ProfJerry's Weblog

One of the great puzzles of our time — at least to me — is why so many of our fellow Americans continue to support Donald Trump and apparently plan to vote for him again.

Maureen Dowd, in the New York Times, suggests an answer:

I am not sure whether pounding away on the facts will work in a country with alternate realities. According to a new Washington Post/University of Maryland poll, 25 percent of Americans said it is ‘probably’ or ‘definitely’ true that the F.B.I. was behind Jan. 6. Among Republicans, The Post said, 34 percent said the F.B.I. ‘organized and encouraged the insurrection, compared with 30 percent of independents and 13 percent of Democrats.’

If people don’t know by now that Trump tried to overthrow the government he was running on Jan. 6; if they don’t know that the MAGA fanatics breaking into the Capitol, beating up cops and threatening to harm Pelosi and hang Mike Pence were criminals, not ‘patriots’ and ‘hostages,’ as Trump risibly calls them; if they don’t know that Trump created the radical Supreme Court that is stripping women of their rights, then they don’t want to know, or they just don’t care.

It’s not a particularly reassuring explanation, but it’s probably close to the truth. And it may be that it’s not possible to move some folks from their “alternate realities” — which is indeed sad and scary.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 655 mass shootings in the US in 2023.

That’s more mass shootings than there are days in the years.

I think we have a gun problem.

Now, some people will say “It’s not the guns; it’s people. And more specifically it’s people with some form of mental illness.

But consider this: If you believe A causes B, it means you’re asserting that if A happens, then B will happen. But if A happens and B does not, then A is not the cause of B.

Consider further that there are many countries in the world. And in those countries, there are likely many people with some form of mental illness. But those countries do not experience anything close to the same number of mass shootings as we have in the U.S.

So, I come back to my assertion: we have a gun problem in this country.

In case you’ve ever wondered about the meaning of “antisemitism,” Bret Stephens offers a helpful guide:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/12/opinion/antisemitism-jewish-israel-war.html

Heather Cox Richardson, in her newsletter, reports:

“Ukraine has become a battlefield now for America and America’s own future—whether we see it or not—for our own defensive posture and preparedness, for our reputation and our leadership,” [Russia expert Fiona] Hill told [Politico’s Maura] Reynolds. “For Putin, Ukraine is a proxy war against the United States, to remove the United States from the world stage.”

“The problem is that many members of Congress don’t want to see President Biden win on any front,” Hill said. “People are incapable now of separating off ‘giving Biden a win’ from actually allowing Ukraine to win. They are thinking less about U.S. national security, European security, international security and foreign policy, and much more about how they can humiliate Biden. In that regard,” she said, “whether they like it or not, members of Congress are doing exactly the same thing as Vladimir Putin. They hate that. They want to refute that. But Vladimir Putin wants Biden to lose, and they want Biden to be seen to lose as well.”

Today, Biden noted that Russian media outlets have been cheering on the Republicans. “If you’re being celebrated by Russian propagandists, it might be time to rethink what you’re doing,” he said. “History will judge harshly those who turned their back on freedom’s cause.”

We’ve reached a sad stage in which the leaders of one party are more worried about seeming to help the leader of the other party than they are about preserving and protecting the national interests.

From the November 9th issue of the Washington Post

All Americans are absolutely entitled to adhere to the worldview that the United States was founded as a Christian nation to defend Western values. However, when they take an oath of office to defend and protect a Constitution that is incompatible with that deeply held view, pluralistic democracy has a serious problem.

There are two ways to resolve the issue. [Jay] Ashcroft [Republican candidate for Governor of Missouri] presents one: Resign if you cannot put your religious views aside. The other is to admit that you must put those views aside to hold public office. When the issue is not evangelical Christianity, but rather John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism or Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, politicians have taken pains to assure voters that their religion would not dictate their actions in office. We should expect no less of today’s elected officials, including [Speaker of the House Mike] Johnson.

Seems like a perfectly reasonable take on the responsibilities of elected officials in a pluralistic democracy.

House Republicans are seeking to take $14.3 billion from the IRS to “offset” aid to Israel. But as many economists have pointed out this is to take money from one of the few agencies that actually bring in more money than they cost.

Heather Cox Richardson puts it this way “funding the IRS brings in significantly more than it costs. For each dollar spent auditing the top 1% of U.S. earners, the IRS brought in $3.18; for each dollar spent auditing the top 0.1%, it brought in $6.29.”

Apparently, the House Republicans need a basic course in economics.

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, writing in the New York Times in the aftermath of student protests re: the tragedy that is unfolding in the Middle East:

Those of us who are university leaders and faculty are at fault. We may graduate our students, confer degrees that certify their qualifications as the best and brightest. But we have clearly failed to educate them. We have failed to give them the ethical foundation and moral compass to recognize the basics of humanity.

…

We need to ask ourselves: What is in our curriculums? What do we think it means to be well educated? What moral stands are we taking?

I spent most of my career working in academia and it is painful to watch what has been happening to much of what we still call “higher education.” While Emanuel’s comments, of course, do not apply to all universities and colleges, it still seems to me that in far too many cases “higher education” has become less education and more job training.

This man should never, ever become President again.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/12/trump-israel-hamas-netanyahu/

Here’s something I cannot understand:

Donald Trump has been indicted in four different jurisdictions for a total of 91 counts.

He has said that the recent Chairman of the Joint Chiefs should be executed.

And yet he apparently has a large number of followers who are planning to vote for him again.

My question is: Why?? Why would anyone continue to support him?

Can someone — anyone — explain this to me?