Should They Look in the Mirror? Should They Just Get New Glasses?

As much as the majority of this country was mobilized against Communism, it's fair to say that Republicans were most virulent, aggressive, and sometimes mindless about combatting Communism.  Setting aside Joe McCarthy's moronic and destructive antics, we propped up a collection of pretty horrible dictators, just because they said they opposed Communism.

But Communism finally fell in most of the places where it dominated.  Its functional birthplace was in what became known as the Soviet Union, and it had other outgrowths, like in China and Cuba.  It also had an outgrowth in Vietnam, because North Vietnam won a war, sort of, and it failed to spread from North Korea to South Korea, because North Korea lost a war.  A number of other countries were absorbed into the Communist regime, but that's because of Soviet imperialism.  Cuba's largely hanging on, China sort of is, and the erstwhile Soviet Union, now Russia and other independents, have had an interesting and troubling journey. 

Two years ago, Russia staged a military invasion of the Ukraine, having earlier taken over Crimea.  Well, it wasn't really Russia.  It was Vladimir Putin.  He invented some nonsensical allegations, and he began expanding his empire.

Vladimir Putin was born into Communism in the Soviet Union.  He was a devoted Communist, and he worked his way up the hierarchy.  Eventually, after the Soviet Union disbanded, he became president of...Russia.  He did it the old fashioned Soviet way, which was all he knew.  He cheated, and anyone who got in his way got killed.  The last one was last week.  Putin is today's Stalin.

So, the United States, still telling itself it "exports democracy," even though it doesn't exactly have democracy to export, came to the aid of the Ukraine.  Until recently.  Now, the Republicans are niggling about supporting the Ukraine adequately, and some of them (famously and idiotically Tucker Carlson, who claims Russia is nicer and better than the US, but who inexplicably doesn't want to move there) are cozying up to Putin.  It's probably important to note that Donnie Trump also cozied up to Putin, because Putin, and a number of other world leaders, know that Donnie is shallow enough and stupid enough to let his head be turned by anyone who says nice things to him.  In fact, Donnie will tell you that.  He'll tell you how wonderful someone is, because they told him how wonderful he is.  If this sounds to you like mutual masturbation, it sounds like that to me, too.

But the point is that the Ukraine's enemy is Vladimir Putin, who is a typical Communist dictator and, as Donnie would put it, if it wasn't about his boyfriend, Vlad, a "thug."  Vlad is doing precisely what the original Soviets did: he's invading and destroying other countries to make them part of his empire.

If there's anyone on earth who should be reliable to challenge that, it's American Republicans.  They should be able to do this in their sleep.  This is a Soviet dictator, once again trying to build himself an empire.  But they can't now.  They have two problems.  Maybe three.  One is that Democrats want to support the Ukraine, and Republicans today are incapable of doing anything in concert with Democrats, no matter how much they would otherwise be inclined to do it.  The second is that the Republican Party is broken and in such shambles that it can't really decide to do much of anything.  Certainly nothing adaptive.  The possible third problem is that Donnie just loves his boyfriend, whom he acknowledges trusting more than anyone, and it's extremely possible he has let his Republican stooges know not to get in his boyfriend's way.  One of Donnie's other psychotic fantasies, assuming he believes it, or cares, is that he will be elected president again, and having retaken the office (oops, sorry, Donnie, I forgot you were arguing that POTUS is not an office.  Well, it is to the rest of us.), he will ask lover boy Vlad to knock it off, which, he would tell himself, Vlad would, because Donnie always believes this nonsense about other dictators falling all over themselves to please him.

It's hard -- impossible, really -- to fathom how today's American Republicans aren't painfully aware of the comically ridiculous, and antithetical to everything they normally believe, corner into which they have painted themselves.  It's as if they no longer even know who they are.

Or, To Look At It In a Different Way, We Can Consider Placebos.

You Know It’s a Placebo. So Why Does It Still Work? | WIRED

It's certainly noteworthy that this article is about both the medical use of placebo, and about politics.  As, frankly, it should be.

Let's start out talking about placebo.  The article mentions that this intervention is ancient.  It mentions that the vast, vast majority of doctors use it (for various reasons, under various circumstances, and with various styles).  I have.  Placebos have a number of kinds of meanings, including becoming what we call "transitional objects."  The article talks about one reportedly very imperfect study that showed placebo benefit in most of the patients in that very imperfect study.  The fact is that in much more careful, rigorous, and proper study conditions, placebo is reliably effective about 1/3 of the time.  I count that as impressively effective.  Interestingly, it turns out not to matter whether the prescriber does or doesn't admit the prescribed substance is a placebo.  When I was in high school, and I worked for a pharmacist, we used to dispense something called "Cebo-Caps."  My uncle, who was an internist, used to prescribe Obecalp (placebo spelled backwards).  In my internship, I did an emergency room evaluation of a man who had what we used to call "cardiac neurosis."  He reported constant chest pain, was nonfunctional, and always thought he was at death's door.  During the history, I asked him about his medications.  There was a very long list.  At some point, he said he was taking "placebo."  I asked him the dose, and he told me.  He didn't seem to recognize that placebo was an inert add-on, so the doctor could give him yet something else without causing drug interactions or exposing him to more side effects.  And setting aside the purely intentional prescribing of placebo, there's the prescribing of various things (medications, surgery, psychotherapy) that the doctor thinks have clinical value, but they don't.  (I just read an article about 18th or 19th C Americans who "reasoned" that tuberculosis was caused by vampires, so they exhumed the bodies of people who died of TB -- and were therefore vampires -- and removed their hearts and burned them, so they wouldn't come out of their graves and give others TB.   Sometimes, it's even proven that the interventions don't have clinical value, but the doctor institutes them anyway, either to be able to offer something, instead of nothing, or to create a basis to charge a fee.

But you don't need me to tell you any of the secrets of medical practice.  If you read the linked article, some of them aren't so secret any more anyway.  This is about more than that. 

If, for example, you look at the "Fortunately" paragraph, you will see that a doctor might prescribe an antibiotic for a condition that is not treatable with antibiotics, or vitamins when there is no deficiency.  The doctor knows s/he is not doing anything active.  But s/he 1) has been consulted, and does not want to feel like a useless disappointment who can't improve the patient's situation, and 2) the doctor has been consulted by a patient who commonly wants something done.  The patient neither knows nor cares that what the doctor is doing isn't going to affect/improve the patient's health.  The patient just has symptoms, and wants something done.  And the doctor gets to pretend to be useful, and gets to charge for the intervention.  So it's really a collusion.

"In a deepfake world where AIs masquerade as people, where marketing calls itself wellness...there's probably nothing so refreshing as a tiny step in the opposite direction: prescribing a pill of nothing, and calling it out as such."  It's a nervy thing to do -- openly admitting you're not doing anything -- and many doctors can't bring themselves to do it.  But as I said, it doesn't change the (1/3 positive) outcome if you do.

"The resulting study" paragraph illustrates how improbably doctors can get away with open label placebo prescribing.  They have the patients to help them, by the patients' in effect inventing their own excuses why something that can't chemically work works.  It turns out to be essential that the patient provides a good deal of the fantasy that inert materials are somehow effective.  In a related setting, voodoo curses "work," because the cursed person believes they work.

"The researcher's bedside manner is crucial...Maybe we start to feel better when someone listens to us, shows respect for our views, and makes common cause with us."  Or even pretends to.  I left off "against our ailments" because it's unclear what the ailments are, or if there have to be any.

"Perhaps OLPs [open label placebos] are a sort of meta-placebo, a testament to how much we believe in our power of belief...A patient may find relief from an open label placebo, the sugar pill that we know is a sugar pill gives us something that its deceptive counterpart doesn't[!!].  It tells us we aren't dupes who can be fooled by lab-coated experts[!!]."  You really have to give those statements careful consideration.  Belief is as good as education, training, and knowledge.  It may be better.  And it allows us not to feel somehow inferior to people who have more education, training, and knowledge than we do.  The table is entirely turned.  The "lab-coated experts" aren't the experts.  The believers are the experts.

"When you venture outside the scientific literature into the world of contemporary consumer marketing, most of the placebos you'll find are still the deceptive kind...Placebos also haunt what the political scientist Murray Edelman famously termed the 'symbolic uses of politics.'  In voters' 'anxious search for direction,'  --[an 'anxious search for direction;' that tells you something you should keep in mind] -- Edelman argued, they might be drawn to leaders who can dramatize confidence 'in a world many of them find alien' -- regardless of whether that performance achieves anything for the voter.  'In place of impersonal threatening forces, followers are reassured by a dramaturgy of personal coping,' Edelman wrote.  That was in the 1960s, but it could just as well have been describing any number of modern politicians."  Or snake oil salesmen.  (If you just became incontinent of urine, you're paying attention, and you get the point.)

"Increasingly, though, cultural (as opposed to clinical) placebos are becoming open label, too."  If you've ever watched Jordan Klepper talk to Trump supporters, and point out their inconsistencies, and the entirely invented, and not remotely true, positions they take, because the "doctor" told them what was the problem, and what was the cure, and they either can't continue the conversation, or they just keep riding the same inane position, you see how the placebo has completely taken hold.  You see how the belief trumps (excuse the pun) all evidence of reality, and how the fact of adhering to a belief is somehow treated as an adequate reason to disqualify experts.  The ability to form, or adopt, an opinion is more compelling than careful and lengthy education.

"So why, when we know the sham treatment is a sham, does it work?  My best bet is that whether we're in a medical setting or casting a vote, we want to feel like someone's taking care of us."  If that sounds like the description of a helpless child, dismissing it that way fails to take into account animal behavior, which is reflected in human nature.  Many animals, including human ones, rely on a pack mentality and social structure.  And it's well known that some non-human animals, and human ones, have a kind of "personal" nature that leads them to lead, and most have a nature that leads them to follow.  Ideally, "leaders" who are doctors are interested in their patients' well-being, as Hypocrates suggested they should be.  The same cannot remotely be said of people who lead politically, or in business.

There are various kinds of toxic "placebos" foisted on people.  Some "leaders" order their followers to take poison, or bully, harm or kill someone else.  Others tell their followers that there are barbarians at the gate, and that gate is, for example, the southern border of this country, which vile, greedy, rapacious, criminals want to breech.

It's tragic that they don't just give out sugar pills instead.

We Came in Second? To California?

America’s Most Racist States in 2024 (RANKED) (msn.com)

This article is someone's way of ranking the racism of states in this wonderful country of ours.  They used two indicators: the number of registered hate groups (hate groups register themselves?), and the number of racist post-election tweets.  It's not made clear how they count racist post-election tweets.  Most commonly, the number of racist post-election tweets is listed as a fraction.  I don't know what 1.4 racist post-election tweets means, unless it's 1.4 per thousand or per hundred thousand or something.  But they don't tell you.

It's a curious thing that Alaska is the least racist state, according to the indicators chosen.  They're said to have one registered hate group, and no racist post-election tweets.  Interestingly, there's been some noise lately about Alaska's wanting to secede from the Union.  It appears they don't think they belong in this group of racist people/Americans.

If you're interested, you can look for yourselves at this list. 

Massachusetts (#32), for example, was much higher than I would have thought.  They were a good deal more racist than Oklahoma (#21), and not nearly as racist as Texas (#49).  Texas and Oklahoma abut each other.  I thought they were the same in terms of racism.  Someone just released a movie about greed and racism in Oklahoma.  Well, maybe Oklahomans are less angry because someone else made a musical about them (it's not particularly great, but at least it's a musical), and Texans are more angry because they're saddled (sorry for the pun) with Greg Abbott, "Lyin'" Ted Cruz (that's what Donnie Trump calls him when he's insulting Ted, Ted's wife, and Ted's father, and Ted is, um, how can put this, performing fellatio on Donnie), and Ken Paxton.

We in "sunny" Florida were the second most racist state.  Apparently, we have 53 registered hate groups and 1.3 racist post-election tweets.

Yeah, OK, California has way more people than we do here, but how do they have 65 registered hate groups, and 0.5 racist post-election tweets?  It's as if Californians were angry enough to have a lot of hate groups, but not angry enough to send out racist post-election tweets.  Californians are so mellow that they're racist, but they can't be bothered to do much about it.

If you're wondering how California and Florida were more racist than Texas, and Texas was #49, it's because they also included DC.  So there were 51 entries, not 50.

Who's Your Daddy? (Who Are Your Daddies?)

Yet again, Donnie Trump is getting donations to pay his lawyers (whom he isn't going to pay).  Now, the tits he's sucking are on "megadonors," not just the small contributors.

Donnie started his life this way.  His biological daddy, Fred Sr, had amassed an impressive (depressing, if you were one of his tenants) portfolio of real estate, and he didn't want to leave it to Fred Jr, Donnie's older brother, who reportedly had a drinking problem.  (Are we, in Donnie and Rep/con fashion, to write off Germans as rigid and unempathic, even about their own offspring?)  So, Fred Sr left his wealth to Donnie, who began squandering and mismanaging it.  I don't know anything about Fred Sr and his wife, but apart from one daughter who became a judge, they seem to have spawned troubled boys.

Why Fred Sr underwrote his loser son, Donnie, is a mystery to me.  But he did, and Donnie lost money hand over fist.  Fred Sr kept underwriting Donnie and his losses.  Maybe Fred Sr was just a superficial and meaningless person, and as long as he could see the Drumpf/Trump name in lights, he was satisfied.  The result, though, is that Donnie's adulthood, failure that it was (bankruptcies, chronic marital failures, etc) was enabled by Fred Sr, because Donnie couldn't do anything except fuck up.  (Except at least he wasn't an alcoholic, like Fred Jr, and he held on to daddy's leg, and made fun of Fred Jr.  That was his big accomplishment.  And it led him to realize that phony images are everything, so creating them became his specialty.)

Fred Sr was Donnie's daddy.  But Fred Sr is dead now, so Donnie has found a collection of other daddies.  He predictably gets himself in various kinds of trouble, and he either stiffs the people he "hires" to bail him out of it, or he gets other suckers to give him their money, so he can...  You know, I don't know what he does with the money.  I don't know if he pays the people he "hires," or he just uses it to support his phony upkeep.  Why should you pay overpriced lawyers to get you out of the trouble you make for yourself, if you can stiff them, like you stiff everyone else, and buy a gold toilet for your 30K sq ft (or is it 11K sq ft?) apartment instead?  And that apartment is worth... Oh, that's right, I read yesterday that anything burdened with the Trump name (anything that hasn't gone out of business already) is dropping in value.

But still, those donors keep coughing up their money.  Why?  Assuming they think Donnie will pull a victory out of his ass (well, our asses), The Guardian says this: "while many donor concerns remain -- not least following Trump's comments about abandoning NATO members -- for some donors they appear subordinate to their support of policies including low taxes and environmental deregulation."  Although The Guardian adds that tech billionaire Peter Thiel and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman won't donate again.  It wasn't explained why people with way more money than they can possible figure out what to do with would turn away from someone who will advocate to give them more, and allow them to finish trashing the planet.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe there really is a religion to get.  (Although to be fair to myself, I never said there wasn't religion.  I just said it's based on fairy tales.)  But the point is that although Donnie doesn't approve of addiction to alcohol, he does approve of addiction to money, and he doesn't care how much damage is done in the pursuit of it.  And the same is true of the vast majority of the suckers who donate their money to him.  It's a curious thing that someone with so many daddies has so many people whose uncle he is.

So, we'll see.  Some perseverative idiot who calls himself "Anonymous" always, regardless of the topic of the posts in this blog, enters comments about Trump's winning this year.  I have not the slightest doubt s/he will do it again under this post.  I wonder if s/he is one of Trump's mindless donors, too.  Likely so.

"Secession?" I Think That's the Wrong Word.

So, 36% of Alaskans want to secede from the Union.  Alaska was the last or next to last state to be admitted, and now, they want out.  Alaska Secession Calls Grow as More Than a Third Want State to Leave US (msn.com)  And a proportion of Alaskans is only the largest proportion from any state.  The national average of state residents who want their states to secede is 23%.  Call it a quarter.  Twenty-nine percent of Republicans have given up, and 21% of Democrats are done.

Thirty-one percent of Texans, 29% of Californians, and 28% of New Yorkers and Oklahomans have had enough.  "Just" 13% of Minnesotans, and 14% of Ohioans, Massachusettsites, and Rhode Islanders don't want to do this any more.

New Hampshire is interesting here.  The linked article says New Hampshire citizens are put off by the size of the deficit, but Carla Gericke, "acting president of the Foundation for New Hampshire Independence, 'described secession from the United States as 'an idea whose time has come and a reflection of the frustration everyone on the political spectrum [emphasis mine] is feeling.'"

Earlier this morning, I was reading an article that I can't find again, and it listed someone's view of the 10 worst presidents.  On the list was Calvin Coolidge, who was dramatically hands off of many things, and who shifted fiscal burdens away from the rich, badly aggravating the wealth disparity.  And a couple of them were reportedly personally opposed to slavery, but they did nothing to inhibit it.  Just those two things sound like indicators of the kinds of things that might lead to frustration among today's Americans.  Warren Harding, who made the list I saw, was too busy playing golf and carrying on with his mistresses.

But in my opinion, none of those things are most likely to lead to the level of pessimism and defeat felt by so many Americans, even in the original Commonwealth of Massachusetts and States of New York and Rhode Island.  The biggest problem we have now is that the public are irrelevant.  People are in office because they run for office, and running for office costs more money than the vast majority of people have, and candidates get the money it takes from donors.  It is those donors, not the public/voters, who are the electeds' constituents.  And if government is not in the public's/voters' interest, but rather at their expense, because they have to follow rules and pay taxes, and the rich/donors don't, then why would the public want to be part of the USA any more?  Because we develop and make things here?  They develop things everywhere, and they make them cheaper in other places.

And we've been sold another bill of goods, too.  The First Amendment to the Constitution promises/guarantees us that the Union will not impose a state religion, but many of the states do just that.  There are Americans who insist this is a Christian country, even though the First Amendment says it isn't, and they demand that everyone follow their interpretation of what they think Christian rules are.

Likewise, the "Second Amendment" (I put it in quotes because there is no "Second Amendment."  It has been indirectly repealed.) is about militias.  Many Americans insist it's about guns.  It's not at all.

The 13th Amendment freed the slaves.  This included that they -- African Americans -- had rights equal to everyone else's.  Tell that to African Americans.  Be prepared for an earful in return.

Donnie Trump rejects the popular vote and the Electoral College vote, declaring himself the winner, no matter how badly he lost.  He doesn't believe in democracy or a representative Republic.  And as of the last presidential election, he had a lot of support.  Tens of millions of voters favored him, and after he -- I'm sorry to say this, Donnie -- lost, he still had a significant contingent of Americans who agreed that he didn't.  He just couldn't have.  They attacked the seat of government, and sent all the legislators scurrying.  If many of them were unclear why they were scurrying, Mike Pence was clear: his life was directly threatened, by members of his own party, because he followed the law.

Donnie also rejects Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which says that anyone guilty of insurrection cannot hold "any" federal or state office, civil or military.  And again, he appears to have some support for his position, although frankly, that support seems to be waning.  Colorado has found him guilty and will not put him on the ballot.  Maine seems to be following suit.   Constitutional expert Lawrence Tribe interprets that Donnie knows he is disqualified, and is relying on the SCOTUS to say that Colorado and Maine are wrong (based on who knows what, apart from the far right leanings of the majority of SCOTUS Justices), and this is why Donnie wants a wider ranging decision, and the trials he hasn't lost yet postponed until after the election.  He thinks he can still win it, in spite of all his disabilities.  By the way, if you watch Donnie ramble more or less incoherently, you see Donnie, and you see the sign-holders behind him.  What you do not see is the audience, which, by all other inferences, is most likely minimal.  Yes, I know about the polls, but poll results are a matter of how many people are polled, who those people are, and how many people who are asked for their opinions choose to give one.  I'm setting aside whether or not the opinions expressed are true representations of what respondents think.  If you're a fan of Jordan Klepper, and you watch enough of his videos, you'll catch one in NYC on a day Donnie was called into court, and he let it be known this was a time for support.  Almost no one was there.  We're talking about Manhattan, and Donnie couldn't stimulate tens of thousands of people, or a thousand people, or a hundred people, or more than maybe 5-10 people.

No, the word is not "secession.  It's dissolution.  It was Benjamin Franklin who said the Founding Fathers were giving us a democracy/Republic, "if [we could] keep it."  It appears we couldn't.  Or we didn't want to.  We exchanged it for a plutocracy.  And we rely for our choice of representatives on a collection of breathtaking dimwits, most of whom are voters who are mostly influenced by how much exposure candidates buy with money they got from their donors/constituents, and some of whom are the electeds themselves, who have no idea what they're doing, and seem delighted to spout nonsense.

Of course, maybe it doesn't matter if we dissolve or destroy this "experiment in democracy."  If our money-hungry and single-minded focus on continuing to burn fossil fuels finishes destroying the planet, then it's not a further loss if we destroy each country on it, either.

A Case in Point

Two days ago, I was coming home from downtown Miami.  I take I-95 north to 103rd St, come north on 6th Ave, and turn right on 119th St.

As I was approaching the intersection of 6th Avenue and 119th St, I could very clearly see an accident that occurred in the southbound lane of 6th Ave at 119th St.  BP police were there by then, and I couldn't tell if anyone was hurt.  There was obvious damage to two cars, though.

The lackadaisical habit BP police have of being on their shifts is either staying in the Administration Building, two cruisers facing in opposite directions so the officers can yack with each other in Griffing Park, a cruiser facing north in the break in the median at 116th St, or, as was true today, a cruiser sitting in the 119th St median at the intersection with 9th Ave.

The closest any of these come to considering in any way speeding on 6th Ave, which has always been our problem street, is the north-facing cruiser in the median at 116th St.  But the possible problematic driving that might have caused the accident I saw at 119th St already happened, and those two cars were never going to get to 116th St.

This is not "your father's BP."  No one makes a serious attempt to patrol our streets -- certainly not our most problematic one -- and, for what it's worth, as many times as I have raised the issue, the "Don't Even Think About Speeding" signs never re-appeared.  You could argue that's just as well, because apart from the signs, we don't give anyone reason to think we're serious.

As I said, 6th Ave has always been our worst street, in terms of speeding.  Sixth Ave is owned by the state, which has made clear they weren't going to allow us to lower the speed limit (although what difference would it make if we did, since we make no meaningful attempt to enforce whatever limit there is), and they're not going to install yet another traffic light after 125th and 123rd, and before the one at the bridge.

The fact that our police don't seem to care, which is a direct or indirect reflection of the fact that our recent succession of "managers" don't care, has cost an increasing number of drivers their vehicles, their health, and in one case, his life.  (I'm not including the recent road rage incident that was almost assuredly unstoppable by anyone.)

We have a problem.  It's a big problem, and it's increasing.  Anyone who lives on the north part of 6th Ave in the Park will tell you about this problem.  Most directly, our problem is a police chief who's uninterested.  Less directly, it's "managers" who are uninterested.  But ultimately -- the place where the buck stops -- it's Commissions that are uninterested.  They need to get a better manager, and make sure everyone knows which end is up.  This, as I said, would require them to care -- about this! -- and I have no evidence that they do.

They don't care about bad driving on 6th Ave, or enforcement, or accidents, or the medians.  So about what do they care?  "McMansions?"  Not impressive.  I don't care if someone lives in a larger, newer, nicer house than mine.  And I don't care what genre of architecture it is.  But I do care if the streets I and the rest of us have to drive are safe, and I care very much that no one runs into me or anyone else.  We need active patrolling, especially up and down 6th Ave, and we need those signs back.

I Wonder What Darwin Would Think of the Modern Connotation of the Word "Darwinian."

I want to begin this discussion with a seemingly unrelated aside.  In medicine, there is a diagnosis called "fibromyalgia."  "Fibromyalgia" isn't a real condition.  It's just a diagnosis.  It was invented in the 1970s to account for some of Frederick Wolfe's patients, who complained of pain, but had no objective findings.  Of interest, Dr Wolfe years later recanted his invention of this diagnosis, because it quickly enough got out of control.  "Fibromyalgia" is essentially self-diagnosed on the exclusive basis of subjective complaints.  Objective findings disqualify the diagnosis.  There is no treatment.  It's just a word, and it has no meaning.

"Fibromyalgia" is not the only medical diagnosis that was invented, has no real meaning, and for which there is no meaningful intervention.  The history of medicine contains a number of such fanciful diagnoses.  But a proportion of the public (patients) and providers have latched onto this one.  Dr Wolfe's reason for having recanted about the diagnosis was that increasing numbers of people with decreasingly consistent "symptoms" were being given the diagnosis.  (And, for what it's worth, increasing numbers of willing doctors were playing this game with their "patients," and getting paid for it.  They institute treatments that are not approved and that are going to cause more harm than good.  Dr Wolfe had wanted to find a medical-sounding way to sympathize with his patients' unhappiness, but he realized he created a monster.)

So, back to Darwin.  I am currently reading his The Descent of Man.  Darwin was talking about evolution, and many humans would probably like to think of their evolution, if they believe in it, as an ascent, not a descent, and Darwin does talk about descent from "lower forms."  But Darwin used whatever term he wanted.  He clearly recognizes the superior characteristics of humans from those animals from which they descended.

Much of this book is about anatomy, although he devotes a good deal of his elaboration to sexuality, and how individuals choose each other for reproduction.

But I was particularly struck by an almost passing comment on page 37 of my copy.  "Man in the rudest [it's not clear what Darwin meant by 'rudest'] state in which he now exists is the most dominant animal that has ever appeared on this earth.  He has spread more widely than any other highly organized form: and all others have yielded before him.  He manifestly owes this immense superiority to his intellectual faculties, to his social habits, WHICH LEAD HIM TO AID AND DEFEND HIS FELLOWS [emphasis mine], and to his corporeal structure [anatomical advantages]."  Other parts of this discussion, especially on my page 41, talk about functional anatomical advantages, particularly of the upper extremities and hands, in terms of killing prey to eat them, or even for self-defense.

We commonly use the word "Darwinian" as if it referenced an ongoing competition, or fight, among members of a species, or among humans, for dominance.  But it is Darwin himself who tells us that's not at all what he meant.  We just invented a meaning for Darwin's concept of evolution.  He very clearly understood that many kinds of animals have social structures and social needs, and he tells us clearly that an important advantage among humans, more than among other animals, he says, is their reflex to "aid and defend [their] fellows."

According to Darwin, anyone who thinks "the winner takes the spoils," or other ways of putting it, represents the superior value of human nature is wrong.  Combative, or perhaps even competitive (except competition for a mate*), humans are not the adaptive part of this great species, as Darwin considered it to be.  They are anomalies.  Their victories are their losses.

To come back to medicine, Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin developed the polio vaccine.  They sold the rights to it for $1, so everyone would have unrestricted access.  Alexander Fleming developed penicillin.  He gave the rights away for free, for the same reason Salk and Sabin charged $1.  Humans who divide, and take advantage, are not winners.  They're failures and losers.  Or so says Charles Darwin.  (There's been talk recently about one medication -- I don't remember what it is -- that costs $13 to make and is sold for $1300.)

Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged was a very intriguing book.  But it relied on the idea that some people are meant to lead, succeed, and conquer, and others are meant to toil at low levels (for the benefit of those "above" them).  It encouraged the idea that no one should complain about or criticize this class/caste system.  Modern-day capitalists rely on Rand as their permission to dominate and even mistreat those "below" them.  It's possible to say that Darwin had his way of understanding things, and Rand had hers.  But Darwin would not agree with her. 

*I heard on the radio yesterday a story about an Indian/South Asian woman who lived in this country, and wanted to marry an Indian/South Asian man.  So she advertised on applicable dating sites, and made very specifically clear what she required (tax returns, etc).  She got surprisingly very many responses, and didn't accept any of them.  No one was "good" enough.  But one response came from an Indian/South Asian man who lived in Switzerland, did computer work, was cruising around on these dating sites in his spare time (mostly, it seemed, out of boredom), and saw this frankly ridiculous set of requirements.  He responded to the woman, not with any of the documentation she demanded, but to ask her if this was a joke.  She responded to him that it was not.  They continued to communicate, he continued, in effect, to make fun of her, and they finally decided to meet, out of weird curiosity.  She had lived in the midwest, but had just gotten a job in NYC, and he agreed to come there to meet her, her having said she was available only to meet him at the airport, before her 2:00 "date" and her 4:00 "date."  He had no other reason to be in the US, and he told her he had no place to stay.  She eventually grudgingly said he could stay at the apartment she shared with others, and she continued looking for "Mr Right."  And he continued to make fun of her process.  These two eventually "found" each other, and they've been married for about 30 years, I think she said.  She said her favorite activity in the world is arguing with him, about anything, and she treasures his intellect.  So much for competing for a mate.  Or knowing what you're really looking for.  (I tell people all the time that if you ask anyone why they chose someone else for a spouse or a boy/girlfriend, they'll tell you something.  S/he is smart, has a good sense of humor, is caring, is good-looking, or something.  But they'll never tell you the real reason, because it's unconscious, and they don't know it.  In the case of this Indian/South Asian couple, she's very scrappy, which appealed to him for who knows what reason, and he gets the joke and has fun with it, thereby imposing rational boundaries on her quirkiness, which she presumably unconsciously realizes.  If everyone knew everything they have to know, the divorce rate in this country would not be 50%, and I'd be performing surgery, waiting tables, selling shoes, or cutting grass.)

Oh, Please.

Today was the day when the SCOTUS heard arguments, and asked questions about them, regarding whether or not Colorado can disqualify Trump from running for office.

The background is that a Judge Wallace in Colorado found Trump guilty of insurrection, but decided that the penalty for insurrection did not apply to the office of president.  But the Colorado Supreme Court overruled Judge Wallace, and said Trump was, in fact, disqualified.  Trump, of course, appealed the disqualification, and that's what today's SCOTUS hearing was about.

The basis for declaring Trump disqualified is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, and in particular, Section 3.

I heard snippets on the radio, but it appears that someone thinks most of the Justices, including the ones appointed by Democrat presidents, will be disinclined to agree that Trump is disqualified.  And the seeming reasons are worth noting.

One reason, raised some time ago, is that the president of the US is not an "officer."  Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson resurrected that argument today.  Justice Jackson noted that some "offices" were specified, but the "office" of president was not.  Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution reads as follows: "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, OR HOLD ANY OFFICE, CIVIL OR MILITARY, UNDER THE UNITED STATES OR UNDER ANY STATE [emphasis mine, but quoted directly], who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.  But Congress may by a vote of two thirds of each House, remove such disability."

Note the word "any."  I have never known nor heard of a candidate for anything who did not say he or she was running for "office."  Trump's website repeats the phrase "Donald J Trump for President 2024."  It sure sounds like Trump thinks he's running for office.

Someone, possibly also Justice Jackson, suggested that "offices" are occupied by people who were appointed, not by people who were elected.  It is entirely unclear how or why Justice Jackson invented this semantic and illogical suggestion.  Section 3 of the 14th Amendment specifies "offices" that are very clearly elected (Senator, Representative, etc), so the concept that electeds don't hold "office" was cut from whole cloth.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he thought it was unfair, or not right, to deprive the public of the chance to vote for their preferred candidate.  But we already have that limitation.  If someone wants to be president, but they're 27, and they were born in some country other than this one, they can't run, no matter how many people want to see them as president.  They'll eventually reach age 35, but they can still never run if they weren't born in this country.

Elena Kagan's concern had to do with the thought experiment problem of disqualifying a candidate because one state's judge said he was guilty.  (Not to mention that state's Supreme Court, which said he couldn't run.)  Section 3 of the 14th Amendment doesn't say that the guilty determination has to be federal, and it doesn't say how many states have to agree.  The fact is that although Trump was only convicted in Colorado, Maine agreed he should not be on the ballot.  Because he was disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.  Imagine someone who is convicted of a crime, and incarcerated in some state.  Can the convict request to be set free in some other state, as long as s/he doesn't return to the state where s/he was convicted and sentenced?  What if the crime was related to sexual abuse?  Is the convict only required to register as a sex offender in the state where the conviction happened?  What about when you die?  Are you only dead in the state where you died?  I have no idea why Justice Kagan was tentative, but her concern didn't make any sense.

The far right wing Justices are going to conclude that Trump can run, and he can occupy the..."office"...of president, if he wins.  They'll conclude that because they're far right.  It's unclear why the Justices who are not far right are reluctant to conclude what Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says they have to conclude.  This country is irreparably broken if the Justices' concerns are for their safety if they agree to disqualify Trump.  And interestingly, Trump's appeal is not that he was not guilty of violating Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.  It's that he thinks he should be able to run anyway.  We can add this to the list of examples of Trump's disregard for the Constitution and its Amendments.  It's not a short list.

What the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania Got Wrong.

Pennsylvania had a decades old law barring the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortions.  The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled yesterday that that law was of questionable validity (unconstitutional), because it discriminated against women.  In fact, the original law did not discriminate against women, because it provided for exceptions in cases of rape, incest, or if the pregnant female's health was in danger.  So, in circumstances where the female was at a disadvantage, and she was pregnant, she could use Medicaid benefits to get an abortion.

Frankly, I would venture to say, this being unknowable, that most abortions occur when the pregnancy did not result from rape or incest, and the female's health was not in danger.  Most abortions occur when the partners in a married couple, or boyfriend and girlfriend, or dating at a lower level, but who want to have sex, experience unwanted pregnancy that they tried to prevent, and they don't want a child.  They didn't from the start of that sexual encounter.  And there is no law that says people must reproduce, or how many times.  This is entirely personal, and no one else's business.

The basis of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's ruling was that a ban on abortion (using Medicaid to pay for it) disadvantages, or discriminates against, women, because it is only women who can become pregnant.  That's true, and anyone who has a problem with that fact can take it up with "god."  But unless the impregnated woman was too promiscuous, or unconscious, to know who fathered the pregnancy, an abortion affects two "people," and is commonly agreed to by both of them.  (The movie "Juno" contains a common example.)  If it's only decided by one (the pregnant woman), and the male never finds out there even was a pregnancy, and possibly would not want "his" fetus aborted, then it is the male who is discriminated against.  The flip side of that coin is a sexual encounter that results in a pregnancy about which the male is never informed (and didn't intend or want), and the male is made to take financial responsibility for a pregnancy about which he didn't know, and he didn't want, and which he had no reason to expect.

Females cannot get pregnant all by themselves (well, one allegedly did, sort of), and the decision to end a pregnancy should not be theirs alone.  We don't have a caste system in this country (not a formal and admitted one), and Medicaid is simply health insurance.  It's just that it's only available to people with little money.  But the fact that Medicaid is used to pay for health care should in no way determine what that health care is.  (If someone objects to using publicly pooled money -- taxes -- to pay for abortion, because that person objects to abortion, does he or she take the same approach to having Aetna pay for abortions, if that person has Aetna, and pays an insurance premium?  And anyway, how did this get to be that person's business?)  We have more than enough problems with American "health care" as it is without adding the further burden of shutting people out of actual required health care simply on the basis of what is their insurance.  And if we allow people to get abortions, and pay with Medicaid, if they got raped, or were victims of incest, or their health is in danger, but we claim they shouldn't be able to use Medicaid for abortions if they just want to have sex (which everyone does) and gets unwantedly pregnant, then we're not even consistent, and we're just making up our theory as we go along.

The exceptions to the proscription against using Medicaid for abortions in Pennsylvania, then, protect females from being discriminated against.  What's left is the potential problem of discrimination against males.  The best answer to this problem is that any abortion, or even any birth, should be approved by both parties.

Of separate note, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision was 3-2.  The former Democratic Chief Justice had died in October, 2022, and a Democrat won election for his seat, on the strength of a pro-choice position, with 53% of the vote, over an anti-abortion Republican.  So, the presumption is that decisions like these are so partisan as to be deflating.  It's not different from the SCOTUS, but it's a shame judges and Justices can't just pay attention to the law.  No one is interested in their personal opinions, especially if those personal opinions spring from their personal religious beliefs.