Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

 Donald Trump is not going to change or otherwise modify or correct his behavior. He is 77 years old; violence is core and central to his personhood, identity, and way of being in the world. As mental health professionals continue to warn, Trump has shown himself to be a sociopath if not a psychopath. His collective behavior such as the coup attempt on Jan. 6, democide in response to the COVID pandemic, being impeached twice, the multiple indictments and arrests, embrace of neofascism, massive corruption, malignant narcissism and utter disregard for reality and facts, political cultism, and other pathological behavior by an American president is unprecedented in the country's history.

Fascinated with J. Robert Oppenheimer

 

Q: Even some of his contemporaries said he was a dilettante. How good he was in terms of raw skill?

A: He had the skill and the brilliance. But he didn’t have the focus. He was not absolutely devoted to physics the way one of the great physicists would be. It was just one of his many passions. At the time he was doing physics, he read a lot of literature and languages. Also, in the U.S., the empirical way of approaching physics was predominant [whereas European theorists were pursuing new concepts]. So the theorists’ job was to help experimentalists understand their data. As the physics and the experiments were shifting, his interest shifted, too.

Martin Filler on Oppenheimer in the NYB

 During my youth Oppenheimer was the world’s most famous scientist after Einstein—a stature he achieved by directing the Manhattan Project’s desert laboratory in Los Alamos, where he led an unruly pack of young scientists to build the first nuclear weapon. His death at sixty-two in 1967, of throat cancer from decades of relentless chain-smoking, made the front page of The New York Times. Since then he’s inspired an unusual number of theater pieces for a scientist, including at least three plays, two musicals, and an opera performed at the Met. Having admired Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s magisterial 2005 study American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, I was encouraged to learn that Nolan used it as the basis for his screenplay. The book brought me back to my early familiarity with Oppenheimer’s story, which combines the mythic import of the Ring cycle with humanizing details that exemplify the inextricable links between world-changing occurrences and the minutiae of everyday life.

 But Oppenheimer turns out to be uncomfortably timely. At no point since the end of the Cold War has nuclear war felt more plausible, as the daily clashes between a nuclear-armed Russia and a NATO-backed Ukraine remind us. Beyond literal nuclear warfare, we are faced with a range of existential dangers—pandemics, climate change, and perhaps artificial intelligence—that will be managed, or mismanaged, by small teams of scientific experts working in secret with little democratic accountability. The ideologies, affiliations, and personalities of those experts are likely to leave their stamp on history, and not in ways they themselves would necessarily wish. Oppenheimer’s dark prophecy may yet be fulfilled.

-The New Republic

My Reading Habits

 Reading Habits

My favorite price of a book is $16 and a quarter. If I find a $16.25 book I might buy multiple copies just for the pride of it. I have no issue with multiple copies of the same book.

I prefer trade paperbacks because they are easier to manipulate with my hands.

I rarely read a book a second time. If I do read a book a second time there needs to be sufficient time between readings.

I do underline and love marginalia.

I seldom read mass market books.

I strongly prefer nonfiction. There are so many things I wish to know about.

Trump's Hobby

 Everyone needs a hobby. Some people take up gardening or metal detecting. Others lean into learning a new skill, like cooking or knitting. One of the most popular new hobbies these days is pickleball, especially among older Americans. The New York Times even hailed it recently as “the cure to male loneliness.” Hobbies are healthy and important, except when they’re not.

Donald Trump is passionate about golf, but his real hobby is obstruction of justice. Federal and state prosecutors say that he dabbles in other things as well, like falsifying financial records, illegally possessing classified documents, and maybe even conspiring with others to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election.

From The New Republic

On Fascism by Michael Tomasky

 Fascism is not a political program. It’s different from every other -ism in this way. Capitalism means something specific: private ownership of the means of production. Communism means the opposite: state (or worker) ownership of the means of production. Socialism is, or used to be, a softer form of communism. It’s hard to say what it means now, and by the way, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are not democratic socialists. They’re social democrats—Google the difference, and you’ll see what I mean.

Anyway. Fascism is a sensibility far more than it is a political program. The word comes to us from ancient Rome, where the fasces was a bound bundle of wooden rods with an ax (or sometimes two) that symbolized political power. It wasn’t always bad; next time you visit the Lincoln Memorial, look below Abe’s hands—those are fasces. They were literal back in Rome, and Cincinnatus, who served as dictator for just 16 days, is famous for having spurned them. He remains one of the few leaders in history who refused absolute power and returned to private life, the other prominent one being our own George Washington, who easily could have made himself dictator in the mid-1780s but refused to do so. The day in 1783 when he stopped off in Annapolis, where the Continental Congress was meeting, and resigned his military commission is the day the United States became a republic.

Fascism developed its modern meaning in Italy in the 1920s, under Benito Mussolini. He coined the term in 1919. He ascribed to it certain attributes—absolute state power over private enterprise, racial superiority of the majority group—but it really revolved around the power of the dictator, the dictator’s emotional connection to his followers, and their complete obeisance to him. It’s mystical and hard to describe. It can’t be defined in any constitution. It’s just something you can see and feel. I once saw a clip of Adolf Hitler giving a speech. After he was introduced and the applause quieted, he stood silent at the podium for almost a minute before he started speaking, quietly. That minute was fascism.

That is what Donald Trump wants. He already has it, in the sense that his rallies are fascist rallies. His backers surrender themselves to him in a way that small-d democratic admirers of Barack Obama and George W. Bush did not. This is why his poll numbers among Republicans go up and up. He has cemented the mystical bond. What he lacks, for now, is the power. We’re in a race now between republicanism, rule by citizens for the common good, and fascism, rule by a dictator for the good of his followers.

In a democratic society, the law is the most efficient means by which to arrest fascism. This is why Trump faces indictments. It’s the surest way to stop him. Smart fascists know this, and they either stay within the law or, perhaps paradoxically, violate it so flagrantly that they end up redefining what “the law” even is. Fortunately for us, Trump is a dumb fascist, and his ignorance may prove to be his Achilles’ heel. We also—again fortunately—have a system and set of laws and traditions that are stronger than those of, say, Weimar Germany, so Trump hasn’t yet been able to pollute them, although if he is reelected, he certainly wil

The new felony charges announced Thursday evening by the office of special counsel Jack Smith are simultaneously shocking and unsurprising. It stands to reason that Trump wanted the computer server that hosted Mar-a-Lago security video deleted. Yes, it’s especially ironic, given the way he carried on about Hillary Clinton’s server in 2016, but this too is a key attribute of fascism: Fascists do precisely the thing they accuse their opponents of doing. In August 1939, Goebbels accused the Poles of violence against Germans in the Danzig Corridor. It’s the only way fascism can work; to get the people to believe the opposite of the truth. Even Trump, dumb as he is, instinctively knows this.

Look at his recent statements. “This is prosecutorial misconduct used at a level never seen before. If I weren’t leading Biden by a lot in numerous polls, and wasn’t going to be the Republican nominee, it wouldn’t be happening. It wouldn’t be happening.… But I am way up as a Republican and way up in the general election, and this is what you get.”

He’s not ahead of Joe Biden. It’s a close race—disturbingly so—but, according to RealClearPolitics, Biden is narrowly ahead. And of course it’s not prosecutorial misconduct. Grand juries—American citizens—indicted Trump, not prosecutors. The only prosecutorial misconduct in Trump’s life was the laxity of the New York prosecutors who failed to nab him over the past 40 years. If they’d been doing their job, the nation might have been spared this turmoil.

With these next two indictments, assuming they happen, the mystical bond will grow deeper. Trump’s lies will intensify; his movement will become more openly fascistic. The law is the surest way to stop all this. But even convictions won’t end it. They’ll keep him out of the White House, most likely, but the Republican Party has probably been permanently transformed. The next Trump can’t wait to grab the fasces.

Brian Karem in Salon.com

 Donald Trump began a process he can no longer control, though he'll never admit it. He's given politicians, and everyone else on the planet, leeway to embrace their darkest nature. The neo-Confederate movement in defiance of the federal government is a direct result of Trump's appeal to those who have nurtured their sadistic and misanthropic fantasies many generations after the end of the Civil War.

But their success is limited, and ultimately they will fail. That's reflected in Trump's own actions. He is under two criminal indictments and faces at least two more — and one of those, in Georgia, can't be erased by a presidential pardon should Trump regain the White House. Then there's Rudy Giuliani. Like many of Trump's minions, he's facing potential indictment himself. And it doesn't make things better for Rudy that this week he had to admit in a Georgia civil case that he lied about the actions of two election workers and grossly defamed them. It's enough to make the hair dye run down his face. "If the devil was as incompetent as Giuliani, hell would be empty," Eisen explained on the podcast "Just Ask the Question."

The Trump Justice Train

 Many pitfalls and risks remain. The window for real accountability is narrow and closing. Donald Trump will push hard to delay and evade, and there are many ways he could succeed. But the more different strong and credible accountability efforts he faces, the better the chance that one or several will succeed and that an understanding of his criminality will break through to more of the American people. 

Had the Department of Justice moved quickly and decisively, it is possible that indictments could have been returned with plenty of time to ensure trials before the 2024 election, which could have removed some of the uncertainty and risk we now face. That could have made real accountability a more likely result. Earlier indictments also could have moved public opinion and perhaps allowed for less resulting polarization.

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

Trump's Aim: Stay Out of Prison

 As we know, it is official Justice Department policy that sitting presidents can’t be prosecuted. So for Trump, being president for the next four years would in essence wipe these indictments off the books. As for criminal trials that started before he was sworn in on January 20, 2025, should he win? Easy peasy. He can pardon himself. Come on. You think he wouldn’t do it? You think he couldn’t count on the right-wing media to endorse it as no big whoop and look at those stupid fulminating libtards, along with a chorus of right-wing, Leonard Leo–anointed constitutional “scholars” to explain why it’s all fine?

-Michael Tomasky in The New Republic

Bertrand Russell - The Problems of Philosophy- Notes

 Philosophy, if it cannot ANSWER so many questions as we would wish, it has at least the power of ASKING questions which would increase our interest in the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commons of everyday life.

Considering Berkeley's Idealism is a waste of time. Talk about rabbit holes! One of the biggest ones in academic philosophy,

Descartes famously said that the only thing he could be certain of was his own existence. There is still something to be said for that.

Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must not be afraid of absurdities

Russell clearly and convincingly refutes Idealism.

Something can exist independently without being lodged in a mind.

Surely no one of sound mind takes Idealism seriously especially if it's all in the mind.

What can we know that is not within the sphere of our personal existence? It depends on what it is that we are wondering about, the exact subject matter, because different subjects involve different criteria as to what we can believe.

So are we now know going to talk about why we think the sun will come up in the morning?

Is there anything more boring than Kant's epistemology? I think not.

I grew up reading Russell in high school not knowing really what I was reading so I have kind of come full circle. Somewhere I have his history of philosophy volume but I will not reread it.

Russell is not dive bar reading.

Russell admits the reality of intuitive knowledge, but we need not, I need not, philosophize about it.

Remind me to never get caught up in Hegel's metaphysics.

A priori knowledge will never explain the world.

Philosophical knowledge is no different from scientific knowledge.

The essential characteristic of philosophical knowledge, which makes it distinct from science, is criticism. Philosophy examines the principles employed in science and in daily life; philosophy is about critical inquiry. Does this mean that philosophy can be seen partly as philosophy of science? There is always room for mistakes in both philosophy and science.

What is the value of philosophy? This is the ultimate question along with the distinction between philosophy and science in which I am interested.

Is philosophy merely innocent trifling? Something for the leisure class to engage in? Endless controversies over which there are no solutions.

Science should be interest to all of us even if we are not scientists because we all benefit from the results of science. Of course, we can all be harmed and die from the results of science also.

But philosophy typically only benefits, shakes up, or harms those who study it.

The value of philosophy will be recognized only by those who recognize and appreciate the goods of the mind as well as the goods of materialism. The few vs. the many.

It is exclusive amongst the goods of the mind is philosophy to be understood and valued. Only those who understand this can be persuaded that philosophy is not a waste of time.

Philosophy aims at knowledge which looks at critical examination of prejudices, beliefs, and convictions. This can make philosophy hard to quantify as to its success and failure.

Philosophy aims at the grounds of our knowledge beliefs, prejudices, and convictions. But it cannot her maintained that philosophy has had any great success in its search for definitive answers to its question, but it can also be said that the questions that philosophy asks do not always have definitive answers or answers to which their are contrasting answers. Philosophy does not profess definitive answers or progress as would scientists or historians. Such is the nature of philosophy, Philosophical knowledge eventually becomes scientific knowledge. This fact must be understood. Does this mean that philosophy is pre-science? Must philosophic questions always precede scientific questions or are they two sides of the same questions?

Science was called philosophy or natural philosophy at the beginning. The uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real. Questions that lead to definitive answers become science Questions still with uncertain answers remain philosophy. Of course, isn't science always considered tentative pending new evidence and new interpretations?

It is part of the speculative business to philosophy to keep asking questions even if no answers are forthcoming or that the answers of philosophy are not demonstrably true. These questions are important and we need to keepbeeing reminded of them. The questions of philosophy shield us from false and assumed answers which are not true.

The value of philosophy cannot be based on the presumption of verifiable knowledge.

The value of philosophy is best characterized by its acceptance of uncertainly. This can drive physicists like Hawking nuts because they cannot deal with uncertainty. If the laws of physics, and the laws of physics are dominant in the thinking of Hawking, and the laws if physics break down a a singularity and the singularity must be done away with.

Questions which seem to have definitive answers are placed under science. Questions which to not yet have definitive answers are called philosophy. Of course, science is always definitive also.

The strength of astronomy lies in its uncertainty.

Philosophy is to be studied not for the sake of its definite answers to its questions, since to definite answers can be delivered, butrther for the questions themselves. Asking philosophic questions broadens our view of the world.

The author's last chapter on "The Value of Philosophy" is worth the price of the book by itself.

Jefferson Cowie (3)

 FDR started a new definition of individualism based on economic security.  P. 3

My argument can be stated boldly and succinctly: the political era between the 1930's and the 1970's marks what might be called a  "great exception"---a sustained deviation, an extended detour---from some of the main  contours of American political practice, economic structure, and cultural outlook. P. 9

There was a one-time liberal consensus in the post WWII era that will probably never be seen again. P.10

An interregnum between guilded ages, but it was not permanent,.  P. 10

The transformation of the state and the government's relationship with the people.  P. 11

Was the New Deal a radical transformation or a conttinuation of earlier theme?  Seems to me it is some of both.  P. 13

 World-renowned singer, Tony Bennett, died on Friday at the age of 96 and a wealth of celebrities who grew to have a deep appreciation for his work, and for him as a person, have been releasing heartfelt remembrances. 

The Jefferson Cowie Book

 Great book.  American history at its best.

RFK, Jr. Killing People

 There is a great deal that is upsetting, watching Robert F. Kennedy Jr. make a phony run for the Democratic presidential nomination. There's the way he's using this as a platform to push vaccine disinformation that has led to many deaths, and not just from COVID-19. For instance, his anti-vaccine campaign in Samoa led to a measles outbreak that killed 32 people, mostly children. There's the shame he brings upon his family, especially his murdered father and murdered uncle, who spent their time in the Justice Department and White House promoting vaccination. There's the way his conspiracism has metastasized, leading inevitably to anti-semitic mutterings blaming the pandemic on Jewish people. There's also the recent revelation that most of his big donors are Republicans who are trying to rat-f*ck the Democratic nomination process. 

-Amanda Marcotte in Salon.com

Jefferson Cowie - The Great Exception - Notes (2)

 The unintended consequence of a conservative racial  immigration policy enacted in 1924 was the social cohesion necessary to produce the most liberal period in American history.  P. 130

The New Deal created the conditions for the most equitable economy since the beginning of the industrial age.  P. 142

The 20th Century decline in inequality took place in a very specific time period.  P. 143

Was unionization at its peak at the conclusion of WWII?

1946 The biggest strike wave in American history.  P. 144

I do not understand the liberal political philosophies of John Dewey.  P. 147

The New Deal proved to be a weak competitor to the dominant individualist strain in American history.  P. 149

The period of the post-WWII era, the period of the Great Exception, was a great time to be a worker.  P. 151

When organized labor was accepted.  P. 154

Labor's victories and the advancement of economic security after WW II proved to be only transitory.  P. 156

Jefferson Cowie - Notes

 How the New Deal was a unique historical moment and what this reveals about U.S. politics, economics, and culture

Where does the New Deal fit in the big picture of American history? What does it mean for us today? What happened to the economic equality it once engendered? In The Great Exception, Jefferson Cowie provides new answers to these important questions. In the period between the Great Depression and the 1970s, he argues, the United States government achieved a unique level of equality, using its considerable resources on behalf of working Americans in ways that it had not before and has not since. If there is to be a comparable battle for collective economic rights today, Cowie argues, it needs to build on an understanding of the unique political foundation for the New Deal. Anyone who wants to come to terms with the politics of inequality in the United States will need to read The Great Exception.

-From Amazon.com

 We are in a strange and disturbing place as a country. People have varying degrees of enthusiasm for Joe Biden, which is fine and natural. Other people are fed up with “the two-party duopoly,” as it’s often put, and that’s fine too. But anyone who has studied the question—as the No Labels leaders surely have—knows that running long-shot presidential candidates is not the way one changes that. One changes that by changing the way we elect the House of Representatives (go look up “Duverger’s Law”).

I’d be all for that. It would be (a) interesting, (b) more democratic, and (c) probably good for reducing polarization. Until that day comes, we have only two parties and only two candidates who have a realistic shot at winning the presidency. People who actually understand how our system works get this. The choice next year will likely be between a candidate who will defend and preserve democracy and a candidate who will seek from his first hour in office to strangle it. I would think that choice would be clear. If Trump wins and follows through on what he says he will do, history will have a harsh verdict to render on all those who thought 2024, of all years, was the year to take his threats lightly.

-Michael Tomasky in the New Republic

 

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Joey Hiles

@joeyhiles1

Walking around my old college campus, it’s so apparent that much of the longing that adults feel for their college days is because it was the only time in their lives when they lived in close knit, walkable communities, saw friends everyday, rarely got into cars

2:01 PM · Apr 24, 2022

 Trump is likely to be indicted for the third time.

 "Tell about the South," said Shreve McCannon. "What do they do there? How do they live there? Why do they?…Tell me one more thing. Why do you hate the South?"

"I don't hate it," Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; "I don't hate it," he said. "I don't hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I don't. I don't! I don't hate it! I don't hate it!"

William Faulkner, "Absalom, Absalom!"

 "Politics has always been the systemic organization of hatreds."

-Henry Adams

I agree.