Why Men are Reluctant to Attack Donald Trump

As a follow-up to my last post, I thought that some explanation regarding why Donald Trump, who is clearly an incompetent and corrupt leader with a major psychiatric disorder, receives so little resistance from other males, some of whom are powerful. Their subservience to him is astounding in historical terms. As I said earlier, Richard Nixon left office voluntarily after considerably less-significant violations of the law. Trump has elevated himself to the level of one of the greatest criminals in American history, yet he still receives little public criticism. To me, as an amateur evolutionary biologist, Trump is exhibiting classic alpha male primate behavior, and, because all humans are primates, they accept his behavior instinctively without thinking about it much. There have also been social and economic conditions that have caused males to revert to their primate instincts to some extent. Over the past several decades, feminism, contraception and employment opportunities have reduced female dependence on males, and this has been a blow to male egos. Furthermore, the evolution of the economy has significantly reduced the number of available well-paying jobs for males. In addition, the pandemic caused families to spend more time together at home, and this added to male-female stresses, because, among primates, males and females tend to live separately – nuclear families are not the norm. The upshot is that males have generally undergone a reduction in social status in recent years, and, rather than attracting harems of beautiful women, they are being given the cold shoulder. Where Trump comes in, I think, is that he lives the way that many men would like to live, though they would never admit it. The absence of critical thinking in men has caused them to overlook the fact that Trump has a history of making poor decisions. A related fact, I think, is that women themselves tend to respect men less now than they used to. There is currently a popular narrative among women that they are the victims of male abuse. That may be accurate in some situations, but to me it seems as if many women are unable to determine whether that is actually the case in their situation.

Just as a brief refresher, I should recap some of Trump's offenses. From his first term, he will be remembered for wasting the time of the federal government with two impeachments, followed by lying about his political loss in 2020 and supporting an illegal attack on congress. He was also sympathetic to the scientifically unsupported anti-vax movement. In his second term, which has barely begun, he has appointed some of the most unqualified people in American history to join his administration, threatened other countries with large tariffs and staged an attempted coup in Los Angeles. He has also ignored constitutional rights in the deportation of immigrants. Each phase in the ascent of Trump's rise to power has resembled a new episode of The Emperor's New Clothes. I think that the underlying dynamic is that unhappy American males have provided enough support to Republicans that they have been willing to overlook Trump's deficiencies. Trump literally is an act, and I can't say that I've identified any examples from any time in his life where he actually said or did anything that was in the public interest. Currently, men admire him, I think, because they would love to behave foolishly, attract throngs of gold-digging women and enjoy themselves without ever taking responsibility for anything or being held accountable. This aspect of the Trump phenomenon can be explained as male worship of male primate behavior. Trump has also attracted some opportunistic women, but their numbers are considerably lower.

The question becomes "Why do otherwise intelligent men support Trump?" This is a little more difficult to answer. The Republican politicians among them feel compelled to protect their political careers: this is a purely selfish motive. The tech billionaires also seem to be greedy, and supporting Trump is a lower risk to them than opposing him. In the case of some of them, Elon Musk for example, he has his own set of psychiatric problems and probably overestimated the probability of benefitting from an alliance with Trump. Trump's life history consists primarily of benefitting at someone else's expense.

My main view of this situation hasn't changed. It isn't a question of whether Trump will succeed in the long-term. It is demonstrably impossible for him to succeed, because none of his policies are well-thought-out, and most of his appointees are unqualified. At the moment, Trump and his Republican allies are attempting to delay the inevitable economic and social disaster that is brewing until after he leaves office.

Why Greater Awareness is Necessary in the U.S.

While there is an abundance of information available now for most people to study topics of interest to them, one of my chief sources of cognitive dissonance these days is that politicians, corporations and the news media have increasingly channeled public discussion into narrow channels that collectively tend to block out conceptually challenging topics. Although I am completely sick of thinking about Donald Trump, viewing images of him, hearing him speak, and having to read and see inadequate discussions about him, the Trump phenomenon in public life is the best example of what is wrong in the U.S at this moment. I've already written about how the internet and social media have stirred up a lot of confusion, but I think that, additionally, it is necessary to discuss in detail some of Trump's specific shortcomings. What I find unsettling is that Trump is never confronted directly about his enormous deficiencies and weaknesses as a person, which are particularly important now that he is the de facto most powerful person in the world.

First, it has to be said that Trump is deeply ignorant. He doesn't read, and most of his ideas are ones that he adopted by habituation while he was growing up. In those days, women and minorities did not have equal rights, gay people were generally in the closet, there was little evidence of impending global warming, and businessmen in New York City often operated in a cutthroat manner. Trump displayed dishonesty at an early age by hiring a person to take the SAT for him. Most of Trump's "ideas" are longstanding formulations that he has been using to get his way throughout his life. As far as I've been able to determine, what little curiosity he has tends to focus on ways to manipulate people to meet his objectives. This seems to be the same pattern followed by his father and his father's father. Some of his grandfather's wealth came from prostitution, and this may have influenced Trump's attitude toward women.

During his second term as president, it is easier to identify his thinking processes than it was during his first term. In the first term he was battling his own appointees and faced with impeachment twice, and the pandemic added to the confusion. In his second term, he has concentrated on consolidating his power and is consciously copying Viktor Orbán of Hungary. It is already apparent that he has no understanding of world economics, and it seems that his advisors are generally unwilling to take the risk of enlightening him if they know better. Trump's primary transactional methodology seems to be to inflict pain of one kind or another and then switch plans if the first one doesn't achieve the desired results. I think that this is one of the best examples of how deeply ignorant Trump really is. It is obvious that he has no understanding of global economics, and he is simply operating on his old business model from his real estate background, which also failed. When he first rolled out his tariff plan, he had not anticipated the extent to which it would roil world financial markets, and he was essentially forced to cancel it immediately. I also find it instructive to examine him as an arbiter of conflict resolution between world leaders. He has already given up on creating a Ukraine-Russia resolution, and he even seems to have encouraged Benjamin Netanyahu to escalate the genocide in Gaza. In both instances, since there was nothing in it for him, he had a hard time staying focused. Following his instincts, he prefers to spend his time soliciting bribes from Arab states and bilking people with new cryptocurrency schemes. Traditionally, Trump and his family have been grifters, and that is still their default model.

The other main deficiencies in Trump, I think, are psychiatric in nature. It seems that, within a political context, bringing up psychiatric issues is a taboo. There is currently a slight drift toward an easing, at least with respect to senility, but technically that isn't a psychiatric issue. Age was brought up for Ronald Reagan in his second term, so there is a historical precedent. A lot has already been written about Trump's psychiatric state, even by a niece and nephew. More significantly, "200 mental health professionals" warned "that Donald Trump is dangerous because of 'his symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder – malignant narcissism.'" Although psychiatry does not get much attention in America, I think that this description of Trump is reasonably accurate. I think that anyone who has paid attention to him for several years can pick this up easily, without much convincing. At this point, Trump's psychological makeup is far more dangerous than Joe Biden's senility would have been if he had been reelected. I have yet to see any full-scale discussion of this problem in the news media. 

What can readily be observed now is that Trump has been unable to resolve any significant issues within his purview, ranging from the federal budget deficit to appropriate taxation to international conflicts. Rather, Trump is simply continuing his cycle of bullying, intimidation and empty proposals. It is readily apparent that, not only is he distracting from the resolution of issues that are of public importance, but that he may actually just prefer to punish people unfairly for his personal enjoyment. To him, minorities, immigrants, women and non-binary people are fair game. Also, because he was an academic dunce, he seems to derive a sadistic pleasure from punishing Ivy League universities. 

I am getting tired of hearing the word "democracy" being used as a panacea for issues such as the Trump phenomenon. Since Trump was duly elected in an accepted democratic process, I think that the focus should shift toward greater public awareness. We should now be barraged with news, videos, podcasts and articles regarding the dangers of the Trump presidency. This may be absent because we are living in an increasingly corporate-controlled country, where the calculated costs of challenging Trump are often outweighing the benefits.

Corruption in America: A Fifty-Ring Circus

I've been reading this new book by Oguzhan Dincer and Michael Johnston. At first, I wasn't sure whether I'd comment on it, and I decided that it is somewhat interesting and provides new ideas that describe some of the behavior in the U.S. While, over long periods of time, various sociological changes occur here, the news media never seems to capture them adequately, and this is particularly true now, when news has become, in Jennifer Rubin's word, "stenography." This book is quite academic and includes definitions, data and statistical analysis, but it still provides a relevant look at current American culture.

Before starting, I should say that, in my view, sociological analysis isn't valued enough in the U.S. Especially in recent years, when you hear "The people have spoken," you have to brace yourself for the possibility that Donald Trump has won an election. For me, in an ideal world, the U.S. government would be a large sociology department, which would cover economics, law, social welfare, equality and national defense. Clearly, the American public isn't sophisticated enough to vote rationally in an environment where, not only are they barraged with misinformation and disinformation, but the entire political edifice that began in 1776 has essentially become obsolete. My hope is that, in a few years, government will become partially or fully automated, with AI and robots performing most tasks: someday, children may no longer have to be frightened by the nightmarish images of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Corruption in America doesn't seem to have been a major topic in recent years. That is probably because corruption is considerably more conspicuous in some other countries than it is here. However, it has always existed everywhere, and it is of some value to examine it locally. Dincer and Johnston break down corruption into two main types: legal and illegal. While illegal corruption is subject to criminal penalties, much actual corruption is legally permitted. This is expressed well in a quotation from George Washington Plunkitt, a New York State Senator of Tammany Hall:

I seen my opportunities and I took 'em. Just let me explain by examples. My party's in power in the city, and it's goin' to undertake a lot of public improvements. Well, I'm tipped off, say that they're going to lay out a new park at a certain place. I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or that makes its plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular for before. Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that's honest graft.

Various topics come up in the book. The authors think that corruption played a role during the COVID pandemic. Specifically, some groups were more responsive to calls for social distancing and vaccination than others. Traditional television viewers were more compliant than social media viewers.

Generally, what I liked the best was the mappings of legal and illegal corruption and political subcultures by state. These maps themselves don't provide any solutions to current domestic disagreements, but they do offer glimpses into somewhat intractable regional differences. Many of the most corrupt states, Louisiana and Kentucky, for example, are in the South. Many of the least corrupt states, Vermont, Washington and Wyoming, for example, are in the North. Political subcultures are classified as moralistic, individualistic and traditional, or a combination of two of these. Most of the moralistic states are in the North, and most of the traditional states are in the South. The individualistic states are more evenly spread out. From glancing at this map, I would guess that the individualistic states tend to be more business-friendly. It also looks to me as if the traditional + individualistic states are generally more corrupt than other states. That also includes Louisiana and Kentucky. 

For my preferences, the exclusively moralistic states may be the most livable in terms of their social environments. But you would also have to examine other regional characteristics. The full moralistic list includes Oregon, Utah, Colorado, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Vermont and Maine. It is probably significant that even though the Bible Belt is in the South, the moralistic belt is in the North. This is reminiscent of the antislavery movement originating in the North. I also think that the business-friendly states in the South may be the most polluted and the most vulnerable to climate change.

The Current Situation

Since I'm still having a lot of trouble finding something to read, I thought that I'd write a bit about the world situation, particularly the return of the chaos-inducing Donald Trump, and what this means for all of us. There is a palpable sense of despair and panic at the moment, and I'm sure that millions of people would like assurances or guidance of some sort. 

First, let me specifically describe how I see Donald Trump. I see him as a stupid person who has been obsessed for most of his life with being perceived as important. From what I observe, he seems to have no particular talent, and he lacks the intelligence and creativity to come up with anything useful for others. In every public appearance of him that I've ever seen, he presents himself as a successful executive whom others flock to for advice. But this is all made-up, and no savvy people take him seriously. As a result, he became surrounded by sycophants who were generally also stupid, and, particularly after he was coached by Roy Cohn, he became extremely hard-nosed, is accustomed to using his underlings to do his dirty work for him, and he also became comfortable lying constantly. It seems that his primary business tactic was to work with small players for services and underpay them in order to maintain a profitable business. His main skill, to this day, is the avoidance of paying full prices for services that he has commissioned. Because of his enormous inheritance from his father, it was easy for him to win court cases against people who lacked his resources. As a matter of habit, he has continued the same technique right up to the present, and because no other person as unscrupulous as he is had ever reached his political level in the U.S. before, he was able to evade jail time for obvious crimes. In historical terms, one would expect that he would be in jail now.

The other aspect of Trump's ascent is the general political entropy that has occurred in the U.S. since about 1993. When business-friendliness became popular in both parties, the power of money gradually took over politics in the U.S. This is more conspicuous today than ever with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook and Rupert Murdoch, among others, attending the second inauguration of Trump. This isn't a real show of support and simply reflects a calculated attempt to benefit their businesses. In private, to them Trump fits the definition of a useful idiot. To be fair though, I also have to point out that the tech billionaires have their own set of psychological deficiencies. The point really is that the U.S. was not originally intended to be the world headquarters for pathological money-grubbers, and this is the spectacle that we're witnessing now.

I'm not about to predict world history for the next one-hundred years, but it isn't that hard to see how things will end for Trump. The rule of thumb is probably "Once an idiot, always an idiot." This means that Trump isn't about to successfully create a new world order for oligarchs. The more likely scenario is that Trump will completely screw things up, because that is what he usually does. He doesn't have a coherent ideology, and, for the billionaires, this is just a temporarily convenient arrangement for them. Because Trump doesn't understand or care about the needs of others, it isn't possible for him to intentionally make a positive contribution to society. This means that it is impossible for him to have a positive legacy when he leaves office. Only he and his friends will benefit, there will be no useful policies enacted, and the U.S. federal government may be left in shambles. The people who voted for him will generally be worse-off, and he and his advisors will probably continue to be charged with crimes. The powerful people who are supporting him now have already prepared their justifications and alibis, and the world will move on. No significant new world alliances will be formed, and within four years, Trump will have permanently departed. His health seems to be poor, and he could potentially die from natural causes while still in office. People like him are not usually assassinated, but that is also a possibility.

I won't belabor my points and will just say that Trump will eventually be remembered as the stupid fat guy who screwed things up for the world for a few years. If you can just sit tight and weather this, you should be fine. There are still real questions about where new technology is taking us, whether climate change will be addressed, etc., but that has almost nothing to do with Donald Trump.

Paradigm Shift Overload

Because I'm tired of biographies at the moment, I thought that I would instead write about how I see the current malaise that seems to be affecting people, especially in the U.S. The phrase "paradigm shift" was coined by Thomas Kuhn in his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Although that's really just a fancy way of saying that scientific models change over time, you can extrapolate from it that most conceptual models generated by humans change over time, and sometimes they are completely replaced by new models. A simple example is the change from the geocentric model of the solar system to the heliocentric model. Scientists are constantly attempting to explain the universe, and occasionally one theory completely replaces another. Sometimes theoretical fissures last for many decades, and there has been a dual model in physics where gravitational theory operates independently from quantum theory, and the two models seem incompatible. This state of affairs has been around since Einstein, and he was unable to reconcile the two systems. Other conceptual models in science can become problematic over time, and, as Sabine Hossenfelder laments in Lost in Math, some physicists have recently become so enraptured by mathematical aesthetics that they seem to have lost interest in experimental data, which is the basis for empirical models.

The reason why I'm bringing this up is that, as an observer of people, it is fairly obvious to me that a rapid increase in the number of public conceptual models employed by people in the developed world is causing a higher level of stress than that which occurred during earlier historical periods. Broadly speaking, humans have evolved to live in groups, and, historically, that required the members of each group to operate on similar ideologies and worldviews. When the world population was much lower, ideological conflict between groups was less common than it is today, because groups simply didn't run into each other as often as they do now. With a much larger world population, and with most religions evolving into various sects, individual countries may have conflicting ideologies both internally and externally. Probably that kind of conflict was rare two-thousand years ago in the individual lives of people, but it has gradually increased and accelerated in the last two-hundred years. In the preceding colonial period, Europeans simply traveled to North and South America and took whatever they wanted, and if the natives caused too much trouble, they just killed them. A similar attitude was adopted more recently in the American South, where slaves were considered personal property until after the Civil War. The gist is that, within a long-term historical context, people didn't recognize belief systems that differed from their own, and, even up until the late nineteenth century, it was often thought that indigenous populations were subhuman species.

What has changed since the end of the last century is a partial migration of group identities from regional cultures to social media cultures. There have been many negative consequences to this, and I'll discuss some of them here. Before the internet came into existence, people often had face-to-face encounters with people who lived in their areas, and this was the primary source of their worldviews and was supported by local news media and local governments. Unfortunately, as I've mentioned before, the internet has gradually taken on an important role by replacing traditional TV programming and news with material that can be produced anywhere, with content and ideas that did not originate locally. This phenomenon has been influencing local ideas for over twenty-five years now, and some of the perspectives that have arisen in particular locales do not represent the historical ideas of a region. One of the effects of this change has been the rise of various opinion leaders and politicians whose careers would have been impossible fifty years ago. The best example that I can think of is the disgrace and resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974 compared to the reelection of Donald Trump in 2024. In Nixon's case, indications of bad character alone forced him to resign or else be removed by impeachment. In Trump's case, although his behavior has been considerably worse than Nixon's – he is a convicted felon and a known rapist – he won reelection by a margin. In the culture of 1974, that could not have occurred.  

In recent years, many individuals have mobilized on social media for their personal benefit. They are now able to reach groups that were invisible a few years ago and seed them with propaganda that places them in the role of opinion leaders without having to face any consequences. They can convince people that the shooting of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax or that they are successful executives when they are not. If you think about it, it is truly astounding that Donald Trump was reelected after several members of his own administration, including Vice President Mike Pence, stated publicly that he was unfit for office. While there are probably false ideas floating around most of the time, there have never before been as many as there are now. If you look at this from the point of view of human cognition, many people are unable to navigate an environment like this on their own. Few people are able to form opinions independently from a group that they identify as their peers. Unfortunately, the people whom they think are their peers may just be internet hucksters these days. It is possible that new regulations will correct this in the coming years, but that is certainly unlikely to occur under the new Trump administration. Trump has been one of the most successful corrupt abusers of social media. 

When I see people viewing their cell phones in public constantly, they are starting to resemble addicts in need of a fix. It seems that some sort of therapy could be developed for these people, but I'm not sure that it exists now. I think that the core of the problem is that humans in general have not adapted to an environment in which numerous worldviews, which are often incompatible with each other, are presented to them. 

Are Private Universities Corporate Proxies?

Dating back to the 1960's, I've always had difficulty understanding campus protest. I mean that not in the sense of not understanding the concerns of the protesters, which are usually readily apparent, but in the sense of the logic of campus protest itself. My cognitive dissonance usually occurs more with private colleges and universities than with public ones. In the U.S., public universities are readily funded by state governments, and most of their students are residents of those particular states, so there is a discernible connection between the protestors and the local political process. Since this is supposed to be a democratic country, it makes more sense that protesters would express political views at a government-administered institution than at a private one. Of course, not all protests are political in nature, and I suppose that non-political protests can make sense anywhere.

The strange thing to me is that, for example, if a student at a private university disagrees with U.S. funding of the Israeli military that results in the killing and displacement of thousands of innocent Gaza civilians, there is an established process for addressing that concern: they could contact their congressional representative or senator or protest outside Congress. Their university has little or no connection to the relevant government proceedings, and its students do not necessarily have any say in university policies. Moreover, private universities are not funded by taxpayers, and the processes by which they fund themselves are not necessarily democratic. One might argue that private colleges and universities are "communities" that can build their own consensus through internal discussion or protest, but that view doesn't have legal footing: students are not true stakeholders and ultimately have no authority in how their private college or university is administered.

The situation with the Vietnam War was quite different from the Hamas-Israel War, because the U.S. itself was the aggressor. In that instance, general political objection to the war seemed reasonable. These days, college and university protests often call for the ending of purchase of stocks of the companies that are located in the country of the principal offenders. For example, colleges and universities were discouraged from buying South African stocks during apartheid and, more recently, the stocks of large oil companies that contribute to global warming. Now the protesters are calling for the divestment of Israeli stocks. While, theoretically, that can be construed as a suitable disincentive for Israel to continue the war, I don't consider that methodology appropriate for a couple of reasons. 

First, in the case of private colleges and universities, investment choices are beyond the purview of their students. The students are essentially customers. Their college or university may be around for hundreds of years, and its administrators have to figure out how to fund it well after the current students have departed. The protesting students can be seen as behaving like the customers of a traditional delicatessen who collectively march in and demand that the owners immediately change the menu to include only vegan and gluten-free items. The fact is that the customers don't own the store, and if they dislike the menu, no one is forcing them to buy food there. Also, more subtly, private colleges and universities in the U.S. are actually participating in the capitalist ecosystem of the country. In order to ensure the health of their institution, it is in their interest to produce graduates who go on to become wealthy and leave them bequests in their wills. The small colleges that didn't follow that model are dropping like flies now. I find it hard to take seriously the "values" of most private colleges and universities. Even when there are stated educational goals, their importance is purely symbolic when you consider the actual tasks required to sustain a private college or university over time. Most of them are devoted to the development of future donors purely as a matter of survival. That is why they coddle their alumni. The richer their alumni, the better.

Second, as a personal matter, I dislike the divestment argument because it trivializes the underlying conceptual framework of what is actually occurring. In this instance, I would rather hear a discussion of the errors made by Netanyahu and the long-term consequences of his behavior. The news media are missing in action as usual and aren't advocating a specific actionable plan. The protestors also seem to be sleepwalking through history and are unable to provide a coherent description of the situation. What, exactly, is the explanatory value of the word "hate"? With better journalism and more effective protest, the Gaza conflict might already have ended. Moreover, the current crisis has been brewing for decades, with the underlying problems festering for many years.

One of my corollaries here is that student protestors seem to be in denial of the fact that they and their universities inhabit a corporation-dominated world.

What I Dislike About the United States

I take my car to Burlington once a year for service, and this year, while I was up there, I was reminded of one of the things that has always made me feel un-American. During the pandemic, the showroom had almost no cars, and the parking lot was practically empty. This year, the showroom was completely filled with SUVs, and the parking lot was also full, mainly with SUVs. After my family moved to the U.S. in 1957, my father usually bought large American cars. One of the first ones was an enormous Chevrolet, but then he bought the first Mini Cooper, which was called the Austin Cooper S. I drove it a couple of times before I got my driver's license. Later, he bought an enormous Ford Galaxie.  The Mini Cooper was sort of imprinted on me, and I've always bought small cars since. The main thing that I like about them is that they are fun to drive. My current car is a Volkswagen GTI Autobahn, and it is by far the best-handling and fastest car that I've ever driven. I love it, even though VW is not the most reliable brand. 

When I moved to the Midwest in 1973 after college, I had a cheap, used Fiat 124 station wagon, which fit everything that I needed to take, but was not sporty and eventually rusted out. None of my cars since then have been American, though one was a Ford that had been built in Germany. At that time, most of the American-made cars were still large. There were token small cars such as the Ford Pinto and the Chevrolet Vega, but they were poorly made and never popular. That was the period during which Japanese car manufacturers began to cut deeply into U.S. market share. On the roads, there were still mainly large American sedans and station wagons. Cadillacs and Lincolns were still popular, but some of the luxury European models also gained market share. In the 1980's, the minivan became very popular, but that has gradually lost market share to SUVs and is no longer in much demand. What I've noticed is that Americans have never liked small cars, and it was only during periods of gasoline shortages or very high gasoline prices that Americans as a group bought many of them. Today, with the availability of hybrid SUVs and various electric models, there is very little demand in the U.S. for small cars.

The reason why I have described this is that I think that it is a basic example of how the American psyche works. There is no meaningful civic education here, and people generally resent government interventions that limit their options. Corporations here are also less regulated than they are in many European countries, and they directly or indirectly keep things that way by spending money to influence election outcomes. Then, through advertising, they are expert at influencing consumer choices. Since Americans, on average, are not very discriminating, they are putty in the hands of corporate marketers. While this has been apparent for at least eighty years, it is actually getting worse now, because the internet is the most intrusive corporate tool that has ever been invented. Although it can be seen as a helpful consumer tool, besides the advantage that it provides to corporations, it is also a tool for enemy states and criminals. For example, a few people have become quite wealthy by taking advantage of the "stolen election" meme. 

Here is a fairly simplified way of expressing the above, which is easy to understand:

1. Corporations inhibit government intervention.

2. Corporations establish standards of normalcy that influence consumer purchase decisions. The ubiquitous presence of certain products, such as SUVs and pickup trucks, also places pressures on consumers who prefer not to deviate from social norms. For example, if all of your neighbors have an SUV or a pickup truck, or both, why don't you? 

3. Over a long period of time, consumer preferences tend to comply with corporate marketing goals.

Besides the above points, Americans seem to have adopted a passive attitude vis-à-vis their responsibilities as members of American and world societies. Levels of apathy toward climate change and foreign wars remain relatively high, which is significant when you consider the long-term consequences for everyone. Of particular note, climate change denial has been led by the oil industry. 

Generally, I am used to American consumerism, though I still dislike it. But I am always interested in ideas, and, because of the conformity among Americans, I find little opportunity to express them here. Some of the people I've discussed on this blog also disliked the mindless conformity that characterizes the U.S. Czeslaw Milosz moved back to Poland as soon as he could; he was here for the benefit of his family and would have preferred to live in Paris. D.H. Lawrence specifically criticized the competitive economic mindset of Americans. Bertrand Russell needed the money that he earned from lecturing here but stopped coming as soon as he could afford not to. In more recent years, many European intellectuals have moved here for the money (academics don't get paid much). The one time that I spoke to Tony Judt, the historian, who had moved from England, he said that he had been wary regarding where to live in the country, and he had dismissed most of the U.S. To him, the U.S. was mainly anti-intellectual. He ended up at New York University.

In addition to the above, I must mention that even more sinister levels of perversity are emerging now in American society. Rather than rehashing previous statements that I've made, I'll just say that a well-known, established criminal with no moral compass and no competence in governing is currently the strongest candidate in the 2024 presidential race. Ironically, this man, an ostensible populist, is actually the tool of less-conspicuous corporate interests. It's all about money.

My Deniversity: Knowing Denise Levertov

Before starting on Voltaire, I decided to read this short volume by Mark Pawlak. Pawlak is a poet and math professor, and the book is a memoir about his relationship with Denise Levertov, beginning in 1969 and ending with her death in 1997. I would never have known of the existence of the book if Pawlak hadn't read my review of Dana Greene's biography of Levertov and contacted me regarding the publication of his book. I mentioned Pawlak earlier on this blog when I found an online post about Levertov's view of the New York Times. The same anecdote appears in this book.

Several aspects of the memoir are interesting to me, others less so. Pawlak is two years older than I am and attended M.I.T. as an undergraduate, majoring in physics. During his senior year, starting in 1969, he used one of his few electives to enroll in a poetry workshop taught by Levertov, who was teaching there at the time. The part that interests me the most concerns their milieu as it developed, and particularly how Levertov lived her life. Pawlak got to know Levertov and her family quite well and visited them frequently at their summer home in Maine. A lot of this material is covered in Greene's biography, but Pawlak offers a more intimate portrait of Levertov's daily life.

She was a passionate person and also quite opinionated. Her personality was much stronger than that of her husband, Mitch Goodman, and she was the main breadwinner up to the time of their divorce. I think that she benefited from an early focus on poetry as her vocation, whereas Mitch fumbled around for decades without really establishing himself in any field. Some of this appeals to me because, while Levertov was the same age as Pawlak's mother, she was also the same age as my father, who grew up not far from where she did in the London area. Although my mother was not in the least bit literary, she had a strength similar to Levertov's that allowed her to compensate for my father's inadequacies.

The part that intrigues me the most is the atmosphere in Cambridge, Massachusetts and environs in 1969 that caused Pawlak to diverge from physics to poetry. At the time, there was a strange zeitgeist across the country that existed primarily on college campuses. In a matter of months, Pawlak was transformed from a geeky physics major into an aspiring poet and a political activist, and Levertov was there to facilitate him. My take is that Levertov came from an exotic background that would be impossible to replicate today. She had little formal education and had grown up home-schooled almost exclusively in the arts. Then she moved with her husband to Greenwich Village in the late 1940's and inhabited what was perhaps the only sustained bohemian community ever to exist in the U.S. Her ideas about poetry and social justice have never been popular here, and with her forceful presentation of them to Pawlak, he was clearly smitten. Pawlak himself came from a working-class Polish background, and this would all have been quite new to him.

One thing that intrigues me is that the environment in Cambridge in 1969 was similar to that of Bloomington, Indiana at the time. In the summer of 1970, I briefly lived a bohemian life among potential artists and writers whose attitudes were probably quite similar to those of people in Cambridge. The difference was that in the Midwest this was an ephemeral condition that pretty much evaporated by 1972, while it lived on in places like Cambridge and Berkeley. The aspiring writer I knew joined an ashram and then went to law school. The two artists never had artistic careers. Whatever utopian elements were present in 1970 in Indiana were short-lived. Bloomington is now better known as the birthplace of the smug, reactionary and intellectually third-rate publication, The American Spectator, in 1967. You might say that Pawlak was either blessed or cursed by living in the Boston area when he did.

A lot of the book is devoted to what I would call poetry shop talk. Levertov was quite good at that and was probably a good teacher for aspiring poets. For me, this is of limited interest, because I am not a poet and have no desire to become one. Years ago, I wrote a small number of poems, and, at the time, I found the process interesting. Since then, I have decided that the short essay is a better format for me, and in fact this blog fits me almost perfectly. I am more interested in the development of ideas and the presentation of them in an intelligible manner. Whatever my readers may think, this format fulfills my idea of free speech, which is actually quite important to me.

As far as poets and poetry are concerned, I can only go by how I react to particular poems. I like several of Levertov's poems, which is probably enough to make her my favorite poet. Then there are other individual poems by other poets that I've posted on this blog that I also like. I'm not interested in all the parsing and discussion that poets engage in with the aim of developing their craft, because, whatever they do, there are too few good poems to go around. I may be a poetry snob, or perhaps I'm just poetically illiterate, but I have enough reading experience to know that no one is going persuade me to like a poem if I don't like it after a careful reading. 

Pawlak also mentions that his poetry apprenticeship with Levertov occurred before M.F.A. programs became popular. I would think that that would have been a better time to learn poetry, especially with Levertov, because, besides being a good poet herself, her pedagogic style required a sort of communality that would be nearly impossible to replicate today. She really cared about her students and made sacrifices in order to support them. On the other hand, I am in no position to say whether or not that turned out to be worthwhile. I don't think that I've ever read a poem by any of her students. Nevertheless, that era isn't completely dead, because Levertov's publisher, New Directions, is still around in New York City and publishing authors such as László Krasznahorkai, who seem like a mirage of the exotic bohemians of yesterday.

From the foregoing, you can judge for yourself whether you would want to read this book. I think that it would appeal mainly to poetry historians and poetry students and to people like me who appreciate Levertov, who still isn't all that popular.

Absurdist Social Criticism

After reading a long string of nonfiction books, I usually begin to crave some good fiction, and, as you know, I always have trouble finding it. I thought that I would attempt to explain how I came to develop my particular literary taste, because I don't actually know anyone whose taste is the same as mine. I was extremely late to develop any literary preferences and only began to when I was most of the way through college. I was more affected by film, and the film that had the greatest impact on me was Dr. Strangelove (1964); this was followed by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). In the interim, I came across some early Soviet fiction and was impressed by Mikhail Bulgakov in "The Fatal Eggs" and his novel, The Master and Magarita. When I was thirty-six, I read Lorrie Moore's short story, "How to Be an Other Woman" and thought that was good. Later, when I was about forty, I read Middlemarch and thought that it was the best novel I'd ever read. Through these works, I think you can get a sense of what interests me.

Dr. Strangelove, in addition to falling clearly within the absurdist tradition, contains a critique of government, and it finishes with an explicit statement of where its ineptitude can lead. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest features the antics of a funny subversive and the horrific incompetence of a mental hospital. This is probably Jack Nicholson's best performance, which helps, but I think it is a significant fact that the film was directed by Miloš Forman, a Czech. I read the novel, by Ken Kesey, and didn't find it nearly as good. The Master and Margarita is evidence of a talented writer living under a totalitarian regime and making fun of it as a consolation, while weaving in deeper human themes. "How to Be an Other Woman" describes in humorous terms how a woman might come to understand her relationship with a man who is engaged in a series of infidelities, and, as part of the collection, Self-Help, parodies advice books. Compared to the others, Middlemarch seems more like a straightforward novel, but it contains much subtlety, and, because it was written in the English tradition, it skewers English society in ways that some readers may not recognize. While George Eliot always maintains sympathy for her characters, Edward Casaubon is clearly a foolish, self-centered intellectual who wastes time on an implausible grand theory; Rosamond Vincy is a fatuous bourgeois; Nicholas Bulstrode is a pious hypocrite – etc. This novel portrays English society in the Midlands of the 1830's and dissects it, showing both its strengths and its weaknesses, and does this with a delicate touch, while at the same time highlighting the relevant human foibles. The novel was written well before absurdism became a genre, but there is some unobtrusive social criticism. 

What I think you find in these works is astute social observation, and in most of them a critique of the reigning powers. In Dr. Strangelove, the American government, in effect, brings the world to an end. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the hero is lobotomized. In "How to Be an Other Woman," the narrator leaves you with the feeling that male-female relationships are like an infinite regress stacked against the female. In Middlemarch, humanity is seen to exist on a fragile basis over which people have little control, thus, in the end, the central characters, Dorothea Brooke and Will Ladislaw, go on to lead unexceptional lives, in contrast to Dorothea's high aspirations. 

In these works, I generally found close social observation and brainy critiques, and I don't often find comparable ones. Since I wasn't born in the U.S., I have always been skeptical of American ideology, and it is rarely questioned here. The early Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, including Poland, Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, were better environments for the flourishing of intellectual dissidents. Although Czeslaw Milosz's literary works were hardly radical, in his book, The Captive Mind, he outlined the rather intense psychological pressures that intellectuals were forced to endure. Comparatively, American intellectuals have never experienced any duress, and they have lived their lives in obscure corners of this capitalist utopia, hardly making a dissenting peep. Most American novels, as far as I know, consist only of basic storytelling, and, these days, are often about the experiences of groups adapting to the prevailing culture, without questioning it much. The literary atmosphere, rather than being energized by angry dissidents, is mellowed by M.F.A. programs that groom writers for the publishing industry. If a novel were actually interesting, it probably wouldn't be a bestseller.

As far as American fiction is concerned, I'm tired of trying the latest wunderkinds, such as John Kennedy Toole, David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, George Saunders and Lauren Groff, but I suppose I'll keep an open mind and attempt to read some future ones. As it is, I think I've wasted enough time on them already. It is ironic that with so much material readily available in the U.S. – a completely corrupt and incompetent president, a seriously dysfunctional federal government, rampant gerrymandering, unaddressed climate change and the botched handling of the coronavirus – writers can't do a better job. 

In recent years, I've been making stabs at Michel Houellebecq and László Krasznahorkai. Houellebecq has some of the characteristics that I like, but he has too many flaws. Foremost, he doesn't write perceptively about people, and his plots are always a little harebrained. The Map and the Territory, when read carefully, is a critique of the art market. However, because Houellebecq's writing is sloppy and his style is deadpan, many readers may not realize this. Submission was obviously the result of Houellebecq's desire to exploit fears that Islamic forces are affecting life in France. As in his other novels, all of the characters lack psychological nuance. It is easy for me to differentiate Houellebecq from works by people whom I think are good. I would guess that, though possessing some talent, he is in this for the money. Krasznahorkai is a better bet, because he hasn't sold out completely in order to make as much money as possible. In his case, he is one of the best writers ever to capture some of the complex psychological aspects of being human. For most readers, he would be too obscure, and they would be unable to appreciate his Kafkaesque qualities. Krasznahorkai's limitations are related to the fact that what he really knows well is Hungary, which, at this point, is hardly representative of most of the developed world. What I find is that he is one of the most psychologically astute writers, and that he, more than any other that I know, understands what it feels like to live in a repressive ideological state, which, frankly, is what the U.S. is, once you understand the nature of capitalist institutions. For this reason, I have chosen to read Krasznahorkai's latest book, Chasing Homer. I thought that his short story, "The Last Wolf," was one of the best I've ever read, so this is worth a try. Of course, Krasznahorkai is virtually unknown in the U.S. For example, Satantango, one of his best-known novels, currently has163 reviews on Amazon.com, whereas Lauren Groff's latest novel, Matrix, has 1171. Apparently, deciding whose fiction to read depends on your social media. Needless to say, I don't and never will have Facebook or Twitter accounts.

The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality

I've finished reading this new book by Kathryn Paige Harden, who is a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, also the director of the Developmental Behavior Genetics Lab and codirector of the Texas Twin Project. I was hoping that she would expand upon the discussion of research in single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) beyond Robert Plomin's in Blueprint and David Reich's in Who We are and How We Got Here, both discussed earlier on this blog. I was dismayed to find a meandering narrative, which seems unintelligible to me, attempting to take the genetic study of humans out of the hands of eugenicists and to convince politically correct progressives that genes do make a difference. The main purpose seems to be to promote equality as the solution to social problems, without emphasizing the role of genes in individual lives.

Because Harden is primarily concerned with the political implications of genetic research, I did not find the book interesting. Instead of emphasizing the science, she resorted to the ideas of philosophers such as John Rawls, whom I have no desire to read. I do sympathize with her, because, while I fall mainly in the genetic determinism camp, I also think that our genetic history as hunter-gatherers predisposes us to prefer egalitarian societies to the hierarchical ones associated with capitalism. Harden's strategy is to distance herself from Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, authors of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, a book that I also have no desire to read. However, she is reluctant to fully embrace Plomin and Reich, whom I think could arrive at a more coherent way to use genetic research than Hardin does in this book. 

Among the failings of the book are emphases on race and individual variation. To me, race is a dead subject, since in most cases it is not an accurate description of a person's genetic makeup. For example, most African-Americans have a significant percentage of genes inherited from Europeans. Harden devotes a lot of space in the book to arguing that individuals are genetically unique, with the exception of identical twins at the time of conception. This is basically a truism and ignores the fact that Reich has shown how the Yamnaya, as a genetically coherent group, became a dominant force in Europe and northern India, where they are still genetically present. In this vein, there is no discussion of how some ethnic groups were wildly successful after arriving in the U.S., while others were not. Although cultural factors must have influenced some of these outcomes, in my mind, genetics has also played a significant role.

One of the main thrusts of the book is that conservative writers such as Murray and Herrnstein should not be allowed to promote the idea that the U.S. is a meritocracy in which superior people should get what they deserve. Her main argument seems to be that luck always plays a role in success, and that even includes the luck of having good genes. I doubt that many conservatives will find this persuasive. It would make more sense to me if Harden had brought up the subject of behavioral economics, which indicates that everyone is confused, including wealthy capitalists.

To my way of thinking, Harden's line of argument would have been more interesting if she had discussed how the human genome equips us to deal with a wide variety of situations. At any given time, one set of genes may offer advantages, and at another time it may not. Arguably, the successful capitalists who have dominated Western cultures for three hundred years are destroying the planet, and in the end will prove to be a detriment to everyone, including themselves. However, Harden is merely a well-meaning psychologist, and such thoughts are beyond the scope of her academic milieu.

Another deficiency in Harden's thinking is her acceptance of American culture as it currently exists. Besides not criticizing capitalism, she does not comment on America's consumerism and conspicuous consumption. It is implicit in her writing that crass people who have lots of money are successful. To put it mildly, this is a dubious attitude to take (think Donald Trump). As a psychologist, I think that she could have done a much better job diagnosing the social ills that we are facing.

One serious issue, which seems completely beyond the scope of Harden's analysis, is the probable decline in the job market due to automation. It seems to me that the percentage of good jobs in the economy is likely to decrease in the foreseeable future. In this scenario, more people are likely to experience insufficient incomes and lower career success.

As you might expect from the foregoing, I'm not much of a fan of Harden at this point.

Obituaries

 While I no longer generally attempt to contact people whom I used to know, I still look some of them up occasionally to see what they're up to. Since I've never had many friends over the years, these are usually people whom I knew through work. What I'm finding now is that a lot of them are dead, and they now appear in obituaries. Most of the people whom I knew in the Chicago area, where I lived from 1998 to 2011, are still alive and working, but before that, when I lived in Dixon, Illinois, Louisville, Kentucky, Indianapolis, Indiana and Terre Haute, Indiana, most of them are dead. Since I still have vivid memories of them, it is a little jarring to think that they died so soon. On the other hand, this provides a broad perspective on people's lives which can only be accrued over many years.

The main feeling that I have now is that the work environment for most people is completely haphazard. They are thrown into groups of other people with whom they have little in common, and everyone pretends to fit the mold set by the management. As an independent person, I always found the pressure to conform grating, and as a perceptive person I was annoyed by the disingenuous behavior of others who were attempting to sustain or advance their careers. Another thing that I've noticed over many years is that some companies are conspicuously better managed than others, and that some have incompetent employees at high levels. Thinking about my supervisors, some were indelibly affected by their military experiences, and they used a primitive chain-of-command methodology throughout their working years. Thus, they spent more time on homage and fealty to their superiors and maintaining the status quo than on solving problems and ensuring higher productivity or improving the quality of work. In my experience, the military style failed, and the companies that followed it were more likely to go out of business. Interestingly, military thinking also fails inside its original settings, thus the conspicuous mismanagement of the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and the disastrous psychological and medical consequences for veterans.

In some ways it seems remarkable that I survived in the workplace for so many years, but a lot of that may simply have had to do with changing jobs and moving. Certainly I never came remotely close to finding an ideal job, thus, I am happier than ever to be retired now. I feel sorry for those I knew who still have to work: I don't see how they could be enjoying themselves.

As for my former superiors, some were better than others. Larry, the president of the company where I worked in Dixon, often said "life is short." It was for him: he died at the age of 79 from Alzheimer's disease in 2015. Another boss, Fred, from Indianapolis, immigrated from England in 1972 and was far less talented. He died at the age of 81, leaving seven grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren. Although Fred never achieved much, I guess you could say that he succeeded biologically. I think that he took early retirement when the company where he worked was sold. Several of my coworkers have also died, and some of them have changed fields. One became a bus driver, and another switched from printing to orthopedic products. Some have changed jobs several times since I last saw them. As far as I know, none have died from COVID-19.

One thing I'm thankful for is that I retired before I had to post an obligatory profile on LinkedIn. I would have found that completely degrading, because it would have been about as far from how I see myself as is possible. I think that this blog comes much closer to saying who I am and what I represent. So, if you would like to consider hiring me for a job, please read the blog carefully.

The obituaries themselves usually supply only the most basic information. However, you can sometimes tell how important that person was to others in the comments they write – if there are any. After reading many obituaries, an individual's life, in the greater scheme of things, does not seem to have much significance. As I've said, it's only a matter of time before everyone is forgotten. As for myself, I don't intend to have an obituary.

The Election

Since it looks as if the U.S. presidential election has been decided in favor of Joe Biden, and I've been wasting so much time following it, I thought I'd say a few things so that I can move on to other topics.

Donald Trump's fitness for office has proven to be lower than ever this year. It's hard to imagine anyone doing a poorer job handling the coronavirus pandemic, and the scale of his lies would have been unfathomable a few years ago. What stands out to me is that he has come this far, given that we can now see how stupid many of his decisions have been, even when you examine them within his framework of corrupt self-interest. He unquestionably lost votes by willfully ignoring scientific advice on the pandemic; he could simply have followed the advice of a competent medical team, and the death count would have been considerably lower. The pandemic has slowed the growth of the U.S. economy, and if it had been controlled sooner, the medium-term economic outlook would be better than it is now. It is also surprising to see how much time and effort Trump wasted on the fabrication of corrupt behavior by Hunter and Joe Biden in Ukraine. There was nothing to find there, and he risked removal from office by precipitating his impeachment. If the Republicans in the Senate weren't also corrupt, he would have been removed from office in February. At the moment, he is spouting fantasies about voter fraud, which are going nowhere. It is obvious that he is completely indifferent to the responsible transfer of power and the stability of the federal government.

Because Donald Trump himself is an inherently uninteresting topic, I find it more fruitful to think about the conditions that allowed him to be elected in the first place and gave him a good chance of winning a second term. There is more to be concerned about here, because those conditions will be in place long after Trump is gone. From my point of view, the main underlying problem is voter gullibility. Almost half of the voters in 2016 and 2020 voted for him, acts that I find fundamentally irrational. It was well known in 2016 to anyone who took the time to study his past that Trump had no experience or interest in governing and was guaranteed to engage in self-serving behavior. It was also clear that whatever policies he had were uninformed and would be used primarily for his own benefit. During his years in office, he took credit for the strength of the economy, which he didn't deserve, and alienated many foreign allies. Most dictators around the world were glad to see him in power. Those voters who supported Trump seem to occupy a different sociological group from those who voted against him.

I have a reasonable amount of experience in Republican versus Democratic thinking, because I have lived in both geographic regions. The contrast between so-called "conservatives" and "élites" has some basis in reality, though those terms hardly describe the actual complexity. In the U.S., practically everything comes down to money, and the grievances of the conservatives usually amount to thinking that they deserve more of it, meaning that they should have better jobs and lower taxes. Jobs were not always an issue for conservatives, but have become more so in recent years, with the rapidly changing economy. In my view, particularly in rural areas, many of the economic woes are the result of increased automation and competition from abroad in manufacturing, as well as the decline in extractive industries such as coal mining. The élites, or, more generally, liberals, tend to be urban-based and work in service and tech industries that aren't affected by declines in manufacturing or mining. I have little sympathy for conservatives who listen to nonsense from politicians like Trump when they should be thinking about what kind of education they need and where they should live in order to get good jobs. Many of the so-called élites simply got good educations and were willing to move for job opportunities. Rather than getting government off the backs of people, the government should be incentivizing poor conservatives to get the proper training and move if necessary, as suggested by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. If you accept the premise that capitalism is good, as most conservatives do (I don't), you must accept that the responsibility of corporate executives is to move jobs to wherever the costs are lowest. It is a contradiction of capitalism for conservatives to demand that jobs be brought to their regions simply to provide them with well-paying jobs. 

Besides the above, I think that Americans have become lazy, self-entitled and jealous, and that for purely political reasons the Republican Party has chosen to cater to whiny conservatives just so that they can remain in office. The so-called Republican vision is actually a farce with no economic basis, and it is clear that Donald Trump has no understanding of or interest in economics. On the global stage, the Chinese are laughing about how their cooperative culture doesn't cause them to go through the pains that Americans inflict upon themselves with their culture of selfishness. Looking at Trump's personal characteristics, what stands out to me is that his supporters would probably like to emulate his selfishness and narcissism. With respect to world history, this is a sign that the U.S. may be on the verge of a serious decline in both political and economic leadership, and that China is on the ascent and may soon be calling the shots. Given the degraded nature of Trump's personality, I'm not sure that I would object. The question is ultimately whether China's leaders represent the most eusocial aspects of mankind.

Stupidity

As I've mentioned before, the time lag between the announcement of new scientific findings and their assimilation by the public is often astoundingly long. In the extreme case, you have the works of Charles Darwin. His main ideas have been confirmed repeatedly, and they have been widely accepted by educated people for over a century. Yet, here in the U.S., about a third of the population still supports Creationism, depending on how the questions are asked. Creationism is dying out here, but it may end up taking a total of two hundred years, despite the mountains of evidence against it. As I've also mentioned previously, there seems to be a time lag between the announcements of the recent findings of Daniel Kahneman, Steven Sloman, Philip Fernbach and Robert Sapolsky and their acceptance within the public sphere. They don't even seem to be percolating within the intellectual community at the moment. Tangentially, the works of Robert Plomin and David Reich, which provide insights into the genetic nature of human aptitudes and their unequal distribution within the overall population, seem buried in the media, perhaps because they conflict with some of the central tenets of political correctness. The picture that has emerged from recent research is that people don't think clearly most of the time or know as much as they think they do. There is nothing that can be done about it because this is how their brains work.

A related topic that isn't exactly a discrete field is groupthink within academic disciplines. The phenomenon demonstrates that even groups of people don't necessarily think clearly. Groupthink has been studied for many years in business settings, but it occurs everywhere, including in academia. Thomas Piketty touches on this in Capital, and may have been the first to criticize the overemphasis on mathematical models in economics. Sabine Hossenfelder has a similar message in Lost in Math, which accuses physicists of wasting time on untestable mathematical models when the real problem may be a lack of new data. From an institutional point of view, mathematically-oriented physics researchers offer the major benefit of not having to purchase expensive research equipment. This strategy may work in the short-term, but more fundamentally it may be a misallocation of resources. Then there is the closed culture of MFA programs and their stranglehold on what counts as literary writing. I have seen some criticism of that system, but it remains intact. My point here is that even highly-educated groups make collective cognitive errors – these are the most likely to escape scrutiny, yet Piketty and Hossenfelder have had the courage to call out the leaders of their fields.

The basic insight one gets from surveying the research is that no groups are immune to a variety of cognitive failures, thus, whatever principles a group claims to uphold, and no matter how competent they may seem to outsiders, behind the scenes, the prejudices and cognitive limitations of individuals are what actually drive practices and policies. In economics and physics, the accumulation of new data became secondary to mathematical modeling. In MFA programs, departments became vulnerable to the preferences of their faculties: the criteria for good literary writing can easily be distorted by the faculty. As I've said ad nauseum, the result has been that MFA writing is now at best forgettable, to put it politely. Nevertheless, MFA writers do well as a cult through their strategic use of self-congratulatory propaganda. It is customary to compare individuals to assess their competence, but comparable variation can be found between groups, and it is a mistake to think that the best-credentialed groups are the most competent.

Of course, these problems in academia are not really that important in the greater scheme of things. I remain astounded by the resilience of Donald Trump as a public figure. In a recent review of a biography of P.T. Barnum, Elizabeth Kolbert writes:

Barnum became one of the most celebrated men in America not despite his bigotry and duplicity, his flimflamming and self-dealing, but because of them. He didn't so much fool the public as indulge it....he turned P.T. Barnum into yet another relentlessly promoted exhibit—the Greatest Showman on Earth. Americans, he knew, were drawn to such humbug. Why they are still being drawn to it is a puzzle that, now more than ever, demands our attention.

The problems of the Trump presidency are as obvious as one could hope. My only criticism of Kolbert's innuendo is that the information needed to answer her question is already available: people are stupid. It seems as if the last hurdle before order can be brought to civilization is the recognition that, although we're smarter than chimpanzees, we're often quite stupid. The research I've alluded to unequivocally supports this position. The stupidity applies to all level of society, though people who are perceived to be successful usually get a free pass. It may be that, at an instinctive level, Trump supporters recognize a fellow ignoramus who has been successful and can dominate and humiliate smarter people if he likes. Trump supporters get a perverse satisfaction from seeing him thumb his nose at the establishment, which they feel has neglected them and reduced their social rank. Trump is uplifting for them because he normalizes inarticulateness and ignorance. Actually, this is a very old problem, one that thinkers have pondered for hundreds of years. Jean-Jacques Rousseau recognized that most people are unqualified to vote. He preferred a more patrician model in which only a few educated people without private ambitions or agendas would be permitted to vote. The Founding Fathers attempted to put in safeguards to prevent mob rule, but the gradual elimination of restrictions on voting and the expansion of the electorate have rendered it more difficult than ever to screen out incompetent politicians from public elections.

Kolbert, like many journalists, recognizes that Trump appeals to the worst instincts of the public. Fortunately, he can never be a popular president, and only about forty percent of voters will continue to support him. The underlying problem, which Kolbert and most journalists avoid discussing at all costs, is that at some point the public must be implicated as part of the problem. The fact that such suggestions would be labeled as elitist doesn't subtract from their truth. Thus, Kolbert, a science writer, whom one would assume is familiar with the research I've cited, is not exactly taking a heroic stance. This brings me back to my criticism of Michiko Kakutani, who, I said, was constrained by the requirements of her publisher, a corporation. There is an implicit "never bite the hand that feeds you" rule in journalism. From a journalistic standpoint, the conflict between free speech and corporate interests is almost always resolved in favor of corporations. There is no marketplace of ideas when so many of them are repressed from the start. Criticism of the public, even when it is deserved, rarely makes it into the media. When it does occur, it is usually only part of Donald Trump's ugly, worn-out business and political strategy.

If one were serious about preventing a recurrence of the Trump phenomenon, one would have to look at changing the democratic process. Trump was elected with the twenty-first century equivalent of the nineteenth-century practice of handing out free beer at rallies. Democracy, though it is preferable to autocracy in most cases, is not a good system for promoting competent political leaders. We are stuck with the worst president in American history only because a minority of the population was willing to set aside reason for a few feel-good moments. It is an unsubstantiated myth that "the voice of the people" will always correct political errors. Moreover, the freedom of individuals, as understood by most Americans, is not a sustainable idea. The U.S. is like a casino in which everyone feels entitled to a piece of the action. The American acceptance of capitalism is so deeply ingrained that alternatives are unthinkingly seen as heretical.

Much as I try to avoid it, I always circle back to the same conclusion: that the best hope lies in removing the public from a decision-making role in many if not most instances. The important problems facing Americans (and the world) are so complex that they may be beyond the comprehension of even the most experienced politicians. If anything, a mechanism is needed to prevent the public from guaranteeing a dysfunctional government in the future. In my view, the competent elite of the future will be AI, and it is already apparent that this needs looking into. I would be surprised if people in the distant future were not amazed that we were able to survive this long stretch of political turmoil with nothing more to help us than our chaotic little animal brains.

The Political Scene

Politics isn't exactly one of my favorite topics, but the current situation in the U.S. seems extraordinary, so I'll continue to comment on it occasionally. The scene here in Vermont isn't dramatic and can even be amusing at times: in the Democratic primary for governor, a transgender woman just defeated a fourteen-year-old boy and two others to win the nomination. However, the conditions in Washington, D.C. aren't as sanguine. The recent death of TV personality Robin Leach reminded me of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," which I used to watch years ago. Adnan Khashoggi, the billionaire Saudi arms dealer, was a quintessential subject for the program; his grotesque lifestyle was said to cost $250 thousand per day. Khashoggi was no doubt a role model for Donald Trump, who also appeared on the program. Subsequent to a reduction in Khashoggi's wealth, Trump bought his yacht, and, of course, renamed it after himself. Looking back, you can also see how Trump had an affinity for the Gambino crime family, with which he had business connections. Although Trump seems to have been a shameless social climber, he never graduated from the ranks of con artists and crooks, and his self-professed business acumen doesn't stand up to close examination.

I don't have any special insights or information about Trump's probable fate, but it seems unlikely that his presidency will end well for him. He has the looming Mueller investigation, possible criminal charges in New York, potential impeachment after the 2018 midterm elections, and, if he survives long enough, the 2020 presidential election, which I doubt he would win. Before it's all over, we may learn that the Trump Organization is propped up by money laundering for Russian oligarchs. Trump held the illusory belief that he would somehow escape the close scrutiny that all presidents face, and that his indiscretions could be suppressed indefinitely. In most respects, Donald Trump is demonstrably stupid. On the whole, Trump merely seems like an anomaly to me, a sign of dysfunctional times. He is fundamentally less interesting than the conditions that allowed him to be elected. How, one asks, did voters elect to the presidency a candidate who lies constantly, surrounds himself with criminals, has little understanding of foreign or domestic policy, economics or law, and has never shown any interest in public service?

This plays into my narrative about the inadequacy of traditional democratic governmental structures in a capitalist society. The two critical parts that cause failure are the stupidity of voters and the amorality and greed of private interests. At the most basic level, what has happened is that corporate media companies such as Fox News have become proficient at convincing disgruntled white males that Donald Trump can improve their economic status. In a classic case of voter misattribution of cause and effect, Trump has been given credit for the strong economy in the U.S., which would have occurred anyway without him. The reality is that Trump's ideas are obsolete or discredited ones from the 1970's and 1980's, and that his advisers are amateurs and opportunists who lack both the ideas and the skills to produce the results that his supporters expect. Trump's tax cut mainly benefits the rich and will lead to larger deficits in the future, which will restrain economic growth. Trump's tariff strategy is reducing prices of agricultural commodities and hurting farmers, while raising costs in some industries and disrupting international commerce in a manner that is unlikely to benefit anyone. His support of the coal industry, which is economically doomed regardless, may increase global carbon emissions. Trump's supporters fall into two main groups: a majority who are ignorant and a minority who seek immediate financial or political gain from his policies. This is not to say that voters who dislike Trump and vote against him are making better decisions, but that voters in general are ill-equipped to deal with complex national and international issues.

For these reasons I return to the idea that self-governance ought to be replaced by an algorithmic form of government. A sophisticated algorithmic constitution based on principles of equality, fairness and protection of the individual could replace the current U.S. constitution, leaving no room for interpretation or manipulation. The current system of government permits a continuous assault by special interests, both domestic and foreign. Because human status or rank is always relative, people compete to own larger houses and properties, and there is no theoretical upper limit that would prevent them from owning, say, larger planets, if it were possible. If capitalism has in fact played a role in human progress, one can now almost safely say that it has outlived its usefulness. The current trajectory, with an incompetent American president like Donald Trump, is moving us toward a needlessly overcrowded world characterized by pointless competition, which in the long run may benefit no one.

Going Up the Country: When the Hippies, Dreamers, Freaks, and Radicals Moved to Vermont

I found this book, by Yvonne Daley, informative regarding this period in Vermont. There isn't much analysis, and it consists mainly of vignettes of people who moved to Vermont in the 1960's and 1970's. The chapters include "The Hippie Invasion," "Life on the Commune," "Higher Education," "Food...and Revolution," "Entrepreneurship—Hippie Style," "Political Transformation," "Creativity," "Drugs," "Women's Work Reimagined" and "The Children of the Counterculture." The title comes from the Canned Heat song. In the appendix there is a list of appropriate soundtracks for each chapter. A few of the people mentioned, such as Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy and David Dellinger, are well known. My neighbor, Jim Douglas, even makes an appearance: he was a student at Middlebury College in 1970, when they ended the semester early and canceled finals after the Kent State shootings; he was the campus Republican club president then and demanded a tuition refund. I spoke to Jim a few months ago, and, thankfully, he does not consider Donald Trump a Republican.

At the time, Middlebury was not a hotbed of antiwar activity. The hippies, radicals and artists were more closely associated with Goddard College, near Montpelier, Marlboro College, near Brattleboro and the now defunct Windham College in Putney. Middlebury College and the Bread Loaf School of English were considered elitist even then. Besides protesting the Vietnam War, nuclear reactors in Vermont and New Hampshire were targeted; in hindsight, the protesters may have been misguided, because more nuclear plants may have meant less coal consumption and less climate change – Daley overlooks this fact. There were assorted communes all across the state, whose members varied in beliefs and activities. Some proved durable while others did not. One was quite libertine, with the leader encouraging a "ten-day-marriage" between members; in a very non-back-to-nature manner, he spent his winters in Florida and returned each spring. It sounds as if the divorce rate was about 100% for young people who moved to Vermont then. Bernie Sanders, for example, got divorced after moving here with his first wife, had an illegitimate son, Levi, with a girlfriend, and later married his current wife. Some parents handled their children irresponsibly, turning them into conservative adults. Conditions for stable households were not optimal, since the hippie men usually had little income, the women were having babies and feminism began to take off in the 1970's.

The wave of people who arrived here then were part of a broad social movement that affected the entire country. Most of the migrants to Vermont were from middle-class families in Massachusetts and New York. Many had been here before on family vacations. Some, like me, were instinctively enchanted by characteristics such as the low population density, the beautiful natural environment and the pleasant but not ingratiating people. A similar history occurred elsewhere, but did not leave as lasting a mark. I am reminded of my summer in Bloomington, Indiana in 1970. I started making homemade bread. There was pot smoking, a food co-op, popular music, and some of my friends from Pelham, New York stopped by in an old school bus on their way out west. I was staying in an apartment with a friend who had dropped out of college and was trying to become a writer. An English instructor who had married a student and left his job brought his wife and moved in with us. They arrived in a VW Microbus, and he got a temporary job at a restaurant while his wife had an affair with my friend. Others were attempting to launch careers as artists. One became a pot dealer and later got arrested; now he's an electrician. Another became homeless and eventually became a Hindu monk. One friend who had led a college protest got married and divorced and later became an architect. In Indiana, as in other states, the hippie movement and antiwar protests tended to be concentrated in the large university towns and did not have much permanent impact on the state – Indiana remained conservative.

The difference in Vermont, which Daley touches on but does not explore in detail, has to do with several factors. First, Vermont had never been an industrialized state, and the anti-establishment attitudes of the hippies had little impact on the locals, who were already used to tourists. I think the lack of factories and the harsh winters made Vermonters more independent than Hoosiers, who, living in the Rust Belt, were used to walk-in high-paying jobs and were more sensitive to anti-corporate rhetoric, which could cause plant closings. The winters also helped screen out the most frivolous of hippies, if only because surviving them required resources and planning: this is not a good place to be homeless in January. Over time, the convergence of tourism and progressive ideas led to the current Vermont brand, which itself is of economic value to the state, allowing businesses to charge premiums on the presumption that Vermont products are healthier and more sustainable than those made elsewhere. The absence of large corporations also freed the state and local governments from the influences of lobbyists, leaving the door open to more radical candidates such as Bernie Sanders. Because of the small population and corporate indifference, it was much easier for someone like Bernie to gain traction here than in other states. I think that this is probably the easiest state in which to become a U.S. senator or governor, because you can practically meet all of the voters and no one is spending millions of dollars trying to defeat you. In fact, although Bernie is often in Washington, he is seemingly omnipresent in Vermont and is likely to show up in your town regularly.

Daley's approach borders on the sentimental, as the book really is about her life and the lives of her friends and family. Conceptually, much of the minutiae that she provides doesn't add much. She tries to stick with the more positive stories without mentioning many negative ones. Drug use must have been a problem, but she devotes several pages to Paul Lawrence, a crooked undercover cop who planted drugs to get convictions. There is no mention of Robert Durst, the probable serial killer who moved to Ripton in the early 1970's, when Vermont was trendy, and opened a health food store in Middlebury. Although she does touch on the dissimilarities between the locals and the newcomers, I don't think that she underscores adequately the fact that the two groups continue to carry on independently and remain segregated. While Donald Trump is more unpopular in Vermont than in any other state, he has supporters here. Daley also says nothing about the quality of the work of the artists and writers who were part of the wave that she describes. As I've said, I don't think that the quality of American writing in general is very good, and Vermont's is probably no exception. I have seen some of the artists' works and find some of them to be above average, but others are more formulaic and suitable for the tourist trade. This is not to say that the book isn't worth reading if you are interested in the topic, which is relevant where I live.

Girl Power

While I find the political situation in the U.S. deplorable, with the arrival of a vulgar, uninformed, bombastic, self-interested and dishonest president, I've noticed that the strong reaction against him may bring unexpected benefits. Feminism in the U.S. seems to move in waves over many decades, and the appearance of Donald Trump on the national scene seems to have precipitated a new one, which is impressive in its ferocity. Although it may be arguable whether Trump caused the #MeToo movement, it seems as if the latest round of sexual harassment protest dates to October, 2016, with the release of the Access Hollywood audio tape, in which Trump discussed women with Billy Bush. Trump was subsequently accused of sexual harassment by several women. A women's movement specifically targeting Trump began in 2016, and this, I think, recently led to the dismissal of several prominent male public figures from their jobs on the basis of sexual misconduct. The speed with which famous men have been removed from corporate, political and film positions is surprising when you consider how entrenched and unchallenged that behavior was until now.

As I've said, I like to view human behavior from a biological standpoint, and in this respect Trump is a typical male. He tries to dominate the situations he's in and cultivates an aura of success, and this is consistent with the behavior of many species, in which males go to considerable lengths to attract females. Other males are outdone in displays of fitness, including physical characteristics and the ability to win contests. Among humans, being a rich alpha male usually guarantees the privilege of mating with women, the net result of which is the production of children. When you closely examine the shortcomings of most alpha males, it becomes readily apparent that there is not necessarily any social benefit derived from the process, which seems biologically to have had to do mainly with their reproduction. Though they may have other talents, Trump-esque men often have far less to offer society than meets the eye, and when you examine them in the context of the highly complex modern world, they tend to be anachronisms who have wildly overstated their capabilities. If Trump were a peacock, would you vote for him? Some characteristics often associated with males, such as competitiveness, may serve purposes unrelated to attracting mates, but that has always been one of their primary functions.

The mating strategies of women are obviously quite different from those of men. They also need to exhibit fitness, which indicates that they are likely to produce healthy offspring, but in their case, if they are sufficiently attractive, they choose among suitors rather than compete with other women directly. In nature, receptive females usually acquire mates effortlessly, whereas some males compete unsuccessfully with other males and do not reproduce. Thus, females have less biological incentive to act aggressively. On the contrary, women, as members of a eusocial species, have an added incentive to offer and receive help from other women in the interest of raising their offspring, which is a daunting task due to the unusually long time period from birth to independence in our species. Of course, women can be aggressive, but under normal circumstances this does not involve physical confrontations or intimidation, which are common among men.

I am bringing this up because I think that greater political participation by women and increased inclusion of women in leadership roles would have a positive influence on society, particularly if it followed the leadership of autocratic demagogues such as Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. In a general biological sense, women have no incentive to assert their power for its own sake and are more likely to be sensitive to social needs than aggressive men. Although Putin is popular in his country and certainly knows how to run it to meet his goals, those goals are not the same as the long-term goals of all Russians. Putin is a Soviet-era autocrat whose policies are not likely to endure for long after he leaves office. The situation with Trump is somewhat worse, because he is incompetent even as an autocrat and therefore has nothing to offer Americans on any level at all. During his tenure, the federal government is losing what little coherence it had, and he is exposing the country to unnecessary new risks.

Because I look at our world biologically, a government in which females dominate must also be examined closely. While such a government might be characterized by greater order and more careful allocation of resources, as in a hive dominated by a queen bee, the goal of creating a large factory to produce and raise offspring is not necessarily what Homo sapiens wants or needs at this stage in its evolution. In the past, when I lived in the suburbs of Chicago, I sometimes felt as if I were trapped in a hive of women who were obsessed with raising their children, as if that was the only thing that mattered in life. Thus, while there is much to be said against alpha males, the female opposite is not exactly everyone's cup of tea.

Nevertheless, it is encouraging to me that women seem to be uniting in large numbers against Donald Trump, because, if they follow through and vote, his tenure will end sooner than it might otherwise. Fortunately, minorities and young people of both sexes also find little to like in Trump or today's Republican Party, and their popularity is dwindling. I am heartened that I am not the only one who feels that Trump's exit couldn't be soon enough. Though Trump's behavior may be rooted in inherited tendencies that once played a role in our survival as a species, it would be an absurdity of the highest order to suggest that, given his behavior since he took office, he could be of any benefit whatsoever to mankind.

The Melancholy of Resistance I

I'm gradually getting back to reading and still have a long way to go in this novel by László Krasznahorkai. It is somewhat different from Satantango in that it concerns events in a town rather than in the country, has a broader range of characters and is written in long, flamboyant sentences. It also exhibits more psychological realism by showing how each character thinks, highlighting discontinuities in perspective that very few writers even notice, let alone capture in their work. As in Satantango the narrative is driven by forebodings and signs, always hinting at some mystery yet to be revealed.

My attitude to fiction is quite jaded at this point, and I am inclined not to read it at all, so whenever I do make the effort I can only tolerate works of the highest quality. In this respect Krasznahorkai doesn't disappoint, and I think he must be one of the best novelists ever. To compare him to Alice Munro or Philip Roth or Marilynne Robinson would be a joke. I find him more interesting than Dostoevsky, Proust, Kafka or Joyce. If you take the novel seriously as a form of art, there probably aren't many other living authors worth reading today.

The thought that is preoccupying me at the moment is Krasznahorkai's use of peasant characters, which ties in with some of my lifelong meditations. One of the reasons why I like him is that he doesn't hesitate to reveal weaknesses in peasants, something that not only does not occur in American fiction but is specifically banned in the era of political correctness. Broadly speaking, the concept of a peasant does not exist in American culture, because it has been replaced by the immigrant and melting pot narrative, in which everyone becomes equal. The melting pot narrative has caused cognitive dissonance in me from the moment I set foot here in 1957, because I immediately noticed differences in people through an intuitive understanding of peasant and non-peasant mentalities. As my life unfolded I became more acutely aware that I didn't care in the least whether I made a lot of money or achieved high social status, and that this put me at odds with the dominant currents in American society.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was put off by the Italian immigrants who lived in the town where I grew up. Later, when I lived in Illinois, I noticed that it was hard for me to relate to the second or third generation Polish immigrants whom I ran into at work. In the workforce, the absence of intellectual curiosity in others became a permanent barrier separating me from them. A similar barrier existed between me and my ex-wife's family. Prior to World War II they had been farmers and grain elevator operators in western Ohio, and after the war the men turned to law, geology and business. The women married similarly and never lived on a farm again. In one generation they went from agrarian lives to professional lives, which reflected their drive for financial and social advancement. As with the Italians and the Poles, I found them unimaginative and incapable of engaging in discussion of subjects which were not part of their limited backgrounds. This prompted me to look into my own background in search of something that might help explain the origin of my different perspective.

Part of that difference is simply a matter of life experience. I was born into a middle class family in England, where I lived until the age of 7. From the ages of 7 to 18 I lived in a suburb of New York City. After that I lived for several years in Indiana and Illinois, with short stays in Connecticut, Ohio, Oregon and Kentucky. Although my experience was hardly cosmopolitan, it was certainly broader than that of my in-laws. Another part of the difference, I've decided, is family history. In my family, the agrarian roots are further back than most. In England my ancestors were tailors and furriers by the early nineteenth century, and in Turkey they were engaged in international trade by the early twentieth century. My grandfather was importing pianos to Greece and his sister was studying music in Paris while my ex-wife's illiterate grandfather was in a field plowing behind a horse in Ohio. Thus, even though education did not play much of a role in my family until the late twentieth century, on my mother's side there was significant multiculturalism by 1920, with my grandfather speaking seven languages and my grandmother having German and Armenian parents.

There is a special beauty for me in writers like Krasznahorkai, who aren't afraid to call a peasant a peasant. In his case there isn't necessarily any heroism involved, because the environment in which he writes has different cultural references from those in the U.S. Even so, it is encouraging to me to know that there is a writer of fiction out there who has a brain. That is important to me as a resident of a country that suppresses all derogatory discussion of its peasant constituency and elects crypto-peasants such as George W. Bush and Donald Trump to its highest office.