Why Isn’t Populism Popular?

In my youth and political naïveté I often wondered why populism wasn’t what all Americans wanted. Didn’t we want “government of the people, by the people, and for the people?” Fast forward to today and we are being warned daily about the dangers of populism, and the words populism and populist seem to be used as slurs.

So, off to my go-to dictionary, Merriam-Webster I go:

populist 2 : a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people and
1 : a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people

Definition 1 is spot on with my original thinking, and definition 2 is also, but that’s not all there is.

Another definition is:

Populism is a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of “the people” and often juxtapose this group with “the elite.” It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. (Wikipedia)

this too is spot-on, and

populism : political ideas and activities that are intended to get the support of ordinary people by giving them what they want: e.g. “Their ideas are simple populism – tax cuts and higher wages.” (Cambridge Dictionary)

Finally, here is why the powers that be, on the left and right (actually “above” as left and right don’t really exist anymore, having been co-opted by the oligarchs) are opposed to populism. Although one could claim that the oligarchs are in favor of tax cuts and higher wages, for the rich, but the assumption here is “for ordinary people” so since such things reduce profits and thus the salaries and stock earnings of rich people, they’re agin’ it. We are supposed to be creating government structures “of the people, by the people, and for the people” but the rich are opposed to this quaint idea. They consider “the non-rich” to be “the filthy poor” who just can’t wait to get their hands on the money the rich people have piled up by hook or crook, so it is unthinkable that “those people” would be in charge. (This is why Franklin Roosevelt was declared to be a traitor to his class. He did way too much for ordinary people (even supported labor unions, eww!), at least according to the oligarchs.) Their idea is government of the non-rich by the elites (the rich and those chosen to represent them, e.g. paid for politicians).

One of their tried and true tactics is to demean the things that they want their followers to hate. They turned the term “liberal” into a slur. Social Security and even the Post Office became socialism. Church-state separation became a war on Christianity and now populism is a dirty word. The message underlying all of this is “you don’t want this, move along.” Apparently they think it is a Jedi mind trick.

What started me off on this post was a single sentence (I don’t have triggers so much as short fuses): “Populists always say popular things, so judge the man for what he’s done not for what he says.” WTF? Only populists tell us what we want to hear? Apparently they were thinking of politicians, not just populists.

The GOP Rebuffs the GOD

“This is what I want: to liberate those tied down and held back by injustice, to lighten the load of those heavily burdened, to free the oppressed, and shatter every type of oppression.” —Yahweh according to Isaiah 58:6

The Official GOP Response—Meh.

Is It Sexism . . . Again . . . Still?

A number of people have commented on the paltry salary Caitlin Clark was offered to sign on as a professional basketball player in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). The amount, while seeming like a substantial salary to most working people (roughly $75K a year for four years) is a pittance when compared to even journeymen in the men’s league. (The minimum annual salary for a player in the NBA is 1.1 million dollars currently for a player with no league experience and will go up to almost $4 million for players with many years of service.)

Here is one political cartoonist’s take on the matter.

But, during the 2022/23 season, the 30 franchises comprising the National Basketball Association (NBA) recorded a total revenue amounting to 10.58 billion U.S. dollars. This was an increase of over 500 million dollars from the previous year.

The WNBA, by contrast, was launched in 1996 and is far smaller, generating an estimated $200 million in revenue annually, according to a report from Just Women’s Sports.

The labels on the cartoon could have been better were they “NBA Income” on the left and “WNBA Income” on the right.

Even the WNBA called the issue a “false narrative.” Why? Because it is. The WNBA has come a long way from its beginning, with much subsidizing by the men’s league. But building a fan base isn’t easy and I hope the addition of a star such as Caitlin Clark and her admirable skills to the league will result in a large increase in fan support, which will then result in a large increase in player’s salaries.

Which Animal Is Most Likely To Kill You In Your State?

The question in the title above has been making the clickbait rounds of late, especially (I think) because the CDC had released statistics on that question.

But all of the responses are wrong, not even close. Some states pointed to bears, other venomous insects, still others venomous snakes, but all got it wrong. My home states, Illinois, was listed with 403 deaths, nowhere near the highest nor the lowest. But the numbers piled up in the IL by the actual champ dwarf those.

So, consider the question . . . carefully:

Which animal is most likely to kill you in your state?

And the answer for all states? You know it don’t you? It is human beings. For every person who gets killed by a mountain lion or a bear, there are hundreds killed by other humans.

Think about it.

There are over 43,000 people killed in auto crashes in just one year recently. That is also more than all of the stats provided for deaths from other animals alone.

And every year, 117,345 people are shot. With 42,654 people dying from gun violence. 16,651 are murdered. 76,725 people survive gunshot injuries. Again, just this one source outnumbers all of the “other animal” related deaths.

Then there are the suicides by other means, the people who drink themselves to death, die from metabolic diseases they could control, and on and on. The carnage is immense!—there were 3.27 million deaths in the U.S. in 2022, and if you look up, say, the Top Ten causes of deaths, you will find things like heart disease, cancer, COVID-19, and so on (Hey, Alzheimer’s made the top ten!), but you won’t find out how many were killed by other humans, because Congress has restricted the statistics that can be measured by government agencies.

Dying from being shot by gun-happy Americans is so rampant that many other countries have advisories for tourists planning to visit the U.S. Instead of Trump’s MAGA, we seem to be involved in MAIABR, Make America Into a Banana Republic.

MAGA Logic

Republicans are now calling for a ban on faux meat, aka plant-based, lab -grown meat, the production of which is an entrepreneurial opportunity which has been grasped by small and large corporations. (I thought regulations were bad, especially those restricting businesses.) And the Republicans offering this new regulation are described as being “pro-business.”

Democrats propose a ban on companies adding poison to our natural ecosystems, especially our drinking water, and they are called “anti-business.”

What am I missing?

It seems that Republicans are “pro-profits” of corporations that donate to their coffers and Democrats are pro-people in a few cases, not all. On occasion the Dems get the Republican disease and support corporations that donate to their coffers but I am unaware of cases in which the GOP actually are pro-people in their actions.

Recently they have been referring to themselves as “pro-democracy” but they do not want people like you people of color, women, etc. to be able to vote. As I said, MAGA logic.

Is This Just a Manifestation of the Green Car Effect?

I have mentioned I am re-reading Daniel Quinn. I have finished Ishmael and am deep into The Story of B. So far the message is clear: for two million years Homo sapiens lived in compliance with the Law of Nature referred to as The Law of Limited Competition (amongst other things), which states that you can take what you want to sustain yourself and your family, but you cannot make war on other species (by wiping them out, hunting them to extinction, obliterating their food supplies, etc.). Then 12,000 years ago or so we opted out of obeying that Law of Nature, and in just that many years we have brought the planet to the point that it may not be able to sustain us or any other species in the next 100 years. We made chickens the most populous domestic species on the planet, and wiped out many, many species of animals and plants to do so.

Okay. I subscribe to many lists, several from Amazon.com, and one of those lists had on it “Agrarian Justice” by Thomas Paine. “Oh, there’s a book by Thomas Paine I haven’t read, so I went on to Amazon.com to buy it only to find out I had already bought it. So, I searched my “Library” of Kindle books and voilà! This book was written in the winter of 1795-96 and I was floored when I started reading it. Here is the part that floored me:

“Whether that state that is proudly, perhaps erroneously, called civilization, has most promoted or most injured the general happiness of man is a question that may be strongly contested. On one side, the spectator is dazzled by splendid appearances; on the other, he is shocked by extremes of wretchedness; both of which it has erected. The most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found in the countries that are called civilized.

“To understand what the state of society ought to be, it is necessary to have some idea of the natural and primitive state of man; such as it is at this day among the Indians of North America. There is not, in that state, any of those spectacles of human misery which poverty and want present to our eyes in all the towns and streets in Europe.

“Poverty, therefore, is a thing created by that which is called civilized life. It exists not in the natural state. On the other hand, the natural state is without those advantages which flow from agriculture, arts, science and manufactures.

“The life of an Indian is a continual holiday, compared with the poor of Europe; and, on the other hand it appears to be abject when compared to the rich. Civilization, therefore, or that which is so-called, has operated two ways: to make one part of society more affluent, and the other more wretched, than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.

“It is always possible to go from the natural to the civilized state, but it is never possible to go from the civilized to the natural state. The reason is that man in a natural state, subsisting by hunting, requires ten times the quantity of land to range over to procure himself sustenance, than would support him in a civilized state, where the earth is cultivated.

“When, therefore, a country becomes populous by the additional aids of cultivation, art and science, there is a necessity of preserving things in that state; because without it there cannot be sustenance for more, perhaps, than a tenth part of its inhabitants. The thing, therefore, now to be done is to remedy the evils and preserve the benefits that have arisen to society by passing from the natural to that which is called the civilized state.

“In taking the matter upon this ground, the first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period.

But the fact is that the condition of millions, in every country in Europe, is far worse than if they had been born before civilization began, had been born among the Indians of North America at the present. I will show how this fact has happened.

“It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.

“But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that parable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property.” (Source: Paine, Thomas. Agrarian Justice, (p. 25). Kindle Edition. )

Here, in short order, Paine presaged Daniel Quinn’s main point in Ishmael and also echoed (pre-echoed?) David Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity especially about Graeber’s claim that Native Americans influenced European intellectual and political thought in Paine’s time period. (Paine was writing in France at the time.)

I think his most salient point was “In taking the matter upon this ground, the first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period.

But the fact is that the condition of millions, in every country in Europe, is far worse than if they had been born before civilization began, had been born among the Indians of North America at the present. I will show how this fact has happened.”

“Civilization” seems, in an historical perspective, to be a mechanism whereby the “haves” can extract wealth from the “have nots.”

The big question, of course, is “Now, what do we do?”

Postscript For those of you who have never heard of the green car effect the name comes from the effect when someone buys a green car, that they see green cars “everywhere.” Actually the number of green cars hadn’t changed, just your attention to them had. This is known as “priming” in the consciousness discussing crowd.

They Can Kiss My Ass

I received a message from the makers of WinZip software. This is software is for “zipping files” together and compressing them to make them easier to transmit, etc.)

Their message was “Your WinZip software is out of date!”

Oh, no, I thought, not that! So, I looked at their special offer. Here it is:

WinZip Pro Suite
The World’s #1 Compression and File Sharing Software Suite

$16.48 $54.95

Discount: 70% off
Delivery: Electronic Download
Operating system(s):Windows 11, 10 / Mac OS X v10.10.X +
This is a yearly subscription product. After 12 month(s), a yearly fee of $54.95 is due starting with the next billing cycle. You may cancel your subscription at any time.

Did you read the fine print at the bottom? The actual charge is $55 per year! And, please also consider the fact that my “outdated” version was not a subscription version. I paid once for it and it worked quite well and, it still works!

So, after careful consideration of their generous offer (generous to them, not me) they can kiss my ass.

Theologians of Science

There is an argument that scientists just blunder around looking for laws, which are just dependable behaviors in nature, but there is no overarching reason why such laws should even exist, therefore God must have made them; God is the “Law Giver,” don’t you know.

What do you think of that argument?

Actually it is philosophers who make this argument, but since they are defending their personal theology, that makes them theologians. The term theologian has Greek roots meaning someone who gives “an account of the gods” (logos being “words” and theo being “god,” etc.).

I was reading, re-reading actually, some Dan Quinn recently and he made the argument that man had to find those “dependable behaviors” by trial and error. Quinn used the example of heavier than air flight. None of the laws of aerodynamics had been discovered, so it was a guessing game as to how to design such a craft. The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci showed several designs (one of which looked like a helicopter with something like a bamboo umbrella that pumped up and down). Of course it was centuries later that successful designs were developed and now we have a much greater understanding of the laws of aerodynamics and vastly more sophisticated aircraft. So, why didn’t religion share out this secret aerodynamic knowledge to make our task easier? (Ah, it is a mystery, my son.)

I am also reading a fascinating book by Peter Atkins, one of the lesser known writers of popular science (and possibly the best at that task), “Conjuring the Universe: The Origins of the Laws of Nature.” In that book, Professor Atkins makes the argument that either the universe has existed forever or that it came into being. And if it came into being as is hinted at by modern theory, since the universe is “everything” it must have been preceded by nothing and therefore it must share qualities with “nothing.” One of those qualities is that energy must be conserved. If one simplifies things by considering matter to be a form of energy (E = mc², and all that) then all of the energy that came into being at the creation of the universe is it. There can be no more, and so energy must be conserved.

Professor Atkins (he is one of my people, a chemist!) continues to point out many of the other major rules of our universe are consequences of the source the universe came from. (I haven’t finished the book yet, so a review is still coming).

So, the theological argument above is not only absurd it has false premises. It, as usual, confused laws which are created socially with laws of nature. Plus this god doesn’t create laws, it works through intermediaries, which makes all such laws “man made.” If you need an example, consider Yahweh’s first commandment “You shall have no other god before me!” This is coming from the people who say that there are no other gods. How could Yahweh be so fragile that he is threatened by imaginary gods? How could he not know that there were no other gods? Is great puzzlement.

As usual, theologians and their philosophical wannabees know far too little to perform the role of Critic of Science. Science needs criticism, which is why each and every scientist is empowered to criticize anything in their subject field and without, even the science of their betters! If you want evidence of this, attend any fairly large gathering of scientists, at some point or other there will be a hissing bitch fight amongst individuals or groups of scientists. More often than not you will be able to observe more than one of these events.

If you are going to criticize something, you really need to know of what you are criticizing, no?

Do They Ever Think Through What They are Saying?

I wonder if the writers of the Bible ever spent any time thinking about what they were saying.

In the book of Genesis the Creation (the six day version) is described and six times it states “And God saw that it was good.” At the end of the description it states “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” So apparently God was proud of his creation, that at the very least all that he created was good or even very good . . . all of it.

But the soul suckers of the NT had to tell us otherwise.

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. (1 John 2:15-17)

So, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” So, John the Dreary would not have us love rainbows, fluffy puppies, golden poppies, children playing in rain puddles, puffy white clouds or any of the beauty of nature or really any of God’s creation.

Why not say “Be Thou depressed, be very depressed. That way you will not have the energy to sin.”

Assholes.

“I Voted for Trump Because It Was So Much Better When He was President . . .

. . . compared to the last three years,” said a voter in the South Carolina primary election. The reporter was polite and didn’t ask him “What planet are you from, sir?”

Apparently this guy didn’t notice his neighbors, friends, and family dying in the thousands, or the economy going to mush because of the pandemic. Apparently he didn’t notice Trump’s GOP friends dumped the strategic supply of N95 masks as being unnecessary and “to save money.”

And he kept his promise to replace Obamacare with a much better system . . , oh, wait (Trump “accidentally poured billions of extra dollars subsidizing American’s coverage). Uh, he kept his promise to build a wall along the entire Mexican border . . .oh, wait. Trump kept his promise to pass a sweeping school choice policy . . . oh, wait.

Trump followed through on his administration’s anti marijuana stance by  standing to the side as 18 states liberalized their marijuana laws from 2016 to 2020, including staunchly conservative states like Mississippi and South Dakota.

Trump also made sure that for-profit private colleges who defraud their students don’t have to pay all the money they took illegally back.

Trump made sure that the Takers weren’t cut any slack by cutting back on food stamps, kicking 755,000 Americans access to food aid under the SNAP program.

While the rest of the world was cracking down on methane emissions (from natural gas wells, transport of LNG, etc.), the Trump administration rolled back environmental regulations to make it easier to leak the potent greenhouse gas with no penalties.

Trump banned the government from using Chinese-made drones . . . wow! He kept us safe!

On the plus side, Trump audited the Defense Depart, which as expected failed the audit.

Trump slashed taxes on mostly rich corporations and rich individuals, and the much smaller tax cuts on non-rich people expire after ten years, the others get to keep theirs.

Trump stifled communications on climate change. Maybe we should call this the Head in the Sand Policy, and his Agriculture Department transferred many of the climate scientists to Kansas City, resulting in many leaving the department, thus reducing the number of climate scientists and leaving the department short-handed.

Trump confused auto makers who had asked for some regulatory relief on emissions by completely scrambling the regulatory scheme, making it much less effective. So instead of having to achieve a 5% increase in fuel efficiency per year, it is now 1.5%.

Trump actually helped in the anti-monopoly area. Whether Google or Facebook will ever say anything besides “we are working on it” remains to be seen.

Trump cracked down on legal immigration, even on the high-skilled workers he said he wanted.

Trump’s EPA essentially blew up a bipartisan deal to more strictly regulate toxic chemicals that Americans are exposed to daily and instead tapped a group of chemicals industry experts to run and advise the program. Trump officials muzzled scientists and civil servants at the agency and crafted narrow approaches to assessing chemicals’ dangers that have massive loopholes. Do you feel safer? Why?

Ever the socialist (at least when it comes to government support for the oligarchs, in this case Big Ag), Donald J. Trump’s USDA steered billions in subsidies to farmers suffering from tariffs imposed by foreign countries as a consequence of the president’s trade wars, an amount that far outpaced the massive auto bailout in 2008.

Trump rolled back rules on banks designed to prevent another financial crisis. Trump doing favors for banks that did his favors for so many years? Makes sense to me.

Trump rolled back rules on racially segregated housing, keeping those darkies in their place.

In 2016, the EPA’s scientists concluded that the agency should ban chlorpyrifos after finding unsafe levels of the chemical on apples, peaches, oranges, strawberries, and other fruits. Dow Chemical, one of the largest producers of products using this chemical, gave $1 million to President Trump’s inauguration committee and leads a presidential advisory committee on manufacturing. Trump’s EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt rejected the findings of the agency’s scientists, denied a petition to ban the chemical, and delayed further action until 2022. Ah, more toxic chemicals on our food, better, right?

Economically, during the Trump administration  the federal budget deficit increased by almost 50%, to nearly $1 trillion (~$1.13 trillion in 2022) in 2019. Under Trump, the U.S. national debt increased by 39%, reaching $27.75 trillion by the end of his term; the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio also hit a post-World War II high.

Trump rolled back a rule on mortgage insurance premiums that would have saved home buyers about $500. Of course, Trump told us we would all be rich if we elected him, rich bigly.

Trump rolled back protections for drinking water in coal country (remember the sludge ponds overflowing into natural waterways?). And those coal country people still vote Republican, curious. (See statistics on coal-related jobs below.)

And if you are wondering why there are so many more mass shootings now, Trump Signed a law that weakens the firearms background check system and undermines enforcement of the current law that prohibits certain individuals with a serious mental illness from gun possession. Oh, and he made sure more fugitives from the law were allowed to buy guns.

Here is a final summary by factcheck.org of Trump’s administration:

The statistics for the entirety of Donald Trump’s time in office are nearly all compiled. As we did for his predecessor four years ago, we present a final look at the numbers.
• The economy lost 2.9 million jobs. The unemployment rate increased by 1.6 percentage points to 6.3%.
• Paychecks grew faster than inflation. Average weekly earnings for all workers were up 8.7% after inflation.
• After-tax corporate profits went up, and the stock market set new records. The S&P 500 index rose 67.8%.
• The international trade deficit Trump promised to reduce went up. The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was the highest since 2008 and increased 40.5% from 2016.
• The number of people lacking health insurance rose by 3 million.
• The federal debt held by the public went up, from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion.
• Home prices rose 27.5%, and the homeownership rate increased 2.1 percentage points to 65.8%.
• Illegal immigration increased. Apprehensions at the Southwest border rose 14.7% last year compared with 2016.
• Coal production declined 26.5%, and coal-mining jobs dropped by 16.7%. Carbon emissions from energy consumption dropped 11.5%.
• Handgun production rose 12.5% last year compared with 2016, setting a new record.
• The murder rate last year rose to the highest level since 1997.
• Trump filled one-third of the Supreme Court, nearly 30% of the appellate court seats and a quarter of District Court seats.

I’ll leave it to you to decide which parts are “better” and which “worse.”