Moderates United

Here is an, in my view, accurate account of the story about Trump allegedly mocking a disabled reporter:  https://www.catholics4trump.com/the-true-story-donald-trump-did-not-mock-a-reporters-disability/

I could see why someone COULD believe that Trump was mocking the reporter for his disability, but in context that makes little sense.  He was mocking the reporters bald faced lying, and disingenuous evasions.  As they point out, he used identical body language to mock Ted Cruz.  You can like or dislike this, but it is a question of style.

And Trump is charismatic.  Say whatever else you will about him, he has always had the ability to make headlines and to get attention.  That, combined with his patent willingness to buck a very corrupt system–corrupt at the Party level, the Congressional level, the intelligence agency level, the bureaucratic level–is why he won the election.  Rand Paul, even with Trump’s billions, even if he had gotten the nomination, probably would not have been able to pull that off.  Why?  He isn’t Trump.

Here is the point I wanted to make though.  In a discussion on Facebook I pointed out to a rabid Trump hater that Hillary wanted war with Russia, and war would be bad.  He said yes, but he still wouldn’t vote for Trump to avoid it.

Ponder this.  Ponder Trump mocking someone who richly deserved to be mocked becoming a more important issue than a war which could potentially end Western civilization.  Ponder the people capable of doing that math.

The frontal cortex has NOTHING to do with it.  The frontal cortex weighs and compares and contrasts, using standards of proportion.  If someone sneezes and forgets to cover their mouth, that is not the same as shooting someone in the head. If someone forgets to say thank you, that is not the same as kicking them in the balls.

But for these people, these ARE the same things. It doesn’t matter what virtues Trump has, or how horrible a human being Hillary is.  It is all the same: us versus them, period.  This is not the mindset Western civilization and our tradition of negotiated conflict was built on.  To be sure, we have fought many wars, but in spite of, not because of, our traditional reliance on reason and dispassion.

This is zombie logic.  This is “I am hungry and I want to eat”.  This is “I hate therefore I am”.

My best guess is that there will be riots in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere (Oakland is usually a given), but that far from preventing Trump’s inauguration, the net effect will be to bolster Trump supporters in their core intuition that large segments of this nation don’t want us to succeed, don’t want our problems fixed, don’t want safety and security for all us, and instead want death and destruction, simply because they are out of their minds.  And the gradual reach of Republicans across the middle will continue to grow.

On that point, I would note that American politics, unlike Parliamentary politics in other nations, is not obviously based on coalitions. We don’t obviously need to form a “government”, like they do in Britain or Israel or Italy.

But the truth is, to get things DONE you have to appeal to a broad swathe of heterogeneous voters, who in most cases can get their guy or gal in office at least in the House.

For many decades, there was a de facto social coalition between traditional Democrats, the sort who lionize FDR, and Social Justice Warriors, as we now call them (although warriors have honor and dignity, so this is perhaps not the best term, even if, as seems obvious, it is intended sardonically).  That coalition seems to have broken.  The Hard Left seems to have captured the party, and you can only say “get with us or get out” so long before you start getting mass defections.

So what Trump has done is form a de facto right and center coalition that is likely to prove very strong, particularly if, as seems likely, he does solve many real problems, and is thus a very effective and popular President.

I did want to note on that score too–this is really three posts in one–that we have historically thought that the best Presidents were politicians, that governing, per se, was an art one had to learn and master.  Past Presidents were, for this reason, usually Senators, Governors, or former Generals (who effectively were part of the government).

But if you think about the skill of a politician, it consists in the main in getting elected.  Yes, if you are horribly ineffective and dishonest you will not get elected twice, but a large corrective this has ALWAYS been perception management.  You lie about what you are going to do, lie about what you are doing, and lie about what you have done.  This is why politicians, in the main, deserve their very bad reputations.

So isn’t it ODD that people would condemn Trump’s lack of political experience?  He has been doing deals, shaking hands, compromising, negotiating, getting things done his whole life.  If he makes a bad decision it shows up in the financials.  He can’t lie about it.  If he makes a good decision, likewise.

The core point, though, is that his JOB is getting things done, not managing perceptions.  His JOB is to be effective, to make good decisions, to build a network of positive relations, to be diplomatic when needed, and a hard ass when needed.

As he said in the debates, wouldn’t it be great if our government operated like a well run business?  Of course it would.  But a well run business would have laid off half of those workers long ago.  Their fear that he may do the same is a big part of why he is being opposed so vigorously.

OK–4th post.  The CIA and other agencies are running propaganda operations within the United States.  This is clearly illegal.  Their charter specifically prevents them from interfering in our domestic affairs.  If there was a Russian hack of John Podesta, that is counter-intelligence, which is the FBI.

As I have pointed out on a number of occasions, the current CIA Director–an agency formed mainly to combat Communism–voted for the Communist candidate in 1976, which was the direct aftermath of our chosen abdication of our duty and our hard fought victory in South Vietnam.  This fact alone should tell us about where the CIA’s head is at.

Chuck Schumer is saying that the intelligence agencies have lots of ways of getting at Trump.  Ponder that too.  A United States Senator is threatening Trump with retaliation by the agencies which work FOR him, and allegedly for the United States and its people.  To undermine the President, to attack him covertly, is literal and textbook treason, as well as a violation of numerous laws.

Trump is going to have form a house-cleaning committee/operation, and start firing the fuck out of people, but only after he figures out what the hell they have been up to.  Anyone who can be found to have deleted ANY government documents can be put in jail.  The method then, would be to figure out who did the deleting, then go up the chain with plea deals, until you get to the big fish, with luck. This is a sordid Gordian Knot, and will take some skill and will to cut through it, but if anyone ever came to Washington with a sword sharp enough to do it, it’s Trump.

Pessimism is proactive disappointment.

It seems to me the major options on the table as far as the future are the perfection of the State, just waiting to see what happens–we could stumble successfully into a better future, but also a worse–the perfection of the individual as a global enterprise, or large scale failures in social and economic systems, possibly in the context of war.

For simplicity, I will say it is the Perfection of the State, versus the Perfection of the Individual.

Our thought leaders SHOULD think long term.  We can and should ask about the long term affects on human well being of consumerism, of technology, of automation, of our financial system.  And of other processes not popping immediately to mind.

What I would stipulate is that the most important human task in all ages, but particularly in our own, is self regulation, and very specifically the ability to achieve relaxation, calmness and inner peace.  We say inner peace as if it is a mystery, but in my view it is in large measure–perhaps entirely–the ability to manage tension within the body, and the ability to accept entirely a myth as true, one which binds you to others.

And when I say myth, I mean something, to coin a term, “Uebertrue”, something which goes very deep.  I do not mean an untruth.  We need groups, we need plans, we need campaigns, we need “wars”.  This all seems to be true.  And if it is true, why not be intelligent in how we collectively meet our individual needs?

As I have said, a collectivist is nothing without the collective.  Individual moral growth is impossible.

But within a truly Liberal ethos, one based on the eminently reasonable and empirically valid notion that if large numbers of small systems become organized, that the collective will likewise become organized, the goal is individual growth, and in large measure my own work, on morality at least, has been oriented around developing the philosophy needed for this.

What I would now argue, in large measure, is that the body must be the beginning, the epicenter of a revival.  Sensations lead to mythic images, lead to feelings, lead to thoughts. If we want new thoughts, a new order, a new beginning, we need to deal with the sensations of billions of people.  This is possible, even if I can’t say at this moment how.

Dogmatism is a spasm of thought.  This spasm is the lightning quick outcome of a feeling, which arises from an image, which arises from body “talk” that person simply cannot process, is not willing to process.

I will likely have more to say, but that will suffice. It’s Friday, most of my body hurts from a hard week, and I’m drinking again.

One of the main reasons Hitler was elected was he promised to put a stop to the sort of street violence–violence he controlled and instigated–that was raging in the streets across Germany; violence, to be clear, of the sort envisioned by amoral assholes like Bill Ayers. They want use Fascist tactics to protest against the non-existent threat of Trump doing anything but be a solid and reasonable President.

Among national figures of all stripes, only those on the Left have called for mass murder. I will reiterate that Bill Ayers dreamed of killing more people than Hitler did, and our best guess is he wrote both of Obamas books and that his family helped him get educated and launched his political career, which is now ending in richly deserved failure.

I can hear the sound of batch deletes and paper shredders from here. The mindset is literally and with justice that if an army which has been conquered by an enemy, and fear trial for war crimes. Again, a comparison with the Nazis is apt, for the Left.

Julian Assanges gesture of $20,000 to any whistleblowers, but it’s not nearly enough. They need immunity and protection from their accomplices. They need Trump.

He needs to announce the formation of a commission of some sort to investigate illegal document destruction, that he plans to prosecute those found guilty, and that he will treat as accomplices anyone found to have had knowledge of such activities who failed to step forth. The law is the law.

And John McCain may have committed a crime in leaking confidential documents, particularly since his intent was naked and eminently dishonorable vindictiveness.

That seemingly won’t die.

The inevitability of death is at the heart of the human experience, but we really don’t understand death.  Dogmatic materialists, obviously, claim without evidence that the brain and mind are one and the same.

However, LARGE amounts of evidence exist that this is not the case, that in fact something that is recognizable “us” continues after our bodies cease operating.

Would it not make a prodigious amount of sense to spend 1/1000 of what we spend on, say, Defense, to fund properly organized, methodical, scientific studies into things like NDE’s, mediumship and the like?  The sort of thing done at the Windbridge Institute, but with Global Warming levels of funding?

What a revolution for the human species to have PROOF that we go on after death.

Trump is a maverick in many things.  He could easily–and quietly–order a Manhattan Project of this sort.  The potential return is incalculable in terms of global peace, relief of human suffering, and the clarification of what exactly we are here on this Earth to do.

I thought I might write a few words (stop laughing: actually, I have been insulted many times, but sometimes with such creativity I had to admire them.  One of my favorites was someone quipping that if I ever decided to kill myself I could do it by jumping off my suicide note) about Obamacare.  First, I will link my two treatments of the topic.

Health insurance reduced to ten paragraphs: http://www.goodnessmovement.com/files/Download/Notes–31–healthcare%20in%20ten%20paragraphs.pdf

Obamacare, at length, and contextualized within a broader regulatory and business context, mainly for the benefit of leftists who won’t read it, and redundantly for those possessing basic economic literacy: http://www.goodnessmovement.com/files/Download/obamacare.pdf

Now, to the topic of repeal, which is a present very real probability.

First, you have to separate the parts of it which were simply coerced charity–socialism–and the parts where it was claimed the government could deliver an existing service better and at a lower cost, which is always farcical.

Broadly speaking, Obamacare helps the poor, and hurts the middle class and affluent.  People who had been able to get insurance at a reasonable cost (at least by the standards now in force, after all this government “help”) were hurt.  Their premiums went up (for obvious reasons I detail in my paper), and their coverage went down.

The people who WANT the repeal of Obamacare are these people.  What they want is the ability to set the terms of their deductible, to set aside money to pay that deductible tax-free (and in an heritable manner, which was a Trump innovation I had not thought of: you get your parents health savings if they outlive it), to be able to choose between many competing providers, and to buy their own insurance directly from the carrier, rather than being forced to use whatever their employer provides, because it is a fucking Blue State and the Unions run things, and losing their coverage when they lose their jobs, or be forced into a plan they hate, can’t afford, and would not choose.

So: 1) require all States to allow all insurance companies meeting minimum standards to sell within their borders.  This is a proper use of the much abused Commerce Clause, since preventing de facto protectionism within the United States was seen as a proper role of the Federal government.

2) Make all money deposited in an HSA tax exempt, both on the way in, and on the way out, when used for medical expenses.  This will HUGELY incent savings, which helps everyone.  Also, make these accounts inheritable, or for that matter shareable, in that a parent could gift without tax consequence their 20 year old son the $5,000 he needs for his first deductible.

3)  Require all States receiving Federal money for anything (this is a cudgel, but it seems the most obvious option) to allow individuals to buy any individual coverage plans they see fit, that are offered by carriers in their States.  This means that, like your car and life insurance, your health insurance is your own, and can be continued exactly as you like if you change jobs, are fired, or move.

4) Self evidently, there is no market reason why plans could not and would not be developed to keep kids on their parents plan.  Why this was ever an issue, I don’t know.

But what I foresee is that people could have $10,000 deductibles, and only pay $25/month.  This is obviously highly affordable.

5)  Make all insurance premiums tax exempt also, PROVIDED that coverage is maintained for the previous 12 months.  Make both HSA and premium exemption contingent on this.  On the one hand, basic coverage will become very affordable, but on the flip side we want universal coverage in the not too distant future.

Now, as far as the poor, a big part of Obamacare was simply an expansion of Medicaid.  We saw endlessly the tired meme “all the other kids have universal healthcare”, but the truth is we ALREADY had a huge safety net for the poor and what market problems existed for everyone else were entirely the result of too much government.  The problem that could be solved with socialism had been solved, and the problem that could not was made worse.

One of the things we want with health insurance is to avoid the moral hazard of allowing people to avoid responsibility for their own health.  In terms of concrete health outcomes, one of the big reasons Americans compare poorly to many other nations is that our poorest pay no cost out of their own pockets for failing to maintain their health.  They just go to the clinic, and lots of stuff is paid for.  So, at any rate, is my impression. I am open to correction.

So what we need is a migration path for the poor.  Let us say that we require them, as a condition of receiving other social benefits, to maintain health insurance of a very minimal sort.  Let us say they pay $25/month for a $10,000 deductible plan which includes one wellness visit a year with a Nurse Practitioner, or Physicians Assistant.  If they get seriously ill, they won’t have $10,000, but we can make them responsible for some portion of that, depending on how poor they are.  Even if they have to pay $1,000 out of pocket, that will be incentive for them to give at least one or two fucks.

And having to pay something, versus just being gifted it for being born, helps build responsibility, and with it, some measure of earned self respect. The alternative is remaining a perennially needy and grasping child.

And I personally would support health education programs.  Maybe, again, they can be made to attend educational seminars as a condition of getting other benefits. Ask them to take care of themselves, but make sure they have at least the basics regularly reinforced.

These are a few ideas.  Repeal and replace for the middle class and up is easy.  For the rest, a migration path.  But perhaps we could take this logic past mere repeal, all the way up to a pathway to get rid of Medicaid entirely for most of the population.  Medicaid is something, but nothing remotely as good as what the free market could and would provide if allowed to do so.

Medicare is another story I don’t have time for right now.  I do think we all need to realize collectively that it is very selfish spending small fortunes to win small amounts of life extension, and that in very poor health.  We keep people alive with machines for months at enormous cost.  Their hearts may be beating, but that is not living.  It is of course enormously profitable for some companies, but they can just suck our dicks.

We could potentially allow people to opt out of Medicare when young, and have provisos written into their health insurance contracts that there are lifetime maximums on end of life care.  This, again, would allow Medicare to gradually fade away, although of course it will be needed for a while.  We COULD write lifetime maximums into current plans though.  These would not be “death panels”, per se: the expenses alone would dictate it. This step alone would likely make Medicare solvent, and we should allow people to opt out at all ages.  Right now, in my understanding, you MUST take Medicare if you want Social Security.

We should allow people to opt out of Social Security, too, but again I don’t have time for that.  Something like what they did in Chile would be good: required saving, but under the individuals direct control.

I have work to do.  Should have been somewhere a couple hours ago, but I can make it another late night.  It all gets done.

For a long time, I said “Thin Red Line” was my favorite movie.  I still love that movie, because it fucks me up every time.  But if I had to pick the movie I’ve seen the most times, that I wanted to watch, it would be “Battle: Los Angeles”.  I Love that movie.  Everything goes to shit.  Staff Sergeant Nantz has major traumatic guilt and likely PTSD, and he STILL has to go into combat.  So  he sucks it up, and does the work of a hero.  Not because he wants to, to be clear, but because the fucking work has to be done, and nobody else is doing it, motherfuckers.  Goddamnit.  1, 2, 3, go do what you know needs to be done.

And in the end, what does he have to lose, going all in?  And in the process, he becomes an honest leader.  He is not asking anything of anyone he won’t do himself.  He leads the way.

That’s a great movie, in my estimation, although I seem to be in a minority.

it seems to me we should have a global religion, but one amenable to endless local diversification. My first thought was to define religion as an organized and local attempt to build a sense of community and meaning through connection to s higher power, then I decided higher ORDER –i.e. The Tao–was better. Orders are latent, organic. We need to rid ourselves of the concept of Gid as king and master. God is the ocean within which we live. Within God is endless potential, but we choose what to pursue and focus on. We ARE radically free, but life does have rules; there are cause and effect relationships between action and result. This observations holds even if one is an atheist.

Prior to Christianity, and the unrelenting rejection of all other faiths which defines the Judaism from which it arose, religious war was, in my understanding, unheard of. The Romsns let everyone do what they wanted, and for those offering incense and sacrifices they felt kinship, regardless of the name of the God or Goddess on the other side of the phone line. This held even for the Jews, who until the destruction of their Temple were still slitting animals throats and casting them into fires.

This is what was so confusing about Christisnity–no sacrifices, and absolute intolerance. That spirit of course infused Islam, where the most dogmatic aspects of Christian intolerance were elevated to positive commandments.

But we need to remember that “religion”, per se, was not a reason for warfare for much of human history.