One of the reasons why extremism is so effective in American politics is that many people cast their votes based on feelings rather than history, such as what a person did when they were in office, or policy, or what the candidates say they will do. Consequently elections are popularity contests and not job interviews. The whole point of campaign rallies is to stir emotions, to “fire up” the base. What exactly is the base? History has shown the consequence of elections based emotions rather than actions.
The problem with extremism is not only that for some it creates enemies but also that for a large group of people it creates knee jerk reactions against. For these people, anything that sounds extreme to them is to not be believed or at least not react to. In my view, these are people like the frog in the warm water that doesn’t jump out as the temperature increases to boiling. All of this is by design to get us either fighting against each other or to take no action.
I think the following quote sums up my position on Harris v. Trump, and I like the entire Atlantic article in which it was written:
If the country is inching toward a more pro-Palestinian stance, the struggle will take place within the Democratic Party. Harris is movable. Who among the Republicans will put pressure on Trump to care about Palestinians? Tom Cotton? Marco Rubio? Stephen Miller?
I understand why people who have a strong dislike for the U.S. Federal government, and want to see it blown up, vote for Trump because there is high probability he will provide the result they desire. However, for every other desired outcome, I think the probability is higher with Democrats in office than Republicans.
Even the most democratic of rights, the right to protest, is most probable of being defended by Democrats than Republicans.
Looking at the Cubs end of season summary by BleedCubbieBlue.com, I think the last list that compares the top ten players from the 2023 season to the 2024 season shows the best explanation for why the Cubs did not the playoffs. All of the Cubs best 2023 players regressed in 2024, and in the case of Cody Bellinger, the regression was dramatic. Last off season we did want Bellinger to leave, but I think this off season if Bellinger does leave the impact will not be as big.
I’ve made an effort this year to post more pictures here. A consequence of traveling for a week is the appearance of several pictures on this page.
Most of the leaves of trees near me have dropped except for this one tree that has been slower.
I am pretty sure the temperature hit a record high here in southeast Michigan. Here I am walking outside in a T-shirt and shorts on the last week of October.
Yesterday we went off the beaten path and saw parts of northern Wisconsin for the first time.
Today we crossed the mighty Mac
The first day of our fall 🍁 road trip was fantastic.
I wonder whether religion’s emphasis on belief rather than faith is contributing to the current state of the United States in which believing an outlandish statement, or at least tolerating it, is about showing loyalty. Immigrants eating dogs and cats? I’ll nod my head politely (just like in church when something I am supposed believe but don’t is said), maybe even say, “it’s possible, what do I know?” because it is how I show I am loyal. Stating one’s beliefs or agreeing to a statement of beliefs in the context of religion is a statement of one’s loyalty to that religion.
More fall color is appearing on this tree from when I took this picture of it a week ago.
Finished reading: Falling Upward, Revised and Updated by Richard Rohr 📚 This is third time I’ve read this book, albeit the first time of this edition. It might be the most important book I’ve ever read in how it opens my eyes.
Long time fellow blogger Dave Farquhar frequently writes interesting articles about computing history. I recommend his site, The Silicon Underground.
Android 15 Private Space
I really like this post by John Philipin, and this quote about education and colleges that I wish was my own:
A university is to educate .. not train. If you are wondering about the difference, ask yourself if you prefer your children to attend sex education classes or sex training classes.
My additional two cents is that this is the consequence of a society that defines success as wealth, and wealth as a dollar value. Already back when I was in college in the mid 80s, the majority of my colleagues were there to get the degree to get the “good paying” job. Honestly, that is why I went to college, because the society I lived in, which included my family and peers and nearly all adults defined success as wealth and wealth dependent on a college degree. The point of view may have been framed as enabling the middle class to move up, but in reality it was the destruction of the middle class.
I wonder, how valuable is it really to cross post? I cross post what I write in micro.blog to Mastodon and Bluesky but I don’t really seek nor receive feedback. I suppose what I write is seen more widely but does that really matter? I do have one instance of cross posting that matters to me personally, which is that what I write on my main micro.blog is also posted to my WordPress site that I have posted to for more than a decade. The WordPress site is a larger archive of my writing and also a location of prior experiments of cross posting. At one time what I posted in Twitter and Facebook were cross posted to that WordPress site.
If your eyes don’t see it, but your camera does, is it real? (Context: what is a photo?) My buddy in my home town sent me pictures like this one of the aurora last night saying that can see it without taking a picture.
The problem is not that politicians lie, it’s that there are no consequences for their lies, that is the norm that has been broken.
Ironic Indeed
I’ve been thinking about the contexts within which the United States was founded, specifically Holy Roman Empire and protestantism. The Holy Roman Empire produces the Doctrine of Discovery that authorizes the colonization of the Americas because white Christian men are superior to non-Christian indigenous men. Today the Tipsy Teetotaler shared a quote of Matthew Crawford that says the following about a consequence of protestantism.
But this brings with it a certain anxiety: if I have to stand on my own two feet, epistemically, this provokes me to wonder, how can I be sure that my knowledge really is knowledge? An intransigent stance against the testimony of tradition, and a fundamentally Protestant stance toward religious authority, leads to the problem of skepticism. Tocqueville’s great observation is that the way Americans resolve the anxiety that comes from a lack of settled authority is to look around to see what their contemporaries think. The individualist turns out to be a conformist.
The subhead that the Tipsy Teetotaler wrote for the above quote is, “Individualism, ironically, creates lemmings.” I think these contexts are important in understanding the current state of the United States of America.
The land upon which I as a citizen of the United States now live was stolen because of a belief in the supremacy of one group of people over another, which allows for slavery and the contempt of one human for another. The majority of the people who ultimately settled on that stolen land were raised in a theology that taught scripture alone and scripture apart from anyone other than oneself was authoritative. Consequently we have a pyramid of people who think they are naturally better than others and know more than others, and the “others” are beneath them.
What may be truly ironic, no actually traumatically sad, is that these two forks of Western Christianity claim to follow Jesus, who taught a very different theology of relationship, a view that sees the world as a circle rather than the pyramid of hierarchy. On the other hand, how is this not the result of a religion founded by an emperor? Jesus did not start a religion, he started something more like yeast and weeds.