Bloody Hell

The remarks “poisoning the blood of our country” are straight out of Hitler’s 1925 autobiographical manifesto, “Mein Kampf” — his blueprint for a “pure Aryan" Germany and the removal of Jews.
Axios Explains: The racist history of Trump’s “poisoning the blood”

Pearls = Clutched.

The continued fascination, if not obsession with Donald Trump’s racism and/or race baiting, and the unwillingness of the Republican Party as a whole to come out against same is, by now, a well-known phenomenon. And, of course, the campaign to re-elect President Biden wants to keep harping on it.

“Every time he says it, we are going to call it out,” said Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign’s communications director. “He’s going to echo the rhetoric of Hitler and Mussolini, and we’re going to make sure that people understand just how serious that is every single time.”
Why Biden’s campaign keeps linking Trump to Hitler

Okay. So people know. Now what?

There’s a pretense at work here, the same one that pops up whenever the response to some tragic act or another is “this is not who we are.” A pretense that states that bad actions, and bad rhetoric, are only the preserve of people who themselves are objectively bad.

Rejection of ideas like all of humanity are brethren, or the content of one’s character is independent of the color of one's skin (or the faith one follows), is not new. Often, it’s borne of the idea that others represent a threat to the in-group that the in-group itself does not, or can not, represent to those others. Consider this passage from Deuteronomy:

Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.
Deuteronomy 7:3-4 New International Version (NIV)

Note the concern here, supposedly put forth directly by the Abrahamic god, that Jews who marry Gentiles will be turned to other faiths, rather than being able to bring their new spouses into Judaism. This is pretty much the same thought process that underlies Mr. Trump’s “poisoning the blood of our country” remarks.

So when the Biden campaign decides that they’re going to make it a point to constantly remind people that Donald Trump’s rhetoric carries shades of Adolf Hitler, the goal there is what? Somehow shame Republican voters into being more courageous in the face of what they see as an existential threat? That hasn’t worked so far. Remind Democrats of who they're up against? I can’t imagine that any of them have forgotten. Convince the marginally-attached or swing voters to turn out for Biden? That’s not how negative campaigning has ever worked.

The problem with making racists out to be monsters is that people come to only see those they understand as monsters to be racists. And while the fears of many conservative Americans may not resonate with people outside of those circles, that doesn't mean that the people who hold those fears don't see them as valid. And so they don't see themselves as monsters (and, accordingly, as racists). And this explains why Republican politicians aren't lining up to call Donald Trump out on this. (Senator Mitch McConnell’s wry comment that, as President, Donald Trump was fine having McConnell’s Taiwanese wife in his Cabinet was pretty good, however.) When Senator J. D. Vance says that comparisons between Mr. Trump and Adolf Hitler are “preposterous,” he’s standing up for Republican voters who are willing to buy into the belief that a person’s values and ethics have a strong correlation with national or ethnic origin, but who are unwilling to see themselves as anything like the ethno-nationalists of 1930s Germany. After all, only a monster could have thought that following Adolf Hitler was a good idea.

And that’s what makes hammering on this so pointless. Not that people's minds are already made up, but that their self-images are already set. I think that the back and forth over Trumpian rhetoric has become about virtue signalling, and, as such, statements only really land with people when they align with that person's conception of virtue. And as conceptualizations of virtue become more openly partisan, attempts to appeal to shared values are going to be less and less effective.

Kind of Gray

At an event on Wednesday, a voter asked Haley: "what was the cause of the United States Civil War?"

She replied that the cause "was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn't do."

"I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are," Haley continued. "And I will always stand by the fact that, I think, government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people."

After Haley gave her answer, the voter told her that it was "astonishing" that she gave an answer "without mentioning the word 'slavery.'"
Nikki Haley didn't say slavery caused the Civil War. Now she's facing major backlash

Personally, I'm not really sure why one would bother to ask Nikki Haley what she thinks of the Civil War. ("And I wanted to see what you think was the cause of the Civil War," does not strike me as a good reason.) The fact that it was going to result in an open pander to conservative Southerners who still want to hold on to the idea that the nation as a whole should consider their ancestors to have been good people in spite of the fact that slavery is now considered one of the worst evils of humankind (a rather predictable trap that occurs when one believes in absolute morality) should have been evident from the start. And maybe that was the point. After all, I'm pretty sure that whomever asked the question was expecting the response they received.

And that response does the following:

• It casts a good chunk of the Southern population as brittle and backwards. But this is just reinforcing the stereotype that a lot of people already have of White Southerners; closeted Klansmen who will, the moment the opportunity presents itself, re-litigate the Civil War in the hopes of reinstating at least Jim Crow, if not chattel slavery. Those same White Southerners are already well aware, and resentful, of this stereotype.
• It casts the Republican Party as dependent on "deplorables." Again, this is a stereotype that a lot of people who aren't Republicans (and some who are) already hold. In a republic where one person has one vote, the votes of bigots count for just as much as everyone else. And pointing out, again and again, that people see Republican voters as tolerating bigotry does little other than give (alleged) Republican office-seekers, like Nikki Haley a reason to stoke resentment of the contempt in which those voters are held.
• It boxes in those people who think that what Ms. Haley has said is garbage. Because anyone who stands up to say that Ms. Haley's statements make them look bad to the rest of the nation will be immediately tarred as being a shill for the Democrats.

And I don't see how any of that helps anything. I suppose that there are some number of people out there who were both considering voting for Nikki Haley and of the opinion that the South needs to own up to wrongdoing in the case of slavery, and those voters may now go somewhere else. But who cares? It's not as if Ms. Haley had, at any point in this process, a snowball's chance in a blast furnace of securing the Republican nomination to be their general election candidate.

All of that noted, it's worth pointing out that one of "the freedoms and what people could and couldn't do" that Ms. Haley feels that "government" had become involved in was the right to treat other human beings as a combination of personal property, machines and livestock. Given that, she could have come up with an answer that spoke the language of freedom and rights by saying that that the war was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of people that governments, local and federal, had openly neglected up to that point.

Of course, however, it's understood that casting the South as being willing to wage war to deny "the rights and freedoms of people" they relied on for cheap labor would have Ms. Haley branded a traitor in the South. So she would have needed to be more "nuanced" than I was, above. But that's a poor reason for her to not be prepared to deal with the question. After all, she's a politician. Weasel wording one's way out of difficult questions is a requirement for the job.

The Corner of Mis and Trust

One of the side effects of increasing political polarization in the United States, and the erosion of social trust that has come with it, is a greater unwillingness to see other people charitably. (And given how often I can be uncharitable, I feel odd typing that.) For example:

The Washington Post published an editorial last month noting that political polarization is increasing along gender lines, with young ("Generation Z") women starting to lean more liberal, and young men starting to lean more conservative. Since assortative mating is also starting to take politics into account, the Post's editorial board was concerned that this could lead to a reduction in marriage rates.

Cue teapot tempest. According to Salon, "It's a good thing most women don't want to date Trump voters," portraying a "no Trump voters" requirement as "the bare minimum." A writer for Medium questions the Post's intentions, asking: "First of all, doesn’t it seem like maybe we’re talking about something else here? Like how worried we are, as a nation, about protecting and cultivating the proliferation of white families and white babies, perhaps?" An author for Lawyers Guns Money accuses the Post of "Malicious false equivalency" and "Refusal to acknowledge right wing violence."

The Daily Kos also had some slings and arrows for the Post's editorial board, taking issue with the following:

As a whole, men are increasingly struggling with, or suffering from, higher unemployment, lower rates of educational attainment, more drug addiction and deaths of despair, and generally less purpose and direction in their lives.

Not so fast, said the Kos author, noting: "Higher unemployment? Really? It’s 3.9%. 'Lower rates of educational attainment?' Nope. Those rates are higher than ever, for both men and women," and then proceeding to flog the editorial board for not blaming the problem on things that liberal America stereotypically cares about, like "stagnant wage growth, out of control housing, and health care costs" and "the male ego and a wounded sense of their assumed primacy in our society."

But here's the thing. I understood, when I read the section quoted from the Washington Post, that they weren't speaking in absolute terms over time, but about men relative to women. Because according to The Education Data Initiative, while "Male and female educational attainment rates both increased between 2010 and 2022," it's also the case that "There is a greater percentage of women who obtain each educational tier compared to men from high school to master’s degree." And that for the current crop of 18 to 24-year olds, while men are more likely to have a high school diploma, they're also more likely to have not attained one. And women convincingly own the post-secondary degree statistics. And this is nothing new.

Likewise, the Department of Labor notes that the unemployment rate for men is higher than it is for women. Again, this isn't something that popped up out of the blue in late November, when open season on the Post was declared.

This isn't to say that the editorial was above reproach. It's paywalled, so I haven't read all of it myself, but the coverage of it pointed out valid limitations in the sample they were using, and like many such things, the employment data is too generalized to be of real use.

Of course, there's nothing unusual going on here. People are seeking to validate, and then amplify, the beliefs of their audiences. Because that's how one attracts, and retains, said audiences. And unlike myself, a number of the people that I've taken note of here write for money; they're charging for subscriptions, selling advertising on their pages or both. And that requires an audience who is willing (or at least perceived to be willing) to share disposable income. I write because I want to write, and Alphabet doesn't charge me anything to host my blog. It takes time, but no money on my part, so I lack a profit motive.

As polarization grows (which it can't do forever) and the camps define themselves more and more by their opposition to the other, we can expect to see more of this sort of thing. And that's partially because the country is at a point where being uncharitable is seen as the correct thing to do. I'm somewhat Left-leaning overall, but not particularly partisan because I don't believe that there are a number of people in the political and media spheres who are engaged in deliberate wrongdoing. I might not agree with what they're up to, but I would still submit that they're actively engaged in doing what they think will make the world a better place. It may turn out to be a road to nothing but sorrow and pain, but it's genuinely paved with good intentions.

P.S.: It's also worth noting that the American Enterprise Institute noted that attitudes towards Donald Trump was becoming a deciding factor in who people would or would not date some three years ago... The Washington Post isn't the first to see something here.

Keeping On

I wasn't really paying attention, but last Friday marked 17 years, to the day, that I've been writing this weblog. (It was even a Friday when I made my first post.) It's been an interesting time. What's interesting about it is that despite the fact that I pretty much make it a point to post often enough to ensure I hit 13 posts a month (a decision I made after January of 2007) it hasn't come with a sense of being disciplined about it, even though I suspect that this is precisely how many people would see it. It's just something I do, and other aspects of my life have simply flowed to fit around it. In fact, I don't have much of a sense of it at all. At a Christmas dinner yesterday, I was asked what I've been doing with myself, and despite all of the time that I spend wandering the World Wide Web in search of things of interest, drafting (and sometimes abandoning) topics and writing and posting things here, none of it came to mind when I went to answer the question. It's just sort of faded into the background of things.

But I suppose that, in the end, this is what one wants discipline to be like. The activity stops being something that one has to actively fit into their day on a regular basis, and it just becomes something that one does, almost as if it were a part of oneself. At its worst, it can feel like a compulsion, or even an addiction, in the sense that I start to become a bit put out when I don't attend to it regularly enough. It nags at me, and drags my attention back to itself when I would rather be doing other things. But again, it's possible that this is a feature and not a bug.

I've decided, time and again, that I wouldn't use Nobody In Particular as a place to complain about the world and/or people in it. I've pretty much given up on that. I, like a lot of people, I think, tend to be somewhat more attuned to the negative things that I encounter in my life than the positive. One thing that I would like to do, however, is delve more deeply into philosophy, just because I find the subject interesting. I'll also have to get out with my camera(s) more. I've started to notice that I don't shoot as much as I used to, and that tends to be more positive activity than being irritated with current events and the coverage thereof. So it's on to year 18 of this activity. It hasn't done what I'd set out to do with it, and I'm not really sure anymore what it does, but it's still been a worthwhile part of my life.

Papered Over

Recently, the Colorado State Supreme Court issued a ruling that, in effect, states three things:

1. That the events of January 6th, 2021 constitute an insurrection against the United States of America.
2. Then lame-duck President Donald Trump participated in the above insurrection.
3. The Presidency of the United States is an office of the government of the United States.

And because the court found the three above statements to be true:

• Donald Trump is no longer eligible to hold political office in the United States.

As a result, the court has said that Mr Trump is ineligible to be on the primary ballot for the Colorado presidential primary. There's been a lot of back and forth about this, and one of the arguments that comes up quite often is that the voting public should be allowed to vote for whomever they please. I find this be be a strange argument, mainly because it's more or less unique to this circumstance. It's never been argued that former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger should be allowed to run for President, and have his name on ballots, even though he's ineligible to serve. If not meeting some of the Constitution's requirements for eligibility to be President mean not having one's name on ballots, why would others be any different?

But honestly, none of this is the least bit worthwhile. The Constitution, the United States Criminal Code, policy, regulation, all of it; they are all simply words on a page. When I was younger, and people would bring up the fact that this or that group had some or another right under the Constitution, I would rather testily remind them that: "The Constitution doesn't protect anything. People have to do that." And American history is full of examples of the Constitution being ignored because it was in enough people's interests to ignore it.

The secret to Donald Trump's success as a politician (and I doubt that he is alone in this) is that he has been able to convince people to count his being in office as one of the things that they understand themselves to be entitled to as a matter of right and wrong. And one of the big reasons that drove ignoring the the Constitution is that it's provisions went against what people understood to be their rightful entitlements.

The United States, like most nations, really, is a nation of laws only in so far as the public sees those laws to be operating to their benefit. Part of the reason why none of the myriad charges that Donald Trump is facing right now have made a dent in his voter base is that those voters perceive the charges against him a a deliberate misuse of the law in order to deprive them of someone who actually cares about them and their success. As the saying goes, this isn't rocket science. Commentators who insist that Donald Trump is somehow managing to defy the laws of political gravity are, as far as I'm concerned, very unclear on how political gravity actually works. The current system exists, not because it is somehow just or morally correct, but because people, either actively or passively, approve of it. Once that approval is eroded, all bets are off. Regardless of what anyone, or any court, has to say about it.

Sight Unseen

A Chicago man has been cleared of murder charges after it was revealed that his conviction relied on testimony from a witness who was legally blind.
Darien Harris freed from prison after trial's key witness was found to be blind

"They didn't do anything wrong because they didn't know," [Dexter] Saffold[, the main witness of the shooting,] said of the prosecutors in the case. "I didn't have to tell nobody about my medical history."

Mr. Saffold is, of course, correct. At least, as far as that goes. This is mostly one of those headlines that prompts people to say "Really? This happened?" After all, "legally" blind and "actually" blind aren't the same thing. If there is a legal problem here, it's less Mr. Saffold's medical history than it is about the willingness of prosecutors to put anyone who they think can help them put someone away on the witness stand. I'm sure that some vetting goes on; after all, no-one wants to be the prosecutor of a case where it turns out that the witness's ability to see, let alone see the defendant clearly, is being questioned. But cases being overturned because it turned out that witnesses were too far away for an accurate identification to be believable are more common than they should be.

But I think that a lot of this can also be laid at the feet of juries, who seem willing to believe people who claim that the defendant is guilty more readily than perhaps is wise. Why, for instance, someone would believe that any sane person would commit a crime, then confess the details to a random stranger who just happened to be in the same cell as they, is a mystery to me. Were I to find myself in jail, I wouldn't say word one to anyone else in my cell, especially if I'd actually committed the crime. Because of course that person is going to seek to sell me out for a break in their own case. Why wouldn't they?

For a justice system to actually work, its verdicts have to be perceived as accurate. as the steady trickle of dubious or flatly incorrect convictions continues, suspicion that the system is more random than it lets on will grow. While this won't be a problem for everyone, it is something that should be looked into, in the name of maintaining credibility. Social trust is low enough as it is (which is part of the problem), having that distrust continue to spread may cost more than people expect.

Manning the Exits

There is a local store, part of the Kroger chain, called Fred Meyer. The basic concept could be described as a supermarket with a small department store attached. It really could be something of a one-stop-shop, where a person could get food, clothing, a television, office supplies, and the like under one roof. The stores are just big enough to have a reasonably decent chance of having what one might need. This makes them busy places during the holidays, as not only are there people shopping for groceries, but also for gifts, party preparation and the like.

In any event, I stopped by to grab some food for dinner, and noticed something interesting. There are, generally speaking, three routes out of the parking lot at this particular Fred Meyer; one each to the North, West and South. This evening, there was a panhandler at each one. For one exit to have a panhandler was pretty standard; a lot of stores in the area seem to have one place particularly favored by people needing to beg of passing strangers. But for there to be enough people attempting to work the exits from a particular location that they were all covered is highly unusual; I don't think I've seen anything like it since the "Great Recession" of the late '00s.

Whether this is an indication that problems of poverty and homelessness in the Seattle area are worsening, I don't know. This is, after all, simply a single observation. But this is the sort of thing that convinces people that things are worse than they were, say, a month ago. Unfortunately, I'm less certain that it convinces people that they should be part of the solution. And, in the end, they're going to have to be. The circumstances and policies that have lead to homes being out of reach for so many have resulted in the people who own the current housing stock being wealthier than they otherwise would be. Unless and until a significant group of people are willing to give up some of those gains, the high costs of living in the local area will result in more people holding signs by the exits to parking lots.

Numbers Game

"I thought I entered a time machine back to the Trump era," Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey said at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus rally on the steps of the US Capitol.

"I could not comprehend how a Democratic president who vehemently countered Trump's policies as a candidate is seriously putting forward the most Trumpian anti-immigrant proposal."
Biden risks Democrats' fury over deal on border and Ukraine

One of the reason, I suspect, that people have lost a certain amount of trust in "institutions," especially political institutions, is that politicians seem to have little compunction against pandering to favored constituencies by making everything Someone Else's Fault. Because anyone with two brain cells to rub together, and even a basic understanding of politics, understands why President Biden and his team are willing to entertain meeting at least some of the Republicans' demands on this issue. The simple fact of the matter is that the Democrats don't have a majority in the House of Representatives, and House Republicans look as if they prize unanimity over providing more military aid and funding to Ukraine. And if the President genuinely wants Congress to appropriate funds for Ukraine aid, he is going to need at least some Republican votes. Concessions on immigration are the way to get those votes. Personally, I would have sought to increase penalties for employers who hire ineligible workers over attempting to seal the border, but this may be why I'm not in politics.

In any event, the current Republican Party still dances to Donald Trump's tune, and that means that in order to bring House Republicans on board with any policy he might want to enact, President Biden must at least appear to be shuffling along to the same music. And Senator Menendez, who one suspects is able to count to ten (or $580,000) without recourse to his fingers, understands this. But the blame mustn't land with the broader Democratic Party, and it certainly can't be laid at the feet of the public, and so that leaves the President, despite the fact that he's only one person in a major political operation.

As Americans seem to become more and more allergic to actually having conversations with one another regarding politics, the parties lose any ability to persuade voters that they have viable answers to the things that people perceive as problems. Mainly because it takes more than simply party messaging to sway people. A certain amount of open and genuine person-to-person communication is also part of the mix. And that's simply not in the cards these days. When politics becomes a matter of right versus wrong, people become anchored in their positions pretty quickly. Which is fine for office-holders in safe seats, where the other party barely rates an afterthought. But when things are closely divided at the national level, the parties lose the ability to make progress in such an environment (which is why Authoritarianism starts to look good to people). And the people who have worked their way up to the highest levels in the political pecking order should know that.

Uncomplicated

Consider the following, found (like a lot of things I find, really) on LinkedIn:

This doesn't even qualify as a simple solution to a complex problem. Rather, it's simplistic. It makes a raft of assumptions, but notes none of them. For instance, who is "we?" Society as a whole? No-one asked me if retailers should be locking up merchandise. Not that locking up relatively portable, relatively high-value merchandise is anything new. And if the "we" refers to the people making the decision to put in locked cabinets at department stores or grocers, that's a "we" that lacks the authority to lock up suspected shoplifters. And of "we" refers to the criminal justice system... well, that's a whole other can of worms, but suffice it to say that they don't control both sides of the equation, either.

But even with that aside, the idea that the United States, as a society, can incarcerate its way out of the problem of retail theft is pretty preposterous on its face.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, picking pockets was among 220 capital crimes in England. Thousands were executed before the attending masses. Undeterred by the fate of their colleagues, pickpockets routinely worked the crowds at public hangings (Gatrell, 1994, 62).
The Deterrence Hypothesis and Picking Pockets at the Pickpocket's Hanging

If the executions of pickpockets was considered fertile ground for picking pockets, it seems unlikely that the potential for going to jail would eliminate the problem of retail theft. Law enforcement is a poor tool for attempting to force people to bear poverty with stoicism and equanimity, given the fact that even wealthy people have been known to steal when it suits their purposes.

But more importantly, being punitive does nothing to alter the perception of an opportunity gap, which is what's really at work here. Sure, there are going to be people who steal out of desire to injure others, or simply for enjoyment of the act, rather than an actual need, or the idea it's the best means available to them to better their material circumstances. A realistic threat of incarceration may deter those people. And it may deter some of the others, as well. But it's unlikely to be an effective deterrent for most, if for no other reason than most people don't expect to (and likely won't) be caught. Locking up people who steal merchandise from retailers isn't as simple as having a squad of police officers standing outside every Target or Kroger store and marching anyone the staff points to, and who can't provide some proof of purchase, off to jail. If that were a realistic plan, it would already have been enacted somewhere. And without an overwhelming police response, the chances of being arrested and prosecuted are fairly low.

Not to say that there's no place for better law enforcement in all of this. But the law enforcement system in the United States is simply not set up to solve this problem, for all that it looks to some like the easy way out.

Missing Planks

One of the podcasts that I listen to regularly is "The Rest is Politics" with former English politicians Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell. While on "opposite sides of the aisle" as we would say here in the United States, both men were expelled from their former political parties for an unwillingness to walk as far out on the wings as said parties wanted them to.

In a recent episode, Messrs. Campbell and Stewart were speaking about a report, from the Resolution Foundation, that lays out what's currently wrong with the U.K. economy, and how to fix it. They note that there are a lot of things that politicians should be doing, such as avoiding either a nostalgic take on a past that never really existed (MAGA, anyone?) or looking forward to a version of the nation that doesn't yet exist, being realistic about the current strengths and weaknesses of the economy (and playing to those strengths), helping second-tier cities catch up to the top tier, focus on the long term, realism about trade-offs and the like.

When "realism about trade-offs" was raised, Mr. Stewart said: "I would wish that somebody would take this report and lay out the really blunt, brutal implications of this." And those blunt, brutal implications basically came in the form of noting that there are certain things that people want, but that they can't have, and that creating the future will entail pain for certain people, who are going to be asked to bear more of costs than they will directly receive in benefits.

It's all fine and good, but the reason why politicians like Mr. Stewart end up wishing for this sort of straight talk from politicians, but rarely getting it is that it's pretty much always a losing strategy in an election. People want what they want, and simply noting that it's economically infeasible will, more often than not, simply create an opening for someone else to come along and declare that, in fact, it is possible to have one's cake and eat it, too. People tend to want to believe that even serious, long-standing problems have solutions that are straightforward and don't cost them anything. One can chalk this up to ignorance, wishful thinking or what have you, but it's a general fact of politics, and one that needs to be acknowledged. It may be satisfying to complain about people's sense of entitlement, but it's a side effect of the idea that people have rights, which is nothing more than another word for entitlements. In other words, once one opens the idea that there is a way the world should be, it's impossible to dictate to people the contours of "should" that they must stay within.

This is why crises tend to be dealt with only after they have occurred, even when they've been seen coming from a long way off; the teeth of a clear and present crisis tend to dictate what needs to happen, and thus cuts out all of the arguing that otherwise takes place.

Fortunate Ones

If you have people you love and who love you, you're blessed. If you're not homeless or wondering where your next meal is coming from, you're blessed.

I saw this on LinkedIn today, and my first thought was: "That's a pretty low bar for being blessed."

I get where the writer was coming from. The piece as a whole was about taking some time this Christmas season to give something to people who were less well off. But I'm not sure about the attempt to position the reader as somehow doing well for themselves simply because they can routinely manage the basics. Part of it, I think is that it aims low. Most of the people I see from posts from on LinkedIn aren't in the millionaire class. (I suspect that those people have more effective networking tools than LinkedIn.) And I doubt that whatever genuinely wealthy people who are on LinkedIn see any of my posts. So it's middle-income people talking to middle income people. But it's really the wealthy people that one should be talking to, if one is looking for those who are "blessed," "privileged" or just fortunate.

Yes, I understand that by the standards of many people in the world, even those of us in the United States who feel that they're "just getting by" are living like kings. (Even if many Americans I meet are openly envious of the number of families in places like India or Indonesia who have household servants to manage the menial tasks.) But giving from the middle to the bottom doesn't strike me as a workable long-term solution.

If course, foregoing a nice dinner or a new item of some sort to give money to the poor is something that many people can do, and it's something that's easy to control. But it's also the lesser sacrifice. In the big picture, people changing their buying habits would do much more for other people. But, it would mean sacrificing low, low, prices when buying stuff, and people find that painful, rather than gratifying. Easier to count one's blessings.

Zero Sum

Perhaps the strangest thing about the current Israel-Palestinian conflict is the degree to which it's being waged in the Court of Public Opinion in the United States and other Western nations. This has lead to a number of people being at pains to demonstrate that they're on one side or the other, and that neutrality is not an option. (As an aside, I'm apparently complicit in the bad acts that both sides have committed as a result of being unwilling to select a hill to unnecessarily die on.)

Whether it's a cause or an effect, I'm not sure, but related to this is what plays out as a competition by partisans of each side to show that they are the most victimized group in the conflict. The two sides go about this by a single-minded focus on the bad things that people have done to them to the exclusion of all else. Pointing out that there are far more than enough instances of both anti-Jewish and anti-Palestinian/Arab/Moslem sentiment to go around can easily trigger a charge of false equivalency.

Domestic American politics does nothing to help, as politicians, never being a bunch that would allow a potential advantage get away from them, have started using the conflict as a signalling device to voters, hoping to gain support from those who might have a favorable partisan lean while convincing those with an unfavorable lean that the other party isn't worth voting for. This, as might be expected, leads to a fairly disingenuous public discourse; nuance interferes with the political point-scoring that is the point of modern politics, and as such, is to be avoided.

It also creates yet another situation where people quickly come to pride themselves on their lack of empathy for others. The recognition that the Palestinians have received a raw deal is seen as being soft on terrorism; understanding that Israelis are legitimately attached to areas that are not part of Israeli is viewed as supporting colonialism and occupation. But here, as in most conflicts, there is no war between peoples, but between governments. (And yes, I'll grant Hamas the status of a de-facto government.)

To the degree that there are factions with both Israel and Palestine who understand that the whole of what was once Mandatory Palestine should belong to them, and them alone, this is a fight between two mutually-incompatible sets of interests. But, like most fights, it's taken on the mantle of a conflict over Right and Wrong. And that's largely what people here in the United States tend to argue over; who's right and who's wrong. But while wars can make people accept certain facts on the ground as existing, wars can't make a new status quo legitimate. And neither can bickering about it at a safe distance from the actual fighting.

Wordy

I believe in creating a country where anyone can do anything and achieve their own American dream.
Nikki Haley

Given that Ambassador Haley is a Republican, I would expect her to frame things this way. But I did notice that she spoke of "creating" such a country. One can take this as a de-facto admission that it does not exist in the present. I'm curious as to what she thinks is missing.

Of course, there is also the small matter of just what "a country where anyone can do anything" looks like in practice. Part of the reason why this is such a popular platitude is that it's easy for people to simply layer what they want to understand the world to be like over it, and call it good. But the real world, as it were, has a habit of not conforming itself to what people might want it to look like. In my conversations with conservatives, I've noticed a belief in what could be called Infinite Demand. One can think of this as what allows Supply-Side economics to work; government policies lower the cost of production, and businesses respond by increasing Aggregate Supply (basically, the sum total of the goods and services available for people to purchase in the economy). As Aggregate Supply expands, prices come down, which, in turn, increases demand, presumably to the degree that company revenues increase, even though unit prices are lower. (Did you follow all of that?) In any event, this where the concept of Infinite Demand comes into play, because the idea that "anyone can do anything" and be successful at it presupposes that the increased supply of whatever good or service that "anyone" creates will be absorbed by the market at a price point that allows it to be profitable. And therein tends to lie the rub. Because for anyone to be able to do anything on the way to achieving their own understanding of the American Dream, the demand for goods and services has to track with the supply; otherwise, it's likely that some number of people are going to pursue careers for which there won't be enough demand to allow them to sustain themselves.

Of course, it's possible to read Ambassador Haley's statement in a way that presumes that training in skills will always be available, so that people can quickly transfer to jobs where labor is scarce, and fund their American Dream in that way. But it's doubtful that even as President, that Ambassador Haley would have enough pull with Congressional Republicans to be able to fund that sort of initiative.

I'm aware that paying very much attention to platitudes is always a fools errand. But people do form opinions of candidates around them. And even though Ambassador Haley has pretty much no chance of securing the Republican nomination this time around, it's a safe bet that she'll make an attempt in 2028.

And Going, and Going...

Back when I first started Nobody In Particular, nearly 17 years ago, my first real post was about some activists who met in Lake Forest Park, Washington, and their idea that the modern United States was, or was on the verge of becoming, a police state. At the time I chalked up their attitude to a combination of paranoia, wishful thinking and a certain freedom to not have to consider that political stands that they took might have consequences.

But after more than a decade and a half of encountering any number of other people who like to tell themselves that the United States has become a genuine police state, I've come to realize that a certain level of narcissism can also play into the mix. I noted back in 2006 that "I don't understand what they are doing that would make the Federal government think them enough of a threat to actually do something to silence them." I suspect that I just should have asked them; they likely would have told me. I suspect that I wouldn't have agreed with their assessment that whatever actions they were taking were really that much of a threat to the status quo, but that's beside the point. The fact is that the activists themselves see their actions as a threat to the wealthy and powerful. There are times, I think where people cast themselves as the "scrappy underdog" out of ego as much as anything else.

Recently, I came across a post on LinkedIn from The Epoch Times, pitching their latest media project, a movie by Dinesh D'Sousa (who else?) that claims (wait for it...) that the modern United States has become a police state. Part of the rationale seems to be a bit of revisionist history and selective understanding of the law. People sent to prison after the rioting in Washington, D.C. on January 6th, 2021 are apparently "political prisoners," rather than people who committed some fairly obvious felonies.

In any event, a number of people were quick to cosign The Epoch Times' assessment of the situation; mainly, I suspect, because the anti-communist Times tends to see the American Left as only one step away from being the next iteration of a communist dictatorship. This gives them common cause with movement Conservatives (such as Mr. D'Sousa) who see any social program that benefits someone other than themselves (or those they favor) as a death knell for Truth, Justice and the American Way. (Not to mention their own cultural and financial interests.) And like other people who see a police state where it's hard to otherwise conclude that one exists, they see their agitation as some sort of existential threat to a power structure that, in all likelihood, barely pays any attention to them. And in that sense, warnings of a creeping police state are self-congratulatory, calling on people to pat themselves on the back for being able to push the current system into wrongdoing in order to save itself.