Who said what about whom

Today is the anniversary of an incident that contributed to the personality disorders described here:

…in his case what had been hardness became cruelty, while a tendency to bluff became plain dishonesty. He often lied without hesitation, and assumed that others lied to him. He believed no one any more. It had already been difficult enough dealing with him; it now became a torture that grew steadily worse from month to month. He frequently lost all self-control and his language grew increasingly violent. In his intimate circle he now found no restraining influence….

Can you guess who wrote it and whom he was writing about?

The answers will be posted time permitting later today or tomorrow.

Reparations

First, who owes them? A just debt is owed only if it is chargeable in justice to the debtor. But the American public as such and as a whole did not incur the debt of reparations for slavery, neither then nor now.

Second, what of the proletariat? What industrial capital expropriated from proletarian labor time differs only in legal form from what landed capital accumulated from fixed assets that happened to be human beings. The claim of their descendants to reparations stands on approximately the same economic ground as that of the descendants of slaves. 

Or, to add a political statement to the foregoing philosophical and economic statements, people who would like to remedy an injustice by perpetrating another injustice cannot expect those who suffer from the latter to vote for them.

Of course these statements are so far merely conclusory and have to be argued for.

The wave may be bluer than they think

The blue wave may be bluer than the prognosticators who study the election polls, ads, and cash flows think. I’ve studied some of their on-going accounts during the last few weeks and months. The election is not just about which party’s “base” is more “energized” and likely to turn out. Here is what the predictions may not have taken into account.

Certain polls have already found an uptick in the likely voter count among millennials, which includes first-time voters. Though not as a rule highly politicized, young people are nevertheless a somewhat bluer constituency. If the uptick is being undercounted, the actual vote will add to the blue wave.

The same applies to non-white voters. If the likely vote in these blue constituencies was undercounted or proved harder to count in the polls, the actual vote at the polls will be bluer than predicted. This, I suspect, may be especially true of the Native American vote.

Assume for a moment the polls took tally of a just proportion of female voters. Are they more likely, regardless of party, to vote for a female candidate? especially at this point in cultural time? If so, more blue votes, just because there are more female Democratic candidates. A lot more.

Normally, in a given race, undecided independent votes tend to fall to either party in the same proportion as the overall vote. Thus they cancel each other out; it’s as if they had not voted at all, and left the election to the committed partisan voters. Will they really happen this year? Which party will the non-partisan voter find less toxic? If non-partisan voters just want a change, other things being equal, a blue vote is the clearer path.

If all these things are true – about the young vote, the non-white vote, the female vote, and the independent vote – then I say the blue wave in the House will be more than 40 seats. And the Democrats will hold all the toss-up seats in the Senate. And take Texas, or Tennessee, or maybe even North Dakota, giving them a majority in the Senate. Even if only some of these things are true, the blue wave may still be bluer than the pundits think.

How Deep is the Deep State?

Ms. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, first assistant press secretary, said she thinks there is a “very real potential” that Mr. Trump’s allegation about Obama administration wiretaps corresponds to facts.

Well, you never know what the “deep state” is going to do next, do you?

Actually, this sort of misbelief is something right and left conspiracy theorists have in common. But if both sides of the political spectrum are using the same words to refer to the same thing, that thing’s purposes and principles must be very obscure indeed …

… unless there are two deep states. That would explain it!

The mere logic of a referent that has self-contradictory predicates – e.g., is both black and not-black – proves that the referent does not exist. Or that at least one of the predicates must be invalid.

Which poses an interesting question. How would the right prove to the left that, for example, the deep state helped the Obama administration wiretap Mr. Trump’s campaign? How would the left prove to the right that, for example, the deep state is spying on and obstructing the efforts of progressive groups to organize? One might as well say it’s the Devil’s doing, as he is well known to support all wrongful acts and oppose all worthy ones.

On the other hand, what good would a conspiracy be if it were unable to conceal itself? Self-contradictions make mighty good concealment – from reason at any rate, if not from the empirical senses, or from the big data in the cloud. Similarly, wouldn’t a conspiracy proactively plant evidence that it doesn’t exist? So how could one expect to confirm its existence?

The power at the disposal of persons who run conspiracies is unimaginable. Or maybe it exists only in the imagination. Nevertheless it suffices for everything.

Until the deep state conspirators show themselves, let’s banish this term to the same realm as “alternative facts,” now so roundly ridiculed that no one dares to use it anymore except as a form of ridicule. And by the way it doesn’t take a deep state to upset the prospects for organizing progressives outside the Democratic party. It takes a lifetime to put the principles of a new party on a scientific basis. Ask Marx. It takes a generation for a party to get sufficiently well organized to attempt a revolution. Ask Lenin. Sometimes it takes a march of 3,500 miles. Ask Mao. Permit me to doubt whether the deep state can do anything to deter individuals like these.

Who Let the Carp in?

The Trump administration has suspended a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project to improve an existing barrier to the entry of Asiatic carp from the Mississippi Valley watershed to the Great Lakes system. This suggests it is possible history will remember Trump as the president “who let the carp in” to ruin the Great Lakes, hitherto something that has made America great as well.

Of course the action is short-sighted. That’s a businessman’s nature. It’s one of the many reasons voters should not elect businessmen who want to run the country like a business. The people’s business is not just another business.

Both these propositions, so far merely asserted, really ought to be proven by argument. For now, I’ll just try to show how they’re connected to a single principle: the public good.

I won’t start by defining the concept right now except by extension, that is, by giving examples. It’s beyond dispute, isn’t it, that the waters and the airs don’t belong to anybody. That is, they cannot become private property any more than the animals of the woods or the fish of the lakes and streams. Of course, hunters and fishermen appropriate these creatures and reduce them to private property, according to regulations lawfully established. But until then they belong to no one private person, but rather to the whole public as a public good.

It's metaphorical to say they belong to God, Mother Earth, or the Great Spirit, and moreover unnecessary to the argument. The governments of every state treat wild creatures as a natural resource of the people as a whole – except when politics obtrudes. I could give examples of this phenomenon local to Wisconsin but there’s no need to digress.

Just so, even though the waters and the airs are even more clearly a public good, a human good, when private enterprise wants to appropriate them to private uses, politics may obtrude.

Consider again the Asiatic carp. They live and breed in the waters of the Illinois River, which are connected to those of the Great Lakes by the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal which through which the Chicago River is diverted out of the Great Lakes basin. The river “flows backwards,” and has since the beginning of the 20^th century. I won’t try to prove the proposition that the carp will ruin the Great Lakes if they find a way in through these corridors. I’ll just say that people everywhere have seen or heard of the damage that invasive species of plants or animals can do. So I’ll assume, again in order to avoid digression, that the claims scientists make on this point are valid.

Now: why suspend a project designed to minimize this risk? Well, the project would inconvenience the barge traffic in the ship canal. More precisely, it would add to the regulatory burden on this private use of the public waters of the canal and river. No need to explain how; it’s enough to know the purveyors of this service oppose the project in question.

The technology of barges and canals is not new. The latest “revolution” it went through, I suppose, was the 19^th century steam engine. Why, contrary to the public good, should government accommodate an industry like this? Twenty-first century technology created intermodal transportation, from ship to railcar to truck and the reverse. Is it too much to ask the barge industry to participate? It would cost a lot to replace the connection between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi by an intermodal facility. A lot of capital that a mature industry working on slim margins can neither accumulate nor borrow.

That’s just another way of saying that the antiquated barge industry only serves commercial needs that are equally old – but, to be fair, still exist.

So rather than impose a burden on the way a narrow private interest uses the public waters, the Trump administration would put the interests of every user of the Great Lakes, drinker of their waters, and dweller on their shores at risk. I won’t even put the private interests of commercial fishermen, sport fishing charters, etc. into the scales.

What’s difficult about the public’s interest in this public good is measuring it. It’s the sum of many millions of more or less marginal interests of individual citizens. It’s also complicated by questions about the probabilities that those interests will be affected at all, or in what degree.

Advocates for the Great Lakes sometimes try to qualify those interests and put a dollar figure on them. Then they can compare them to the costs the barge industry, etc., will more predictably incur.

This tactic is a mistake. Progressives must insist on the principle that public goods of this kind are not commensurable with private goods. Certainly not in dollars. Further that such public goods enjoy a presumption of validity that can only be overcome by a showing that private use of them creates yet other compensating public goods.

How this principle of public good is also a progressive principle remains to be demonstrated. Until then, I’ll return to my other proposition about public goods. It’s that government in general and public servants in particular are, or should be, best suited to make accommodations between public and private goods, and especially between competing public goods. This is not a businesslike process. It requires consultation with all such interests, and consensus and compromise in the result. That’s not how businessmen like to operate.

Governments that allocate tax dollars the way businessmen allocate revenues enjoy the economic efficiency of totalitarian states. That’s not the American way.

On the other hand, if it’s good business to run the risk of ruining the Great Lakes, maybe that instead is how Mr. Trump will be remembered.

Note also that this particular Corps of Engineers project, whether it lives or dies, has little impact on the City of Chicago’s use for the Ship Canal and the Illinois River, that is, to flush the city’s wastewater. At least it’s a public use. But if the Trump administration really wanted to spend money on infrastructure for the public good, it would fund the separation of the watersheds so unnaturally connected more than a hundred years ago. And help the Democratic voters of the city clean their wastewater for themselves.

“Make It So!”

Mr. Trump’s staff appear to have abandoned the use of the term “alternative fact” for the time being, if not the notion that it could refer to something meaningful and true. That’s a good thing, because it was being used of what students of critical thinking would designate mere assertions, claims to be accepted solely on the authority of the person making them.

Consider a couple of the prominent examples.

First, the size of the crowd that witnessed Mr. Trump’s inaugural. This, like for example the size of General Lee’s army at the Battle of Gettysburg, is in the nature of an historical fact. Nowadays journalists help determine, in real time, the facts that later become part of history. The determination of such facts is rule driven. Historians and journalists follow generally the same set of rules: corroboration of evidence, with either opportunity to observe or acknowledged expertise or both, proven reliability of sources, impartiality, etc.

Certainly Mr. Trump had opportunity to observe the inaugural crowd. But if his claims meet any of the other criteria for acceptance as historical facts, his spokesmen have not raised it on his behalf. We’re left with the mere assertion of a casual, and moreover interested, observer – albeit one since assuming great authority.

Many also consider the claim that Mr. Trump actually won the popular vote an alternative fact, as well as the further claim that election officials nationwide certified the validity of some 5 million votes that should not have been validated. At least Trump admits it would take an investigation to prove it, and so does not assert it solely on the authority of his position.

The results of elections, like for example the results of a census, or of headcounts that are used in the distribution of public funds, are official facts. These determinations are the legal duty of the responsible officials; they fix the legal duties and rights of individuals and the public as a whole. Further, the governing laws establish, to a greater or lesser extent, the rules under which the officials are to make these determinations. So official facts are also rule driven rather than arbitrary, and the rules come ultimately from elected legislative bodies. As such, they are essential to a government of laws, not men.

Would Mr. Trump really like to say that thousands of public officials and many more tens of thousands of civic-minded volunteers at the polling places did not perform their duties lawfully? Given the preponderance of Republican office holders at the state and municipal levels, this assertion impugns a lot more of his friends than his enemies.

While Captain Jean-Luc Picard can command the crew of the Starship Enterprise to do, even the President of the United States cannot command historical and official facts to be. Saying it doesn’t make it so, no matter who you are. Some writers seem to think that Mr. Trump is just manipulating the media when he makes such assertions. Maybe. I’d hate to think he’s actually living in an alternative reality.

Another even less flattering interpretation is that he and his people don’t care about what the facts are, but only what the people believe. No comment on that for now.

The Deniers

There are all kinds of facts: historical facts, judicial facts, scientific facts, among others. And now there are “alternative facts.” The difference is there are rules for determining historical, judicial, and scientific facts. The rules of evidence, for example, control what kinds of things a finder of fact (judge or jury) can hear or see in reaching a verdict (from the Latin roots for “truth” and “say”).

Gazing down at their hand-held devices, people implicitly accept the facts of the science that make them possible. The same is true of any technology: It’s applied science. Expecting it to work entails not only accepting the particular scientific facts and laws that make it work, but also the methods by which such facts and laws are generally determined.

Everybody expects technology to work. How can some of us selectively deny other scientific facts validated in the same way?

One of the reasons courses in the natural sciences are required even in high school (at least when I was in school – maybe still in public schools) is to teach scientific method and logic, that is, the experimental method and the inductive logic that drives it. Understanding what is true about science helps children become citizens who are less likely to be fooled by superstitions and charlatans.

Inductive logic is one of the foundations of science. It says that if a phenomenon is observed once, it may be unique. But if it is observed regularly, it becomes possible to explain the cause and result as a law of nature.

Consider my cat, Jenny Kaye. One of the games she likes to play is to push an object bit by bit to the edge of the table until it falls off. Maybe she just likes to see them fall. They always do. But maybe Miss Jenny Kaye Newton is testing the law of gravity. I can suppose it’s an experiment. Maybe one of these objects won’t fall. That would be even more fun.

Unlike Jenny Kaye, science has rules for deciding what a “regular” observation is: controlled conditions, calibrated instruments, etc. The number of observations is important too. That’s where statistics comes into play, just as it does in political polling, or when actuaries calculate the likelihood of morbidity. Pollsters may not always get it right, but actuaries make life insurers a lot of money by telling them how much to charge for bets on whether their customers will live.

Now consider the data points climate scientists gather in order to calculate global warming. Who knows how many they gather every day? They’re gathered over the whole of earth’s surface, land and sea, at regular intervals every day, and they have been for years and decades, in the United States since 1880. Is it more daily data points than Twitter has tweets (58 million) in a day? Or than YouTube has views (4 billion as of 2012) in a day? Maybe not, but it’s more than enough to be statistically significant.

It’s more than any one denier can gather by looking out into his back yard occasionally on an unseasonably cold day, thinking “the globe isn’t warming much around here today is it?” And feeling very clever about his insight. Maybe this denier should, like my cat, keep gathering data. Very few communities, if any, have not set a temperature record or records in the last ten years. So the denier might have to take a reading every day for ten years at the same time each day before he could be in a position to defend his denials rationally, and then only about the climate in his own community. So why do people who aren’t equipped to gather and analyze climate data nevertheless deny the results deduced by those who can?

To say nothing of what the physicists and chemists have shown about human causality, that is, the release of greenhouse gases as a regular practice for running human societies and economies. I won’t try to describe what they measured and explained. I probably wouldn’t get it quite right. I’ll just point out that I might with equal justification deny that there’s any causal connection between what I am typing on my keyboard and what appears on my computer screen.

People who think climate changes are not due to human activity (like Scott Pruitt, tabbed by Trump to head the Environmental Protection Agency), or that an ingredient in vaccines causes autism (like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who might like to lead an investigation of the ingredient at public expense), I’m sorry to say, are no smarter than my cat. At any rate they apply inductive logic no better than she. Or other systems of belief are interfering with their implicit belief in the everyday truths of science and technology.

It’s easy to see which belief systems are influencing highly-placed climate change deniers: large accumulations of capital are threatened by policies designed to limit the release of greenhouse gases. Whether and to what extent the opposed policies might have a rational basis other than in the denial of scientific facts, has to be the topic for another post.