If
Trump drowns in the Swamp, will all earth drown with him?
I
really wish people would see how all the rest of us are in the midst of a
crisis, every bit as scary as what Trump himself is now facing – and not
something which will instantly become better when and if he is impeached, or
put into house arrest or a straitjacket. One week before that election many
were saying “At least it will all be over, and life will return to normal.” Not
quite. And even less normal if Trump retires to Florida or to Sochi or wherever,
which for all I know could be tomorrow.
The
move to get rid of Trump has become ever more emotional and intense. For
example, I was surprised when a very calm stalwart friend, a lot like Kasich in
spirit, passed on the address of a video
which
might go viral:
I can
certainly understand how certain folks on the authoritarian right are cheering
and carefully cultivating this movement, as they now stand to take over more
completely and get rid of all but the lightest symbols of democracy, but it
really puzzles me why folks on the left (and many folks on CNN) are letting
themselves be conned into enthusiasm here. Of course they do not like Trump,
but why be irrational about it, and above all – what do they think will happen
AFTER he is gone?
I am
also baffled by the sheer fuzziness and blinders of so many people hiding in “the
bubble.” There is one guy on CNN, Van Jones, who has been doing a nice job of
reaching out to SOME people... but he has systematically missed a large and
crucial part of the US, and of the earth in general.
For
example: why is it that so many people assume that authorized legal wiretaps
are the only forms of surveillance in wide use today, and that Trump is not
simply in a state of shock from having seen a transcript of his private
conversations in circulation? Yet why is it that even his own people cannot imagine an
alternative beyond GHCQ? Didn’t Tillerson learn something from his discussions
with the wikileaks people?
Long
ago, Cheney announced a plan which could basically be called Ollie North on
steroids. Outsource the core functions of intelligence and IT. Bypass all the “silly
outmoded inhibitors” of the legal system and human rights, by putting things
OUTSIDE the federal government, and “let the private sector take over.” Of course, there are well-meaning pro-human
agents active in private sector IT as well, but it doesn’t require a GHCQ to
explain what Trump is frantically trying to explain. Ironically, both Trump
himself and the folks on CNN need to get off the blinders, and understand that
they may actually be missing a huge amount of objective reality by laughing too
soon when Bannon talks about a “silent coup.” It is sad and ironic, however, that Bannon
himself declares he is proud that he worked with Cheney... but even so, a lot
of the folks who have listened to Bannon did so after direct experiences with
the silent coup, a very real problem (related to money in politics, but much
bigger than what Hillary Clinton has allowed herself to imagine) becoming all
the more visible in more and more government agencies.
By now,
Trump is beginning to realize that “draining the swamp” (removing the most
severe level of corruption in politics, like what Teddy Roosevelt did but
requiring a lot more now)... is a whole lot harder than simply declaring a fig
leaf of a new conflicts rule. He is starting to drown in the swamp, and anyone
could see on his face how boxed in he begins to realize he is. Though I voted
for Hilary, I did so with only half a hear, because I expected that by this
time in her Presidency she would already be murdered by the swamp, unable to
thrash and struggle as much as Trump does, but will even Trump survive? Does he
realize how much he would need to engage a deeper level of collaboration with
more trustworthy allies, capable of mounting more effective investigations and
of maintaining confidentiality as flanks are guarded?
And
should we call on bigger allies, like Jesus himself and his real people (not
folks like Cruz), to try to save the day?
I was
starting to think about that.... but then Trump gave a speech in Detroit,
threatening to quickly get rid of the new mpg standards. It is a reminder of
what can happen when wild kids start yanking out the circuit boards in the
house. (And yes, I wish China would be more realistic about the chance of
nuclear preemption, something which becomes MORE likely when a guy like Trump
encounters certain kinds of protest. If only he could make a deal with Russia or
China to just take that place over themselves, to eliminate the threat of what
a guy much crazier and less predictable than Trump might do!)
Those
circuit boards are there for a reason. Woolsey says “Mattis gets it, and Trump will
listen to Mattis,” but even Woolsey has failed to appreciate key real-world
technical/economic realities, without which economic survival of this planet as
a whole simply does not compute. (See www.werbos.com/oil.htm
for a peer-reviewed IEEE discussion of how to improve the circuit boards enough
to give us SOME hope of survival – but even more is needed. As Lowell Wood
might inform him, if he were head of OSTP.) That sure enervated me, as seriously as I was
enervated by seeing how poor Hillary might have suffered if she had been
elected.
After
that... between the devil and the deep blue sea, where is there any path of
hope?
I did
enjoy a video conversation last week with folks involved in the business side
of IT management.
It
seems there is a kind of valley of death between practical genesis of a new
technology
and its
arrival as a mass product. (There is another earlier valley of death, but this
one is also important.) A speaker noted how morale and support seem to be less
then that at the genesis or product stage, because about half the world drifts
into dissillusionment and about half into delusional thinking,
neither
of which solves real problems and results in real products in the end. (Though
we discussed examples and fine points as well.) Progress at this stage depends
really critically on the small group of people in the middle, resisting both
delusional thinking and jaded disillusioned pessimism, remaining sane and
pragmatic and doing what really needs to be done. It
seems that the whole earth is in that kind of condition right now; Trump is
certainly not the only person engaged in quite a bit of delusional thinking
right now; if he is removed, we may all learn how sneakier, more paranoid
people engaged in delusional thinking are actually far more dangerous. Given a
revolution and revulsion as real people suffer... well, it is true that folks
on the left are also capable of delusional thinking and various types of bad
stuff.
So –
the challenge is sanity. Can we find enough sanity, and mobilize it enough, to
restore democracy
(there
HAS been a silent coup, really... enough that Comey still seems to feel
disillusioned enough to have no choice but to follow their regrettable pressures
until/unless circumstances change), and even enough intelligence to avoid the
problems coming in objective reality, such as the very real problems with
climate change in the oceans which do not follow the whims of Oprah, or Fox or
even of Al Gore?
If we
all die, who won?
It was
great to have a serious discussion of sanity with these IT guys, who were clear
enough to catch me in a fuzzy error in discussing that subject. In fact, there
are multiple levels of sanity, more than I usually discuss, even in my paper
published in Russia and posted at www.werbos.com/Mind-in_Time.pdf).
In
discussing the delusional folks and the dissillusioned folks... I immediately thought
first of folks in the field of space policy.
The
space people rightly complain a lot about phobic, pessimistic and jaded cynical
folks in Washington, who do indeed give up too soon, just as they totally gave
up on the possibility of an airplane before the Wright brothers, and even gave
up on the possibility of airplanes becoming relevant during the early years
when they didn’t make money. They have lots and lots of quotes from famous
powerful respected people declaring what is impossible, all of which look ever
so silly in retrospect. (Hey folks, you look equally silly and nuts when we
look back from the future!) But many of them are equally aberrated in an
optimistic way, letting loose with euphoria about “Jesus saves,” “Elon Musk saves” or even “SLS Mars program
saves” – all without appreciating the need for very, very intense and serious (yet
constructive and honest) technical vetting. No way to get to space without a
lot of very hard very real work, especially work on the mind itself to get it
right. (No coincidence that JFK was a student of Teilhard de Chardin, and was
arguably the only president who really strengthened the US in space! And
Barbara Hubbard and myself quietly helping a little years later... as I may
someday recount, the backstories of NASP and Fresh Look study.)
In
truth, even scientology (or scientology purified as proposed by Miscavage, the
dissillusioned but wiser father of the current head of that organization) could
understand these kinds of disillusionment and delusion. They basically learned
it from Freud – and they hate Freud for the same reason that some people using
backpropagation hate me. They don’t like
older, more complicated and more general original stories. Karl Pribram has an
excellent, unique short book explaining the deep concepts of Freud, including
the full neural network version of Freud’s theory of traumatic experiences, how
they aberrate many human decisions. In essence, all mammal brains learn to
respond DIRECTLY to bad experiences; if a criminal wearing a blue shirt hurts
you as a child, that memory, buried in your “id” (little cells in the cerebral
cortex and limbic system) will cause you to run away from people wearing blue
shirts later in life... even if those are police men trying to protect you from
the criminal threatening you now!! (This is similar to how Trump and Bannon
salivate irrationally like Pavlov’s dog at the mere thought of Hilary
Clinton.). Freudian psychiatrists help people express their natural ability to
RELIVE such memories, and see them again in the fresh light of adult
understanding which explains what happened... and discharges the aberration. But I
must give credit to scientology for noticing that the EXACT SAME kind of
aberration can occur in the opposite direction... explaining how some people
slaivate in a different way, equally irrational and equally interfering with
rationality, when seeing Elon Musk or even (for some people) Donald Trump
himself. (Though in truth, they are more likely to transfer the salivation to
Ivanka. Forgive me for speaking truth to power, but this is very real.)
But –
as I said to the IT people, this is all just one level of sanity. ANY mammal
brain has the same pattern. Can you imagine what happened for the interesting
minority of dinosaurs truly out of control like the guy in North Korea? It is
real. And in truth, I see chipmunks in my back yard who are not only friendly
but just as delusional and euphoric as the most extreme space people. Of course,
the more extreme jihadis are also euphoric-aberrated, and drugs supplied from
rich Saudis are part of that wing
of the
Third Caliphate movement... supplied by people less myopic but equally
aberrated, even as they know how silently and carefully to run folks like Lamar
Smith and Ted Cruz and the folks Comey is intimidated by at FBI. (Again, I cite
the last chapter of the very serious book “A G Man’s Journal”
for the
early inception of the silent coup.)
In my
paper, Mind in Time, I talk about two further levels of sanity, both uniquely
human (on this planet), which are also necessary to deal with problems as what
we face. And also necessary to real scientific and technical creativity.
(Sorry. Lamar! Your new efforts may win new singing contests,
but not
real products. The BO Xilai sort of songs, funded by your new corpsmen, the new
young brown guards, are not compatible with mid-term economic stability let
alone growth.)
In
fact... Trump is thrashing hard, but the circuits he is pulling out are already
a mess... it really is a case of the devil or the deep blue sea (worldwide)...
so where is there hope?
An old
colleague of mine said... it is like Asimov’s foundation trilogy, where we
should put efforts into more realistic goals, like laying the groundwork for
the next world civilization. (It was fascinating for me when I saw how some
folks in Byzantium tried much the same, with interesting threads emanating from
those efforts!). (I also recommended reading Orson Scott Card’s horrible but
informative trilogy, Empire, which accurately reflects how some delusional
people behind our own silent coup misunderstand what Trajan did to the poor
people in the Eastern Roman Empire.) But I do not feel as optimistic as he
does. If this world civilization goes, there is every reason to expect that the
whole species goes with it, due to very concrete things.... so... well, sanity
and truth and the struggle for more of them... at least those can be of value
in a later existence... so long as we do not create a planet which is not only
dead but a cost to other planets (like Terminator hazards to navigation in
space).
“When
you are up to your knees in alligators, it is hard to remember you came there
to drain the swamp” – popular adage reflecting our best practical knowledge
today about higher function of dorsolateral and orbitofrontal cortex, key
vectors of human brain evolution;
“You are
only worried because you don’t know all the facts. If you knew them all, you
would be terrified out of your mind” – from Congressman Trent Franks,
describing the challenging of adapting to his new role on the committee which
thinks it has all the scariest, most secret information...
By the way... regarding what hope may yet exist for the American Republic (hope that Gaia and our Father in Heaven know something I do not)... I also think of what Kasich said yesterday: the way out would certainly require more cooperation across the aisle. Some creativity and moral highground that way. Duh. Also, it would require supreme court justice(s) committed to the Constitution, with the "new" interpretation that the words "people" and "citizen" refer specifically and only to human beings; when dark money likes someone too much, that worries me... just a worry... but there I do not know all the facts. It also matters where the money comes from, and how it flows, and that plays a core role in the systems analysis. With mpg standards, Barry McNutt of DOE proposed years ago that they should be mpg per passenger, at least, rather than naked mpg, to reduce the kind of bias Trump talked about in Detroit... but one would have to have a functioning brain to do such a thing; adding a denominator to that regulation would be so much simpler than the many, many things in our existing tax code!
Best of
luck...
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