THREAT AND REALITY OF FOREIGN WARS AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE GROW DAILY: DOES ANYONE CARE?

Our nation's media is consumed in talking endlessly and repetitiously about the highly contentious, extremely divisive  election campaign we are experiencing.  Every news network is continuously dissecting each candidates statements, the pros and cons of their personalities and their stand, or lack of it, on key issues. As important as the outcome of this election is, there are two other absolutely crucial, potentially deadly, concerns increasing daily that demand attention. In our nation's foreign relations as well as within our own society, violent threats are growing  that our leaders and our media  studiously avoid placing any real emphasis upon, either deliberately or out of ignorance. These are: 1) the seriously rising threat of major warfare erupting between nuclear powers, and 2) the greatly increased frequency of lethal outbreaks of violence within our domestic society, now occurring literally on a daily basis throughout the United States.  These concerns will be discussed below, and possible reasons for their relative absence from our press and our public awareness explored in some depth.

 Our leaders are certainly aware of the reality of the overseas threats.  We are becoming more and more confrontational with Russian forces--in the Baltic Sea area as naval forces threaten engagement;  in the backing of different sides as the chaotic Ukrainian crisis remains unresolved; along the eastern flank of Europe as our missile installations in Romania and Poland are seen by the Russians as highly threatening to them; and in Syria where the West and Russia are backing opposing sides in the war that divides that nation.  In the Far East, our military is confronting Chinese forces in the South China Sea over China's military developments on contested islands, and challenging statements are repeatedly made by political and military leaders of both powers.  Yet, even with  these potentially explosive situations, little is being said by our leadership or by our media about the inherent risks implicit in these situations, the policies leading to their development remain unchanged, and no serious diplomatic negotiations are underway to reduce or resolve the mounting level of threat.  A few distinguished, highly respected individuals have voiced their considerable concern, ex-Ambassadors, former Senators, retired military officials. Their statements, however, are either totally ignored by the media or buried in pages which are outside of mainstream attention. In short, the awareness of potential and growing risk of warfare which could, tragically, become nuclear, is being avoided. Why?

Meanwhile, on the domestic front, homegrown lethal violence has become epidemic, virtually a daily event at locales throughout the United States. Breaking news interruptions of regular broadcasting announce the latest mall shooting, school lockdown, air flight disturbance, bombing occurrence. Only a small majority of these are related to foreign terrorist groups. The vast majority are a profound indication of a serious collapse in the emotional well-being of our nation. Rampant, uncontrolled anger, rising unchecked, breaks through any remaining veneer of civility, leaving both intended and unintended victims in its wake. Most occurrences are perpetuated not by hardened criminals, but by previously law-abiding citizens who have harbored grudges or malevolence, with rage unpredictable breaking through. Mental health services are insufficient and incapable in preventing the mayhem, law enforcement can only pick up the pieces.  The public is aware of the possibility of unexpected danger, and warn their children and loved ones to take what preventive steps they can, but know how inadequate and insufficient those steps are.  The nation's stress level is rising, at times to an individual's breaking  point. Whether over finances, relationship failure, health issues, career goals, etc., excessive stress leads to frustration, which can lead to aggression, and violent outbreaks in its most heightened form. Effective prevention calls for a major increase in mental health awareness, availability, and resources, all calling for money which is not forthcoming in our current political climate.

The fact that our domestic threat level has risen precipitously in recent years may be related to the central question raised earlier--why so little concern has been expressed over the rising danger of wars overseas that could become nuclear.  Since the possibility of violence, however rare, is a threat we are becoming accustomed to living with on a daily basis in our own communities, are we becoming immune to concern over distant international threats, even if the nuclear threat is there? We are already engaged in our nation's longest lasting war, continuing endlessly in the Middle East, even expanding in spite of the public's growing disillusionment over it. We have been attacked in our homeland, we live with daily threat. Are we becoming burned out by these threats, seeing little or no relief in sight? Our Congress has been stymied for the past seven years by obstructionism and gridlock, pressing issues of all kinds remain unattended, citizens' needs left under-served. A few people protest, most observe with muted resignation and relative silence. Is it possible even the possibility of a nuclear war barely raises the reading on our alarm meter?

Our nation's leaders are not likely to call attention to the nuclear risk, grave as it is. They know the public is not in the mood for more war. Yet, it is our leadership's own policies that are heightening the risk. They are promoting the political and military moves, for their own strategic reasons, that are threatening Russia on its borders in eastern Europe. Little attention is given, and no credibility granted, to Russia's perspective on the conflict over the Ukraine, or to the legitimacy of their claim to Crimea.  The risk of war with China may be less than it is with Russia at this time, but the tensions are growing, and again it is our forces that are extending their reach into what China considers its sphere of influence, not the opposite. Its a stretch to consider our vital interests at stake, unless one considers the entire world to be within our own sphere of influence.  Only the publicly-discredited neoconservative foreign policy movement would extend our power to such an extent, but those views do still exist within our leadership, more surreptitiously now, among influential Democrats as well as Republicans, including those likely to assume more power as a result of the coming election.

With our leadership choosing to downplay any real risk of nuclear war, while still continuing the policies that perpetuate the threat, the media seems content to keep its focus on daily realities, breaking news whether from the existing Middle East fighting, the election campaigning, the freeway chases, the ever-changing news cycles, the rotating talking heads. The rising level of anger apparent in our society is a compelling spectacle to observe, and draws increasing numbers of participants. So infectious, in fact, that one party's presidential candidate manifests that anger daily,  and it has become the basic substance of his campaign.  What is missing from the media, and from the mass public's awareness, is an awareness and appreciation of underlying issues, a deep analysis and understanding of the consequences of current policies and actions. It shouldn't take an outbreak of nuclear war to reawaken the public to the inherent danger that is currently at stake.  A chorus is needed to sound the alarm before it is too late. A nuclear "mushroom cloud" warning was once given to promote a false, unnecessary war. It would be tragic if when the danger is real, the warning was not given, and the public remained blind of an approaching, preventable calamity.

TRUMP, APPEALS TO ALPHA FEMALES?

COULD ALPHA FEMALES GET TRUMP ELECTED?

As several people pointed out in response to my last post, if --as the creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams, is suggesting--Donald Trump's appeal to Alpha males and the women who admire him aren't enough to get him elected. But what about Alpha Females? Perhaps we should consider this: In the New York Times of 1/30 under "Election 2016" we read, "RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina has a split political personality. Consider Debbie Holt."

"A staunch supporter of abortion rights, Ms. Holt, 56, who owns a barbecue restaurant in downtown Raleigh, makes clear where she stands on other fronts in the culture wars with signs in her storefront window: “Stop profiling Muslims,” says one. Another: “Go To The Bathroom Where You Feel Best.”

"Yet Ms. Holt is also an outspoken supporter of Mr. Trump. “He don’t take any stuff, just like me,” she drawled in between ringing up lunch-rush customers, using a more piquant word for stuff."

If she is an "Alpha Female" (definitions vary), are there a significant number out there? I can't find any research on the subject. Perhaps Scott Adams analysis is limited because it doesn't include them.

TRUMP WILL BEAT HILLARY IN A LANDSLIDE

If you watched Bill Mahr, Thursday the 28^th, you saw the comic strip creator of “Dilbert” explain why Donald Trump will be beat Hillary in a landslide, just as he predicted that Trump would win the GOP nomination.  He was so convincing that for many of us, after he was done, we probably thought that Hillary doesn’t have a change unless her campaign literally hires the creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams.

In terms of modern techniques of persuasion, Hillary is really lame.   Her campaign seems not to know: 1) Most people are basically irrational.  2) Knowing that people are irrational, Trump aims to appeal on an emotional level.  Adams adds: “People vote based on emotion. Period.”  3) By running on emotion, facts don’t matter.  So, Trump is reality free

4) If facts don’t matter, you can’t really be “wrong.”  “If you understand persuasion, Trump is pitch-perfect most of the time. He ignores unnecessary rational thought and objective data and incessantly hammers on what matters (emotions).”  5. With fewer facts in play, it’s easier to bend reality.  Steve Jobs famously aimed to create “reality distortion fields” to meet his needs and achieve his ends. Trump employs similar techniques.  6.   To bend reality, Trump is a master of identity politics — and identity is the strongest persuader.  Identity politics are political arguments that focus upon the interest and perspectives of groups with which people identify.  Trump is well on his way to owning the identities of American, Alpha Males, and Women Who Like Alpha Males.  He panders to them.

All of this is somewhat complicated and if you go to the Washington Post article it will become much clearer.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2016/03/21/donald-trump-will-win-in-a-landslide-the-mind-behind-dilbert-explains-why/?tid=pm_entertainment_pop_b 

 I think the Clinton campaign should read https://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/teaching/articles/J-Communication-2007-1.pdf about framing and agending setting. 

 Finally they should view New York Times Magazine, Donald Trump Shares His Opponent-Branding Secrets

By Mark Leibovich, May 9. 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/09/magazine/donald-trump-shares-his-opponent-branding-secrets.html?ref=topics&_r=0   

 “Little Marco,” “Crooked Hillary,” “”Low Energy Bush,” “Lyin Ted,” etc., have become household brands like slogans we all know such as “Just Do It,” “The Happiest Place On Earth,” etc.  How is this achieved?

MY PARTIAL VISION OF UTOPIA

I love Libertarian Party presidential hopeful John McAfee’s vision of a country where a “gay married couple can defend their marijuana fields with fully automatic machine guns,” except for the machine gun bit, because my concept of the future excludes anyone –including the cops—from owning a firearm (violent people will be subdued by the police by spraying laughing gas on them).

My vision for the future is that Non-violent offenders from local jails and prisons would help the gays nurture their vast fields and learn how to cultivate exotic strains of weed that intensified sexual experience. The police who transported them there would be required to assist in husbanding the cannabis.

My concept for future America would include formerly homeless non-able bodied vets, inside good pubic housing, getting stoned, doing art, music and dancing with partners gay, straight, bisexual, or transsexual. All homeless in America who didn’t want to be on the streets would have public housing and could, if they desired, march to Washington, Sacramento and other state capitols to urinate on conservative/libertarian/neo-liberal politicians who opposed public housing for all.

With regards to Middle Eastern wars, they could continue as long as the sons and daughters of the congressional-military-industrial complex fought them.

Food, clothing, shelter, free education, through the Ph.D and MD, access to medical care, recreational facilities, good jobs, early childhood education, adequate parental leave to care for the young, pre-natal care, access to clean drinking water and air would be deemed the rights of all people, including the undocumented.
Politicians who voted to cut back on food stamps for children, before this program was instituted, would be forced to go to bed hungry at night 2 or 3 times weekly.

Talented Politicians who use rhetoric-- eloquence aimed at persuasion—to deny climate change, must eat coal dust and drink oil for one meal of the day of their choosing.

Anyone want to add something?

HOW CAN HILLARY BEAT TRUMP?

HOW CAN HILLARY BEAT TRUMP LIKE A DRUM?

Trump’s Asymmetric Warfare

 

Charles M. Blow MAY 16, 2016 NYT

"How do we “beat a bully?” There is no way to sufficiently sully a pig or mock a clown. There is no way to shame a man who lacks conscience or to embarrass an embarrassment.

"He has waffled or equivocated or backtracked on tax plans, releasing his tax returns, his proposed Muslim ban, and any number of issues," such as taxing or not taxing the middle class, the national debt, criminalizing women who have abortions, minimum wage, self-funding his campaign, sending troops in to defeat Isis, etc. .etc.

According to Politifact, Trump “makes things up” and lies most of the time. But Blow doesn’t really offer a solution to the problem. I’ll try.

Social Scientists point out that facts don’t matter as much as emotions. Unfortunately, leaders like Hitler and Trump have high emotional intelligence. University of Cambridge professor, Jochen Menges, identified the “awestruck effect,” in which he describes that Hitler was able to persuade German’s due to “his ability to strategically express emotions, and these emotions affected his followers to the point that they would stop thinking critically and just emote. Sound familiar?

Perhaps the best way Hillary can triumph over Trump is to appeal to emotions and forget statistics and facts. One of the techniques is “storytelling;" it isn’t a waste of time, it’s the way that people connect with their audiences, going back thousands of years. People react not to data, but how you make them feel. The use of anecdotal evidence to draw a conclusion is like using the NBA all-star teams to estimate the average height of Americans. But in the battle between emotion and reason, reason hasn’t a chance.

A classic instance was Ronald Reagan's story of a "welfare queen" who was abusing the system, who Reagan attempted to portray as indicative of the average welfare recipient. It turned out she didn't even exist when some reporters finally decided to look for her. It didn’t matter, it was a story told by a man trusted by millions just as Trump is. Hillary’s trust factor is very low. She has much to overcome. She and her advisors should read Hitler's Mein Kamph and carefully study TV advertising techniques.

Sure these comments are very cynical but Hillary's got to beat this most dangerous, deceptive man, Donald Trump, by hoisting him up on his own petard.

OUR NATION'S POLITICAL DIVIDE HAS BECOME A MASSIVE CHASM: NO RELIEF IN SIGHT

As the 2016 Presidential election draws ever nearer, with contentious battles within both parties, vehement positions are being taken both within and between the two parties. Many words and relentless energy is being expended, and the gulf that exists between the opposing sides seems to have reached a magnitude that suggests reconciliation will be more difficult than ever, if not impossible. Both sides promise solutions, and are enthusiastic about the proposals they are recommending to the public. But neither side is discussing how they will breech the gap that exists in the nation's political divide.

 To be certain, these divides have always existed, and are especially pronounced during presidential campaigning. For the effective functioning of our nation's tri-parte Federal System, some degree of reconciliation and compromise between the opposing sides is necessary to avoid governmental stalemate and breakdown.  But since Obama's election in 2008,  the political divide in Congress has only grown, resulting in a degree of polarization and gridlock in considering and approving essential governmental actions that is unprecedented. As basic, key aspects of our nation's well-being continue to decline, because of governmental stalemate and inaction, the nation's impotence in bringing the sides together so that prime problems can be dealt with is a sorry sight to see, both for our own population and for the world. The problems are obvious, such as income disparity, infrastructure failure, youth unemployment, educational quality and opportunity, affordable health care, criminal justice reform, immigration management, environmental concerns, foreign policy quagmires,  the list could go on indefinitely. In recent years, only affordable health care has been approached with any significant, wide-ranging legislation, producing a controversial result that has admitted holes and flaws. With the other problems, much discussion, little or no action, and opposing sides growing ever further apart.

 In this scenario, it is no wonder this election year is revealing, to the dismay of both major party establishments, that a strong anti-establishment feeling is gripping the country and influencing voters preference of presidential candidates.  Within the Republican Party, the established power system is in total disarray, their preferred candidates were disposed of early by voters, only two anti-establishment candidates remain as viable existing candidates. For the Democratic Party, no one expected their chosen presumptive candidate to receive formidable opposition, certainly not from an independently-minded democratic socialist from a small state with little organizational backing. They were massively wrong, and are struggling to have their candidate mount the enthusiasm, the primary votes, and the small donor contributions of the challenger, even as he faces major structural obstacles to his success.

Whoever wins the party nomination battles, and the ultimate prize of the presidency, one thing remains certain, and it presents a staggering national problem that none of the candidates are adequately addressing--how can they lessen the divide that has blocked effective political action in our nation during the past seven years?  This divide has only been made more extreme, more intense, more profound, by the election campaigning.  The two currently leading candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, have disapproval ratings well over 50%, both among the general population and among members of Congress, which is very rare for presidential nominees. Not a good sign for cooperation and success if elected. The other two ranking candidates, Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz, represent diametrically opposed sides of the political continuum, one a very progressive self-described democratic socialist, the other a right-wing religious fundamentalist who eschews any compromise with opposing factions.

 With both parties having an internal divide, and the separation between the parties growing to insurmountable degrees, it is difficult to foresee how the government might function following the election. Yet neither party, nor none of the candidates, are discussing this issue, as if only winning the election is important, not what is to follow in the form of achievable government action. It would take a demonstrably strong leader, with a clear mandate to govern and policies designed to bridge the existing gap while still moving the nation forward in dealing with pressing problems, to meet our nation's current needs. That leader does not seem to be in sight, another indication of the failure of our nation's political establishment in recent years. One can only hope that this forecast is incorrect, but from this perspective, it does seem that our nation's political divide is likely to only grow more volatile, more dangerous, more intense as a result of this election, with no relief on the foreseeable horizon.  There may well be very dangerous days ahead for our country, all of this year's political rhetoric notwithstanding, and in fact, unfortunately a likely contributing factor.

ADVICE FOR BERNIE SANDERS

Republicans keep asking Bernie how he’s going to pay for free public college education for all.  Why doesn’t he say “From waste, fraud, and abuse in the Pentagon”

In the years following the 9/11 attacks, the United States and its allies have fought a continuous war. The taxpayer tab for the war totals about $5 trillion, or $16,000 per person, according to Brown University’s Watson Institute for International StudiesIn the years following the 9/11 attacks, the United States and its allies have fought a continuous war on terror. The taxpayer tab for the war totals about $5 trillion, or $16,000 per person, according to Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.

Most of this money went for unnecessary wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and to buttress our incompetent Middle Eastern allies. 

Too, war contractors have been rewarded by a bought off congress (read campaign contributions/bribes).  An example is the failed F-35 combat aircraft.  It’s cost has been $1.4 trillion and tens of billions in projected cost overruns because of design flaws. 

Partly because of its convoluted bookkeeping systems, $8.5 trillion—yes, trillion—taxpayer dollars doled out by Congress since 1996 has never been accounted for.

Come on Bernie!