Monday, October 19, 2020

The Overwhelming Evidence That Trump is Uniquely Unfit for Office

Presidents and candidates for president are criticized relentlessly every election.  Somehow political opinions cause people to personalize politics and actively dislike an opposing candidate.  But normally the reason for that dislike is the candidate’s positions on key policy issues.  The strength of our political system is that the effect of these passionate disagreements on policy is a swing of the pendulum a little bit from left to right and back, and the country compromises its way into the future.

But this is not a normal election.  Although the majority of Americans disagree with Donald Trump’s policy decisions (see the 2016 election results) and initiatives, that is not the primary reason to vote him out of office.  Here is the reason:  Trump is a deeply flawed human being and is a danger to our country and the rest of the world.

Never before have a president’s own cabinet members and closest advisors described him as incompetent, a danger to the country or unfit for office.  Never before have so many of the members of a president’s own party organized to oppose his reelection.  Never before has a president received outright condemnations (not disagreements!) from so many leading magazines, scientific organizations, journals and institutions.  Never before has a president caused such a precipitous drop in the USA’s reputation around the world and such alarm in our allies (https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/09/15/us-image-plummets-internationally-as-most-say-country-has-handled-coronavirus-badly/ )

Never before has a President cried out ‘lock them all up’ at his political rallies.  Never before has one encouraged his supporters to ‘liberate’ a state from its government.  Never before has a President lashed out so childishly at every critical remark or opponent.  Never before has a President bragged so pathetically about every minor aspect of his activities nor focused so completely on himself.

I have collected a selection (not exhaustive by any means) of the reasons I believe this is a unique situation and I have included links to reliable sources.  One may argue that Trump has many political and military allies, but I believe his allies are only supporting him because of his policies or because their own political fortunes are somehow tied to him.  They are taking a calculated risk (poetically described as a Faustian bargain) that his dangerous personal defects and behavior will not have catastrophic consequences.

The depth of the following indictments is breathtaking!

Former Trump Cabinet Members, Advisors and Close Associates 

  • John Bolton (Trump’s longest serving National Security Advisor) wrote a book that portrayed Trump as incompetent and a danger to the country.  He confirmed that Trump should have been convicted of impeachment.  Described him as “erratic,” “stunningly uninformed,” and “unfit for office,”
  • General Mattis, Trump’s Secretary of Defense: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/
  • General Kelly former Chief of Staff for Trump - https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/former-white-house-chief-of-staff-tells-friends-that-trump-is-the-most-flawed-person-hes-ever-met/ar-BB1a6NLk  
  • Rex Tillerson (Trump’s former Secretary of State) - called Trump “undisciplined” and  told CBS News’s Bob Schieffer“ that it was challenging  “to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of says what’s on his mind and tries to do illegal things.”
  • A group called the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform or REPAIR for short, made up of former U.S. officials, advisors, and conservatives and organized by ex-Trump administration officials,  is calling for leadership change in the White House and seeking to repair the Republican Party," https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/administration-officials-launch-anti-trump-group/story?id=72594615
  • Mary Trump (his niece and a clinical psychologist) who writes in her book that Trump paid someone to take his SAT’s (certainly not difficult to believe) and describes his multiple personality flaws – “cheating as a way of life, no principles, total narcissist”
  • Michael Cohen (personal attorney) – makes a multitude of claims about Trump’s obsessions, sexual habits, lack of principle, etc.  Cohen is a disreputable character and it is hard to know what is fact or fiction, but just the fact that such a man was Trump’s attorney and ‘fixer’ for so many years is horribly damning.

Science, Medicine and Health

Former Republicans and Conservatives

Senior Military Officers and National Security Officials (note: Trump has his list of military supporters, but they are supporting his conservative policies as military officers often do.  The military and security leaders below are convinced that Trump is a danger to our democracy and many of them have worked directly with Trump)

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Sunday, October 11, 2020

Science, Politics, Religion and Confirmation Bias

The pandemic has focused my attention on how science, politics and religion interact.  I have been appalled at the disregard that the Trump administration has had for scientific and medical input when it does not align with their political agenda.  This conflict between politics and science in our country stands in stark contrast to the relationship between the two in other developed nations.

Before the pandemic hit, Trump also refused to acknowledge or even address the preponderance of evidence for human-influenced climate change.  He has called climate change a hoax and blamed the Chinese for ‘inventing’ it to hobble the U.S. economy.

Trump has been able to defy or reject scientific consensus because his followers are highly suspicious of science and gleefully endorse his opinions.  He knows he will not be held accountable or criticized for any disparagement of scientific opinion.

Why are a substantial portion of Americans ready to dispute or disregard scientific or medical information?  The U.S. is the most technologically advanced nation in the world.  Our universities, medical centers and research labs are outstanding.  The work done in these institutions has led to a rapidly increasing longevity, healthier lives, time-saving technology and endless devices for entertainment and other leisure activities.

It is true that science and medicine are not black and white worlds.  There is constant disagreement and debate as ideas, hypotheses and theories are introduced and go through the scientific process.  In every field there is lively discussion and sometimes acrimonious argument.  However, the scientific community has established a process of peer review and evidence-based analysis to make progress as rationally as possible and to avoid the chaos of random theories and unproven ideas. 

Science is not always about the majority opinion, but over the years the best way for the truth to emerge is for every qualified party to look at all the facts and weigh in with opinions or perform supporting or opposing experiments.  In the great majority of cases, the majority ends up being right.

There are always contrarians and outliers in every scientific discipline.  They are a necessary and important part of the process, to ensure that theories are not promoted or accepted without vigorous debate and as much confirmation as possible.  Occasionally a contrarian will cause a significant re-thinking of a theory or result and thus contribute to the onward march of science.

But there are also contrarians and outliers who simply enjoy the controversy and the renown that comes with fighting against the ‘establishment’.  And when science and politics intersect, these outliers can be given a megaphone by political supporters who like what they are hearing.

In the pandemic, Trump’s supporters have eagerly sought out any scientist or medical doctor who supports Trump’s astonishing contradictions or departures from the epidemiology community’s best advice.  With the media’s rapid-fire reporting of every new theory and collection of data, it is easy to make a case for almost any point of view.

There is a term for the tendency of people to seek out information or opinions that confirm their own political or social views – confirmation bias.  Those who support Trump, for example, assume that his handling of the pandemic is exemplary.  They are  stung and angered by the criticism of his COVID-19 record, and look around on the Internet to find interpretations of data that defend him – COVID is no worse than the flu, the death statistics are wrong, the pandemic is a hoax, only the very weak and old are dying - all at odds with the vast majority of the medical and scientific community.  They do not seek a consensus view, or try to really understand the science, but rather start with a conclusion and work back from there.

Religion is at the heart of science distrust.  Religious views have been under attack for several centuries because of scientific advances. Believers who are unable to accept the mystery and ambiguity of faith and seek out a rigid dogma have been brainwashed to be suspicious of any scientific theory or fact that does not support their religious doctrine.

Religion and politics have become closely intertwined.  Perhaps they always were.  Political views merge with religious doctrine.  Thus, the rejection of science by fundamentalist religious people extends into the political realm as well.

The Internet and social media have become the primary sources of information for a significant percentage of the population.  This is a very dangerous situation.  There is no moderator, no arbitrator or editor to guide people and to separate the credible from the preposterous.  This is ultimate freedom for people to choose, but it comes with a price.  That price could be the death of scientific truth.

 

 

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Monday, October 5, 2020

Atheists, Agnostics and Believers – Not So Different

If religion is the human effort to reconcile mortality, pain and uncertainty, then atheism and agnosticism are the equivalent efforts to reconcile reason, science and theology.

It was the rare individual who balked at religion and belief in some sort of God before the enlightenment.  As mystifying as the world was, with all its natural calamities, wonders, joys and heartaches, there seemed to be no way to comprehend it without a foundation of Gods, spirits, devils and supernatural events.  The variety and complexity of these attempts to understand the world make up the rich mythology of humankind.

In western civilization, the growth, power and ultimate corruption of the Catholic Church during the middle ages and renaissance led to the Reformation, beginning in the early 1500’s.  By the early 1600’s, the combination of religious chaos and political machination was too volatile to contain, and a thirty-year war of catastrophic proportion ensued, depopulating continental Europe by 20% according to many estimates.

After this devastation, coincident with a growing movement of scientific and philosophical inquiry known in history as the Enlightenment (late 1600’s to the end of the 1700’s), many educated men and women began to question the dogmas and orthodoxies of formal religion.  The elevation of human reasoning and the evidence of the senses eroded much of the unquestioning obedience to the church and new ideas about the nature of God and humankind were abundant.

Such luminaries as Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Hume and many others developed ideas that undercut the authority of the church and called into question much of the earlier accepted theology of both Christianity and Judaism.

In this period, only the most radical thinkers questioned the existence of God, but many rejected the ‘irrational’ underpinnings of the Christian faith – the virgin birth, the miracles of Jesus, the resurrection, the trinity – and nurtured the concept of a more nuanced and less dogmatic religious belief.  This belief was coined deism. It acknowledged the existence of God but stripped away most of the supernatural and bureaucratic trappings – the priests, the doctrines, the liturgy – and gave each individual the freedom to relate to God in his or her own way.

The American democratic experiment was in great part influenced by enlightenment concepts.  As children of that intellectual heritage, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and many others were either deists or were influenced by deist concepts.  Thomas Paine wrote the following:

'The opinions I have advanced ... are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation, by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty; that the only true religion is Deism, by which I then meant, and mean now, the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues – and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now – and so help me God.'

In the 1800’s new scientific revelations further challenged, and to some extent, undermined the claims of established religion.  The newly established geological age of the earth and Darwin’s writings on the Origin of the Species and evolution called into question most of the stories of the ancient religious texts.

Some seekers of truth began to completely reject the notion of God, calling themselves atheists.  Others termed themselves agnostics, finding a middle ground in an ambiguous belief in ‘something’ but not embracing any specific form of religious thought or deity.

Both atheists and religious people, displaying that peculiar habit of humans to be self-righteous and judgmental, excoriated their foes with ridicule and disdain.  Neither group could conceive of how the other group could ascribe to their belief system.  Agnostics generally abandoned the entire exercise of religious inquiry, setting it aside for ‘future study’, perhaps in retirement!

One of the key questions that religious people pose is how the world would function without the moral authority of a God and His or Her religious institutions.  The investigation of this question is underway, as most of Europe and a growing number in the USA have ceased attending any regular, formal religious activities.  Initial reports seem to indicate that Europe has not devolved into an immoral, chaotic hell.  Indeed, some of the most ardent atheists and agnostics are involved in very noble pursuits such as Doctors Without Borders and other very moral endeavors.

Morality is a complex topic, but it is clear that our concept of morality has evolved, as we no longer consider it moral to stone or burn heretics, urge imperial conquerors on with prayers, or accept slavery as a God-ordained institution.  Perhaps it is best for us to use our combined human intellect and inquiry to refine our moral compass, rather than rely on ancient, questionable edicts.

In the final analysis, the three groups - atheists, agnostics and believers - have more in common than one might suspect.  As human beings, we are all faced with the overwhelming task of making sense of the world.  It seems that humanity has generally benefited by our search when it is sincere and in good faith.  There is still more mystery in our universe than fact in the big questions, and we must all live with a certain amount of ambiguity.  If we come to different conclusions about God and religion, yet contribute to the human community and do our best to avoid harming other people or ourselves, can we not call ourselves brothers and sisters and accept our varied, abstract musings without condemnation?

What God or Spirit or Divine Force, if there should be one, would not be proud of the passionate efforts of all humanity to make sense of its world?  Let us embrace the variety of thought and experience and each seek a path that is of rational or spiritual comfort.


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