Billionaires

I'm going to go way out on a limb here and claim that billionaires aren't all exactly the same.

At least, I'd be going out on a limb if I said that in some of the places I hang out. I like those places, it's nice to have found places where nearly everyone hates Elon Musk, but all the same, the frequent, unchallenged assertion that all billionaires are the same is getting to be a pain in the ass. 

 

It's possible that I might dislike every single billionaire, if I examined each one closely. But I haven't examined each and every single billionaire closely. Which is why I'm unable to say that they're all the same.

But there's more than that. Yes, even more. There are differences which anyone can see. Some billionaires are Republicans, some are Democrats. The they're-all-the-same yahoos will respond that they're just pretending to be different, while they pull the strings behind the scenes in our one-party system. Have we gotten to the 100 mark yet, 100 times of me mentioning, in this blog, that brilliant remark of Kurt Vonnegut's, that we are what we pretend to be?

Gotta be at least close to 100 by now. 

There are differences, though. When Warren Buffett says publicly that he should pay more taxes, that's different from Elon Musk publicly saying that he shouldn't have to pay ANY taxes, because he's already publicly benefited mankind so much. And whether Musk really means that, or can barely keep a straight face while he says it and is as amazed as, for instance, I am, that anyone believes he's a public benefactor (we are what we pretend to be!), both Buffett and Musk are decidedly different than most billionaires inasmuch as they've talked about taxes at all in any way except privately.

Musk and Trump and Cuban, and very few other billionaires, seem to live for the spotlight, for public attention. They can't get enough of it, it seems. Many other billionaires seem to live very strictly by the code: "Fools' names and fools' faces often appear in public places." So that we've very rarely, or perhaps never, even heard their names.

Which would make it even harder to tell if they really are all the same, and also exactly the same as the publicity-hungry type of billionaire. 

As with taxes, so also with philanthropy: some billionaires practice it openly, some by stealth, some hardly at all. Instead of "hardly at all," I was going to say "not at all," but it seems even Trump and Musk may have engaged in some charitable giving. Not as much as they would like people to believe, but a little, milked for as much publicity as possible, timed to divert from scandal.

Now, even in the cases of billionaires who give the great majority of their wealth to good causes, it could be argued that they are not making up for all of the damage they caused while accumulating that money. The Andrew Carnegie Syndrome. I'd be more than glad to debate that. On a case-by-case, billionaire-by-billionaire basis. I'm still not going to even debate the nature of all billionaires at once. 

Because, as Denzel Washington said in Philadelphia: "This is the essence of discrimination: formulating opinions about others not based on their individual merits, but rather on their membership in a group with assumed characteristics." Simple as that. I'm not having it.

But wait, there's EVEN MORE: I have come to believe that a great many of these people claiming that all billionaires are evil and all the same, are themselves millionaires who would much rather debate something else than whether and to what extent their own existence benefits society as a whole. The B-word gives them a very convenient way to change the subject. Might even work if the people they're talking to are also millionaires. Yeah, I bet in would work real well in those circumstances.

Perhaps it was just a coincidence that the first two people I heard spreading the billionaires-are-all trope were millionaires. Gore Vidal, and then Bernie Sanders. 

In fact, in retrospect, I've got to wonder whether Gore Vidal himself was a billionaire when he warned the public to keep both hands planted firmly over one's wallet whenever in the vicinity of a billionaire. Vidal was not merely a bestselling author when he said, he had written a great many very big bestsellers, besides some screenwriting and having been born the grandson of a US Senator and being the first cousin of Al Gore and a cousin by marriage of Jacqueline Kennedy, and living half the year in a villa in Ravello and the other half in the Beverly Hills Hotel. If he wasn't worth at least $100 million in the late 1980's, when he issued his dire warning about billionaires, then he must have given most of his wealth away, or followed terrible investment advice, or been a really amazingly big tipper, or something.

You know what, maybe Gore was a billionaire and knew it, and was ironically warning his more perceptive readers, those capable of reading between the lines just as he spoke between them, to watch out for him, and maybe go into business with less treacherous types. If so -- good one, Gore! and ain't I a dope.

My point was that when I read that article in Vanity Fair where Gore talked about the billionaires and the hands clamped on wallets just for safety's sake, it struck me as very odd that someone that rich was warning the public about the rich. 

And then in 2016, Bernie Sanders went on and on at such length about billionaires that he got a billionaire elected President. And I noticed that during 2016 he and his wife sold their second house for half a million. 

Their SECOND house. Making me very suspicious that the rest of their holdings might tally up to another half, making them the dreaded M-word, as are no doubt many if not most of Bernie's colleagues in the Senate and House. 

That was before 2019, when it became widely-known that Sanders' income in 2017 had been over $1 million, leading to his famous public gaff about how you, too, can become a millionaire if you write a bestselling book. 

Who knew it was so easy, right?

Seemed disingenuous to me, because Sanders seemed to be saying that only in 2017 had he become a millionaire. 

But again my point is: a rich person warning me about those evil, evil rich people like movie stars and the Clintons!

Also, I suspect that very many of the people around me these days repeating the all-billionaires-are-the-same trope, may have learned it directly from Bernie Sanders, thus adding to the reasons I dislike him.

Trump's Wrath

In this morning's news, Trump's son's girlfriend has "incurred his wrath" by going to work for a Republican candidate for a US Senate seat. Guilfoyle signs up with Greitens -- and incurs Trump's wrath.

The GOP are following a crazy old man who's angry at everyone. 

"By STEVEN BOLLINGER 9/23/2023 8:43 AM -- Inmates celebrating a birthday party at a minimum-security Federal prison in Maryland Tuesday incurred the wrath of their fellow inmate and former President, Donald J Trump, for singing too loudly. 'No wrongfully-convicted prisoner in the history of humanity has endured more horrific and inhumane conditions than me,' Trump said to reporters while simultaneously getting a massage and eating a creme brulee. 'This creme brulee is terrible,' he added, although he finished it anyway. After the massage, Trump led the group of reporters to the prison's gym, where he impressed them by lifting a pair of 5-pound dumbbells and telling them that they weighed 125 pound apiece. 'I'm down to 190 pounds and 6 percent body fat,' Trump said. Neither the assertion about his weight nor the one about his body fat has been confirmed at this time. Sources close to the former President, under strict condition of anonymity, have said that he seems heavier and flabbier than during his term as President, when his personal physician asserted that he weighed 239 pounds."

It Looks as if I Can't Stop Writing About Trump Just Yet

Believe me, I'd really like to. Believe me, I completely understand those of you who never want to read another word about him. But he hasn't gone away yet. From strong hints that he would run for President again in 2024, Trump has shifted, according to accounts so numerous and similar that it has become impossible to dismiss them, to the belief that he will be reinstated as President in August 2021.

Charles CW Cooke's National Review article ends by describing him, on the issue of his reinstatement, as "so unmoored from the real world that it is hard to know where to begin in attempting to explain him."

I agree. My only issue here is, this describes him in general, not just on this issue, and for a long time -- since long before 2015 -- not just recently, as Cooke seems to believe. The GOP has been following "a world-historical buffoon," as James Carville so beautifully put it.

The problem is not that Trump is a moron. There have always been lots of morons, and the world deals with them, keeps them safe and away from sharp objects and so forth. The problem with this moron is that he's got millions of dedicated followers. You'd think that more Republicans would know better. You'd think that more of the ones who know better would have the guts to stand up to him. 

 

I've got to stop over-estimating Republicans.

 

Off-the-Record Republicans

Today, US Senator Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, announced that he will object to Joe Biden's Electoral College win in the joint session of Congress on January 6 because he's "concerned about the integrity of this election."

How many Republican lawsuits which were "concerned" about this have been thrown out of how many courts, because of an utter lack of evidence to back the claim that this election was stolen from Donald Trump? Claiming that Biden stole the election is like claiming that Hillary did something wrong regarding Benghazi: it's not just ridiculous, it's monotonous already. Can't the Republicans think up some new scam?

But even most of the Republican morons who couldn't stop beating the Benghazi dead horse still said, early in 2016, that Donald Trump was a grifter and a fraud who succeeded in politics by stirring up racism and belief in stupid conspiracy theories. On the subject of Donald Trump, they spoke like sane human beings, until Trump became the apparent 2016 Republican nominee. Then they all shut up, except for the ones who started to extravagantly praise the same grifter they had been denouncing the day before.

Countless times since then, Republicans have been quoted off the record as saying that they know how horrible Trump is. In some cases it's not so hard to guess who these off-the-record Republicans are: you just match up what they said to a reporter off the record in 2018 with what they said to a cheering campaign crowd in 2015. Or maybe Chris Christie and Ted Cruz sincerely changed their minds and now truly, deeply admire Donald Trump. Yes. That's probably it.

How many others have been publicly supporting Trump while they privately despise him? Will we ever know? Does that group of thoroughly-dishonest, two-faced, party-over-country hypocrites include Mitch McConnell? Mike Pence? Josh Hawley?

The Master Took Everything

I'd been trying to remember what novel it was I'd read, which novel I was reminded of by Elon Musk and his fans, in which the protagonist, a follower, a hero-worshipper, breaks down and sobs toward the end of the story, an old man who has wasted his life serving someone who didn't deserve it. 1984? No, that wasn't it, although Winston Smith weeping as he loves Big Brother at last is a similar scene, a similarly heartbreaking catastrophic defeat. Today I remembered: it was The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. I read it not long after the movie came out in 1993. And I was struck above all by that scene near the end, and I have always felt that I was taught an important lesson there, not to give myself away to those who are not worthy.

I remembered the lesson always, and the image of the old man crying because the Master had taken everything from him, although I forgot for a while which book it was from. So what does this have to do with EV's? Well, I think about Elon Musk's fans. Tesla owners, Tesla shareholders. I also think about Trump's fans. Trump and Musk, and other narcissistic sociopaths, only take, they don't give back. I feel sorry for those who waste their lives giving to unworthy heroes, expecting rewards which they will not receive.

 

Over and over again, we hear people who've been cast aside by Trump, from chumps who'd paid for Trump University all the way up to former Cabinet members. After they had served him loyally, extremely loyally, but not extremely enough. They express their surprise, and we are surprised, wondering how they could have failed to noticed the thousands of similar cases which preceded their own. We're astonished that they could have been surprised.

 

The difference between Musk and Trump is that Musk is a little bit more clever, a little bit less obvious in his predatory behavior. But only a little bit. 

 

Biden Says the Transition is Going Well

Joe Biden says that the transition from the Trump administration to his own is going well, and that outreach from the present administration, across the board, has been sincere and not begrudging.

In short, Biden says that the behavior of the Trump administration has been the exact opposite of what the public has seen and heard from President Trump himself.

If you've been reading a lot news from Washington over the past four years, as I have, then surely it has struck you have often members of Trump's administration, as well as Republicans in Congress, have expressed strong opposition, even horror and disgust, to Trump, off the record. 

What a strange approach: to privately oppose a leader whom you publicly slavishly follow and extravagantly praise. Will all of these Republicans ever go on the record and actually tell the truth right out in public about what they have been thinking and doing during the Trump Presidency?

Or, on the contrary, will there been so many Republicans who claim to have been secretly anti-Trump, secretly saving the world from Trump from within the belly of the beast, that it will be damned hard to believe all of them?

There's a problem with believing anyone who says, I was lying all that time, but now I'm telling the truth. Hey, come to think of it, that's sort of the whole point of that story which has been told to so many children, about the boy who lied about wolves being around.

There's a definite advantage to just telling the truth, publicly, privately, on the record, off the record, every which way. Several advantages. Several huge advantages. Several huge obvious advantages.

But if some Trump administration official or Republican Congressperson or Senator wants to try to explain to me why he or she was saying one thing in public and the exact opposite off the record, for four long years, and wants to explain to me how that behavior actually made some sort of sense, I'll listen.

For a little while, anyway.

Big-Boy Pants

It's Friday afternoon, and the mayor of Philadelphia, Jim Kenney, has said what many of us have been thinking: that's it's time for Trump to "put on his big-boy pants" and concede that Joe Biden has been elected President.

But there's a problem here, and we all know exactly what it is: President Trump has no big-boy pants. There've been countless moments over the past five years, since well before Trump was elected, when he has demonstrated that he has no big-boy pants. There can be no shred of doubt left in any sane observer's mind that has no maturity, no decorum, no sense of fair play, no respect for anyone or anything. This has been clear for a while. No one is surprised by how Trump is behaving. Everyone knew that this election was going to be a two-step process: first vote Trump out, then force him to leave office. Step one: mission accomplished. Step two -- ? 

It's up to us. He won't go quietly. And we all knew he wouldn't.

Random Notes

I recently, finally, got ahold of a copy of Steven Runciman's History of the First Bulgarian Empire. But whoever made this hinky edition -- they forgot to include the index! Is this important to me? Yes, it's important to me! It's not as bad as if they had left out the 3rd chapter and the bibliography, but only in the sense that cutting off one of my ears would not be as bad as cutting off one of my legs. It's still very bad! And it's just completely thrown me off. They left in a map of Bulgaria at the end of the book, but the reprint is so small and so poorly-done that it's just about useless. Are there more maps, and/or other illustrations in a legit edition of A History of the First Bulgarian Empire? Hey! You find a copy of a legit edition, and then you tell me!

I've been binge-watching Bill Burr, and I don't hate him so much any more. He seems like a guy in therapy, saying shocking, horrible things because those things are inside of him, and he has to get them out in order to deal with them, and heal. Except that in Burr's case it also makes him a very successful stand-up comedian. Burr has said, repeatedly, that he knows he's a very sick, damaged person, and that he's trying to get better. That alone makes him better than a Republican. He's Democratic/Green, apparently, although he very often enrages Democrats and Greens. And Republicans, and Libertarians, and independents, and apolitical aesthetes.

And he doesn't seem to mind if he shocks people, which I think is a good position for a "serious" comedian to take. I'll give you an example: Bill was talking about Trump supporters who love the way that, according to them, Trump "triggers" overly-sensitive liberals with his Tweets. Bill is not impressed. He says that Trump offends maybe 60% of the public with his Tweets, which any moron could do. Bill says that it would actually take some creativity to offend nearly everyone with a Tweet. Like, over 90% of the general public. For example, he says, you could tweet: "Trump is such a bastard, he made me vote for a woman!" and than just sit back and enjoy the fireworks.

And he made me laugh when he talked about airlines. I would've thought the whole topic of airlines was played and tired for stand-up comedy, but Bill had some nice touches. He talked about having flown coach for 20 years before making it to first class. His description of first class air travel is nice: for example, he describes a seat in first class as "a chair large enough to hold a human body." And he describes being seated in the back of coach once during that earlier time, and there was still an empty seat next to him close to takeoff, and he started to have hope that he would experience what he called "poor man's first class," being able to stretch out on two coach seats. But then, just before takeoff, a very fat man got onto the plane, and sure enough, he was coming all the way to the back to sit next to Bill, and as the fat man approached, Bill began to scream and kick "like Quint sliding down into the mouth of the shark at the end of Jaws."

There are some comics who actually are right-wing bigots. And then there are some who joke about things we don't usually talk about in public, and say the quiet parts loud, and are sometimes mistaken for bigots. Like Sam Kinison and "Dice" Clay and Sarah Silverman. And Bill Burr. Okay, keep hating him if you want to. Bill will certainly understand.

Early yesterday, Twitter blocked an account from the Trump campaign. And then later yesterday, Twitter crashed. Or did it? I became very paranoid, wondering whether Trump had shut Twitter down (I can't be the only one who was wondering. He's threatened to do it numerous times), wondering whether a great crackdown had finally begun, whether an unmarked van was coming at last to break down my front door and take me to an undisclosed location. But I'm still at large. 

BE STRONG, MURRKA! THREE MORE MONTHS! MEE R MUNKEE! MEE LUV YU! VOTE 4 TH OTHER GUY!

Beelzebub

So: in the Vice-Presidential debate, a fly landed on Mike Pence's hair, and stayed there for a while, and now some people are calling Pence "Beelzebub."

Because "Beelzebub" means "Lord of the flies," and yes that's also where William Golding got the name for the novel everyone in my generation was supposed to read in school but many of us didn't. I'm also reminded of one the many great moments in Rob Roy, 

 

 

a much better movie than Braveheart but Braveheart was released like a month later and destroyed it commercially:

Montrose : Great men such as yourself draw rumor as shite draws flies. Duke of Argyll : You are the shite, Montrose, and the flies upon it!

And I'm reminded of that because I disagree with those who say that Pence is even worse than Trump -- I mean, have you seen Trump?! Have you heard Trump? Have you SMELLED Trump?!

 

To stay with the metaphorical theme of this post, in my opinion the biggest offense committed by Mike Pence is the same as that committed by most Republicans over the past four years, namely, polishing a turd. Admittedly, Pence is even more guilty of this one than are most of his colleagues.

Which is why I'm so struck by the physical resemblance between Pence and Franz von Papen, one of the clique of German upper-class twits who, in January 1933, thought it would be a good idea to appoint Hitler Chancellor of Germany, figuring it would be easy to control him -- a real world-class, Hall of Fame bad idea.

Which brings us back around to Hal Holbrook in All the President's Men, telling Robert Redford that these guys weren't very bright, and things got out of hand.

So get out there and vote if you haven't already. Or stay in there and vote from there, which ever one applies. You know what I mean.

 

If I Had a Billion Dollars --

-- the red light on my computer's mute key, f6, wouldn't go from functional to non-functional or vice versa every time my OS updated. And similarly, I wouldn't have to tell my blog software not to count my own pageviews for the blog every time I turned on the computer, because that box unchecked itself every time I turned off the computer. I can't afford to get a new computer every time one malfunctions, or get it repaired or other fancy rich-guy stuff like that.

If I had a billion dollars I'd have an EV and solar panels on my roof, and so would a few nonprofit organizations, courtesy of me.

If I had a billion dollars I'd have an extra-fancy strap on this watch, here, and I'd pay somebody to attach it to the watch because I'm really bad with that sort of fingertip type work.

If I had a billion dollars, I would finally find out what truffles taste like if you just eat one whole, as opposed to eating some food which just has tiny specks of truffles in it which you can barely see but which make the food irresponsibly expensive for you to eat.

If I had a billion dollars, I would finally know once and for all if becoming rich still leaves you unhappy. I strongly doubt that a billion dollars wouldn't make me very, very happy for a very long time, maybe forever. I think that people who say that money lacks such power simply don't have enough experience with poverty to appreciate being rich. And you'll notice that most of the rich people who say money can't make you happy do NOT give all their money away, and that that's not just because they are too kind to make others unhappy with money, but because they're basically full of shit, in addition to being full of money.

I just did an update, and the red light on my f6 key went from working to not working. I really like that red light when it works. That's what set me off into thinking about having enough money to own multiple computers and and an EV and solar power and to be able to give generously to causes I find to be good and to be able to obtain a truly fine watch band without giving it a second thought and eat all the truffles I could eat.

Here's to Fully Automated Luxury Communism bringing all of those things, and much, much more, to everyone on Earth, very soon. Cheers. First step: vote Trump out. I know, I know, Joe is hardly a Fully Automated Luxury Communist dream come true, but beggars can't be choosers and right now the choice is Trump or Joe, and Joe's a lot closer to want we want even though he's very far from what we want. The Communists in Germany should've voted for Hindenburg along with the Social Democrats in 1932...

What Joe Said

Sarah Silverman liked and re-tweeted a tweet by an African-American woman whose name I didn't know, saying that a white guy doesn't get to tell black people they're not black if they support the most racist President since Woodrow Wilson over him. I was about to comment on Silverman's tweet with something like "White woman likes tweet by black woman telling white people that they don't get to tell black people they're not black if they support the world's biggest living racist nightmare," but before I could make the comment, Ms Silverman's tweet had disappeared.

Perhaps because in the meantime, Biden had apologized for his comment to Charlemagne Tha God,

saying "perhaps I was much too cavalier" and "I shouldn't have been such a wise guy."

The whole thing, wise-ass insensitive remark, Twitter uproar and apology, happened within a few hours.

Another way you can tell Biden apart from Trump: he apologized for saying something dumb. Remember? Apologies? That thing we haven't heard from a US President in 3 and a half years?

Science, Art and the Coronavirus

Perhaps you've heard: the unfortunate conflict between scientists and artists is still going on. This conflict is not always such a big deal, but, perhaps you've heard, there's a deadly worldwide plague going on.

Not every scientist is in conflict with every artist. Some scientists are deeply knowledgeable about and appreciative of the arts, and some artists are deeply knowledgeable about and appreciative of science. These people -- I don't know how large a group they represent, I can only hope the group is large and growing quickly -- have grasped that neither science nor art by itself can address all human needs. They realize that art and science can compliment and help each other.

Then there are people like Frank Castorf, an idiot and perhaps Germany's most famous living theatre director. He's become even more famous in the past couple of days by publicly complaining that he doesn't like being told by Angela Merkel to wash his hands, and that he resents not being able to shop and dine out as he is accustomed to do.

And so, since he is one of Germany's most prominent representatives of art, he's causing a lot of damage. Who knows how many deaths he will be directly responsible for.

I wonder, does Castorf resent Merkel telling him what to do because she's a woman? If Germany had a male Chancellor at the moment who was passing along the advice of scientists -- that's all that Merkel is doing, of course: passing along the advice of scientists about how we can best hope to survive this epidemic, not exercising any sort of personal authority over Frank Castorf -- would Castorf enthusiastically support social distancing and masks and hand washing? I suspect he might. He might think of it as a paramilitary sort of discipline. He has some stupid macho tendencies.

Castorf is also, like Donald Trump, making this worldwide crisis all about him. He claims that before the coronavirus outbreak, young people in the theatre wanted old men in the theatre to die as soon as possible. (Castorf is 68 years old.), and that now they want to save every old man they can, even with such allegedly fascist measures as compulsory hand-washing.

No sensible person I know agrees with Castorf that young theatre people were ever wishing old men dead. I suspect the truth may be more something such as that now and then, some big-mouthed, wise-assed young people have said that they wish that Castorf would retire, and Castorf is blowing that way out of proportion and using this particularly thin excuse to wallow in self-pity, at a particularly bad time and in a particularly destructive way.

This conflict between art and science comes from artists and scientists not appreciating what the other group can do. Some scientists think that science can solve all of humanity's problems, some artists think that art can solve all of humanity's problems, and, of course, they're all mistaken. We need both.

Social distancing, masks and hand-washing will save lives. Science has told us that, and there is no doubt at all that science is correct about that. We still have a problem, though, because many people are not listening to this very simple and important message from science. Scientists know how people should best respond to a pandemic, but they don't know how to convince people to respond in the best way. Convincing people to take scientifically-sound, live-saving advice is something that artists are good at -- or, at least, something they can be good at, if they're not completely infantile self-pitying idiots.

Will Bernie Help Biden?

I would've much preferred Bernie Sanders to Joe Biden, as the Democratic nominee for President. But still, I would much prefer Biden to Trump as President. Now that it's gonna be Joe, is Bernie going to help out?

It's something which (eww!) politicians do, something known as (ewwwww!!!) politics: give and take. Give something to somebody, even if it's someone you really dislike, in order to get something. To save the situation from being a total loss. To help the possibility that later on, you'll get that something, the something you wanted but couldn't get right now.

I don't know what Bernie will do. I have no idea what goes on in his mind. But right now, he wields a lot of power, and he could use it to help someone he has a lot disagreements with, Biden, in order to help Biden beat someone who is much, much worse: Trump. Remember President Trump?

In 2016, Bernie wielded a lot of power after he had lost the nomination, and in my opinion he didn't do everything he could have done with that power, in order to beat Trump -- but right now 2016 and how well Bernie used his power and my opinion of what he did, none of that matters. Right now, what matters is Trump vs Biden in November. And Bernie can do a lot about that. Many of Bernie's supporters say they don't see any difference between Trump and Biden. Bernie could do a lot to explain the differences to them. If he wants to. If he sees the differences. Like I said, I have no idea how Bernie's mind works. He's a strange case to me: a politician who has spent nearly his entire career not engaging in politics, holding himself disdainfully above all of the compromises and horse-trading.

This would be a particularly bad time for him to keep holding himself above it all, instead of getting his hands dirty, helping something to happen which he no doubt sees as bad -- a Biden Presidency -- in order to prevent something which would be much worse: a 2nd term of Trump. I hope so much that he gets down into the dirt and fights, that he acts like a politician at last. The whole world needs all the help it can get right now, removing Trump from office. And that's not going to be done with idealism. It's going to be done if a whole lot of us hold our noses and vote for someone we despise, in order to stop someone else who is much, much worse. That's politics. There's nothing pure about it, never has been.

Bernie for President 2020

This is not a joke. I'm completely serious: I'm endorsing Bernie Sanders for President in 2020, and I'm doing it now, before the primaries even start.

I've said many times on this blog that I hate Bernie Sanders, and I meant it. And I still hate him. I've blamed him for Trump being elected, and I stand by that. I said back in 2015 that Bernie was the only man who could get Donald Trump elected President, and by God, Bernie did it. I said that the math was clear back in March 2016 that Hillary had it sewed up, just like Rachel Maddow and Barack Obama, and we were right, and I'm not going to discuss it because I can do math, but I don't know how to teach math. And also because most of the people who say they want to debate this don't want to debate, or learn, a goddam thing.

I'm endorsing Bernie this time because I believe that if we don't nominate him this time, he will get Donald Trump re-elected. Because he has a hard core of fanatical, hard-core, unreasonable followers. When Bernie and the Bernie Bros didn't get what they wanted in 2016, they behaved like spoiled babies and wrecked everything.

I do not see the slightest sign that they learned a goddam thing from the experience.

Let me be clear: I'm not talking about the majority of people who voted for Bernie in the 2016 primaries. I'm not talking about the majority of people who put Bernie bumper stickers on their cars. Most of those people were reasonable enough to get behind Hillary before Bernie did, and in a much, much more enthusiastic and meaningful way than Bernie ever did, even though many of them hate her intensely. Even most of the people left of center who hated Hillary still understood that the differences between Hillary and Bernie were tiny compared to the differences between any Democratic candidate and Trump. They were able to grasp the concept of party unity. And the vast majority of people who are supporting Bernie now are going to vote for any Democratic candidate rather than Trump.

I'm talking about the more than 1 million people who wrote Bernie in. I'm talking about the Bernie Bros who didn't vote in November 2016, or voted for Stein or Johnson or Trump, and I'm talking about Bernie, who either can't do the math, or pretended that he couldn't, and honestly, which would be worse?

I'm talking about people who can't be reasoned with.

It will be much more effective to just give these idiots what they want, and unite around Bernie, than it would be to nominate anybody else, and try to get the Bernie Bros to unite around them, and to get support from Bernie himself which would be more than half-assed.

Bernie is far and away the strongest candidate we have for President in 2020, because he has that hard core of idiots who will screw it up for anybody else, exactly the same way they screwed it up for Hillary in 2016, and none of the other candidates has a hard core like that. And he has a hard core like that because he's like that. But he still will be a far, far better President than Trump. Biden or Bloomberg would be much worse presidents than Bernie, and they would still be much, much better Presidents than Trump. Almost any Republican Senator, Congressperson, governor or mayor in the US would be a far, far better President than Trump, but it looks like they're going to nominate Trump for a 2nd term, so this is no time to fuck around. Bernie is the best bet to stop Trump, so I'm 100% behind Bernie. And if I'm in a place where a lot of swing voters can hear me, I'll wear my very best shit-eating grin and pretend to love Bernie, because this is no time to fuck around. (The readership of this blog is very close to 100% Leftist.)

It's easier, it's smarter, to just give Bernie and his Bros want they want. They don't understand the concept of party unity, but enough of the rest of us do. Yeah, it's sort of paradoxical and ironic. Try to enjoy the irony, if you hate Bernie too.

And again, just to be perfectly clear: when I say "the rest of us," I'm including the great majority of people who support Bernie, the great majority of people for whom Bernie would be the first choice. I'm talking about the vast majority of people to the left of center, who understand how important it is that Donald Trump not be re-elected.

Are Right-Wingers Basically Just Lonely Old Guys?

A Facebook friend expressed the opinion that many of Trump's fanatical supporters are lonely old white men with no friends, no support group. I think he may be on to something, and I think it may apply to more than just Trump's hard-core base.

I just spoke to my brother today. Yesterday I'd left him a voicemail saying it was about time for "our monthly time to disagree about... everything." My brother is not part of Trump's hard-core base; he belongs to the part of Trump's support that hates him, but still supports him because they hate Democrats much more (that group probably also include many Republican Senators and Congresspeople). My brother's a libertarian loonie who believes in worldwide conspiracies of Evil being run by Hillary, Soros, Israel and The Media.

So I screamed at him for a half hour or so on the phone, telling him repeatedly that he has his head up his ass and doesn't know shit about politics, history or culture, then he said he had to go and I told him I loved him and to take care, and sorry about the yelling.

And most likely, in November we'll do it again.

Actually we don't disagree about absolutely everything. He's a scientist and doesn't deny that humans cause global warming and need to stop it. I repeatedly make a point of acknowledging that he is well-informed about science, technology, engineering and math, highly educated in those areas. He agrees with me that Trump is both an idiot and a career criminal. We both hate Elon Musk, although probably not for identical reasons.

Anyway, if my friend is on to something here, if there's a basic link between right-wing lunacy and loneliness, maybe we all should be calling our crazy right-wing relatives more often, and hugging them more and reminding them more often that we love them even though their heads are completely up their asses.

Maybe even scream at them a little bit less, although I'm not totally sure about that part. That would be asking a lot.

The 2019 MacArthur Genius Grants Will Be Awarded the Day After Tomorrow

Once again, I'm in great suspense. (Please don't ask, "You? A genius grant, Steven? For what?" Please just don't.)

Donald Trump insists that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, but that the selection process is rigged against him.

Which one of the two of us is more of a sad, apelike dude? Which one of us is less like Theodore Roosevelt (won the Nobel Peace Prize, may have been considered for the Literature Prize as well)?

I've posted more than 1,790 posts on the blog over the past 10 years. In addition, I've written 2 unpublished novels, an unpublished play, several published short stories (you've never heard of the periodicals there were published in, which today are probably defunct), many more unpublished short stories, drafts of several more, unfinished novels and a buncha miscellaneous stuff.

Trump compiled a list of of his accomplishments as President earlier this year in which the word "accomplishments" was misspelled. He has breathed tremendous new life into feminism, environmentalism, stand-up comedy and political journalism -- all unintentionally. He has been known to pose as his own nauseatingly fawning publicist. He quite recently claimed to weigh 239 pounds. He claims to have huge hands and to draw record-size crowds. Trump university. Trump Steaks. Trump commemorative plates.

I'm comparing myself to this guy. I guess I'm having severe doubts about myself and whatever it is I do.

Economics: Beyond Quantity

As I've mentioned several times already on this blog, there appear to me to be (at least) two different kinds of socialists: those whose primary enemy are wealthy people, who want to eradicate great personal fortunes; and then those like me, who would much rather eliminate poverty, and do not believe that eliminating wealth and eliminating poverty are one and the same thing.

It also occurs to me that there are (at least) two different kinds of entrepreneurs: those who feel that the way to become rich is to squeeze whatever money is left in the possession of poor people out of them; and those who do not. It could well be that the first kind of socialist is only able, for some reason, to perceive the first kind of entrepreneur. Michael Brooks, for example,

a left-wing American radio news-talk guy who often and flatly states his belief that billionaires are evil, and that the quantitative category of billionaire must be eradicated, may, for some reason, only be able to perceive billionaires to the extent that they resemble Donald Trump. Brooks lives in New York City, so if he wanted to, he could look around himself and see rich people doing all sorts of un-Trump-like things, from leaving decent tips to giving to charity to raising money for the Democratic Party... Maybe Brooks sees all of this every day, and he doesn't consider those people to be actually rich unless they're actually billionaires. I don't know, I don't know how Brooks thinks, except that I suspect he doesn't think very deeply or in great detail, at least not when it might contradict certain flatly-held beliefs. (You gotta hold those flatly-held beliefs way down low, out of the wind, they might get knocked over and you'd actually notice something for once.)

Conversely, some people, some of whom have studied Adam Smith and then ceased to think about economics (although in many cases continuing to write about it and win Nobel Prizes in economics), believe that rich people are morally better than poor people, and that everything entrepreneurs do is a blessing for mankind in general. It's hard for me to imagine how anyone can read Smith and not perceive that the world has changed beyond all recognition since he published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, but, quite obviously, for many businesspeople, Smith is still quite literally the last word. Just as, for many Medieval people, beyond a few miles from the coasts the oceans were full of dragons and death, so, for many economists right up to the present day, beyond Smith lies Marx, who is pure evil and has nothing to give to mankind except agony.

Although I believe it is possible for someone to become wealthy and to benefit mankind at the same time, ironically, the economics of Smith, who believed that to become wealthy was to benefit mankind and vice versa, have given ideological cover to entrepreneurs who thrive while behaving in ways which are utterly predatory, and much worse than useless for the common good.

Also, and this is very important in any meaningful discussion of economics: there are (at least) two different ways of measuring someone's well-being: the first simply adds up the monetary value of everything that person owns; and the second one, the one I use, recognizes that life is not nearly that simple: well-being is a matter of your health, where you live, the air you breathe, what you eat, what opportunities you have, and so forth. And these things are not always strictly measurable in monetary terms. Comparable good things can cost much more for one person than for another; or they can be free in some cases; or, in other cases, they may not be available for any amount of money. (I just mentioned the common good: quick now, what is the common good worth in dollars and cents?)

Economic discussions often focus much too narrowly on quantities of currency, and not nearly enough on qualities of existence. The latter, the quality, is really the only thing that matters. The only reason that the quantities of currency matter is that they can sometimes affect those qualities.

Quantities of currency can affect people's lives very much. You can improve people's lives very much by giving them cash, and, there's no doubt at all, you can kill a lot of people by depriving them of cash. But it isn't the actual cash or lack of it which helps or hurts someone, it's the things which cash can buy. And cash can't buy everything. It can buy exactly what a buyer and seller agree that it can buy. That's exactly how much it has always been able to buy. If someone owns a house and is calculating how much they might save buy installing solar panels, and they're really not thinking about saving human life on Earth, then their economic calculations are appallingly primitive. So, how much would you pay to save human life? Hopefully you can see how absurd the question is. We can't buy a clean atmosphere. We're going to have to actually clean it up, and cleaning it up may well involve putting much less emphasis and worth on quantities of cash, and much more on things like qualities of substances and of behaviors. It may be environmentalism which will finally force many people to confront the fact that money isn't really reality, it's just a tool we've been using for a while, which we can set down whenever we choose, and pick up a new one.

So, to Michael Brooks, I say (ha ha, just kidding, I know damn well Michael Brooks isn't listening to anyone saying anything resembling any of this), focus on the effect people have, and not on the size of their stack. No doubt, in many cases, billionaires actually are complete bastards, just like you say they are. So, in those cases, tell us, news-talk guy, tell us specifically, what bad things they are doing. If you happen to know what those bad things are. If not, maybe you should do some research before the next time you open your mouth. Be careful, though! Research, when diligently and earnestly done, has been known to upset long-cherished beliefs!

People Being Hurt By the Trump Administration

In case you've been fortunate enough not to have been adversely affected by the Trump administration's policies slashing funding for social safety-net programs, and wondering whether anyone you know personally is feeling the effects --

-- well, for example, there's me. My food stamps have been discontinued and then continued again, back and forth a couple of times. Currently they've been cut off for a few months. And now the Social Security Administration informs me that they intend to discontinue my disability benefits as of next month. My Medicaid would be gone, and I might owe the government some money for years' worth of benefits they are now alleging that I was not eligible for.

A paralegal at the legal firm which represents me says that the threat to drop me from Disability and Medicaid is a simple mix-up and will be straightened out without too much trouble, internally, within Social Security, without having to take my case to court, and I shouldn't worry. I'm trying not to worry. As far as my food stamps are concerned, they're not sure whether or not those will be continued. They're looking into it.

And I'm doing a lot better than many disability recipients in that I have a lawyer. I can picture someone getting letters like the ones I've been getting from Social Security and having no idea what they mean (I had no idea what they meant, the paralegal had to explain them to me) or what to do about it.

I'm pretty sure I know what the Trump administration would like us to do about it -- die in the streets like dogs, after they've seized everything we have. That's what they'd like us to do.

Like I said, I'm trying not to worry. I hope that paralegal knows what she's talking about. I'm hoping I'm wrong when it feels to me that is Trump appointees coming after me and everything I own (it's not much), and that it's very, very personal.

Same Trump, Different Day

William Consovoy, one of our President's lawyers, reacted with disdain to the efforts of Democrats in the House of Representatives to obtain Trump's tax returns, insisting that they've offered no good reason to obtain the documents.

Right. And also, nobody thinks that Trump's father bribed anybody to get him into Fordham and Wharton.

And it's obvious that Trump's comb-over isn't hiding anything.

And no-one would characterize Trump as a liar.

And he's draining the swamp.

And Shaquille O'Neal is not a tall man. Not at all.

And there's nothing whatsoever farcical about President Trump and his administration.

And Trump weighs 239 pounds.

And his base gets furious over the mere suggestion, the mere idea, that some poor people might be getting dozens or hundreds of dollars too much from the government, while remaining oblivious to the millions and billions the Trump administration is ripping off.

And Mexico paid for that beautiful 2000-mile-long wall guarding us from Mexicans. Believe me, folks, I've spoken to some experts on the subject of imaginary walls, and all of them, to an imaginary man, are ecstatic about the quality of our new border wall.

And the crowd at Trump's inauguration was not only the biggest crowd anyone has ever seen, anywhere -- it keeps getting bigger.

And there's no over-compensation involved in Trump's constant use of terms like yuge and biggest ever, what could you possibly even mean, that's ridiculous. YOU'RE the over-compensation!

And America is getting greater, and more beloved around the world, and better-run, and more beautiful, every day.

"Is He Crazy or is That Just the Way He Acts?"

I saw that headline over a picture of Trump, and, like many others, I'm sure, at first I assumed it was someone talking about Trump -- perhaps a high-level Republican, speaking off the record, to be sure, but getting pretty tired of pretending that Trump isn't a lunatic and a jackass.

But no, that's a quote from Trump, talking to reporters today about Beto O'Rourke's announcement of his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President as he sat beside the Irish Prime Minister.

Trump's entire comment on the subject was:

"I think he's got a lot of hand movement. Is he crazy or is that just the way he acts? I've never seen hand movement. I watched him a little while this morning doing, I assume some kind of a news conference, and I've actually never seen anything quite like it. Study it; I'm sure you'll agree."

It's not just that Trump insults everyone: his insults are so dumb and dull. So utterly lacking in wit, style and grace. Every time we hear another of Donald's insults we groan and roll our eyes and ask ourselves how anyone could ever like this moron.

Just for relief from the daily dullness of the moron-in-Chief, I'm going to quote some insults from someone who was really good at it: that great American, Mark Twain, O how we need his like right now:

"It [the press] has scoffed at religion till it has made scoffing popular. It has defended official criminals, on party pretexts, until it has created a United States Senate whose members are incapable of determining what crime against law and the dignity of their own body is—they are so morally blind—and it has made light of dishonesty till we have as a result a Congress which contracts to work for a certain sum and then deliberately steals additional wages out of the public pocket and is pained and surprised that anybody should worry about a little thing like that."

"Benjamin Franklin did a great many notable things for his country, and made her young name to be honored in many lands as the mother of such a son. It is not the idea of this memoir to ignore that or cover it up. No; the simple idea of it is to snub those pretentious maxims of his, which he worked up with a great show of originality out of truisms that had become wearisome platitudes as early as the dispersion from Babel."

"When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and unblessed Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane."

"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

"It does look as if Massachusetts were in a fair way to embarrass me with kindnesses this year. In the first place, a Massachusetts judge has just decided in open court that a Boston publisher may sell, not only his own property in a free and unfettered way, but also may as freely sell property which does not belong to him but to me; property which he has not bought and which I have not sold. Under this ruling I am now advertising that judge's homestead for sale, and, if I make as good a sum out of it as I expect, I shall go on and sell out the rest of his property."

"The only reason why God created man is because he was disappointed with the monkey."

"Mr. Roosevelt is the most formidable disaster that has befallen the country since the Civil War—but the vast mass of the nation loves him, is frantically fond of him, even idolizes him. This is the simple truth. It sounds like a libel upon the intelligence of the human race, but it isn't; there isn't any way to libel the intelligence of the human race."