Politics

This is an interesting essay in The Guardian on the idea of quarantining extremist ideas.

A non-trivial proportion of the population regards the media as having a responsibility to represent all idea with equal validity. So the appearance of extremist ideas in the press, even if they are treated negatively, results in more legitimacy than they are due. The authors in this essay make a case for quarantining these extreme ideas, refusing to cover them. Strategic silence, they call it.

When a petulant, irrational, and incurious baby-man meets with world leaders, what can possibly go wrong?

Turns out, a lot.

Dear Governor Brown,

By now you are aware of Nicholas Kirstof’s piece^[Was Kevin Cooper Framed for Murder: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/17/opinion/sunday/kevin-cooper-california-death-row.html] in The New York Times in which he presents abundant evidence that investigators and prosecutors framed Kevin Cooper for the murder of four people in Chino.

Advanced DNA testing could produce potentially exculpatory evidence. Or not. But the truth must be pursued. You have rejected calls to exercise the authority of your office to order such testing. It beggars belief that you would not use that authority wisely in the search for truth, when the evidence was distorted for malicious purposes is so strong.

The thriving New York Times just published a list of questions being posed by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III. What I found particularly interesting was his question about Trump’s intent behind his tweet on May 12, 2017 in which he said: “James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

The question being posed by Mr. Mueller is insightful because it will require Trump to admit to the office of the Special Counsel that he was deliberately attempting to intimidate a party to a Federal investigation.

Brutal piece by Adam Davidson about the pivotal role that the takedown of Michael Cohen plays in the unraveling of this disastrous presidency.

The narrative that will become widely understood is that Donald Trump did not sit atop a global empire. He was not an intuitive genius and tough guy who created billions of dollars of wealth through fearlessness. He had a small, sad operation, mostly run by his two oldest children and Michael Cohen, a lousy lawyer who barely keeps up the pretenses of lawyering and who now faces an avalanche of charges, from taxicab-backed bank fraud to money laundering and campaign-finance violations.

A brutal piece on Trump from the New York Times.

There are plenty of examples these days, from Moscow to Budapest, of how “democracies” can be manipulated to the point where they can yield only one result. This is Trump’s objective, and for it he needs a weakened Justice Department, a weakened press and an American public that will believe anything. He has had setbacks but is stubborn.

Trump’s toolkit is familiar. In it are the tools of every authoritarian brute everywhere. Americans are better than this, though.

Great Stalin - banner of friendship of the peoples of the Soviet Union!

After reading about U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Number 1 fan”, Gene Huber, I was struck by the similarities between the adoration of Trump and that of Soviet leader, Josef Stalin. Throughout his tenure as General Secretary of the Communist Part of the Soviet Union, a cult of personality developed around Stalin. He was often called Великий Сталин (Great Stalin.) Propaganda posters depicted Stalin as a benevolent steward of the needs of the people.

“Спасибо любимому Сталину - за счастливое детство!”

(Thank you dear Stalin for a happy childhood.)

Carl Sagan’s “Baloney detection kit” is arguably more important now than ever. His 9 rules for critical thinking work for science and they can work to detect political baloney, too.

Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

Growing up in the Deep South, I was steeped in the old trope that holds Robert E. Lee, the leader of the Confederate Army as a man of principle who only reluctantly took up arms against the United States. I was well into adulthood before I decided to research Lee’s history for myself. Briefly, the man himself was a slaveowner and held brutal views about their treatment. There is no question about his ideology and why he was a Confederate general. The man was no saint.