The Lone Ranger Rides Again

Attention boomers!  Or anyone who watched the The Lone Ranger in the early west of television.  Ask anyone who did and it's likely the first thing they will remember is the opening theme and the stirring narration that ends with "Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear--the Lone Ranger rides again!"

Well, if this is you, you may be surprised to learn that film of this opening is a rare artifact.  The Lone Ranger series shot only five seasons (one in color), though it was a staple all through the 1950s and for decades beyond, at first in early evening primetime and then on Saturdays.

At some point the series went into syndication, and minutes were cut from each episode to make time for more commercials.  So apparently was most of the opening narration.

At least that is the probable reason that the complete narration is missing from most if not all episodes now available, on YouTube or in various compilation DVDs.   Most DVD packages only re-package the first couple of seasons, with a different opening narration.  Episodes of subsequent seasons carry only a partial version, with slightly different visuals from the one we remember.

So after years of typically obsessive and cockeyed searching, I located this fragment posted by TeeVees Greatest on YouTube, which includes the full theme (music from the William Tell Overture) that ended as well as began each episode.

I know you want to thank me, but I heard you saying--who was that masked man? Hi-yo Silver Away!

If You Bought It, You Own It

Whatever there is to say about liars and why they are believed, or those aspects of Russian interference in the election we know about or suspect--stealing emails, feeding them to the media, possibly microtargeting propaganda to specific voters identified by voting lists they stole--there is still the individual responsibility to defy the lies, learn the facts, discern the long-term implications of your vote.

But in 2016 a lot of American voters didn't.  That a majority didn't vote for Homemade Hitler and that he got installed on the basis of a few thousand votes in a handful of states, seems to mitigate.  But it doesn't.  Especially because in district after district, and state after state, enough voters installed reactionary Republicans, either by their votes or by not voting.  They kept the Senate and they did what they did today.  They kept the House.  They've got statehouses and governors galore, enough to gerrymander the future.

So once again you may weep, because you bought it, and now you own its dangerous fragments.  You own a reactionary Supreme Court into the foreseeable future. And in general you own a foreseeably grim future due to what's being done and not done to the environment and on addressing the climate crisis, as well as health and financial protections and emergency efficiency.

Even I was ready to toast our luck in surviving the first hundred days without cities in smoldering ruin, or a military dictatorship building in parallel to a new war.  But those hundred days aren't up for another few weeks, and the signs are growing.  Syria?  North Korea?  Both?

There may be reasons for the electoral outcome.  There are no excuses.  You--Democrats, Republicans, Bernie people and other self-styled 'revolutionaries', media and voters-- you bought it when it was obviously going to explode, it bragged it was going to explode. Now you own it.

Debate Made Not Simple

Kowincidentally, my last post--"The White House of Blue Lies"--appeared on what I have since learned was International Fact Check Day.  Of course, you knew that.

I only learned about it from this Washington Post piece, which also has some useful links to listicules about spotting fake news on the Internet, and otherwise fact-checking.

Apropos my piece, the LA Times has a more specific take on Why Trump Lies.  In my piece I also threatened to expound on what makes a fact a fact and related tests for what might reasonably be believed as factual.  Be forewarned that I'm about to do that now. That is, I'm about to explain how I learned to make those judgments.

1950s

First, formal education as it was in the 1950s and 1960s included explanations based on cause and effect in science and history--particularly American history-- along with narrative and propaganda.  By junior high we had a class called Civics, and in high school, social studies and Problems of Democracy.  A lot of it was sanctimonious crap but some of it was useful. It included definitions and examples of evidence and reasoning, and of propaganda , and the more common techniques or types of deliberate falsehoods such as as rumor and innuendo.

We also learned the different kinds of stories in a newspaper, which were easier to spot in those days.  News was on the front page, and all the pages of the first section, except a page or two near the front. On the left hand page, there were the editorials, most often set in a distinctive font.  These editorials were the official opinions of the newspaper, and generally were unsigned.  There would also be one or two editorial cartoons.

The remainder of the page contained letters to the editor and columns on topics in the news, written and signed by individual columnists, almost always journalists or former journalists.  In urban newspapers there might also be opinion pieces written by non-journalists, under their own names.  These are still called "op ed" pieces, because they commonly appeared on the page opposite the editorial page.

There was news later in the paper, including stories on pages devoted to business news, sports, community doings, social news, right back to the obituaries.  There were also feature stories, usually on entertainment or home-relates subjects, maybe a humorous column or two and of course, the comics and the want ads.

Admittedly, the newspaper structure made it easier to separate factual news from opinion, than in the free-for-all of the Internet.  But it was at least worth knowing that there is a difference.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion, as playwright David Hare points out.  But not every opinion is equal--some are based on demonstrable facts, and therefore are better.  You know, because the Holocaust really happened.

We learned the basic rules of objective news, opinion, columns and features which some of us would practice on the school paper.  We also learned the difference between these forms--grouped under the name of "editorial"--and advertising.  We even learned basic kinds of advertising, such as "transfer" (a celebrity transfers her fame by being seen with a product) and "endorsement" (the celebrity actually says to buy the product because he does.)

For hundreds of years, basic schooling included subjects called Logic and Rhetoric.  Elements of these were folded into our subject categories, generally in what we called English.  But these civics courses also included types of logic (especially false logic) and rhetoric (means of persuasion) that especially pertained to public issues.

I believe most of my generation was exposed to such an education.  Those of us who went to Catholic schools got additional experience in argument through the legalistic definitions of morality that made up the rules and regs of Catholicism at that time.  There were definitions of sins for example, and lots of caveats and special cases.  We also were unintentionally exposed to the contradictions of Church dogma and American democratic decision-making.

Some of us got further experience in argument and in testing facts through participation in debate.  I think about this often these days.  I continue to think that what I learned in debate was basic to everything I did in journalism and non-fiction writing, as well as how I judge public issues.

  The first task in every high school debate was to define your terms.  If terms were not understood and agreed upon by both parties, there was no way to engage on the question.  The debaters on opposite sides of the question could argue over the definitions, but they had then to offer their own definitions, clearly and in public.

So let me define my terms.  Interscholastic high school debate in the 1960s had a particular form that it probably doesn't have anymore.  We debated the same topic for an entire school year.  It was set by the National Forensic League, as were the structure and rules of the debates themselves. (We also participated in the Catholic Forensic League, but it had the same topic and followed the same rules.)

Debates went like this: a debater for the Affirmative of the proposition spoke.  Generally this student was supposed to outline the Need for the proposition to be enacted.  Then the First Affirmative was questioned by one of the debaters for the Negative.  Then the First Negative speaker gave a rebuttal, questioned by an affirmative.  Then the Second Affirmative, whose responsibility was to outline a Plan for how the proposition would work.  After questioning, the Second Negative spoke, and was questioned.  I think each side got a final statement, but I'm not sure about that.

What was tricky for a lot of students--and especially for conscientious Catholics, aware of moral positions--was that all debaters had to be prepared to argue both sides, affirmative and negative.  Generally, you didn't find out which side you were charged with arguing until just before the debate (and you often had three debates a day.)

It was considered part of the experience to be able to see an issue from both sides.  That was interesting, and there were ways to do that.  But basically the problem remained: how could you argue against something with the same persuasiveness as you argued for it without being a hypocrite?

One way was to agree with the Need but suggest your opponents' Plan was so flawed that it wouldn't work.  I recall that we used this strategy on the proposition in our first year, 1962-3, which was: Resolved: That the United States should promote a Common Market for the western hemisphere.  This wasn't exactly a hot button issue, although it was topical because of the European Common Market, established in 1958, that paved the way for the European Union, which became a reality in 1994.

Debating this topic required a lot of research into international trade, the economics and politics of it, and the little that was available on possibilities for free trade among North and South American nations. This was 31 years before NAFTA.  The obvious Negative strategy was to argue that free trade was bad, and protectionism was good.  But there was also the possibility for outlining a different Plan, and I believe we tried that, arguing that it could succeed only if it created a trading partner with the European Common Market.

Our topic the next year was much more topical: Resolved: That Social Security benefits should be extended to include complete medical care.  This had been debated in the U.S. Congress during the Kennedy Administration, when it was called "Medical Care for the Aged," and would result in a landmark law about a year later in the summer of 1965, now called Medicare.

(Since research--especially on poverty among the elderly--led me to strongly favor the proposition, when on the negative I believe we again resorted to arguing against the plan, or just sadly proving that the affirmative hadn't made their case.)

Opposition to providing this medical care in the real world was an object lesson, since it was largely based on scare tactics, especially ideological shouting about "socialized medicine."  That was often the Negative line of attack, along with assertions that it was unaffordable and unworkable.  (Arguments that, we found, had been made against Social Security itself.)

So research was somewhat easier in the sense that there was a great deal more information available, but that became a problem of organizing it.  You had to anticipate the various arguments of your opposition.  So we lugged boxes full of file cards, clippings and article reprints to every debate.  Why?  Because our opponents would demand evidence of the truth of what we said.

That evidence had to be accurate.  And it had to come from a credible source.
Was it truly a fact, or an opinion? Then what was the source? First of all, you had to have one. “Everybody knows that” or “the American people believe” didn’t cut it. Neither did "according to a famous study." You had to have names, dates and places, or you’d soon hear your opponent scream, ”What’s your source?”

Then the source had to be credible. What qualified the source to make that statement? Was the information tainted by self-interest? Was the source of asserted fact generally reliable and unbiased? Was the opinion by a real authority?

If the fact is from a scientific study, how was it conducted? Are there other studies of this phenomenon and what did they conclude? And if it was a statistic, what did the numbers really mean? For instance, if the rate of rabies incidence in the population of Argyle, Nova Scotia went from 1% last year to 2% this year, there are different ways of saying it. You could say the rate went up by only 1%, and I could say it doubled.

 That's the cry heard most often in rebuttals--"what's your source?"  We learned so much about facts this way.  Facts were only as good as sources--and providing the credibility of the source was vital.  (It was also helpful to have the very same evidence as your opponent, so that if their use of it was selective, we could say, "but your source goes on to say...")

We had to be aware of possible bias by the author, organization or publication quoted (or the basis of our opponent's accusation of bias) so we could defend or attack the source's credibility.  So we had to approach what we read partly as our opponent might, to anticipate objections or--better--to find support for our contention from an unlikely source.

So we might point out when a study was financed by a biased entity, or for example when a certain speculative statistic was supplied by the American Medical Association, a staunch opponent of government funding medical care.

I expect we used what we could from other countries whose government funded medical care, like the UK and Canada, to suggest that it worked and that scary predictions hadn't happened. (As indeed, they haven't in the US.)

We learned about statistics--how to frame them and how to question them for what they really said.  There is a big difference, for example, between "average" and "median," with median (income, etc) usually telling you more.  You had to show how they applied to what you were talking about--or (arguing about your opponent's numbers) how they don't.

We also learned about relevance.  A blitz of facts wasn't enough--you had to demonstrate how these facts support your assertions and your case.  How does historical precedent, and even broad assertions of purpose, actually apply?

Manipulating information was also the intent of various forms of argument. We ran into variations of the classic logical fallacies, like “poisoning the well” (invalidating all arguments on the basis of a single assertion,) “begging the question” (restating your assertion as the conclusion, as in “big government is oppressive because it curtails your freedom”) or relying on a "straw man" argument, as well as various ad hominem attacks, such as mud-slinging, name-calling and emotionally loaded language. The argument from precedent or the simple but colorfully described assertion that all will end badly, without providing actual reasons. But mostly we dealt with inconsistent arguments that didn’t justify the particular conclusion. We could spot somebody confusing categories, making false analogies

Another aspect of debating was the importance of listening to your opponent, and especially of listening critically.  Listening critically to yourself and your partner was equally important in preparing.  These habits served me well in journalism as well as in evaluating public issues and arguments.

By debating both sides of a question, we learned that few issues are one-sided, and that general propositions may sound great but you need a workable plan. But most of all we learned how to test evidence and argument for validity, relevance and meaning.

All of this was in service of principles, of a vision, of a moral question, usually with historical roots.  Articulating those was kind of my specialty.  They were essential, but so were the facts, the argument, the plan.

I learned other lessons (such as the arbitrary nature of success--I still have ballots in which I was rated the best and the worst speaker in the same debate by different judges.) But in any event, my partner and I (Michael D. Krempasky, both years) were effective enough to win both the National Forensic League and Catholic Forensic League championships for our district in 1964.

These high school debates forever exposed the flaws in the presidential debates, and in turn, public affairs debates in general.  Evidence for assertions is rare, and facts are not disputed but simply ignored or countered with other "facts" with no evidence.

They illustrate for me as well that merely "fact-checking" is inadequate.  Some facts may be accurate but irrelevant, in either a positive or a negative sense.  Facts can be blown out of proportion, or applied wildly, or they can be said to prove what they don't come close to proving.

Fake news is only the beginning.  Fake debate, fake discussion that isn't about finding solutions but only gaining advantage is rampant.  And it's killing us.

The White House of Blue Lies

How can you explain the connection between Homemade Hitler and his voters?  How can the continual lies be told and believed?

Those questions have haunted every political moment since at least the election.  Some social scientists believe they have the answer, which is somewhat enlightening, sort of common sense, and overblown, all at the same time.

It's all about what reinforces the identity of the group you belong to.  The echo chamber of views you all hear, talk about and subscribe to, from the people and outlets you trust to give you those views.  Your own misgivings or doubts don't count as much as the rewards of being acknowledged as a member of the group.  It's an emotional bond, it's a rush, the common laughter, the warmth of belonging.

One article I saw gave it all an evolutionary spin--the human social animal's survival depended on being included and valued within a specific group.  Anything that got you exiled could mean your doom.

Well, maybe.  But it's not hard to understand social pressure.  It was there in 50s suburbia and it was strange but fascinating for me to watch it unravel in the working class culture of western PA during Vietnam and Watergate.

Think also of conversations in the workplace.  Relationships and acceptance in a group depend on gossip about people not part of the group, or at least not there at that moment, as well as on more general outside topics.  In all these cases, the information that binds the group need not be true.  Gossip gets its bad name because a lot of it isn't true, and is often invented or believed because it's a good story, and everybody who shares it is in the devilish warmth of a conspiracy.  In the same way, stories about politicians and how politics works etc. are just different forms of gossip.

That's more or less the positive side: stuff that makes everybody feel good, because everybody agrees and will support each other in other ways, it is assumed.  But people are also united in anger, and that's become more common.

They are often people with a grievance, and they join together based on who and what they blame, and what they see as the solution.  This definition covers some ecological warriors as well as rabid righticans,  people who rant on the Internet and people who become terrorists.  Anger may be only one of their motivations but it's prime.

Anger is hard to sustain, so it must be fed with stories, and they might be true but they need not be true. The anger may begin with experiences and stories that are true, but that quickly expand to dubious and even outrageously false assertions. But they are accepted because they mostly must fit the pattern of what is already believed.  Like gossip--each new tidbit must be consistent with what is already believed.

This leads naturally to the theory of Blue Lies.  They are defined (in the words of this Scientific American article that links them directly to the White House) as "
a psychologist’s term for falsehoods, told on behalf of a group, that can actually strengthen the bonds among the members of that group."

So there are white lies, which don't hurt anyone, and black lies, which are harmful to all.  Blue lies are told against a group that's not your own, but that support your group's beliefs.

This article again gives it that evolutionary explanation, and notes that researchers have found "that this kind of lying seems to thrive in an atmosphere of anger, resentment, and hyper-polarization."  (See what I mean about both overblown and Captain Obvious.)

But the important thing about blue lies is that the lies out of the White House aren't even meant to convince everybody--or very likely, you.  They are meant to garner favor and create credibility with particular groups.

None of this is actually new, not even the social science patina.  And like most social science truisms, the basic mechanisms are pretty familiar from novels and movies.  Even in politics, the Bush II propagandists were pretty clear about it, chiding the "reality-based community" for even thinking all of their stuff was meant for them.  It's about whose buttons to push.

It's not new but in the national public realm of the US (with a global audience) it's more extreme than ever.  It's gone from Reagan's hyperbole and glib fibs to escalating partisan nastiness to our apprentice dictator's obvious and extreme lies, his utter disregard for the truth.  The normal tests for truth that clash with the blue lies are just ignored as invalid and partisan.  But it doesn't matter, as long as the target group gets the message (and adversaries are thrown into burbling, helpless chaos and accusations of untruth that feed into the narrative of their partisan hostility.)  

There are still subtleties and complications, though.  On the minus side, there are the darker beliefs and prejudices and unconscious bias that bind groups, that might not be overt, but might be expressed say in the secret ballot.  On the plus side, there's the human capacity for contradiction.

In a much earlier time, psychologist Carl Jung (who never would make the kind of deterministic, blanket statements that today's psychologists do with their pretty flimsy and flawed information) derived two observations from studying the process of how a normal if precocious little girl figured out the facts of life, and having done so, merely added them to her own fantasy explanation of birth and death.

His first observation was the power of fantasy in the lives of humans of all ages.  Consider how much of our lives is devoted to fantasy and fantasy worlds, and our culture especially.  Our fantasy worlds themselves create a culture, a group that we belong to.  To a degree we could see these fantasy worlds include political parties.

 His second observation was that people could hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time, and find some way to reconcile them.  He cited as example some tribal peoples who knew very well how babies were made but insisted they were made in another way.

The theory of blue lies suggests that all facts are mere assertions that either please or displease members of a group, and accordingly are either true or false for that group.  This it has seemed to me for some time is the operating belief of Republicans, along with the belief that everyone in Washington is equally corrupt.

That facts as such may no longer exist really alarms people.  For it makes civilization impossible, let alone democracy.  Up until now, we have had accepted tests of what is a fact and what isn't.  Just as we have had accepted evidence of what is a crime.  One of these days I may rehearse what some of those tests are, as I understand them, since they may be slipping out of public consciousness.

But for the moment there are a couple of points to tie this all together.  As important as facts and reason are, they aren't everything.  There are values, beliefs, fantasies, aesthetics, a spiritual realm.  As well as what's bred in our bones from millions of years, and dancing in our unconscious.  Sometimes these facts and these fantasies or beliefs contradict each other in some sense.  Then we have decisions to make.

Sometimes we can reconcile them, even if it means living with a kind of contradiction.  But it also means that accepting new facts need not destroy everything.

There are plenty of stories about culture heroes--or even small, tragic figures--who asserted something that went against the crowd and were exiled, punished, sacrificed.  But then the crowd changed.

Groups do change, and facts can be part of that.  Blue lies become seen as lies. The process may be slow, and it may cause trauma.  What may yet happen to Homegrown Hitler is that he is seen as a traitor, a false messiah.  It may be happening now.  But I think the contradictions are growing, too.  Some people who say they don't believe in climate change,  may also believe in climate change, for example.  They may not say so yet.  But they may look at their leaders differently.  And they may, with their secret ballots, choose other ones.

Meanwhile, the White House of blue lies is also the White House of trying to save our asses lies, and when that becomes obvious, it's a different game.  It may take awhile, as it did in the Watergate era. But the regime seems already down to its core believers, so like a lot of things these days, it might not take long at all. Which in some ways may not be good, because without adequate preparation and a smooth way forward, when the dam breaks, it's chaos.      

The Long Scandal Ahead

Before you get too hooked on all this, be warned: this could be a long term commitment.

The gathering scandals around the current regime look more and more like Watergate, at least in these respects: they involve electoral politics to win the US presidency, the coverups may lead to the crimes (one of which may be treason) and crucially, that how all of it is adjudicated will test the basic strength of the Constitution and the American system of government.

And like Watergate, it may soon absorb the attention of the American people beyond anything else.  There is news on this daily, that involves possible crimes in potentially various jurisdictions by a growing number of people. In Washington there is a Federal Bureau of Investigation investigation that could include recommendations for criminal charges, as well as hearings by (at the moment) the intelligence committees of the House and Senate.  The Washington news includes a half dozen high ranking campaign, transition and White House officials.

Expect the list of all of these to grow.  These scandals seem to have the momentum to explode but more likely to unwind or snowball gradually over time.  The regime is doing its best to thwart investigations and prosecutions (as targeting certain banks in New York with relationships to both Russians with direct ties to the Russian government and to the Trump family and their enterprises, which was being led by a federal prosecutor that our apprentice dictator fired.)  But it is likely to only delay them.

One element that's different from Watergate is Congress. First, Democrats were the majority party in both houses.  Second, there were Republicans in party leadership positions as well as in the rank and file who put country (and the integrity of its federal institutions) above party and ideology.  That's much less true today.

So the chances of the parties coming together to create select committees or to back an "independent counsel" (which in Watergatese was special prosecutor) are slim, at least for the near future.

  But it's likely that there will be plenty going on, some of it in the courts, which will (for one thing) addict a new generation to televised hearings, and of course all the shows analyzing all the dirty doings and investigations.  People in Watergate days were obsessed, and that's long before social media.

My main points here are: it's not going away, and it's all probably going to take a long time.  It seems likely to last for the almost two years to the next congressional elections. Some believe that the congressional Rs are already so disenchanted with Homegrown Hitler that they'll impeach him themselves because they fear losing their elections in 2018, but this seems unlikely.

What happens after the 2018 elections will depend to some extent on the outcome of those elections, and whether Democrats become the majority in one or both houses. If Democrats win both houses, and things unwind as they seem they will, articles of impeachment will be offered in the House.  There will be more than one such article, and they will include using government positions for private financial gain.

The House will appoint a committee, it will have hearings, it will winnow down the articles of impeachment to the strongest few.  When this happened v. Nixon, and it became clear that there were overwhelming votes in the House to impeach and in the Senate to convict, Nixon abruptly resigned.

So expect to stay tuned...until say late 2019.

That of course is something of a best case scenario.  We may not have the same federal system of government by then.

Slowly

“This increasingly intelligent, fast-moving civilization needs to be applying some of its intelligence to things that change slowly...If we are constantly tending to the immediate day-to-day problems, we’ll lose that sense of the long term, and then we could be really sorry.”
Stewart Brand

from an interview in The Sun Magazine, quoted in the 40th anniversary issue, 2014.

Brand's comment applies to many things, but most urgently to our actions against the natural world that sustains us.  Decisions today can impoverish the future, and make our descendants really sorry.

But there is also the natural world's today, its recurrences and changes fast and slow...Today here is predicted to be another sunny--well, non-rainy--day.  Among rainy days to follow...This by the way is likely not the first photo on the Internet of the tulips in our front yard.  I saw a young woman bend to snap a picture of them with her phone the other day...But these are mine.

The Point

The cultural divide (if that's what it is) was never clearer to me than in these paragraphs from Edward Ball's article, "The Mind of Dylann Roof" in the New York Review of Books, March 23, 2017.  (Though NYRB offers free access to a lot of articles, this one beyond the first few paragraphs requires subscription.)  Who is Dylann Roof?  See paragraph 3.

"Guns are embedded in South Carolina culture, with every attempt at firearm regulation trampled by the state legislature. Fathers give their sons, and some daughters, guns in rites of passage... 

This is cheaper than...

Dylann Roof got his gun. His father gave him money for it on his twenty-first birthday. “Happy Birthday! Here is $400 for the gun and the concealed carry permit,” the card read.

I went to the gun warehouse that advertised AR-15s to see the pistol Roof used for the massacre of nine African-Americans at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015. Palmetto State Armory, in the Charleston suburb of Mt. Pleasant, is the size of a big box store. It was previously a supermarket. (The company’s motto, on its logo, is Desperta Ferro—“Awake the Iron.”) The idea that a young man shops for guns in a 40,000-square-foot store with Van Halen playing on the ceiling speakers is, in this part of the US, unremarkable.

In the middle aisles are ammunition, gun sights, accessories, gun cases, and targets—bull’s-eyes, plus targets in the shape of men, like a guy in a hoodie. On the left side of the store are racks and racks of rifles, shotguns, and assault weapons, propped like rakes, by the hundreds. And in dozens of locked glass cases, like jewelry, the handguns.

I walk along one hundred yards of glass cabinets, past the Smith & Wesson case, the Browning case, past Springfield, Sig Sauer, Kemper Pistol, Uberti, Baer, Beretta, and arrive at the Glocks: engineered in Austria, manufactured in Marietta, Georgia. Roof used a Glock 41, a .45 caliber gun that feels like artillery in the hand—black, nine inches long, thirty-six ounces loaded.

“That’s the big daddy,” says the salesman, “for target and home defense. Holds thirteen rounds, strong recoil.” The salesman is a small man with a tenor voice, which he throws an octave lower to assist in male bonding. “I have a Glock 36”—he pulls back his jacket to show the holstered gun—“smaller, better for concealed carry.”

...this.

Roof added a laser sighting to his Glock, which throws a red dot where the shot will land, and he used hollow point bullets. Hollow points are more lethal. When one hits a person, body fluids enter the tip and cause the metal slug to spread and deform into a spiked wheel, which continues to progress, shredding internal organs. They cost about seventy-five cents each, twice the cost of a standard bullet."

We'd like to believe that the gun culture is primarily about "sport," either target-shooting or some traditional practice of hunting, within the law and with respect.  But this excerpt makes clear that "concealed carry," targets shaped as men and especially the hollow point bullets, have nothing to do with either image of sport.

Hollow point bullets, which have no function other than to shred the internal organs of human beings, sell for seventy-five cents.  You can't get a Milky Way for that.

President Envy

Valentine's Day photo by Michelle Obama

Mindful of my responsibilities to keep readers informed on the Obamas, I note this piece on their recent activities.

 According to this story, it's a lot of decompress and family, while nudging ahead the next projects: presidential library, memoirs and the effort President Obama announced before he left office, to work on getting Dems elected to state legislatures and state houses in time to prevent the Rs from gerrymandering even more congressional districts to their liking with the 2020 Census.

In this last effort President Obama is getting some backlash help from the apprentice dictator now in the White House, whose regime is prompting huge new interest in Democrats exploring the task of running for office.

Meanwhile Homemade Hitler has been regularly and outrageously attacking President Obama, instead of doing what most new occupants do, which is seek out counsel of former Presidents, especially the most recent.  His vulgar ferocity unmasks his envy.

It reminds me of Richard Nixon's envy and resentment of JFK and the Kennedys in general, including envy and resentment of their popularity, and the affection the American public had for them.  Nixon took it to psychotic levels, feeding the paranoia that sent him down the road now known as Watergate.

Add to that the well-known R disease, the Obama Derangement Syndrome, and Homemade Hitler's blatant delusions of grandeur (claiming inaugural crowds exceeding Obama's when in fact they were clearly a small fraction of either Obama Inaugural, etc.) as well as President Obama's continuing popularity versus the tanking poll numbers for HH, and this could become more than a sideshow.

Friday's GOP Defeat and Empty Victory

For America and its people, it was the best news of the calendar year: the  arrogantly slapped together, cynically altered and altogether horrendous Republican replacement for Obamacare died a hidden but ignominious death, because it couldn't get enough Republicans in the House (where they have a 44 seat advantage) to pass it by majority vote.

Then surprisingly, the White House regime and the R leadership announced that it would not be revised or revived.  The threats to healthcare are over for the foreseeable future.  It's too bad that sensible improvements won't be made in the current system, but that is far outweighed by the virtues and advantages that will remain, and that would have been ended or crippled, with vast consequences to a lot of people and eventually the American economy.

Obamacare, celebrating the 7th anniversary of its passage, remains the law of the land, with its highest number of insured and its highest poll numbers as well.

While most of the attention for the past several days was focused on the rabid right conservatives in the House opposed to the bill for not destroying enough, several accounts on Friday agree that the nails in the coffin--not just for this go-round but the near future--were hammered by "moderate" Rs and Rs from blue states, all fearful of these consequences to their constituents, especially the changes demanded by the rabid right and granted by the desperate House leadership and White House.  For example, the Atlantic:

And as opposition mounted, Republicans representing swing districts and Democratic states began to pull their support, worried about cuts to Medicaid, a broader projected loss of insurance coverage, and a potential backlash from voters in the midterm elections next year. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the proposal would increase the number of uninsured Americans by 24 million people over a decade, and a Quinnipiac University poll showed that just 17 percent of potential voters supported the plan, with 56 percent opposed."

It was widely reported as a serious defeat for the Rs and specifically for the apprentice dictator in the White House.  With the media's track record, that might be taken with a grain of salt, but there are some interesting numbers, for whatever they are worth.  The LA Times added:

"A Quinnipiac University poll published this week said that 56% of voters disapproved of how Trump was handling his job; only 37% supported him. Other polls have shown similar numbers. Worse for the president, some of the voter groups that have most strongly backed him have begun pulling away, the poll indicated.

“We’ve been polling for 24 years and have never seen anything like this,” said Timothy Malloy, the assistant director of the poll. “Far and away, the worst numbers ever seen in a president."”

The LA Times story echoed an observation I read earlier in the week, that part of the failure of Homemade Hitler to seal the deal with House Rs was his inability to defend what was actually in the bill--even to them.  That could definitely recur.

Repealing Obamacare was the national Rs main campaign promise; another was building the Keystone XL pipeline, which would add about fifty permanent US jobs while churning up a lot of carbon--perhaps enough to doom civilization--and lacerating habitat for threatened animal species down North America from the Alberta wastelands.  

The current regime announced Friday that it was approving this project, an apparent victory.  But several articles (in the Forbes business magazine, an oped in the Baltimore Sun newspaper as well as EcoWatch) said there were several reasons that the pipeline would not be built immediately and probably not at all.

The reasons range from litigation, state and local permits still needed, and the distinct possibility that the Canadian government might well not give its permission, in order to meet its Paris Agreement commitments on carbon waste.

 But the most compelling reason given may be that the expense of building the pipeline versus the much weaker market for coal sands oil as well as the overall steep drop in oil prices since it was first proposed, will mean that the company itself will drop out, because the damn thing won't make anybody any money.

The Editor

What a hard week: the death of three irreplaceable voices and icons of the age, all in their late 80s.  And joined by a fourth: Robert Silver, who died on March 20 at age 88.

Silver was the surviving founding editor of the New York Review of Books, itself an irreplaceable element in global intellectual life as well as in domestic politics since it began in the 1960s, which is also when I started reading it.  I can add little to all the praise by those who knew him and were edited by him, except that I was and remain envious of the experience and the relationship.

He did email me once out of the blue--or had his assistant email me, since he didn't do it himself. He wrote about piece I did on NYRB, specifically on the articles in the then most recent issue. So my one and only communication from Robert Silver was this: "I was touched by what you said about the paper. During 46 years, I’ve never read a piece in which a writer said what was actually in an issue." 

I notice now that in several of the remembrances, writers note that Silvers always referred to the NYRB as "the paper." But at the time, I was astonished that no one had ever written about a specific issue before, as well as that he would write me about it.  Or even that he saw it--this was not even an article in the San Francisco Chronicle or other publication, but on Daily Kos (and here at the Daily of course.)  I assume the same assistants who handled his email found the online piece, and printed it out for him.

There are remembrances online at the NYRB site, and several others at the New Yorker site: here, here and here.  Read just a few and you'll see why Bob Silver was the paradigm of Editor.

I can only echo one of those quoted, famed editor and NYRB writer Robert Gottlieb: “The loss to all his writers is profound, and the loss to our poor imperiled world, incalculable.”

May he rest in peace.  The good he did lives on, and let's hope the example he set does, too.

March for Survival

Today the NY Times cataloged the ways in which the current White House regime is planning to stop US efforts to address the climate crisis.  It is more than sobering.

It also contradicts what US citizens tell pollsters they want done, although the poll cited also shows a lack of urgency.  People don't believe it will affect them.  It will, but not as much as it will affect people now alive but too young to be asked, and their immediate and distant descendants.

There are a number of ways to think about this.  First, the die was cast on election night, and at minimum the time lost in more aggressive actions to confront the climate crisis will make the future worse.  Perhaps that time can be made up, but perhaps not.  Recent information on the oceans and coral reefs suggest that any lost time could be fatal, and that it might be game over anyway.

Plans are underway for big Earth Day demonstrations, under the banner of the March for Science.  The climate movement and its leaders (and its mavericks) have done some great things in focusing the topic and bringing it to public attention.  But they've also blown the nomenclature and generally failed to find a way to make the issue urgent.

Everybody understands the basic problems--the climate crisis is (in a variety of complicated ways) almost invisible to most people, and it is (or has been publicized as) a problem affecting the future, not so much the present.  So other stuff gets priority and attention.

There's also growing concern that an onrushing mass extinction event is even more urgent, and it involves a different set of solutions, though the two crises share a lot in cause and effect.

But all that considered, and for all the good things that have been done with a relatively low key approach, or even by not mentioning the climate crisis, this isn't likely to work.  The climate crisis was not an urgent issue in 2016--as it has never been in a presidential election--and so here we are.

I see the p.r. value and the constituency for a March for Science.  It is basic in a way, and certainly plays to the constituency that is already convinced.  Marches pretty much are about how big the choir is that you are preaching to.

Science is a set of tools for addressing the climate crisis.  Science is necessary, and symbolically, it's another way of drawing your line in the sand.  But it is not the main objective.  The main objective is survival.

Until there is an Earth Day March for Survival, we won't be really confronting the urgency of these tasks.

Truth and Consequences

On Monday FBI Director James Comey became the latest official to deny there is any truth to the Homemade Hitler's wiretapping accusation.   That the Dictator Apprentice is a liar is not exactly news.  But now it's official.  One consequence is succinctly summarized by David Leonhardt in the New York Times:

"When Donald Trump says something happened, it should not change anyone’s estimation of whether the event actually happened. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. His claim doesn’t change the odds."

It's also now well accepted that, apart from pathology, the Big Lies as well as all the little lies are part of the authoritarian playbook, which is why they are never withdrawn even when contradicted.  As Paul Krugman wrote: "This administration operates under the doctrine of Trumpal infallibility: Nothing the president says is wrong, whether it’s his false claim that he won the popular vote or his assertion that the historically low murder rate is at a record high. No error is ever admitted. And there is never anything to apologize for."

Krugman sees this also as part of a trend for politicians and others: right wing economists, for instance, who continually predicted dire consequences to everything President Obama did, and never admitted that these disasters did not come to pass.

There's a political psychology to this, which is that the important thing is to keep repeating the lie, and alot of people are going to believe it's true--or why else would people keep repeating it?  Even the people who repeat it in order to say it is a lie, add to the cumulative effect.

Nevertheless, there are two things going on here.  First, the current Republican regime is fumbling and floundering.  Courts have twice blocked its xenophobic travel bans, though Homemade Hitler's immigration and travel police are creating chaos for no real reason.  The FBI is actively investigating unlawful ties to Russia, and so on.  If the heathcare bill that the Rs are rushing to vote on doesn't even get out of the House, that's a thundering defeat.

Second, White House credibility is being shredded.

What will be the result?  The weaker this regime gets, the more likely it will attempt large scale military action, either war against another country or as response to a terrorist incident.

But what happens if nobody believes them?  Then we're in uncharted territory.  

Breslin

Jimmy Breslin, author and most of all, New York City reporter and columnist, died on Sunday at the age of 89.  He was the Charles Dickens of New Journalism in the 70s, a Damon Runyon who caught the color but throughout his career also championed the downtrodden in substantive ways.

He was a columnist for the New York Daily News when I was writing a half-dozen articles or so for the paper's Sunday magazine.  I worked out of the Daily News offices (and so did Clark Kent, at least when he was Christopher Reeve.) I passed Breslin in the halls and we exchanged greetings.  One of those semi-vicarious moments of feeling like journalists together.

We weren't very much alike as people, journalists, writers, but still... I just re-read one of my articles from those mid 1980s issues, on the New York Lotto game, and it had the kind of street description and interviews, plus the pov and a few low-key flourishes, for which Breslin set the standard.  He was a big personality in New York--he used to be on TV a lot--but he was rightly proudest of being a writer.

Here's a short piece on him from the New Yorker this week; Jonathan Alter's tribute in the same pub;  He was--as I was to a lesser extent--a member of an endangered species that in some senses is already extinct.  Which is not to dispute that he was one of a kind. Alter ends his piece:

There are still columnists and reporters doing great work (especially on Trump since the Inauguration), though not as many are getting out of the office and “climbing the tenement stairs,” as Breslin described the essence of his craft. But, toward the end of his life, I found him surprisingly sanguine about the chances of these human stories surviving the demise of tabloids and being told online. Were he writing now, he would be seeking out stories on the personal consequences of Trump’s health-care and budget plans. And he would tell those stories with a little more fun and a lot more rage.

 May he rest in peace.  His books live on, and his memory.

Alive

"There's an African proverb: 'When death finds you, may it find you alive.'  Alive means living your own damn life, not the life that your parents wanted, or the life some cultural group or political party wanted, but the life that your own soul wants to live."

Michael Meade
from an interview in The Sun Magazine, quoted in the 40th anniversary issue, 2014.

Generations Chuck

Chuck Berry begat the Beatles and Stones, and so in the 70s Chuck Berry and John Lennon played together, a not terribly inspiring performance on daytime TV, but still.  Then in the 80s, Berry played some gigs with Stones guitarist Keith Richards (and got into some famous onstage arguments.)  But this collaboration begat a third generation, as John's son Julian Lennon sang the hell out of Johnny B. Goode, sounding like his overawed and nervous father should have in the 70s, with Richards blazing on guitar.  Also check out the audience--the older man somewhat self-consciously responding, followed by the young boy shaking his head in uninhibited joy.

Chuck Berry and School Day Memories

I never liked Elvis Presley.  When he emerged in 1956, I thought he was ridiculous.  At the age of 11 I was possibly not yet hormonalized enough, but in fact I never liked him even after that.  (He did have a good voice, however; something he's not often given credit for.)

There were tunes that intrigued me even earlier, by Fats Domino for instance, that forecast the big change in popular music.  But in 1957 I was ready for rock and roll.  Sixth grade was accompanied by Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Dion and the Belmonts, the Elegants and other do-wop groups.  The first 45 I bought was a guitar instrumental called "Raunchy" by Ernie Freeman in 1957.

In March 1957, exactly 60 years ago, "School Day" by Chuck Berry was released. It wasn't his first hit, but it was the first I remember clearly.  I probably saw him lip synch it on American Bandstand, the Dick Clark program from Philadelphia on TV every school day afternoon.  Or maybe I saw him on the local version on Saturdays, hosted by Pittsburgh DJ Clark Race.  Or probably both.

The tune eventually led off an EP --an Extended Play 45 rpm record--of six songs featured on American Bandstand, and so it was the first Chuck Berry song I owned, and listened to over and over.

The song mixed familiar elements of my world with a kind of (for me) teenage dream world.  It's about a school day, starting off: Up in the mornin' and out to school/ The teacher is teachin' the Golden Rule...

Although my teachers were teaching more rules than that at the Cathedral School. My Catholic parish was still catching up to our Baby Boom numbers, and so my class from St. Paul's was moved for 6th and 7th grade up to the much larger Cathedral School on Main Street, across from Greensburg High School.  It was my first experience with lots of kids (by 7th grade, some of our classes had 60 students, and were complete chaos) and with big school features like a cafeteria.

And Chuck Berry even sang about that: Ring, ring goes the bell/The cook in the lunch room's ready to sell/You're lucky if you can find a seat/You're fortunate if you have time to eat...

The song was basically about school as a pressure cooker (Back in the classroom, open your books/Keep up, the teacher don't know how mean she looks)

Then suddenly there's release: Soon as three o'clock rolls around//You finally lay your burden down/Close up your books, get out of your seat//Down the halls and into the street

And that's where any similarity to my experience ended, and the teenage fantasy world began: Up to the corner and 'round the bend/ Right to the juke joint, you go in.. 

There were no juke joints, or malt shops, or any of the teenage fantasy places we saw on Ozzie and Harriet and other TV shows.  Sure, there were places with juke boxes.  But there was never any place around where kids would dance in the afternoon: The best we could do is go home and watch other kids dance on American Bandstand. All day long you been wantin' to dance,/Feeling the music from head to toe/ Round and round and round we go...

Not that any of us could dance, or could overcome the self-consciousness of being shorter than the girls (who somehow during the summer between 6th and 7th grades, all grew breasts), and with our voices changing and pimples sprouting.  So losing inhibitions and joyously dancing at the juke joint was as much a fantasy world as the world of romance.

Still, I could feel the music, feel that it was particularly mine, and so rejoin Chuck Berry's ecstatic words to end the song: Hail, hail rock and roll/ /Deliver me from the days of old/Long live rock and roll /The beat of the drums, loud and bold/ Rock, rock, rock and roll/The feelin' is there, body and soul.

That was Chuck Berry's subject: the music itself.  From Roll Over, Beethoven to Johnny B. Goode and Rock & Roll Music.

  I think it was Chuck Berry who killed Your Hit Parade, the TV show in which a stable of singers performed that week's top hits.  Dorothy Collins, Snooky Lanson and the others might get through songs about true love and broken hearts, and the occasional novelty song, but there was no way they could dramatize Chuck Berry's teenage anthems to the life of rock & roll.

Chuck Berry was a musical innovator in what he put together: rhythm and blues and country music principally, but he also knew how to construct a pop song.  He said the guitar riff opening to "Johnny B. Goode" was inspired by the Glenn Miller Orchestra opening to "In The Mood."  There were lots of black artists whose songs were hits mostly when recorded by whites.  But Chuck Berry's songs couldn't be imitated.  Only a decade later were there new versions by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, among others.

He had seemingly several careers, popping up with a new hit or playing on TV with John Lennon, never looking or acting much older.  I saw him live at an oldies show in the 70s, when he had his last and biggest hit, "My Ding-a-Ling," not among his best.

Chuck Berry had a strange life, suggested by just one fact: three days after he performed at the White House for President Jimmy Carter, he was locked in a federal pen for tax evasion.  But he had a long life, too.  He died on Saturday at the age of 90.  May he rest in peace.  His work lives on.

Legacy

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott
January 30, 1930-March 17, 2017
R.I.P.

Ryan's War-- on Seniors

The Paul Ryan healthcare proposal--fully embraced by Homemade Hitler--is hurtling through Congress, hoping that it's moving too fast for anyone to read it first.

Too late.

Senator Bob Casey released a 50 page report detailing how the plan raises premiums and lowers coverage as citizens age, with seniors (not quite 65) of the lowest income paying the highest percentage of their income.

Paul Krugman: "Affluent young people might end up saving some money as a result of these changes. But the effect on those who are older and less affluent would be devastating. AARP has done the math: a 55-year-old making $25,000 a year would end up paying $3,600 a year more for coverage; that rises to $8,400 for a 64-year-old making $15,000 a year."

Low income seniors--even those on Medicare, which covers only part of healthcare costs--depend on programs through Medicaid.  The Ryan plan would end much of this support by 2020.

But news is Republicans have gotten concessions from Ryan and the White House: they have agreed to wound Medicaid even more.

This is the Cruelty State's proudest boast--thanks for your service, now that you're too old we'll kill you, painfully.

Jackboots of The Cruelty State

Besides yet another tragic object lesson in the hard truth that it is so much easier to destroy than to create, the Cruelty State budget (dubbed a "campaign press release masquerading as a government document,” due to its lack of being an actual, you know, budget, with income and outflow and covering the whole government) is also the perfect budget if your goal is to create a military dictatorship.

Slash support for everything from the EPA and NASA earth science to cancer research, regional and community programs and public broadcasting, with no significant money for infrastructure--along with the proposed destruction of healthcare support given by government in every other advanced nation on the planet.  Then-- besides giveaways to the wealthy and the wealthiest businesses-- increase spending on military hardware.

And while you are at it, keep making noises about going to war with North Korea.

This is how it works in the Third World military dictatorships: when the military is the privileged institution, where poor people can get status and get fed only in the military. Also create the sense of being besieged in a hostile world, and identify at least one enemy for patriotic citizens to get excited about fighting.

Even within the military budget, the hardware gets the bucks and programs for peacekeeping and responding to global emergencies gets cut.  It's all about the jackboots.

Truth

Whether they fully articulate it or not, an element that strikes terror in many hearts and minds regarding Homegrown Hitler's regime is the nightmare reversal of truth and lies.  The regime lie and because they say it, it is the truth.  There is no argument based on evidence of any kind that can contradict it, and increasingly, that support it.  And therefore, there is no recourse.  There is no democratic process, or any kind of decision-making based on verifiable evidence.

But making decisions based on facts as well as priorities, and even knowingly ignoring where the evidence leads in order to strike a compromise that brings parties together to support a common program, have had and still have an important institutional place, everywhere from city councils to courts and even occasionally in the US Congress.

Some decisions are made that way by law, such as applying rules regulating carbon in cars and power plants, as this article explains: because even a climate crisis-denying ignoramus bought and paid for by fossil fuel corporations as EPA director will have to prove a case.

But at least a couple of the regime's efforts to remake reality may be getting some resistance in Congress, even from usually fact-free Republicans.   This Washington Post article is persuasive that a couple of R leaders in the House and Senate aren't meekly cooperating with the regime's strategy of making wild accusations and then pushing them over to Congress to investigate.  They are committee chairs asking for evidence for the charge of wire tapping against President Obama, and saying pretty plainly that they don't believe the White House or the Justice Department has any.

One of these, a conservative and once (and probably future) regime apologist, Rep. Devin Nunes told to a reporter in 2015 that his biggest concern was the "spread of false information on the right:"

“I used to spend ninety per cent of my constituent-response time on people who call, e-mail, or send a letter, such as, ‘I really like this bill, H.R. 123,’ and they really believe in it because they heard about it through one of the groups that they belong to, but their view was based on actual legislation,” Nunes said. “Ten per cent were about ‘Chemtrails from airplanes are poisoning me’ to every other conspiracy theory that’s out there. And that has essentially flipped on its head.” The overwhelming majority of his constituent mail is now about the far-out ideas, and only a small portion is “based on something that is mostly true.” He added, “It’s dramatically changed politics and politicians, and what they’re doing."

From reality TV to Facebook as the prime dispenser of "news," it is the newest and most frightening of the tendencies that encourages--even deifies--ignorance.

There are somewhat more familiar components to the Dark Age Now though they are amped to brand new heights.  Jeffrey Frank recalls Homegrown Hitler's disdain for Camp David, as close to a hallowed setting as we get in America, rich with history as well as practicality, and imbued with the continuity of the American presidency.   "Seen in that light, Trump’s contemptuous remark about Camp David became another early warning that, even after taking the oath of office, there would be no end to his vulgarity and mendacity."

Frank later comments:"hard to watch what’s happening to the office and the mission of the Presidency, aided and abetted by men and women who will not be forgiven in the history books that Trump will never read."

The Washington Post has taken to adding a motto under its name on every website page: "Democracy dies in darkness."  It is the darkness of ignorance, of deliberate ignorance.  That ignorance is created not only by the dearth of information, but of shared belief in the fundamental tests of what's true and what is not.

Gist for the Mill

On the dictator apprentice's leaked tax return:

"Almost as noteworthy was the fact that most of the tax Trump paid was captured by the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is a backup tax designed to insure that people with a lot of deductions don’t entirely escape taxes. Because Trump took a write-down of more than a hundred million dollars in 2005, his initial tax liability was just $5.3 million. If not for the Alternative Minimum Tax, which he and other Republicans want to get rid of, his effective tax rate would have been about 3.5 per cent. Because he was liable to the A.M.T., he was forced to pay an additional thirty-one or so million dollars."


The gist of the court decision stopping Homegrown Hitler's latest travel ban:

 In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson quoted a Fox News appearance from senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, who argued that “fundamentally, you’re still going to have the same basic policy outcome for the country” even after the rewrite. The judge said the new executive order was similar in intent to the first one — and that it targeted Muslims.

“These plainly-worded statements, made in the months leading up to and contemporaneous with the signing of the Executive Order, and, in many cases, made by the Executive himself, betray the Executive Order’s stated secular purpose,” the ruling said.

On the regime's announced legislative agenda--which is so far a total illusion:

As a candidate for president, Trump promised that he would work with Congress to pass legislation that would dramatically cut taxes, spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investments, significantly expand school choice and make it easier to afford child care. And he promised he would get started on all that — and six other pieces of legislation — in his first 100 days, according to a “Contract with the American Voter” released shortly before Election Day.

Now past the 50-day mark, only one of those bills — the House GOP health-care plan — has been introduced. And its path has grown more treacherous by the day, with mounting concerns about the millions of Americans projected to lose coverage, including many who supported Trump in last year’s election...

Other promised 100-day bills included a sweeping crackdown on immigration, including a southern border wall paid for by Mexico; a new system of tariffs to discourage companies from relocating abroad; and reforms aimed at reducing “the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.” No such measures have been introduced."

Persistence

The first sunny days of spring (after Daylight Savings Time anyway) revealed blooming jonquils (above), grape hyacinth and tulips in the yard, as well as the calla lilies that persisted through the winter...

Mercy

"Instead of humanity rationally governing the world and itself, we are at the mercy of monsters that we have created."

Dale Jamieson
Reason in a Dark Time

What "Universal Access" Means

Does the Republican plan for healthcare guarantee universal coverage?  Nope--something better: Universal Access!

Universal Access means everybody can get health insurance!  After all, it's the American way.

Americans have Universal Access to lots more than healthcare, too!  For instance, Americans have universal access to flights in private jets whenever they want one---provided they pay for the private jet.  But other than that, there are no restrictions.  This is America!  (Well, depending on other factors, you might not actually be allowed to fly in it--but you could still own it.)

Universal Access to health insurance also means that you can buy a really cheap policy, way cheaper than under Obamacare.  Of course it won't cover anything much, but it will be way cheap!

But if you want health insurance that covers lots of stuff, even everything, you have Universal Access to those plans, too!  Provided you can pay the very steep prices, which get steeper the older you are.

Listen, you can even have Universal Access to the Universe if you want, if you can pay, if you can wait for faster than light spaceships.  After all, facts are just limitations, and they don't matter anymore.  Universal Access is what they used to call bullshit, when that was still a word and not White House policy.

So don't worry that the Republican plan won't cover everybody, or even everyone now covered under the suddenly popular Obamacare. (CBO Update: 24 million people fewer than Obamacare, which is even fewer insured people than before Obamacare.)  Universal Access is what will make America great again.

(Well, yes, anybody can get health insurance now under Obamacare, but that isn't Universal Access.  Because...well, because they don't call it that.  What is this anyway--fake news?)