Inauguration Resolutions

TL;DR

I do try to be compassionate, but the sudden wave of "analysis" that my algorithms served up to me the instant Trump took office, was like the rapid onset of toothache. I'm quite agitated by watching a media ecosystem fall back into the same ineffective participation in spectacle, as the first 4 years of Trump presidency.

Just talking sheer psychology 101 - the best predictor of future behaviour is past relevant behaviour. As such, Trump is less newsworthy now than he was in 2016 where we could honestly say we didn't know what was going to happen when a pretend boss from TV held the highest office of the world's largest economy. 

Trump is in my opinion, overanalysed, such that it is easy to get caught in the weeds. He has no diagnosis of malignant narcissm, and for good reason psychology is not a check and balance on presidential candidacy. But you can basically use the narcissism traits to more or less accurately predict all his behaviour. 

I am resolved to not do the same thing as last time, because I have learned my lessons. Just as I am resolved to never have a catheter in my pee hole again, or to never go through LAX immigration again when I could go through Dallas Fort Worth, I may not keep my resolutions but I'll give them my best.

Here they are if you don't want to read my whole rationale:

1. I'm not going to consume "copium" for 4 years, which is to say, I'm not going to seek reassurance or soothing by watching comedians daily ridiculing Trump and his lackeys. I know they are ridiculous, I am full up on validation.

2. I'm not going to give attention to the un-newsworthy which is the endless speculation and overanalyses of Trump. Trump is a symptom, I am resolved to direct my efforts toward understanding the circumstances on which Trumpism is contingent.

3. I am resolved to dedicate my energy to promoting economic literacy, this is the good fight. The culture wars are a dangerous distraction.

4. I am going to challenge assertions made by my friends with arguments, and get comfortable with discomfort because it is important that people think, not just affiliate.

5. I am resolved to be a promiscuous friend who doesn't cancel or disassociate with anyone based on their political views. This tribal ostracism is a suicidal disaster.

6. I am resolved to not "get informed" after the facts, like becoming an expert now in Curtis Yarvin, the 2nd term's answer to Steve Bannon. Not only because it is likely it would be a complete waste of time, like understanding Steve Bannon proved to be, but because the root issue is that people's attention is going to self-soothing their fears and anxieties before-the-fact hoping the worst will not happen, and then only bothering to understand the worst once it has happened.

Via Negativa

Now, I don't speak much Latin, nor much Spanish for that matter, but I believe the above subheading means "by subtraction" as in Michelangelo carves his sculptures by removing material, not adding.

So in terms of what I need to hear to form my opinion of the coming administration and the likelihood of my foundational tensions to be resolved I can conclude by what I don't hear. 

What would have reassured me, had Biden's inauguration speech is pretty good and he spoke a lot about unity given that it was just over a week after the Jan 6th insurrection. But I don't need to study it minutely, it's what he failed to say that didn't bode well - he failed to turn to the republican voters and say "I am your president too, I am here to serve you, that's the job of the President" and from Hillary's "Stronger Together" campaign slogan to Biden's speech where he lays out a positive vision of restoring unity, I would be pleasantly surprised if any democrat were to actually reach out to the Republican enemy. 

I had no rational expectations that a republican President, let alone Trump would put himself at the service of his detractors. Somewhere between the election of the elderly and vanilla Biden and his inauguration I posted to fb a comparison to the Roman Emperor Nerva who began the Nerva-Antonine dynasty that Machiavelli famously called "The Five Good Emperors" in his book "The Prince":

Nerva's brief reign was marred by financial difficulties and his inability to assert his authority over the Roman army. A revolt by the Praetorian Guard in October 97 essentially forced him to adopt an heir. After some deliberation Nerva adopted Trajan, a young and popular general, as his successor. ~ from wikipedia.

Biden or rather the democratic party didn't revolt in time. Furthermore, he had basically already screwed the pooch when he picked Kamela Harris as his running mate, a very unserious successor choice. Biden was likely picked himself by Obama on a similar logic to reassure older Democratic voters that progress was tempered, and I can sympathise with Biden's decision to essentially do the opposite, and Kamala's decision to do the same as Obama, Hillary with Tim Kaine, these are myopic and transparent picks where possibly with the exception of Biden as VP, they are not picking young and popular candidates who are approved by the right people, namely people who are concerned about someone competently discharging the duties of president, not their ability to appeal to niche demographics in battle ground states.

So how much coverage of the inauguration do I need, before it is just spectacle and gossip to me? About 30 seconds of Trump rambling as if still on the campaign trail, appealing only to his base. There's nothing newsworthy there, if the sense of "news" being derived from new or novel. 

 Happy fucken New Year. The "new"s was plastered with press coverage of Trump's inauguration. I watched little but saw enough, enough to know the spectacle has decayed. Trump is less of a known quantity than he was 8 years ago, probably the most concrete piece of knowledge attained in his first term was validation of something quite predictable: being his response to the global Covid Pandemic which I shall summarize as "he didn't want to deal with it, so he didn't." 

Almost inevitably, I will write blog posts over the next four years that cite the 45th & 47th President because he is a useful prominent example of various shit. But I thought I would share here what I am resolved not to do:

I'm Not Going to Consume Copium for 4 Years.

Now I was not aware that the neologism "copium" is associated with 4chan pepes. It makes sense that it is, but I still find the term useful even though lefties don't tend to use it when mocking and getting gratification from right wingers seeking copium through Fox News and Tucker Carlson. The term may not be politically neutral, but I shall use it as such because it is more a matter of usage.

In turdburgers first term, I watched a lot of Seth Meyers' "Closer Look" segments from "Late Night with Seth Meyers." These would get 100s of 1000s if not millions of views daily. Less often, but quite regularly I would also watch Colbert's monologues from his "Late Show with Stephen Colbert." who's youtube clips of his monologues also regularly exceeded a million views.

What's the service being provided? Entertainment yes, but not in isolation, it was also copium for people alienated not only by the Trump administration, but from a broader community in general. The late show hosts (with the notable exception of Conan O'Brian, now retired) served as lightening rods of reassurance that non-Trump voters, left-wingers were not alone in finding reality bizarre and unnerving.

There's this thing with a complicated name called "inductive reasoning" but it describes the simple process of observing enough points to see a pattern. A simple example that is likely fairly timeless are the phases of the moon. Human societies everywhere observed the pattern of waxing and waning between new and full moons over roughly a 28 day, monthly cycle. 

Inductive reasoning can fail in two ways - first we can conclude a pattern is there that isn't, because our sample is too small. Bertrand Russell uses maybe a simpler example of  chicken gaining confidence every day that the farmer feeds it corn that the farmer is looking out for its best interest

That's the error of induction which is seeing a pattern that isn't. 

The copium of watching world class comedians ridicule Trump and his surrogates on a daily basis for 4 years is at this point the other kind of failure - failing to see a pattern that is.

We can fail to see the pattern emerging and keep uselessly collecting data. In my life this has been me and my friends and various times taking too long to conclude a romantic interest or partner is a turd, giving them too many chances to disappoint us by failing to not be the person we should by now expect them to be. 

I don't, and I am going to suggest you also don't, need daily affirmation that "this shit be crazy." There's a left-wing gamer-turned-debater called Destiny that has a standing challenge on Trump to simply show him a single example of Trump speaking on anything that will give him the impression that Trump knows his shit. 

I raise it, because its a succinct way to kick copium such that you do not need daily reassurance that this shit be crazy. Instead of collecting daily data-points to support the conclusion that Trump is not competent, you can simply put the onus on reality to provide evidence that falsifies the hypothesis that Trump is inept. It is far easier to assume he is going to be a shitty global celebrity and allow for evidence to the contrary, than to keep bolstering the case by collecting his every utterance and consuming what passes for journalism these days to explain that yes indeed this shit be crazy and maybe, just maybe that he is a shitty global celebrity. This is a huge timesaver, and energy saver. 

Now, right-wing comedy is practically non-existent. However you feel about Joe Rogan and the cadre of mediocre comedians that have made bank by appearing on his podcast and whining about cancel culture, there just isn't that much comedy gold in the hills of neoliberal Democratic presidents and administration. I'm guessing the best analogy to the late show monologue-copium, is fox news, right this is where right-wingers go for reassurance that Obama and Biden be crazy because of tan suits and cognitive decline.

I am not suggesting that these things are equal, but they are analogous. I can make a prediction that Trump's popularity will decline over his term in office. 

This is because, and I can use the masculine pronoun in the case of US presidents - when your guy wins you are excited, this is usually followed by frustration when campaign promises go unfulfilled and institutions limit and thwart the powers your guy has to run his administration. Equally, when your guy loses, you are initially fearful, anticipating broad and terrible reforms to be put into place based on the dangerously misguided campaign promises of the other guy, then while remaining anxious have moments of relief when their campaign promises go unfulfilled and institutions limit and thwart the powers their guy has to run his administration.

Now the Republican Party of the US is dangerous, because I think enough has transpired since the Clinton administration to indicate that they have spiritually and sometimes practically withdrawn the consent of the loser upon which democracies rely. There is also the growing pool of nutjobs of which probably the most prominent example is Marjory Taylor Green indicating a shift over time from a conservative party to a radical nutjob party should this prove a trend. 

Compounding this danger is Popper's paradox of intolerance, which is that a tolerant society cannot tolerate the intolerant, meaning in this case, that the Republican party's withdrawal of the consent of the loser - the withdrawal of the consent of the loser is best personified in Mitch McConnell who literally does not see the Democrats even elected as being legitimate. Behaviour that confirms this disposition is now a matter of historical record in blocking Obama's nominated Supreme court Justice Merrick Garland and rushing through Trump's nominated justice Amy Coney Barrett, a documented double standard.

Bringing me too...

Narcissism of Small Differences

I recently listened to the audiobook of "Knife" by Salmon Rushdie, read by the author. A long time resident of New York City, he voiced an opinion I have also heard from comedian David Cross, also a resident of New York City voiced on his "Senses Working Overtime" podcast: That if Trump is re-elected the United States might become unliveable.

 Here is the thing that people at all points of the political spectrum have taken every opportunity to miss since at least the War on Terror - the overturning of Wade v Roe has been a much bigger problem for Trump's base than it has been to the blue states. Just the same as Islamic fundamentalism is a far bigger problem for Muslims than it is for Secular and Christian citizens of the West. I could even go so far as to point to the red state conservatives getting apoplectic about children getting gender-reassignment surgeries and being "groomed" by drag queen storytime hour - even granting their perspective, these issues are not effecting the parents of children in Texas, Kentucky and Alabama - they are effecting the parents of California, Washington, Oregon, New York etc.

Wrong is wrong, and right is right and the debate is worthwhile where people remain civilized enough to debate the facts and civilized enough to concede that there are facts to be known. As it stands, I don't feel passionately enough about any of these issues to consider relocation, I will get to what I resolve to be the good fight a bit later, the point is that both Rushdie and Cross are highly intelligent people both more accomplished than I am ever likely to be, but I can take their sentiments as either of two things:

1. Some kind of slippery slope fallacy, where they think 2nd Trump Presidency = Gestapo taking all dissenters to death camps. Now, based on "stop the steal" US democratic institutions are at risk, but the tipping point where people who don't like Trump needs-must seek refuge elsewhere is not election or inauguration, it is when the institutions fail, for example when the administration starts ignoring the supreme courts. This is distinct from institutions having fails - like when the Republic lead senate failed to convict Trump of impeachment for the Jan 6th insurrection, basically showing a partisan disinterest in the facts of the trial.

Anyway, the sentiment is an hysterical abrogation of solidarity with resistance. "Unliveable" is pure hyperbole. I am resolved to not entertain the hyperbolic unless the facts support it. And thanks to narcissism of small differences, though it is admirable and encouragable to be concerned for the people who vote for Trump and will most suffer the excesses of the Republican Party, they are the canaries in your coal mine. 

2. What renders the US "unliveable" is not Trump's presidency itself, but the relentless media coverage of Trump as spectacle. 

This sentiment I do have sympathy with, but the target of your outrage shouldn't be the president or the country but the media who deserves your ire. This is the better part of why I became a big fan of Michelle Wolf during Trump's first term - she was one of the few true leftist comedians in the sense of being critical of the institution to which she belongs - ie. left wing media. Incidentally, Wolf left the US during the Biden administration to live in Spain for love. 

One of the quotes that illustrates this point comes from Norm Chomsky, though I do not think it was the intent of his original statement: "Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it." now to be fare, I assume what Chomsky is explicitly referring to is all the state sponsored terror conducted by the US and its allies/satellite states like Israel. 

I'm obsessed with this quote in a much broader sense of human psychology, what is truly terrifying about terrorism is our predictable response to it - to illustrate the point there's a terrorist attack on a civilian population that causes outrage - the nation state of those civilians will then predictably retaliate against the host nation state of that organization, the retaliation typically serves as a recruiting drive for those terrorist organisations which serves as further justification for further military operations. It's a death spiral.

In the same way, Trump makes roughly half the population obsessively anxious about his every move so the media covers him relentlessly exacerbating that anxiety. In a hypothetical world where I was a US citizen eligible to vote, in 2020 all any democratic candidate had to promise to get my vote would be the promise that I did not have to literally hear about any time the US President took a shit every day for 4 years. I have enjoyed that these past four years, and furthermore I have used induction to detect a pattern that most of what Trump says and does is not predictive of the future, he is not a very good source of information on what he will do tomorrow. As such, he doesn't need anywhere near the coverage he gets.

Both legacy and new media have not adjusted to "the dumb president" model of which Raegan, particularly 2nd term Raegan  pioneered with what we now know as a matter of historical record to be the onset of his Alzheimer's. Biden is really the first "dumb president" of the Democratic party in modernity. I am taking the term "dumb president" from Fran Liebowitz, though it would be perhaps more fitting to call the phenomena something like "absent president" "inert president" "empty president" in reference to Chomsky's assessment of the great achievement of the US in the Reagan administration in demonstrating that the US can run without a president at all. 

It is a matter of form to assume that a US President is a source of information, and there is a general problem with political coverage where the media directs our attention to what politicians are saying at the expense of what they are doing. Homer Simpson famously declared that he wouldn't sign anything he hadn't read or that someone had given him the gist of. Legislature is drafted, written, available to the public and press yet audiences and the media generally prefer to just have some politician or staffer come on air to give us the gist of what it means. 

When I think about the Australian medias distinct lack of coverage of the 2023 proposed amendment to the Australian constitution I still get frustrated to the point of pulling my hair out that virtually nobody talked about what the proposed change actually fucking said, I think I found one article that dealt with the wording but it was just an interpretation, not a legal interpretation and not a serious discussion of what the amendment would and wouldn't permit future governments to do.

All of which is to say, I strongly suspect the sentiment of Rushdie and Cross is the hyperbolic slippery slope that 2nd term = purging of blue states. Now Rushdie is in his late 70s and also survived an attempted murder by some fucking loser with a backpack of knives, and his family now/still lives mostly in the UK so if he relocates for family, I would not begrudge it. But in David Cross' case he has an estimated net worth of US$10~12M, with the median lifetime earnings of US citizens being US$1.7M or about $42,000 per year as such, unless there is a rational fear that a Trump lead Republican administration can find a Putin style way to dispossess political enemies of their property, Cross has the opportunity to live in or out of the US as and when it suits him. 

I resolve to a not give attention to the un-newsworthy, to follow the basic tenant of "watching what they do" not the oversupply of speculation as to which way a headless chicken is going to run. 

As to the narcissism of small differences, I resolve to point out that you are much more likely to be jailed or targeted by a violent mob as a result of the Trump administration by being part of the Trump administration: Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone, Allen Weisselberg and Rick Gates. Similarly, who tries to kill President Trump? Mentally ill white men. Trump's rhetoric is more likely to make the US unliveable for himself, than New Yorkers, I mean I know his a New Yorker, but he probably would have been much safer living in New York than doing his rallies.

But, and here's the segue, what the resistance needs, like everyone, is competence and to some extent though I predict that Cross and other celebrities and even plebs that threaten to leave won't, there is a kind of natural corrective that those who cannot soberly assess a situation are the first to flee.

All Problems Are Real But Grossly Unequal

There is a basic problem I am resolved to confront people with who will not let identity politics' embers be deprived of oxygen. 

I am confident it stems from economic illiteracy, but it is basically this: Why has the neoliberal left embraced identity politics? 

Evidence of this Justin Trudeau's famous "we like to say peoplekind" Biden's selections of Kamala Harris and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson the latter of which he explicitly stated his nomination would be a woman of colour. PBS adopting LatinX to refer to Latino people, the Australian Albanese governments 2023 Voice Referendum...None of these old white men are "woke" politicians and if you watch the Trudreau clip the woman he corrects receives it well and if you were in the room you would feel as though Trudeau knows how to play an audience with pedantry, this was something that drove conservatives nuts, to his fans it wasn't a gaff but mana from heaven.

It shows up most prominently though in the corporate world, and that is the best trail of breadcrumbs I can lay out for you. In Australia I have direct experience of receiving emails with signatures that declare the pronouns I would have assumed and an acknowledgement of the Country from which the email was sent with further solidarity/alliance flags. The content of the email or chat will be about the lack of hours available for the staff one month, the next a complaint about the staff having a recently high rate of shift cancellations, or not making themselves available for the minimum mandated number of hours, or that staff members work from home priveleges are being revoked due to a drop in productivity.

This we can describe as left-wing cognitive dissonance. Businesses have embraced diversity, reconciliation etc. while working conditions have regressed back to the Waterfront of the great depression where workers are obliged to be available and productive out of consideration to the business' budget, but employers assume no risk of overemployment out of consideration to the household budget.

So why? I am resolved to ask this question of anyone still insisting on giving the majority of oxygen to non-MLK humanist identity politics. Why have corporations embraced diversity in their marketing material and informing you that Tracy uses "she/her" and Keith uses "he/him" while explaining the concerns of the shareholders preclude them from paying you enough to not got evicted from your home?

It is my estimation, that neoliberal left wing politicians have embraced identity politics because these are cheap. They are polling their constituents who are giving them the offer "I need $5,000 for ankle surgery or you could give me a pat on the head." and the parties are choosing the pat on the head. 

And a pat on the head is meaningful I shall concede that, gladly. Statements of apology like PM Kevin Rudd's for the stolen generation and the Canadian parliaments to the Canadian indigenous I'm sure have tremendous symbolic value, for which in my own case, I received them. 

But what the facts of the Trump re-election suggest is that if people are struggling to live, they will vote Christian Nationalist on the vague promise of "something terrific" and a naive belief that Tariffs will somehow deliver them a living wage.

It is a discipline to prioritise things that make a systemic material difference to everybody's lives over those that make a transitory symbolic difference to, too often, very few. 

Why can't we do both? Because attention is a limited resource. 

last analogy on this point, I swear, because I'm trying to be compassionate but in a highly agitated state by algorithms foisting coverage of Musk and Trump on me.

When I was in primary school, kids broke limbs and turned up in plaster casts. Not because of schools corporal punishment, but kids broke limbs typically through misadventure on holidays and in their free time. I broke my wrist several times as a child typically using my wrist to break my falls. 

But, and I can't trust the sequencing of my recollections this far back. I was quick to realise that a plaster cast was a big obvious thing and that the question "what happened?" was a dumb obvious question. And I somehow at a young age new, before I suspect I even experienced it first hand with my own broken wrist, that it was unpleasant to have to explain to every single person how you broke your wrist.

I can use this experience, to cognitively empathise with the plight of someone with gender dysphoria and the 20th century paradigm of pass/read as one sex or the other. I can imagine the pain of daily existence being one where confused normies misgender you are ask "are you a dude or a lady?" etc. I have personally experienced a busy body objecting to me entering a public toilet, she said "excuse me what are you doing? That's the women's bathroom." Now I am a man, the situation arose because the woman didn't realise the toilets in Princes Park Carlton are neutral. We would call her a Karen and misogynistic as that term is, I think everyone is sufficiently experienced to evoke the unpleasantness of such encounters. If I take a rare and isolated incident and use my imagination to multiply that out to a constant daily struggle, such that the potential makes all bathroom use an anxious threat, it has my sympathies.

This cost though is born by very few, I think good and real progress has been made, just by making a general public aware that trans is a thing. 10% of Transactivism has likely helped remove 90% of the incidences of "Why are you wearing a dress dude? Do you think you are a lady?" But the bathrooms and the sports is likely a wicked problem for which the solution is about as realistic as training under 12 schoolchildren with underdeveloped impulse control not to ask dumb obvious questions like "what happened?" when a kid turns up to school one day with a moonboot, a plaster cast, crutches, an eye patch etc. 

It's Not Enough To Be Right, Resolve To Do It Right

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent," ~ John Maynard Keynes

Jon Oliver is not helping. In fact "Last Week Tonight" may even be a good candidate for what fine arts Graduates of 2050s will make content of on some future platform for how poorly it ages. This is such a beautiful example of exactly what I am resolved to stop giving oxygen. 

Yanis Varafoukis then and to the present day, is fighting the good fight. His book "Talking to my daughter about the Economy" is a good explainer of economics but I would still say it is too advanced for what is necessary in fighting the good fight.

In the embedded clip, Jon Oliver states that the world's economy is depending on this man (Yanis) and then claims the more you learn about him the more disturbing it gets, and what disturbing thing does he go onto lambast? Yanis' style. 

It literally happened, but it is also a beautiful metaphor on the hulk that needs turning around if you are unhappy about the prospect of Trump's second term and concerned about the crazies that attach themselves to him.

The good fight, is in short economic literacy. That is basically how voters are being scammed out of their vote, and Yanis perhaps has made the most important point any leftist needs to hear - that capitalism *is* dying, but it is going to be replaced by feudalism, not democratic socialism.

I will divert though because identity politics deserves some trashing. I believe there is an account to be had of why identity politics has taken up so much oxygen. Again, this is a failure of induction. I am just going to pick out a very concrete and easy to understand example.

It involves a cadre of grifting youtube movie and tv reviewers, exemplified by "The Critical Drinker" and then a number of studios and their media output - we have "The Rings of Power" from Amazon Studios, "Velma" from HBO/Max, Pretty much everything made by Disney Star Wars post "Solo: A Star Wars Story" "Heman:Revelations" on Netflix, "Star Wars Discovery" on Peacock, the rebooted "Doctor Who" on BBC/Disney+ and on and on.

These shows can be described I think as "woke" pretty fairly, insofar as you can make predictions about the plot and characterization based on casting. 

These have been lightening rods for the culture wars, and I am going to suggest a case that these wars, though vicious are not even worth fighting.

Just between Amazon's Rings of Power and Disney's acquisition of Lucas Film we are talking about billions of dollars being lost by Amazon and Disney, and likely hundreds of thousands of dollars being made by youtube grifter channels that hate review these frankly, objectively embarrassing products.

Like, there may be instances where something did okay commercially, but broadly speaking I want you to comprehend that for all the symbolic value you place on the moral victories these shows may have had by getting actors of colour paid, queer relationships depicted in pop culture, behind the camera opportunities created etc. they are driving the institutions embracing these causes, going broke. 

The Critical Drinker I think said he was "done" with reviewing "The Acolyte" by episode 3 or 4, but continued to release videos for the rest of the sole series until the finally because they clocked him 1M+ views up to 3.2M views per video.

I would hope that Yanis would approve of me quoting Pyrrhus at this point:

If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.

— Plutarch[4]

I am actually all for combating systemic racism, what has perplexed me over the last decade (when such jargon kicked off) is that systemic racism involves pretty much no discussion of the system of economics and almost always involves individual responses to systemic problems. The economic system driving growing wealth inequality is a potential glue issue that could join the plight of white rust-belt maga country voters and disenfranchised minorities.

"Intersectionality" was a big meme since 2015~2016, and it's also a fucking loser people need to stop investing in. In practice it is manifesting "the perfect is the enemy of the good" and all these efforts to combat systemic racism and patriarchy result in a personal response to a systemic problem. Things like changing speech. In practice from what I have observed, intersectionality results in a white lesbian not being able to get a spot as on air talent on a LGBTQIA+ community radio show about the queer experience, or a group of women choosing an overweight minority woman to be the cover model to their dress pattern over a white model that embodies middle class aspirations, than say US Presidents not being old white men. 

If we could actually get to a place where we can discuss the economic system and its ordinary operation, what a boon it would be to discover "intergrationality" where we look at the growing inequality, the shrinking middle class, and the shrinking social mobility and discover the vast majority of the most privileged in society have common cause with the most marginalised in society.

One would be right to be sceptical of the promise "a rising tide lifts all ships" associated with bogus trickle down economics. But another "1%" would be the 1% of people I know that can have an intelligent conversation about trickle down economics, rather than a tribal response.

I can imagine there are people genuinely frightened today by Elon Musk's Nazi Salute. I'm sure inordinate energy has already been expended in trying to mind-read into the dog-whistle. 

 Something that causes me, not fear but forlorn, was arriving at a party where someone referred to a cooler as a "chilly bin" which prompted someone else to enquire why they were using the New Zealand term for cooler instead of the Australian one "Esky" to which they responded they were trying not to use "Esky" anymore. You can click that link but Esky is a brand name that Australians use generically, like Americans used to say "Hoover" and still do "Aspirin" it is derived from "Eskimo" which is treated as a pejorative in Canada, where the preferred term is Inuit, but is not in regions where modern nation states map onto multiple indigenous groups where Alaska contains both the Inuit and Yupik people, that would both be covered by Eskimo but not the Aleut people who I would guess where not covered by Eskimo because their culture was distinct more akin to Native Americans who from North America down to South America often refer to themselves as Indians, CCP Grey has a great video on this disconnect between well-meaning white people and indigenous communities.

Now I raise this because I don't think this person is dumb or crazy or political correctness gone mad. These are the cultural cul-de-sacs that I have access to. It more just delivered to me the epiphany that being out of touch can neutralize what intelligence you have. Much as you can imagine how bad I would be at using my writing skills to write Queer fan fic of the Twilight series, which I have never read nor seen adapted, or how bad I would be if I used my imagination to run a DnD or Pathfinder campaign as DM with experienced role players. 

I don't have a memory of being a fish out of water watching the partygoers rise to their feet in rapturous applause at this new exciting way to score points all summer. My memory is that it basically went unchallenged, and I think the real point is, that the point itself is not important.

In some ways, it literally cannot be important to be sensitive to a subset of people on the other side of the world we really have no contact with. I sympathise with the desire to be internally consistent and another friend later made the point that Australian's who wouldn't say "corroboree" shouldn't say "powwow." My position is actuarial, more in line with my evaluation that such things are not worth doing in the first place, so not worth doing well. I remember the outrage in the papers when the Simpsons' Australia episode first went to air in Australia and I would never argue that the writers of the Simpsons should care.

Since the war on terror, or at least since the terrorism threat was combatted by the "Coalition of the Willing" in good old fashioned nation state warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq, I have wanted more actuaries to be in the public sphere to make sense of the cost of our sensibilities. Namely retaliations that are super costly, result in more deaths than September 11, the London tube bombings and the Bali bombings among just the armed personal of invading forces that have destabilised regions and made terrorism worse.

It is too much of a cognitive strain to fight the dumb fight and try and change the world by changing our language, unless it is just to use our language to grapple with the fucking economy. What % of voters know what GDP is? Could not only expand the acronym but define it? Yet clearly some great % of voters shake in their boots when they are told that GDP shrank last quarter.

LatinX is probably the go to example of the dumb fight. Firstly Latinos broadly hate it, but it is a great indicator of tribalism and whether you are out of touch. Much as I got indignant at a close friend for wasting my life by pedantically explaining the technical difference between a nerd and a geek, I got exasperated in my controlled way when I was trying to explain that LatinX is functionally an exonym like "Eskimo" imposed by the few onto the many others, and I pronounce it "Latinks" and he corrected me to "Latinecks" at which point, I have 4 years of living in Mexico to testify that it is an unpopular term not worthy of respect and by and large rejected by Latin America who are not only proud of their culture but speak a gendered language where our hands are masculine no matter who they are attached to and our heads are feminine, our tongues are female our eyes masculine, I am not going to pick the mierde de mis ojX con mi manX. Es mis ojos y manos, asi lo dice mis lengua.

This dumb fight has to die, every victory is Pyrrhic. 

I am a big believer that the truth will out. In fact, in part due to the component of left-wing popular imagination that has consumed so much oxygen in the past 10 years I've had to learn the term "universal realist" to identify as someone who believes in reality, to distinguish myself from someone who finds it fruitful to deconstruct everything.

Another ample manifestation of cognitive dissonance, or at least double standards on the left is between the deference to climate science on the one hand, and the ignoring of mathematicians on the other. I am referring to quotas, which I think is a big reason that Gen X produced such awesome diversity under the auspices of equal opportunity, and Gen Z-thru-Y have produced masses of dud media under the auspices of social justice. 

If you restrict the pool of candidates, you reduce the probability of the best candidate being selected. 

I suspect most left-leaning people feeling trepidation, anxiety and despair at the prospect of another Trump term would understand readily that Catholics are grossly overrepresented on the SCOTUS. This is because Republican nominees are quota restricted based on their stance on abortion, which devout Catholics correlate with. Gallup estimates that 22% of US Citizens identify as Catholic, whereas Supreme Court Justices are 67% Catholic, and in terms of representation it is likely even worse than first blush, because I would guess the majority of that 22% of Catholics' actual disposition toward abortion is like "yeah fuck it get an abortion what do I care." By now I expect a large number of Catholics to be culturally Catholic like secular Jews. 

Right, so I think most left leaning people the maths would suddenly click, that of all the judges in the US of which there are 890 Article III federal Judges, and Republican think tanks say "only consider the Catholic ones" you are no longer searching for the best Judge out of 890, but maybe the best judge out 450 (Assuming Catholics are for some reason overrepresented among the candidate pool also).

This is the same as "Deal or No Deal" the case the contestant picks at the start has only a 1 in 30 chance or something of being the largest prize money, and the deal is always the smart play as the odds you didn't pick the largest prize is 29 in 30, 28 in 30 that failing that you didn't pick the second highest, and so on all the way down. Such that if you and some hot stranger you were saving until last and your sister are the final three cases representing 50c, $1 and $5 the deal you are offered is going to be skewed closer to $1 than $5 and you should take it because the odds you picked the $5 at the start remain 1 in 30, and it is now 1 in 29 that that your sister and the hot case holder have the $5 between them. Or something like that, I can't actually do the maths myself because Deal or No Deal is more complicated than the Monty Hall Problem.

I just have no faith that if we take a neutral skill like cooking and you are presented with 10 cooks to represent you in a competition, and 2 are women and 8 are men, and you can ask all of them to prep a dish so you can choose, that most of my friends actually understand that if you just restrict it to the men only or the women only, you have decreased the odds of selecting the best cook to rep you. 

Fuck me I am going on and on, let me get back to the Keynes quote I opened with, because being economically illiterate is a big fucking deal...

Were I trapped on an enclosed ramp with 10 other people who decided that maybe if they collectively push the spiky ball up the ramp in order for it to roll back down and smash us an escape, it's not enough that I am correct about there being no way for us to get out of the spikey balls way. If they do it, I die too.

Now I don't want to introduce hyperbolic doomsday scenarios, given what I just fucking wrote, I'm just trying to get you to picture the concrete problem that Keynes alludes to in the context of financial markets. 

Lets take a gander at Australian political history. To give Australia its due, there may be no better country in which to be mediocre than Australia. Our preferential voting system basically enshrines the consent of the loser, where much as our right wing politicians may seek to imitate the bloviating blow hard strong men of foreign democracies appealing to single-issue voters in a shell game for votes, our ballot really doesn't reward taking strong stances on hot button issues. "It's the economy stupid!" is the essence of our ballot papers.

We also don't have the electoral collages that have been gamified into "winner take all" because there's an incentive to be a battle ground state, particularly if you are a flyover state. Australia has swing electorates and our system makes it pretty clear that Australian voters will throw out their principles to avoid drowning in their own obligatory mortgages. Our system also is pretty friendly to third parties and independents because they can form coalitions to form governments, in fact our 2nd major party is actually 2 parties referred to as "the coalition" because it is more or less a permanent agreement that the Liberals and the Nationals are one party in practice.

Kamala's loss is likely overdetermined, Biden dropped out too late to hold a primary, Kamala didn't have enough time to campaign but I would still bet that the biggest factor was Biden presiding over high inflation. This is the right way to word it, because pretty much every nation bar Japan had a government preside over high inflation be it the Tories who were wiped out in the 2024 UK election on the right side of politics having been in office for 14 years and 5 PMs, or Australia's Albanese left-wing government, or Trudeau's left wing government in Canada. Italy's right wing coalition that has Giorgia Meloni as PM, it happened in Germany with Olaf Schtolz traffic light coalition and centre-left cabinet, Bolsonaro might have been one of the first right wingers presiding over 9.4% inflation ousted in favor of Lula, a genuine left-wing reformer.

Which is great way to introduce my resolution to fight the good fight and fucking drop the stinking losing turd that is the culture wars.

What one can infer by broadening ones scope beyond the boarders of one's own country is that voters of the free world are largely economically illiterate but economic conditions either satisfy them or don't and in two party democracies the incumbent will try and claim credit for economic boom times and the opposition will blame the incumbents for economic downturns, so someone is always willing to take or foist credit onto issues like inflation that was a more-or-less global phenomena in 2022 to which every central bank regardless of the incumbents political leanings more-or-less took the same actions - namely raising interest rates.

Some examples, via Brown Professor of Economics Mark Blyth where you can be as right as you like in the abstract nebulous discourse, or right in terms of data, and let me be clear Blyth is very much a lefty and fighting the good fight. So the data says that the overwhelming correlation that predicts complaints of excessive force - as resulted in the death of George Floyd, is military service. It turns out that people who fought terror in Iraq and Afghanistan for 17 years, don't make great cops in US cities.

Also, for all the energy invested in understanding complex cultural issues in the culture wars, also via Mark Blyth you can look at this map about CO2 based employment in the US and who will be most effected and notice it's strange correlation to the Electoral College map and maybe just maybe the penny might drop that we have an analogy to a struggling relationship here - where the content of the fight is over the kitchen cupboard handles, but what is actually going on is that both partners are dissatisfied by the lack of sex since they had children.

The good fight is economic literacy. Right? this is how people left and right are getting fucked over.

For example, at the reception after a friend's memorial service I was sitting in a bar chatting to some people my own age I'd never met before, and for whatever reason negative gearing came up and I explained to them what it actually was, which is you buy a property at a price so high, that the rent you can get for it won't cover the mortgage repayments and our (Australian) government says "great job Einstein, congratulations on making an investment that bleeds money, you can offset your taxable income with your losses so not only did you pay too much to own a house you don't need to rent it to people who actually want to live there, but we'll let you, one of Australia's top-earners contribute less to public infrastructure, health, education, law and order, emergency services and the defense forces that secure your property rights." and people my age so then mid 30s, were like "I had no idea that's what negative gearing actually is."

I think most of my countrymen would be shocked to hear how a British youtube news channel TLDR will brazenly attribute the Australian housing affordability crisis to property investment which in terms of Australian media is outside the Overton window. Right it was a hot button issue for the past two years but all Australians can talk about is increasing supply, to suggest that houses are unaffordable because of all the people investing in them is practically taboo. And I don't mean "practically" as in "almost" I mean it as "in practice" you cannot fucking say that in Australia because too many fucking Australians are tied up in house price speculation, even those who just bought a family home to raise their kids took on a mortgage driven up by the insatiable appetite of investors.

These are just examples - the good fight is fighting the growing wealth inequality. People currently fighting the good fight are among others Gary Stevenson of Gary's economics, trying to explain to ordinary people the economy that they don't understand and is being used against them to dispossess them of their homes and democracy and environment.

There's also Yanis Varafoukas formally and infamously finance minister of Greece during its sovereign debt crisis, bringing me full circle, and returning to his point that capitalism is being replaced with feudalism, which I see as essentially the same point as Gary Stevenson's about the growing inequality.

I am going to fight the good fight with them, but I would sooner have them champion this fight than myself. I will defer up the chain and they are free to dissent. 

I have spoken to too many people who haven't even realised that capitalism and socialism are not mutually exclusive. That you drive to your capitalist place of work on socialist roads. Too many people don't realise that that feudalism is not only still around but growing, despite the fact that nobody would bat an eye to the totally normalised term "landlord". 

This is where all people regardless of political leanings are hamstrung in the manner of 1984s Newspeak, which was the totalitarian governments attempt to prevent thoughts by removing language, but Economics is more akin to when the Church forbade the translation of the Bible into the language spoken by the commoners. The economy isn't simple, it's like a CPU though in which no individual part of it is particularly hard, computers work basically by on off switches, multiplied now millions of times on a scale sometimes invisible to the naked eye that turn a series of switches into a magic box that can allow us to talk to Grandma face to face on the other side of the world.

In the same sense, nothing about your ability to walk into a shoe store anywhere in the world and they will (probably) have a shoe that fits your foot is particularly complicated to explain as a single aspect, but it gets complicated quickly if you try to describe everything that makes this possible, and the explanation is not "intelligent design".

These conversations need to be had, and I am resolute in having them, or at least making a bunch of speeches. Speaking of which...

No More Suicidal Cancellations

Louis CK to many is permanently cancelled because of his masturbating for audiences of women. That said he keeps working and he is still probably among the best stand up comedians in the world. I guess a fine example of how being out of touch can render your intelligence moot.

He is still very insightful though, that was and is his job to this day so it is fitting that I can use him to point out that cancelling is suicidal.

"The things progressives do...that I've never seen another political movement do, is assign people to the other side." ~ paraphrased from this short clip I can't be bothered embedding.

There is no doubt a specifically bad idea at the root of cancellation, the nearest I can put my finger on it is boiling it down to two broad sentiments: 1. History is largely arbitrary, pretty much anything could have succeeded and the world could be pretty much anyway. 2. Media effects are powerful, which is to say if you give a person Das Kapital by Karl Marx they will become a communist and if they read Mein Kampf by Godwin's Law they will become a fascist.

Having invoked Marx, another important idea is the infinite recourse to lack of commitment. Very similar to no true Scotsman fallacy where on both sides of politics loser ideas just wont fucking die because the proponents feel the only reason the ideas fail is because we aren't committed enough.

Here is a body positivity example - say a survey was conducted of teenagers in the US, UK or whatever where pubescent boys were asked "who would you rather go on a date with? Tess Holliday or Emily Ratajkowski" and make it 6 years ago whatever you want, and little girls were asked "who would you rather look like? Tess Holliday or Emily Ratajkowski" and the results came back that an overwhelmingly large majority of both pick the slender Emily over the medically obese Tess I would expect left wing commentators to only entertain that we are just not committed enough to changing beauty standards by featuring more plus sized models in media, sooner than entertaining that while unrealistic and indeed socially constructed, beauty standards are neither arbitrary nor intelligently designed.

It is the same rationalization as Afghanistan is in the lowest ranked nations on the Human Development Index because foreign interference keeps preventing a true commitment to Islamic Fundamentalism that would result in human flourishing. That teen pregnancy, STIs and opioid abuse is rampant in the Bible Belt of the US because its citizens are not committed enough to the teachings of Christ.

Every time these natural experiments in idealogy fails, it is explained by saying the experiment was flawed, and the idea that the hypothesis is just wrong cannot even be entertained.

A video released by Alice Cappelle last year titled "How feminism turns into f*scism" opens with her reading a tweet about how in 1992 a 15 year old school girl went to join a far right youth group (all male) 30 years later Giorgia Meloni is on course to become Italy's first female Prime Minister. 

Crucially Alice who is clearly intelligent and delivering a video essay in what I assume is her second language to boot, states "I could end the video here, to be honest" having just read the tweet from Politico that I just paraphrased. Like Giorgia Meloni has proved the video thesis - feminism turns into fascism.

I raise this example as a salient one for me, of something I come across again and again when trying to expose myself to the best left-wing explainers. When Alice asserts that she can end the video after reading this one tweet, she is effectively saying "if you aren't already in the choir, singing from the hymn sheet, this video isn't for you."

It is fucking easy to find terrible right-wing content, but it is also fairly easy to find right wingers and conservatives making arguments. It's also easy for example, and has been since like 2014 to know where right-wingers get their arguments from. 

I have found it much much harder to identify where left wing, I'm going to call them memes, come from. Again and again and again, when I try to find the best argument for diversity quotas, or gender affirming care, or decolonizing bookshelves, or why to vote Yes in the 2023 Australian Voice Referendum, finding arguments is like pulling teeth.

I don't know, if the left is aware, but the loudest voices make a lot of assertions. 

A really good premodern example is a Japanese philosophical text Hagakure which might have been my first exposure to a distinctly Eastern mode of thought. I won't get too technical, but I would pitch the book reading experience as a commentary on how to put the asserted highest virtue of loyalty into practice. I gave it to my friend who was majoring in philosophy at the time because I thought he'd find it interesting, and he I think was justifiably dismissive of its value. I think he basically summarised it as "this guy is saying that what he does is great."

Hagakure is written close to the year 1700, by a guy who was born into the Samurai class but never actually faced combat experience. He is what we would call a pencil pushing desk jockey, as completely isolated from Western Colonialism as it possibly can get shy of being an uncontacted people in the Amazon. And the Author thinks being a Samurai and a loyal servant to one's feudal lord is great and the kids these days are awful because they don't take the responsibility of decapitating a vassal commanded to commit ritual suicide seriously.

If you need a more in-depth example, not to pick on anyone, but this is but an example of a video essay titled "You Should be Worried About Literary Censorship" that is weak at arguing the assertion of the title and instead, what it successfully argues to someone like me is that the "You" in the title is not me, I would just be assigned to the other side, because the video assumes knowledge on my part.

These filters are passively assigning people to the other side when what is assumed to constitute a sound and valid argument takes the form "if x is colonial, then I can end the video right there." or "if x is capitalism, need I say more?"

A lot of the worst right-wing apologists have a refrain "Orange man bad!" and this probably filters out the people who most need some constructive feedback on how to stop the suicide of assigning people to the other side. Because it is my experience of feeling visceral cognitive pain talking to someone (and it happens a lot in Mexico) who is just like "yeah well the US dump grain into the sea while people in Africa are starving, that proves capitalism doesn't work." This is not thought. This is not understanding. This is making noises to orient yourself to your tribe, and make sure you never stray from a social safe zone.

I am resolved to be a safe zone regardless of people's beliefs. The safety I offer does not extend to criminality, so if you were like "pfew I'm glad to hear that, I've been wanting to talk to someone about abducting and murdering people because it makes me feel like God." You are shit out of luck, but as an atheist, I'm happy to have friends who think the reason the world is going to shit is because of a lack of commitment to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, because things are so much worse than the crusades and inquisition and the middle-ages when people were really committed. 

My job, is to persuade you or correct myself by presenting arguments. I implore anyone who is disillusioned by the backlash to wokeism, to go and rewatch Season 3 of Survivor, the one in Africa and pay particular attention to the disastrous hubris of the "Young Samburu Tribe" for those who don't need a refresher, the young members of the Samburu team conspired to eliminate the older team members suicidally weakening their chances of having a winning voting block after the tribal merger. Exacerbated by the "twist" of swapping three members of each tribe which broke the Samburu voting block, eliminated their leader Silas, and sent Samburu to the tribal merger with a 4-6 disadvantage.

There is plenty of evidence that the US political right only care about your loyalty to the team. So long as you say you want to make America great again, it doesn't really matter if you make it much worse. By contrast the left are obsessively creating more and more burdensome etiquette and an ever growing list of taboo subjects to make themselves an ever shrinking and ever more exclusive club.

It's a gym fitspo meme, but very valid for the left here - "you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable." It is not a new resolution for me, to keep people in my life I disagree with. It enriches me. Fucking progressives love fantasy shit and I ask you then how often you come across the trope of groups avoiding "evil" by trying to stay in their own little enclave until they let the evil grow so large they can't anymore. Ents in Lord of the Rings, the Vault dwellers and Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout, the Alexandria Safe-Zone in Walking dead, Casterley Rock and the Aerie in Game of Thrones, the Fremen (initially) in Dune and on and on. 

Civilization and society is not built upon isolating the like minded. It shouldn't be a stretch to suggest this is actually the thing threatening civilizational collapse, but I do want to make one concession.

My best friend and I got in an awkward situation where we were both concerned about eachother's racism. Me because his antiracism was literally just reductive reverse racism, and he me (probably) because I'm not on board with antiracism, which, and again I'm just guessing, but if you are on board with antiracism I notice there's a general tendency to not acknowledge that there are other ways to combat racism - namely MLK's humanist approach, so anyone not antiracist is racist. Or something like that. 

Now the thing is, I as his friend am very much not a connecter to a large and vibrant community. So if the rest of his community is contingent on him holding antiracist beliefs, or else he would be banished, there's really no point to us arguing about how to prosecute identity politics because I am not adamant the he believes as I do to remain my friends, but he likely has other groups that are adamant that he believes as they do or else he is out, not just out but potentially sanctioned.

It poses somewhat of a dilemma, fortunately I can somewhat be his secret friend, so he can have both and we can challenge each other to our mutual benefit, even if he cannot ultimately budge.

Some people though, are not free to be my friend, I however am resolved to be friends with anyone.

After the Fact is Failure

I would feel remiss if I didn't talk about the NBA in attempting to explain something. I have not watched the following embedded video:

I know the phenomena it is trying to explain, how former MVP Russell Westbrook, the only player ever to average a triple-double (double digit points, rebounds and assists) over 4 NBA seasons and former MVP was considered "washed" being relegated from starter to bench at both the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers before being acquired, apparently at Nikola Jokic' request by the Denver Nuggets this season. 

I don't need to watch the video, because its premise is wrong. The nuggets "unlocked" Westbrook by playing him as a starter due to injuries to the starting point guard Jamal Murray. Westbrook was never locked, he was thrown under the bus and scapegoated because the Lakers cannot acknowledge that Lebron James is washed. He was doing fine on the LA Clippers until that franchise for perplexingly bizarre reasons acquired James Harden, the "boat" of the NBA where the two happiest days of a team fan's life are the day your team acquires James Harden and the day your team trades him away.

In both cases the teams put Westbrook into a roster where someone who cost them much more money needed the ball in their hands rendering Westbrook redundant, even if he is better.

The point is, or rather the resolution, is that if you are putting out a video to "explain" who this Elon Musk guy is and what is he doing with the Trump Administration or a video after Trump's election of the influence of Curtis Yarvin on the Trump Administration you have already failed strategically.

The New York Times released this interview with Curtis Yarvin 4 days prior to me writing this and way too late for its readership to assess the implications of this guy having influence on the administration.

Information needs to be accurate, relevant and timely.

Attention is the struggle and part of why I feel Identity politics has a case to answer for using up all the oxygen and inflaming a culture war. 

More broadly, what I feel I can reasonably infer is in the attention economy, people begin with their minds made up and dedicate their attention to hoping that what they fear will happen, won't happen. So in the lead up to an election they focus on how well Kamala is polling and what the polls say etc. And then when the election is done, that's when attention becomes available for what crazy stupid shit some fucking douchebag blowhard thinks who is liked by guys peripheral to the Trump administration.

I watched around 12~14 minutes of Curtis Yarvin being interviewed on right-wing audience captured podcast Triggernometry when I knew nothing about him simply because the video was titled "The Case Against Democracy" and within 12 minutes I'd seen enough and can reassure you now that Yarvin's ideas are stupid and cannot work. I know this because Yarvin thinks it is radical and intelligent to speculate on who really wrote the works of Shakespeare. 

Not only is it a conspiracy theory, making Yarvin a conspiracy theorists, but among the conspiracy theories it is almost inconsequential. What if tomorrow we found incontrovertable proof that Shakespeare's portfolios were actually written by...[drum roll] some other guy. And the leading suspects are literally other guys, so it is not even consequential like if it turned out the greatest English playwright was a woman or something.

This is the equivalent of what it would say about me if I went to a job interview and decided to answer the question "tell us a bit about yourself" with "well I think Elvis is still alive." okay, it says enough that it really doesn't matter if I understand FIFO vs LIFO cost accounting. If they cut the interview short I'd be like "Oh because of the incredibly poor judgement I demonstrated there." 

So Yarvin thinks I believe that the US should become a corporation with shareholders instead of voters or some shit. Probably because he notices that corporations can thrive while Governments blunder around and get voted out all the time. But to point out just one simple way the analogy is bad among multitudes, corporations have this luxury of being able to fire people so they aren't part of the corporation anymore, and they can do this usually because people don't have to live on their employers property, they live in a nation state that often has a social safety net. 

It would be interesting but stupid if nations around the world started emigrating citizens on a performance basis, where the department of emigration says "you didn't hit the lowest tier sales target for the past two quarters so we are going to have to let you go." 

And like, go where France? Saudi Arabia? Indonesia?

To put a bow in this, something else is broken if people have to learn about what Brexit means, after Brexit is passed, or what another Trump term means after Trump is elected. We are supposed to vote from an informed position, so our media is broken and our attention is broken. 

If you are voted remain in Brexit, or Yes to the Voice, or for Harris etc. and then when those referendums or elections didn't go your way, endeavoured to find out what it means - then you were already an uninformed voter.

I personally, didn't need to delve into who or what the Trump administration is thinking, I don't need to inform myself of Project 2025 and who's who in the Trump camp, because not wanting Trump to be president was overdetermined. 

Sufficient for me to make up my mind was just the selective pressure from Trump's 1st term. By this I mean, whoever is in the Trump administration gets burned, then replaced with someone worse, how can we be confident they will be worse? Because these are the people willing to do the job, not having observed what happened to the person they are replacing. As more and more people are fed into the meatgrinder that is hitching yourself to Trump's wagon, the less excusable hitching yourself to that wagon becomes. 

Sarah Huckabee Sanders was worse than Sean Spencer, Barr was worse than Jeff Sessions, maybe John Kelly was better than Reince Priebus but Mick Mulvaney was worse than Kelly. 

At the point where someone is willing to be VP after what happened to Mike Pence as a result of "Stop the Steal" we can all be confident, knowing nothing at all about JD Vance, that he is a man of zero integrity. As we can expect from everyone at this point in the Trump administration. By 2028 we should expect the US government to be populated by literal invertebrates with no capacity to extrapolate into the future where Trump inevitably orders them to correct the number of moons in the sky, which failing to do they get canned in order to be replaced with a wet wipe.

So I am resolved to not get into monday-morning quarterbacking as I believe the Yanks say, I am resolved instead to disrupt distraction.