link will reveal to you many sorts of shaming, all designed to separate and denigrate some subgroup that is different from you.
Part of shaming is the use of certain shaming words. One of those words is the “f” word. I mean, “fat.”
Politically, one does not refer to a person as “fat.” The more acceptable reference is “big,” or in clothing, “plus” size, or “not in condition,” or “out of shape,” even more gently, no reference at all, as though we are blind to all differences.
I do not know how Serena’s coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, will reveal to her that part of the reason she lost yesterday is that she either is fat, big, plus, not in condition, or out of shape, if she isn’t already aware of it.
In her younger years, Serena moved to the ball like a lioness after a gazelle. She was a graceful ballerina, but with strength and power.
Yesterday she abandoned the rapid, lithe steps that formerly brought her into perfect hitting position. Instead, she stood flatfooted, and settled for taking a long, slow, laborious stride, punctuated by a lean and reach, that almost, but not quite, allowed her to stroke the ball properly.
She was (dare I say it?) a fat ballerina.
Perhaps she knows, but due to her sensitive physical condition (She almost has died on two separate occasions, the most recent, a year ago) and possibly sensitive emotional condition (after postpartum and losing in a second consecutive tennis major final), either cannot or will not change.
Or perhaps she believes, that given her age, her accomplishments, and her limited future in professional tennis, she doesn’t wish to go through the effort and discomfort of weight loss.
That Serena remains one of the world’s greatest players, is a testament to her will and her natural athleticism. But I, as an admirer, am sad to see this magnificent champion turn “large,” in a tutu bordering on the comical.
I suspect that if Mouratoglou somehow could communicate to her the need return to better “condition,” i.e. lose about 20 pounds, Serena still might have more championships left in her. Otherwise . . .
Communication, especially in the high-strung, sensitive world of professional sports is, as we said, complex and subtle. It requires great care and delicacy. But if anyone can do it, the Serena/Mouratoglou team can.
At least I hope so.
Serena seems like a very kind and moral person, a magnificent champion, and a good mother.
She is the G.O.A.T., who warmly hugged the young woman who defeated her and demanded the crowd to “stop booing,” lest the youngster’s victory not be tarnished.
Serena would not deserve to be remembered with the “f” word.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 