The future has arrived. But, which future?

In this blog, and with my students (I have only one more term to engage with them!) I have often discussed my concerns about the China model for development and its superficial attractiveness not only to developing countries but even to "thinkers" right here in the US.  In 2013, for instance, I wrote in this post against the backdrop of a federal government shutdown:

It is tempting, in such situations, to look across at Russia and China and note that their governments are more “efficient.”  A few months ago, well before this partial shut down, even the New York Times columnists, Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof, had written about how the Chinese get things done while we squabble here.  When Valdimir Putin effortlessly pushes ahead with his agenda, there are appreciative comments as well.

The Chinese model looks "efficient."  The American model of democracy, on the other hand, has always seemed messy, and the past five years of tRumpian politics has only worsened the standing of American politics and governance.

No wonder then that I was attracted to this essay in The Atlantic, in which the author argues that when Joe Biden worries about China it is not merely about the economic competition.  Nope.  His worry is something much bigger.  "In Biden’s view, the United States and other democracies are in a competition with China and other autocracies."

The old rules-based international order has come apart, and two broad constellations of countries are emerging in its place—one consisting of democracies, the other autocracies. Each side is motivated more by insecurity than by an ambition to transform the world in its image. Xi and his fellow autocrats worry that the free flow of information, the attractiveness of democracy, and economic interdependence would destabilize their regimes. Biden and America’s allies are concerned that Xi’s attempt to make the world safe for the Chinese Communist Party will undermine freedom and democracy, pushing international rules in an illiberal direction and empowering autocrats worldwide.

Sure, there are other interpretations of China in the global stage.  Biden gets my vote on this with his concern that the China model is a serious threat to liberal democracy.

And, yet again consistent with my world view, another essay argues that the fate of democracy in the world depends on the fate of democracy in one country--India, where liberal democracy has been rapidly losing ground to authoritarianism that is favored by mOdi and his toadies.

And the rest of the world doesn't even need a microscope to examine what the tRumpian Republicans have been doing in the states that are governed by them: Democracy is already dying in those states!

As Biden says, we are at an inflection point.  What we do and say have immense implications for the global future of liberal democracy.

Mind your Ps and Qs ... because ...

During discussions in the classroom, which now seems like something that happened in my previous life and to which we might not return for a few more months, I would often follow up with a student's point with "because ..."

I want students to explain why X leads to Y, and not just assume that X is there or that Y will happen.  After all, the courses that I teach are not faith-based.  Sometimes, I would even tell them that very point--we do not simply believe but provide logical explanations.

If the context is climate change, then I even quote Katherine Hayhoe, who said it well that she does not believe in climate change, because climate change is not about belief, not about faith, but is about cause-effect.

Even though I walk around with a Rodney Dangerfield-like punchline, I know well that there are students who listen to me and think about what we discussed.   Like how a student wrote to me well after a term ended:

Hello Dr. K,
When we were in class last term talking about Climate Change you had mentioned Dr. Hayhoe and the quote she had about belief ...
I was wondering if you could please either send a link to her quote or just the quote itself.

If only a significant number of Americans behaved like that student!

Instead, there is a widespread denial of science that runs deep.  "[So many] of the same people who reject the scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change also question the evidence related to COVID-19."

Given how common it is, it is remarkable that philosophers have failed to give it a formal name. But I think we can view it as a variety of what sociologists call implicatory denial. I interpret implicatory denial as taking this form: If P, then Q. But I don't like Q! Therefore, P must be wrong. This is the logic (or illogic) that underlies most science rejection.

It is not that this crowd is completely against science.  They cheer, for instance, when the American military pinpoints a location and bombs the shit out of an area full of brown people.  They know well that it was science that helped create the bombs and the precision technology to target an area.  So, to call them science-deniers is perhaps incorrect.  They are against science only when they run into "If P, then Q. But I don't like Q! Therefore, P must be wrong."

I like this framework to understand those who oppose climate change, evolution, ...

But, to reject Q just because it is not what we prefer as an interpretation means that it is only a matter of time before we run into reality.  "When we reject evidence because we do not like what it implies, we put ourselves at risk."

The U.S. could have acted more quickly to contain COVID-19. If we had, we would have saved both lives and jobs. But facts have an inconvenient habit of getting in the way of our desires. Sooner or later, denial crashes on the rocks of reality. The only question is whether it crashes before or after we get out of the way.

We are paying for the inaction due to denial all through February.  I cannot wait for President Joe Biden to throw out the regime of "alternative facts" and get us on to a path of ""If P, then Q" and take care of the Ps and Qs.

"The ultimate challenge"

I have been a fan of carbon tax.  I have blogged about it, talked about it, discussed it with students.  And I followed with interest the ballot initiative in the neighboring state.

It is, therefore, depressing to agree with David Leonhardt about the political reality of pricing carbon--won't happen.

What is the political reality?  As I quoted in that blog-post, "any Republican Presidential candidate who supported a carbon tax or regulations “would be at a severe disadvantage in the Republican nomination process.”  This Republican reality has become a nightmare in this hyper-partisan tRump time:

The G.O.P.’s radical turn means that climate activists can no longer search for a compromise between the two parties, in the hope that their leaders will try to sell it to skeptical voters. Republicans have made clear that they will instead stoke the skepticism for their own ends. Doing so pleases the oil and coal industries, which are generous campaign donors. It also helps win elections.

Win elections.  Win them at any cost.  Screw the damn liberals!

Why then don't initiatives succeed, even in blue states like Washington?

Carbon pricing puts attention on the mechanism, be it a dreaded tax or a byzantine cap-and-trade system. Mechanisms don’t inspire people. Mechanisms are easy to caricature as big-government bureaucracy. Think about the debate over Obamacare: When the focus was on mechanisms — insurance mandates, insurance exchanges and the like — the law was not popular. When the focus shifted to basic principles — Do sick people deserve health insurance? — the law became much more so.

Which is how tRump also won, right?  While Hillary Clinton talked like an expert on the mechanisms to make things better for Americans, tRump merely provided flashy simplistic slogans and rhetoric.  She, for instance, talked to coal miners, about how she will support programs to re-train them, while he even mimed a cartoonish version of coal-digging.  And he won!

This reality is also driving a new way of looking at the climate change issues--the Green New Deal:

Rhiana Gunn-Wright, a 29-year-old Rhodes scholar, works for the think tank New Consensus and helped design the Green New Deal. When I spoke with her, I was struck by her sense of political realism and how different it was from the old definition. For a long time, environmental activists have shown an almost compulsive — and in many ways admirable — honesty. They have chosen policies, like carbon taxes, that emphasize the downsides: Energy prices will rise. The Green New Deal and the recent clean-energy ballot initiatives do the reverse. They emphasize the benefits of clean energy and minimize the downsides. “There is a lot of anxiety and uncertainty in America today,” Gunn-Wright said. “Any solution that is tied to tangible economic benefits is going to have a better chance of passing.”

The truth, but not the whole truth.  Which is any day infinitely better than tRump's and the GOP's bullshit.

Leonhardt sums it up well:

The sad truth is that climate politics are probably not going remain as they are today. The future will almost certainly bring increasing harm, through more extreme weather. Eventually, some Republican politicians, especially in coastal states, may be willing to break with party leaders on the issue. Eventually, Americans may decide to punish politicians who deny or play down climate change. By the time a price on carbon took effect, it might not be so unpopular anymore. But we can’t wait for the politics to change to begin taking action.

On the road again ...

The Grand Old Party is becoming whiter, older, and racist by the day, and that demographic delivered a strong Senate for trump and the party.

They will soon start talking about the most important national security issue.

No, not North Korea.  Not Russia.

You know that other one.  The huge army that has been blitzkrieging its way to the southern border.

Yes, the "caravan."

On Tuesday, Vox’s Dara Lind reported that “[a]s soon as this week, the Trump administration is expected to issue a new asylum policy — ostensibly in response to the migrant ‘caravan’ — that could have the effect of barring people who enter the US between ports of entry from asylum.”

Because, hey, the manufactured brown-people crisis is the only thing that works for these 63 million racists.

It is not as if the migrants are having a jolly good hike through the territory:

The journey is gruelling and poses a number of challenges for those who decide to join the caravan. The hot weather means sunburn and dehydration are a constant risk.
The migrants have mainly been sleeping on the streets or in makeshift camps and there is a lack of clean water and sanitation. At times, food has been in short supply.
As the caravan has progressed, the towns they pass through have become more organised about providing shelter and food.

The racists have conveniently forgotten that this country was founded by people risking it all and fleeing their homelands in search of a better life and liberty. 

All they see is that the brown people are coming.  From shitholes.

The old, white, racists will ring the alarm bells soon.

In trump's America, women will have lots of kids, right? Hahahaha!!!

When discussing population dynamics, I have often asked students about the number of children of the recent US presidents.

Obama?

Two.

The president before him?

Bush. Two.

Before him?

Clinton. One.

I then ask them if they didn't have more kids because they could not afford too many children.

Of course not!

They didn't keep trying until they had a boy?  I mean, all girls?  A chuckle.

I would then ask them if they know how rich Bill Gates is.  We would laugh.  I would follow up with a silly question: Is he rich enough to afford to have, say, twenty kids?  But, he does not, right?

The point the exercise would lead to is this: Michelle Obama, Laura Bush, and Hillary Clinton, had careers independent of their husbands.  And almost always, the world over, as women get educated and start working outside their homes, well, they don't have too many kids.

I have stopped doing this routine. For an obvious reason.  President donald t. rump!  I don't ever want to talk about him or his children!

I am not sure if trump understands such things, and whether his base does either.  Because, if they did, they will seriously worry about their tough stand against immigration.  But then, 63 million voters for this guy.  I mean, this guy!

The latest reports are that fertility rates are continuing to fall in the US.

Fertility rates have been dropping for all race and ethnic groups, with the largest drop occurring among Hispanic women.

Yes, Hispanics, too, that trump and his base love to beat up on (literally?)

With such a trend, of course the white supremacists come out in full swing.  Iowa's steve king goes full blast white nationalist and talks about the "great replacement" of whites with, gasp, browns.  And that too Muslims.

He talked fearfully of falling fertility rates in the West and spoke at length about his belief that Europe and America are threatened by Muslim and Latino immigration.
“If we don’t defend Western civilization, then we will become subjugated by the people who are the enemies of faith, the enemies of justice,” King said.
The interview is remarkable, capturing a sitting U.S. congressman completely fluent in modern white nationalist talking points just weeks before an election he is favored to win

Yes, he is "favored" to win.  Despite, or because of, such white nationalist hatred in, you know, the heartland, where real Americans live!

king, who represents one of the reddest districts in America, has beaten his Democratic opponents by more than 20 points in the past five elections.

Like I have said for a while, trump's language of hatred directed at non-whites and non-Christians is not new; the GOP has been at it for a long time.  trump merely removed the euphemisms and mainstreamed it.

I suppose he has done his part to "save" the whites and his civilization by having five children that we know of, with three different women, of whom only one was born in America.

Stormy Climate

The bottom-line first: "the central question about storms in the Asia-Pacific is who pays for the damage."

 Although China is now the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, America and Europe are estimated to have emitted 37% of the global total between 1850 and 2012. The Philippines, by comparison, emitted 0.5%. That has triggered repeated calls for wealthy countries to help poorer ones pay for the cost of the effects of climate change, not least from tropical storms. Those calls are unlikely to grow softer. But, with the Carolinas still reeling from Florence, and Mr Trump in the White House, America, at least, is unlikely to offer an encouraging answer.

Sometimes, I suspect that Republicans do not want to acknowledge climate change, or the human causation of climate change, because they worry that America will be asked to pay for it.  Because, the moment one acknowledges the human causation behind global climate change, then the immediate follow-up question will be about who caused it.  And if the question of who caused it comes up, ahem, America is on the hook for massive payments.  Climate reparations!  Republicans smell money--in this case, a potential loss of money.

Here in the US, we talk about the increasingly powerful storms.  But,

If storms can wreak such havoc in the world’s richest country, their impact in poor Asia-Pacific countries is even more far-reaching. Every year, the Asia-Pacific region is battered by more and bigger storms than reach America.

Meanwhile, people in Chennai are already worried about the coming monsoon season.  After the disastrous rains and flood of 2015, and then the cyclone that tore through the city in 2016, it has been "normal" for two years.  When the people of Chennai watched in real time the devastating floods in Kerala this past summer, it was deja vu for them.

Here in the US, the GOP couldn't care about the rest of the world.  Heck, the party and its dear leader do not care even about Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands!

Therefore, news was made when 17 Republican members of the House signed a symbolic resolution to "promising to take “meaningful and responsible action” to address human-caused climate change."  Seventeen.  Yep, 17.

It is the largest number of Republicans ever to join an action-oriented climate initiative in “maybe ever,” said Jay Butera, a congressional liaison for Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which helped put together the resolution. “I’ve been working on this issue for 10 years,” he told me. “This is a high water mark.” Of course, these 17 Republicans represent just 7 percent of the House GOP.

Seven percent!

It should surprise nobody that the Democratic Party is the only hope for those worried about climate change.

More and more, voters seem to agree with California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who recently said, “If you want to go green, you better go blue.” Becerra was speaking from the stage at the Climate Summit, comfortable as part of an overwhelmingly blue majority.

An inconvenient truth!

Bomb, bomb bomb. Bomb, bomb, Iran!

Today is when the star of the trump reality show will announce his decision after teasing the viewers with "will he?" questions.  Recall how the star announced his decision on the Supreme Court nomination, or about pulling out of the Paris Accord?  It is all about the ratings, the substance be damned!

It will be a huge surprise, an awesome twist, if the star announces that the US is committed to the Iran deal.  That will be an unexpected plot twist, immensely more head-turning than JR returning to Dallas!

In all this drama, which is a complete contrast to the years of no-drama-Obama, let us not forget one fundamental aspect: Most Republicans have always hated working with the Iranian government.  The Republicans have no qualms working with our frenemies, especially Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.  But, Iran they hate.  It is simply that trump states everything in crude terms what seasoned Republican politicians say in polite language.

Consider, for instance, Mitt Romney.  He toadied up to trump by sharing frog legs for dinner, in the casting call for the role of Secretary of State.  Romney (like most GOP politicians) thought he could go about executing his preferred policies as trump clowned around in the White House.  trump tossed him away like a used condom. Remember that?

Romney's immigration policies are no different from the ones that are being implemented by the trump administration hand-in-glove with the GOP Congress.  This is a man who as a candidate asked the undocumented to self-deport.  As a candidate, he trashed the economically unfortunate as takers, and wanted to shred the safety net--exactly what is being done now, under the fearless leadership of his running-mate, Paul Ryan.

So, later today when trump announces that the US is nuking the Iran deal (yes, pun intended!) expect most of the Republicans to applaud him.  His rock-solid base will enthusiastically back him, and might even claim that this is exactly what Jesus would have done.  If chaos and wars increase, then the chances of the second coming increase, right?

The title of this post?  That's what the "elder statesman" John McCain sang back when he was the GOP candidate for the presidency.  Don't ever be fooled by these maniacs!  Apparently McCain's dying wish is that trump should not attend his funeral.  Strange politics!

But, seriously, won't it be one hell of a plot twist if trump announces his commitment to the Iran Deal? ;)

Immoral priorities

Of course we don't expect our politicians to be people of absolutely perfect moral standing.  We are humans and we are imperfect, and our elected officials will also be imperfect humans.

Thus, it has always been a question of how much imperfectness will we tolerate.  Gary Hart was on a roll, leading in the polls with a winning formula that had him practically in the Oval Office.  And then his monkey business came out, with his affair with Donna Rice and the infamous photograph on a yacht named Monkey Business.  He was gone in no time.

Thirty years later, trump was elected to the Oval Office despite--or because of--his horrible track record.  Ironically, his strongest supporters are the moral crusaders of our time--the evangelicals.  These Jesus-loving moralists elected him and support him.  Heck, even his current wife does!

And what kind of a scumbag is he?

Trump’s background and beliefs could hardly be more incompatible with traditional Christian models of life and leadership. Trump’s past political stances (he once supported the right to partial-birth abortion), his character (he has bragged about sexually assaulting women), and even his language (he introduced the words pussy and shithole into presidential discourse) would more naturally lead religious conservatives toward exorcism than alliance. This is a man who has cruelly publicized his infidelities, made disturbing sexual comments about his elder daughter, and boasted about the size of his penis on the debate stage. His lawyer reportedly arranged a $130,000 payment to a porn star to dissuade her from disclosing an alleged affair. Yet religious conservatives who once blanched at PG-13 public standards now yawn at such NC-17 maneuvers.

An born-again friend of mine, with whom I have practically disconnected the old relations, is one of those trump supporters!  These people apparently know all too well WWJD!

These evangelicals have no problems with "the distinctly non-Christian substance of his values"

Trump’s unapologetic materialism—his equation of financial and social success with human achievement and worth—is a negation of Christian teaching. His tribalism and hatred for “the other” stand in direct opposition to Jesus’s radical ethic of neighbor love. Trump’s strength-worship and contempt for “losers” smack more of Nietzsche than of Christ. Blessed are the proud. Blessed are the ruthless. Blessed are the shameless. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after fame.

Gary Hart must be kicking himself for being 30 years too early!

So, where does this leave us?

Here is the uncomfortable reality: I do not believe that most evangelicals are racist. But every strong Trump supporter has decided that racism is not a moral disqualification in the president of the United States. And that is something more than a political compromise. It is a revelation of moral priorities.

Immoral 63 million voters need to have their own come-to-Jesus moments regarding:

For a package of political benefits, these evangelical leaders have associated the Christian faith with racism and nativism. They have associated the Christian faith with misogyny and the mocking of the disabled. They have associated the Christian faith with lawlessness, corruption, and routine deception. They have associated the Christian faith with moral confusion about the surpassing evils of white supremacy and neo-Nazism. The world is full of tragic choices and compromises. But for this man? For this cause?

For now, 63 million voters stand accused. The evangelicals have to additionally deal with their lord too!

No traitors we are. We, too, sing America!

About eight years ago, after the "Tea Party" activists essentially took over the GOP, as the anti-Obama approach became the only guiding principle for that party, and with the intense opposition to Obamacare uniting all factions within that party, I started worrying about the meaning of the "take the country back" that the maniacal Republicans were mouthing off.

It was in that context that for the first time ever I blogged about Langston Hughes' poem.

Since then, Republicans have made it crystal clear what they meant by taking the country back.

Thus, during this Black History Month, it is most appropriate to re-read Hughes.

I, too, sing America.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides, 
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

I get paid to stay at home and do nothing!

If memory serves  me well, up until a couple of days ago, I had never ever taken a sick day through all these years of teaching.  Not once.  A few years ago, a student--Robert--who had taken a few classes of mine, joked loudly that I never cancel classes, unlike other faculty.  Unfair to the students, he said.

That streak ended.

The flu bug did not kill me, but merely inconvenienced me.

I am lucky that my employment always came with sick leave that I could take if I ever felt unwell.  But, this is not always the case with all the people.  

Back in the old country, it is only the minority who are employed in what we academics call the "formal sector" get such a privilege.  To the overwhelming majority, going to work when ill is to be expected.

That's how life was everywhere on this planet.  We were all poor and unhealthy.  As societies get prosperous, I expect us to become more caring about our fellow humans. But, even in the uber-rich USA, there are millions who don't have the privilege that I have.  Like the couple mentioned in this report:

Mark Moyer, 20, and Sarah Rogers, 22, were waiting for a note from Dr. Marna Rayl Greenberg.
Because of their hacking coughs, their boss at a local shipping warehouse had told them to leave and not return without a doctor’s note.
But Dr. Greenberg, the hospital’s vice chair of emergency medicine, produced notes certifying only that they were sick. “You need to be seen again, and then I can write you another one saying you’re well,” she said.
The couple, who had matching hand tattoos of the date they met, were clearly struggling. Their jobs pay only $9 an hour, and until they recently moved in with her parents, they had been living in a car.

If they don't show up for work, they lose their hourly wages.  

"Financial need, medical experts say, plays a big role in spreading flu: many Americans go to work sick because they cannot afford to miss days. "  

At least out of selfishness, I would  expect the heartless Americans to provide a safety-net for the struggling people.  Because, the virus spreads.  Easily.  "People with flu can spread it to others up to about 6 feet away. ... To avoid this, people should stay away from sick people and stay home if sick."

But, the family-friendly, Jesus-loving, white supremacist party that now controls all the branches of the federal government couldn't care about fellow humans. It is on a mission to shred to pieces even the little bit of safety net that we have managed to put together since the New Deal.

Oh well; even Jesus will not be able to forge a New Deal with the current version of the Grand Old Party!  The maniacal Republicans will rather excommunicate him first!

Browns not welcome!

First it was my father. Then another day it was a cousin of his. And more from other people. Finally, the day I was flying out, an uncle who called to wish me also asked the same thing as all the rest asked.

They all wanted to know why trump is against immigration.  They were even more curious about why he wanted to end the rule that allowed spouses of those on work visas to also work here in the US.

I wished I could editorialize to them that this is what one got for playing along with the devil, instead of fighting it.  India's proto-trump--narendra modi--sold to the Indian public that he and trump are best friends.  People, therefore, assumed that trump would grant India a whole lot of favors.  Instead, they were being slammed with immigration tightening and harsher approaches to outsourcing, which are India's important economic assets.

What they did not want to acknowledge was that modi and trump were, and are, pals regarding one and only one thing: Their shared hatred of Muslims.

But, I didn't editorialize.

I told them that trump had always made this very clear.  There was nothing new.  He hates the brown-skinned.  His party hates the brown-skinned. And a good chunk of his party hates immigration, especially of the brown-skinned.

The uncle, whose daughter is the CEO of a large telecommunication company in the old country, was not convinced.  He wanted an explanation for why trump and the GOP would adopt such a stand when it was so clear that America benefits from immigrants.

It was the old "cut the nose off to spite the face" madness, I told him.

Cato updates us about Republican bills in Congress that "would have far-reaching negative effects on economic and labor force growth in the United States, instituting the most severe restriction on legal immigrants since the 1920s."

These cuts lack any reasonable justification. Labor force growth is an essential component of economic growth. Immigrants already increase U.S. Gross Domestic Product by roughly $2 trillion annually. For the United States to remain competitive internationally, it needs an expanding workforce. These proposals will harm domestic growth and make it more difficult for U.S. businesses to out-produce their competitors around the world.

Like I said, it is a cut the nose to spite the face approach.  The same approach that, incidentally, the Bernie Sanders people also mostly favor, even though they might use more polite language when speaking of the brown-skinned!

U.S. immigrants who primarily enter under the family sponsorship and diversity categories are the most highly educated in American history. True “merit-based” immigration reform would give these immigrants more opportunities to immigrate, not fewer. In any case, America needs workers at both ends of the skills spectrum to grow job opportunities for all Americans. There is simply no economic justification for banning so many legal immigrants.

Of course, recently trump upped his game by telling his 63 million supporters, and the rest of the world too, what he thinks of the brown-skinned.

The modi-toadies are slowly waking up to the devil's ways. modi himself is beginning to realize that trump might not be india's friend!  Maybe trump will respond to modi in Davos by speaking with an Indian accent, eh!

Race is a social construct

Consider the following quote:

"In Arizona, a majority of the grade school children now are Hispanic. That means Arizona's future is as a Hispanic society. That means in effect, the border has moved north."

There is one important aspect that the quote does not even bother to mention.  It is not a "Hispanic society" but American children.

Such is the Republican rhetoric these days, thanks to 63 million racists who voted for their Dear Leader!

In the introductory class that I teach, I provide students with demographic data on Mexico, which shows the important changes there: Sharp decrease in total fertility rate; decrease in mortality rates; and improvements in economic conditions.  Therefore, while in the 1980s plenty headed  el norte, now the net migration is negative--more Mexicans return to their homeland compared to the ones coming to America!

That is the story that another Indian-American, Shikha Dalmia, writes about before she concludes:

America's economy over the last several decades has been built on the backs of Hispanic migrants willing to work their tails off in jobs that Americans simply don't want to do. In a rational world, the president wouldn't be wasting taxpayer dollars on militarizing the southern border to repel peaceful workers from a friendly neighbor. He would be sending them invitation cards to come north and help him Make America Great Again.

But, trump and his white supremacists have made it very clear that this is not really about any logic and evidence.  It is simply about racism.  Norwegians are welcome. Shitholers need to be deported.

Dalmia has been going ballistic for quite some time now.  She is not merely a right-of-center commentator, but a libertarian.  An immigrant.  In another essay, she writes:

The GOP is now fully Trump's party. There is no limit to what principles it'll abandon just to keep immigrants out of the country. Maybe it will deport the Statue of Liberty next.

The 63 million racists may have won the war.  But, they will lose the battle.  The next decade will be completely contrary to what these racists dream about.  We shall overcome!

Some like it hot ... only if they are Republicans!

This commentary, which I will send to the editor after a final round of read-through, is an example of how the blog-posts and comments are not mere rants ;)
*************************

“The whole world is getting hotter, sir” said the auto-rickshaw driver on a warm December afternoon in Chennai, India, as he drove me to the hospital where my aunt had been admitted to the ICU.

It was not only that auto-rickshaw driver, but everybody that I talked to over the three weeks of my annual trip to the old country seemed to have plenty to say about global warming.

An old high school friend, Ramesh, was blunt when we talked about the unusually warm December. “Only Americans don't recognize the reality of global warming," he complained. It is the Republican Party that does not even acknowledge climate change, I responded. My weak defense of my land and its people did not win me any brownie points.

There is immense concern in India for a reason—the facts of global warming are very much a part of daily life. Newspaper commentaries and television shows reflect nothing but worries. There is no denial of the reality.

Back in the old country, temperatures throughout the year are warmer than usual. In a coastal city like Chennai, the warmer temperature along with high humidity makes life highly uncomfortable, to say the least. “Endless summers,” my father complained. Rains—even the once predictable monsoons—are increasingly erratic. Even worse, every monsoon season is seemingly punctuated by extreme weather events.

In December 2015, Chennai had rains and floods that were far beyond anything that even the oldest living person had experienced. In December 2016, a cyclone ripped through the city. People were, therefore, expecting the worst in 2017, especially after the fake predictions of earthquake and tsunami off the southern coast—rumors that spread far and wide thanks to the extensive use of WhatsApp and Facebook.

Fortunately, the December heat was all the people of Chennai had to deal with. But, the extreme weather did not spare the state of Tamil Nadu, for which Chennai is the capital.

On November 30th, Cyclone Ockhi made landfall in the southern peninsular tip of the Subcontinent. 245 people died, according to official counts, with nearly 700 still missing after more than a month. Thousands of homes were destroyed or damaged, and the transport and telecommunications infrastructure took a beating as well.

Until recently, scientists were not sure whether such extreme weather events can be attributed to climate change, even though their studies predicted such outcomes. We laypeople were left to speculate whether such events could be mere accidents. Not anymore. Scientists have been steadily confirming that if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, then there is no denying that it is indeed climate change!

Examining the extreme weather events of 2016, scientists delivered a firm conclusion about the causation. “Climate change was a necessary condition for some of these events in 2016, in order for them to happen,” said Jeff Rosenfeld, who is the Editor in Chief of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in New Orleans this past December. Climate change was the culprit in approximately 65 percent of the examined cases over the past six years.

Even here in the United States, extreme weather events like Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, and the very late in the season fires in California, caused tremendous damage to life and property this past year alone. And then there were other disasters around the world—like the terrible floods in Nepal. The German reinsurance company Munich Re recently cautioned that “our experts expect such extreme weather to occur more often.”

Yet, America stands alone on the global stage with its vehement denial of climate change and its human causation. My friend Ramesh echoed the sentiments of many when he commented that they cannot do anything about the US. “Countries like India will simply have to suck it and move on.” He continued with, “at least out of sheer self interest, India must drive environmentally friendly energy sources, just as China is doing. If these two do a good job and Europe maintains the high ground it currently occupies, then maybe it might, just, be manageable.”

The rest of the world has seemingly given up on the US when it comes to addressing global climate change. Meanwhile, in pursuing an “America First” approach, we are oblivious to the reality that there is no wall that we can build in the atmosphere in order to create our own climate.

If only we understood how much our lives are intricately connected to the life of an auto-rickshaw driver on the other side of the planet!

OMG! Another mass shooting that was committed by a woman?

Seriously, we have two problems: Guns, and men.

The party of thugs, aka the GOP, won't allow us to talk about these two.  Definitely not about guns.

Consider this chart from Pew Research:

Pew notes:

 As recently as 2007, 48% of Republicans and GOP leaners said it was more important to control gun ownership, while 47% said it was more important to protect gun rights.

That's a good chunk of the GOP, along with an overwhelming majority of the rest, in favor of controlling gun ownership.  Until 2007.

So, was there anything in particular that happened in 2008 for the GOP folks to become nutcase defenders of gun rights?  Think about 2008. Something dramatic happened in the country, remember?

In 2008, it seemed clear that the country would vote in a Democrat to the White House, after eight long Bush years of wars and crises that were ending with the global recession.  The two leading Democratic candidates belonged to demographic categories that the GOP typically does not favor: A woman and a black man.

The election happened.  The Onion carried the day with the best caption ever.

Gun sales skyrocketed.  And the GOP became cemented in gun rights.

In June 2017, Pew reported:

Nearly two-thirds of Democrats (64%) say there would be fewer mass shootings in the U.S. if it were harder for people to legally obtain guns; only about a quarter of Republicans (27%) say the same. And Republicans are skeptical that making it harder to legally obtain guns would have an effect on mass shootings: 54% say it would not make a difference, while 18% think restricting access to guns would lead to more mass shootings.

Tell me again how awesome the GOP is?

Source

What, to the American slave, is the ...

Even a casual visitor to this blog would have noticed the pinned blog-post on the right: How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

In that post, which was one heck of an educational lesson for me, I quoted Frederick Douglass:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

The 4th of July is a symbol. As much as the flag is a symbol. Or the national anthem.

Douglass's protest lives on even now because white supremacy has not gone away.  In fact, white supremacists have been able to even get one of their own in the Oval Office!

In an interview with the New Yorker's editor, Hillary Clinton has a lot to say about trump, to whom the GOP loyalists and bible-thumping Christians, including past commentators at this blog, flocked in the millions.

She castigates Trump for inflaming and giving “permission” to misogynists and racists. “Those attitudes have never gone away,” she told me. “But we had successfully—and this is part of the role of civilization—we had rendered them unacceptable: being an overt racist, being an overt misogynist, saying the terrible things that Trump said about immigrants or Muslims. All of that was not political correctness. It was respect. It was tolerance. It was acceptance. But there was a growing resentment, anger, that came to full flower in this election. . . . The Internet has given voice to, and a home for, so many more people. And so with Trump to light the match, from the first day of his campaign to the last, there was a sense of acceptance, liberation, empowerment for these forces.”

The racist lit another flame by attacking black athletes who channeled Douglass--they did not stand for the national anthem.

In response, players, activists, and commentators alike want to remind the fascist that we are well past the days of the white plantation owner telling blacks what to do.

We’re not on the plantation anymore Chump. There will be no “buck breaking” out here. Fingers on the hand form a fist. #TakeAKnee ‘til free.

— jesse Williams. (@iJesseWilliams) September 23, 2017

Or, here is the NY Times columnist, Frank Rich:

This isn’t complicated: To Trump, NFL players are slaves with no right to challenge their masters (and his friends), the plantation owners.

— Frank Rich (@frankrichny) September 24, 2017

Of course, fascists love to wrap themselves up with the flag and demand unquestioning obedience to the national symbols.  The proto-trump in the old country--modi--did that a few months ago when he and his minions mandated that moviegoers stand in attention to the national anthem prior to the movies.  My friend and her daughter were in the tiny minority who protested.  Of all things, women daring to protest.  How dare they, eh!  They were whisked off to the police station.

modi and trump have fucked up things so badly that it will take generations to recover from them.  The list of charges against the 63 million keeps getting longer and longer.

I will wrap this up with one of my old favorite poems.  By e.e. cummings :

"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

To the GOP, denial is nothing but a river in Egypt!

I have blogged enough about climate change, which is all the more why I cannot understand how the maniacal Republicans can continue to be in denial.  Two years ago, back in August 2015, in responding to this comment by a GOP loyalist, I wrote:

What is, therefore, tragic is this: even when we now know better, we seem to want to continue along the same path that we have been traveling for decades. And the esteemed leaders of your favored political party even believe that the problems are all nothing but figments of the liberal imaginations. It is beyond my abilities to comprehend how politicians who have tremendous influence over our lives can be such vehement deniers.

The GOP loyalists apparently do not care for anything other than electing one of their own to the Oval Office--humanity be damned!

And then there were mysterious visitors, who continued to spout their denialist comments (like here.)

Thus, we continue to fail to address climate change.

Is this failure to act the legacy our generation wants to leave for the generations yet to come?

Apparently even the destructive hurricanes and extreme heat and all the other data won't convince the denialists!

[The] most savage heat waves that we experience today will likely become routine in a matter of decades. The coastal inundation that has already begun will grow worse and worse, forcing millions of people to flee. The immense wave of refugees that we already see moving across continents may be just the beginning.
...
In Washington, progress on climate change has stalled. The administration has announced its intent to withdraw from the global Paris climate accord. And top Trump appointees insist that the causes of climate change are too uncertain and the scientific forecasts too unreliable to be a basis for action.

A school "lifer" like me from the old country, who returned to India after earning his credentials here in the US, warns that storms and heatwaves will worsen because of climate change, and that monsoons will become more chaotic.  "It’s a question of taking onus and preparing for the bad climate," Krishna concludes.

Do that. Or, the alternative is to simply put into practice the words of the GOP's patron-saint of skulldaggery: deny, deny, deny!

J'accuse! J'accuse! J'accuse!

In June 2016, I was in an airport shuttle van with an Armenian-American driver and two German tourists.  The male tourist said that because it is illegal in Germany to say or do anything supporting Nazis, there is nothing there, at least in the open.  He blamed the US for exporting neo-nazi stuff to Europe.

This past weekend, the neo-nazi side of America was in full display.  A woman's death, and a black man's near-death, and more ...

Even prior to that post, in May 2016, I wrote about the looming dark clouds.

It starts with a swastika and 1488 etched on a bench on a bridge over a river :(  Here is to hoping that we will end it all before it even takes hold.

The evil has taken a firm hold, and eradicating it now will be a much tougher problem than anybody could have imagined.

In those posts, the two highly religious and openly Republican readers who used to comment stayed away from commenting.  One of them had even pontificated a year prior in a post on our biased and bigoted selves:

I do not understand how one person thinks he is better than another simply because of skin color or religion or any accident of birth, such as the wealth of the parents or location of the home. Every human has value and has gifts and talents and skills to share. None is more important than another.

I bet that those readers were two of the 63 million who voted for trump, who was thanked today by the former KKK leader.  The "thanks" was because the president equated "activists protesting racism with the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who rampaged in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend."

Two weeks after the November election, I wrote that white nationalism is not new to the GOP.

The big difference between 1984 and 2016 is this: Reagan used the political dog-whistle to remind the GOP white loyalists about blacks and immigrants.  Trump ditched the dog-whistle and went for the straight talk.

Elections have serious consequences.  This past election was perhaps one of the most consequential one ever, which is something for future historians to write about.

I quoted Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wrote:

Trump’s victory, in light of all of his antics during the campaign, makes it all but impossible to deny the continuing currency of racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia in the United States. It’s on display for all to see. This could be a good thing: It forces us to reckon with who we really are. Is America really about the democratic, progressive values professed in the founding documents? Or, are we really the small-minded, bigoted place Trump’s election represents?

The nine months after the election have made it clear that the 63 million did vote for racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia, and more.  They stand accused!

June 1, 2017: A date which will live in infamy

So, ... it finally happened.

President Trump announced Thursday that he will withdraw the United States from participation in the Paris climate accord

The asshole did it.

Source

I bet his 63 million voters, including two frequent commenters in the pre-election years, are orgasmic with this premature withdrawal.

It is not only the global climate change, about which I have blogged enough, that worries me.  This decision by the worst ever human being will mean that in the international politics of give and take, well, most of the rest of world will begin to work around the US.  And when we go knocking on their doors, they will flash their middle fingers to reciprocate trump's gesture.

The US as the "leader of the free world" no more.

Fareed Zakaria on Trump and climate accord: This could be the day the US resigns as leader of the free world https://t.co/TTwMoMjqEn

— CNN (@CNN) June 1, 2017

I wish people would understand something that many serious people, and the insignificant me, have been saying ever since trump became a candidate: most of his policies are in tune with what most of the GOP is all about.  In this context, it is not merely trump who denies global climate change and the human causation of it--that is pretty much the mainstream GOP position.  trump just happens to speak crudely and plainly, whereas the "establishment" leaders use appropriate euphemisms!

Oh well ... I feel so exhausted. It is not even five months into the asshole's presidency.

The frightful adjunct economy

The US is embarking on a potentially disastrous experiment--to create freelance work without a social safety net.  This does not bode well.

Freelancers are not new to the higher education industry--over the years, the system has been increasingly employing part-timers, whom we refer to as "adjuncts."  In large metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, it is not uncommon for adjuncts to teach classes at more than one college.  Given the time they spend traveling from home to different campuses, they are also referred to as "road scholars."

Life as an adjunct is tough.  The additional income is great if one already has a full-time job.  This was my story when I started teaching in California.  But, without a full-time job, and relying on adjunct positions means they have to keep the departments and students happy--else, they lose the gig.  And, if budgets tighten up, they are the first ones to be let go.

When they lose their jobs, the former adjunct professors scramble for health insurance--this is a benefit that is tied to the job.  The lack of a national health plan was addressed only a few years ago with Obamacare, which might be gone really soon.  Retirement and disability benefits are also benefits that full-timers have.

This adjunct thing has not worked out well in higher education.  And now we are taking this disastrous approach to the rest of the economy, via Uber, and AirBnB, and ...

The industry that drove America’s rise in the nineteenth century was often inhumane. The twentieth-century corrective—a corporate workplace of rules, hierarchies, collective bargaining, triplicate forms—brought its own unfairnesses. Gigging reflects the endlessly personalizable values of our own era, but its social effects, untried by time, remain uncertain.

Remains uncertain is an understatement.

Normally, every efficiency has a winner and a loser. A service like Uber benefits the rider, who’s saving on the taxi fare she might otherwise pay, but makes drivers’ earnings less stable. Airbnb has made travel more affordable for people who wince at the bill of a decent hotel, yet it also means that tourism spending doesn’t make its way directly to the usual armies of full-time employees: housekeepers, bellhops, cooks.

We are rushing to decimate full-time work, and replacing that with part-time "gigs" that do not offer benefits and in a society with a frayed and tattered safety net.  All these are profound political transformations, but without the needed political discussions!

A century ago, liberalism was a systems-building philosophy. Its revelation was that society, left alone, tended toward entropy and extremes, not because people were inherently awful but because they thought locally. You wanted a decent life for your family and the families that you knew. You did not—could not—make every personal choice with an eye to the fates of people in some unknown factory. But, even if individuals couldn’t deal with the big picture, early-twentieth-century liberals saw, a larger entity such as government could. This way of thinking brought us the New Deal and “Ask not what your country can do for you.” Its ultimate rejection brought us customized life paths, heroic entrepreneurship, and maybe even Instagram performance. We are now back to the politics of the particular.
For gigging companies, that shift means a constant struggle against a legacy of systemic control, with legal squabbles like the one in New York. Regulation is government’s usual tool for blunting adverse consequences, but most sharing platforms gain their competitive edge by skirting its requirements. Uber and Lyft avoid taxi rules that fix rates and cap the supply on the road. Handy saves on overtime and benefits by categorizing workers as contractors.

 I don't understand how people think that all these will work out without serious discussions on a new social contract that reflects the rapidly changing 21st century conditions.  A new social contract will require the mega-mega-rich to spare a few dimes, but the GOP is only keen on giving them more tax breaks!

If all that doesn't worry one, there is more:

We are, all of us, in inescapable thrall to one of the handful of American technology companies that now dominate much of the global economy. I speak, of course, of my old friends the Frightful Five: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

Enjoy, for now, because "It’s too late to escape."

Carrying coal to Newcastle

In my classes, I often remind students that for all practical purposes, it is the last two hundred years that have made a huge difference in the human condition, and that the rest of this century will undergo transformations that will be of a scale even grander than that of the past two centuries.

All those pretty much began with the way we started using coal to power the transformative ideas.  This coal-based transformation of the world, the Industrial Revolution, began in England.  The same place where history was made this past Friday:

Friday was the first full day since the height of the Industrial Revolution that Britain did not burn coal to generate electricity, a development that officials and climate change activists celebrated as a watershed moment.
The accomplishment became official just before 11 p.m., when the 24-hour period ended.
...
Now on a path to phase out coal-fired power generation altogether by 2025, Britain, also the home of the first steam engine, is currently closing coal plants and stepping up generation from cleaner natural gas and renewables, like wind and solar.
“Symbolically, this is a milestone,” said Sean Kemp, a spokesman for National Grid, Britain’s power grid operator. “A kind of end of an era.”

I wish the coalman-in-chief in the White House and his 63 million toadies will get to at least hear about this, which their only news source--Faux Noose--will not cover, I am sure.

“The first day without coal in Britain since the Industrial Revolution marks a watershed in the energy transition,” Hannah Martin, head of energy at Greenpeace U.K., told The Guardian. “The direction of travel is that both in the U.K. and globally we are already moving towards a low carbon economy.”

If not for the fucked up GOP, we would have moved a lot more towards a low carbon economy!

Not that the world of business is any better either.  Which should worry us when business schools rarely, if at all, include sustainability in their curriculum.

Even if we stop or reduce greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures will continue to rise for 100 or more years due to carbon dioxide emissions already in the atmosphere. Today’s business students who will be tomorrow’s business leaders are guaranteed to face sustainability challenges.

Tell that to the businessman-in-chief, when he is not busy grabbing pussies!