Earth Day and What Science Can Teach Us

Today is Earth Day. So what do we know about Earth? Terra, to give Earth its Latin name, is the third planet out from Sol (aka the Sun), a medium sized yellow star in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Earth is a rocky planet of 12, 756 km in diameter and it orbits 150 million kilometers from the Sun. It is approximately 4.6 billion years old and has a single, relatively large satellite named Luna (aka the Moon). The present atmosphere of Earth is about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and 1% water vapor and other gases. The most notable feature of Earth is that it is home to a huge variety of life that has dramatically shaped its physical features. Life appeared very early in Earth’s history, perhaps as early as half a billion years after the planet’s formation. However, it took several billion more years for multicellular life to appear and evolve into more complex forms, with one of the most recent to appear (only a few hundred thousand years ago for the present species) being a type of ape that in the last few millennia has developed an agricultural civilization and in the last couple of centuries has seen explosive population growth and rapid advances in technology. I refer, of course, to our own species, Homo sapiens, i.e., humans.

Virtually all the information in the previous paragraph is well established fact, and all of it we know due to science. In the last couple of centuries, our understanding of the planet we live on and its place in the universe, as well as the history of our own species, has advanced hugely due to science. Science is distinct from belief systems such as religions, as it is based on observation, evidence and analysis. That isn’t to say that science (or more accurately, scientists, who after all are only human) never gets things wrong, much less that it has answers to everything. But over time, science has given us a very good, if still incomplete, understanding of many aspects of reality, and since it is firmly based on logic and evidence, it is far more reliable than any other way of explaining things.

The above may seem self-explanatory to most knowledgeable people, but it is still necessary to emphasize it, because not only is there still a very large segment of humanity who doesn’t accept significant portions of our scientific understanding of the world, but the US government itself has largely fallen under the control of people with an anti-science attitude. This is why Marches for Science have been organized for today around the US and the world, because despite the self-evident benefits that science brings to humanity and the obvious advantages of having a more accurate, science-based understanding of the world around us, there are many people in power (and ordinary people who support those people) who deny scientific explanations of reality.

Climate change is just one example of an issue where this anti-science attitude has caused and continues to cause great damage, but as it is the most important and urgent, it is worth special attention. In fact, it isn’t necessary to be a scientist or have a detailed knowledge of climatology to understand the basics of climate change. Simply put, certain gases in our atmosphere trap heat, causing Earth’s atmosphere to act as a blanket that raises the planet’s surface temperature. Essentially, the atmosphere is transparent to visible light, the form which most of the energy Earth gets from the Sun takes, but the Earth radiates most of the energy back in the infrared, i.e., as heat, and like the glass in a greenhouse, these gases – naturally referred to as greenhouse gases – are opaque to infrared radiation, so they trap the heat, making the planet’s surface hotter. This is not a bad thing, as without this greenhouse effect Earth would be much colder, certainly too cold for human life. But too much of a greenhouse effect is not a good thing either, as the example of Venus illustrates. Venus is physically very similar to Earth, but due to a runaway greenhouse effect it has an extremely thick atmosphere primarily consisting of carbon dioxide and surface temperatures of over 450 degrees Celsius, far higher than temperatures on Mercury, even though the latter is closer to the Sun. The chief greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane (the gases that make up most of the atmosphere, nitrogen and oxygen, are not greenhouse gases). Of the three main greenhouse gases, water is the least efficient at trapping heat while methane is the most efficient, but because water is by far the most plentiful, it contributes the most to the greenhouse effect, followed by carbon dioxide. Methane does contribute substantially, despite only being present in trace amounts, though unlike the other two gases it breaks down into its component elements relatively quickly, so it doesn’t accumulate as easily.

So we know that carbon dioxide and methane are greenhouse gases. This is a fact that has been known to science for a very long time and is clearly demonstrable experimentally. Furthermore, these two gases are major contributors to the greenhouse effect. This is also well established. We also know that human industrial activity, mostly involving the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, produces large amounts of carbon dioxide, and that other types of human activity, such as livestock raising and leaks from natural gas (i.e., methane) production results in the release of methane. What’s more, we know that the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has gone from around 270 or 280 ppm (parts per million) in pre-industrial times to around 400 ppm today, a very substantial increase. Finally, we know that average global temperatures have increased by a significant amount over the past century, with a particularly rapid increase over the last few decades. Though some try to question this latter fact, they can only do so through cherry-picking of data, and even that has become pretty hard to manage as the data showing warming becomes more overwhelming.

To repeat, we know the following facts:
1. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to the greenhouse effect, as is methane
2. Human industrial activity produces large amounts of carbon dioxide and significant amounts of methane
3. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from less than 300 ppm in pre-industrial times to about 400 ppm now
4. Average global temperatures have also increased significantly over the same period, particularly in recent decades.
The conclusion is obvious. Human activity is warming the planet at a rapid rate. While an increase of 1 degree Celsius or so, which is approximately how much warmer the last couple of record-breaking years have been over the 20th century average, may not seem like much, it is actually a very large amount, as changes of just a few degrees can make the difference between an ice age in one direction and the melting of the polar ice caps in the other. This is why we have to take climate change seriously and do so now.

Those who want to challenge this obvious conclusion attack the science in different ways. One is to emphasize the uncertainties. Of course there are always some uncertainties; in a sense, science is all about uncertainties, as it involves trying to find answers to all the things we don’t yet know. What’s more, good scientists always acknowledge the uncertainties that exist, because claiming to be sure when the evidence doesn’t support it is bad science. So, for example, there is still some uncertainty about the exact ratios of the three main greenhouse gases’ contributions to the greenhouse effect. But that doesn’t change the fact that carbon dioxide and methane are both major greenhouse gases. Some cite the fact that we still can’t predict the weather with a high degree of certainty to cast doubt on climate models. But in fact it’s easier to identify long-term climatic trends than to predict day-to-day variations in chaotic weather systems. Some talk about how “the climate is always changing” or how there have been times in Earth’s past where the planet has warmed and carbon dioxide levels increased without humans being present. This ignores the obvious points that just because the climate has changed for reasons other than human action in the past doesn’t mean the current changes aren’t caused by humans, any more than the fact that forest fires happened before there were people means that humans never cause forest fires, and that very slow, gradual change is one thing, rapid change that is too fast for us or individual ecosystems to adapt to is something else entirely.

Then there’s the frequently repeated claim that a few decades ago scientists were talking about global cooling and that they only recently started talking about global warming. This one is just plain false. As far back as the 19th century it was pointed out that human burning of fossil fuels could lead to an increase in global temperatures, and more than half a century ago this was widely acknowledged among scientists. The media stories in the late 1970s about the possibility of an impending ice age did not represent a widely held consensus among scientists, and in fact the very idea was prompted in part by the well understood fact that in the absence of other factors human production of carbon dioxide would cause temperatures to rise. Temperatures had risen slowly but steadily for most of the first half of the 20th century, but they stopped increasing for a few decades after that. So one suggestion, if not a widely accepted one, was that a natural cooling trend was counteracting the human effects on temperatures, and if it continued it might lead to an ice age. But there were other explanations, such as that other pollutants, such as those that made up the smog so commonly seen in industrial nations in the 1960s and 1970s, were blocking sunlight and balancing out the effects of carbon dioxide and methane production. This latter explanation seems more likely, though I don’t know if it is the one most climatologists accept today. In any case, the warming trend started up again by the 1980s and is now proceeding at an unprecedented pace, so whatever the explanation for the pause in the warming trend in those decades, the planet is clearly not cooling.

Of course science tells us many other things that we need to pay attention to, such as the effects of human activity on ecological systems (e.g. through overfishing, elimination of predators, introduction of invasive species, and so forth), the effects of chemicals and other substances we produce on human health (e.g. pesticides, chemicals in food and other products we use daily, and lead and other pollutants in our environment), the effects of overuse of antibiotics on the spread of diseases, and much more. Again, some people may want to deny what science can tell us on these issues due to ulterior motives, while many others simply prefer to ignore it because that’s easier than doing something about the problems. But we ignore science at our peril, as the long-term consequences of letting these problems fester are sure to be much worse than the difficulties of tackling them now.

But coming back to the planet that we celebrate on Earth Day, science tells us more things about it. One is that Earth itself is in little danger from anything we may do. The planet will be here for billions of years more, whether humanity survives or not. Another is that life on Earth is almost sure to survive in some form even if we drastically alter the environment for the worse. Life on Earth is pervasive and appears even in the most seemingly inhospitable environments. Unless we somehow set off a runaway greenhouse effect like that that transformed Venus into the place it is today, some life will survive the worst we can do. Life on Earth has been through a number of mass extinctions like the one that killed off the dinosaurs (and most other species on Earth at the time) and has always rebounded; at worst humanity will just be the first species to cause a mass extinction of other species on its own. Even the global warming we cause won’t be permanent, as the carbon cycle will eventually result in the excess carbon dioxide getting absorbed into limestone (though as this takes thousands of years, our transformation of the environment can easily destroy our civilization and wipe out many other species in the meantime). But if we as a species want to survive, and if we want to maintain our present day civilization, we’d best heed what we can learn from science.

A Short Rant on the Disastrous New US Administration

I’ve commented here and elsewhere on the historic nature of the current US "president" and his administration – that is, how historically terrible he, and it, is – but I always feel like I’m understating the case. Whether it’s the lack of ethics, the terrible nominees and appointees to various key positions, the complete disregard for the truth, the lack of respect for basic political norms such as press freedom, the horrible executive orders, the insanely destructive budget proposal, the signing of awful bills passed by the similarly awful and unprincipled Republican Congress, the stonewalling and misdirection on investigations into Russian interference in the elections, or just the sheer incompetence, there are no parallels in modern US history for an administration or a chief executive this bad. It’s gotten so it’s almost impossible to keep track of all the outrages, since there are so many of them, and a lot of them are quickly buried by new ones.

For example, one of the popular vote loser’s very first acts was to sign the repeal of a regulation requiring fossil fuel and mining companies to report payments to foreign governments. This was a fairly straightforward anti-corruption measure. Of course the big oil companies like Exxon who pushed for its repeal claimed that they were not against transparency in principle, just this particular regulation, but their reasoning was dubious at best. More disturbing was the Republicans’ great eagerness to the companies’ bidding; likewise for their recent repeal of regulations preventing internet providers from selling users’ private information without permission, or the administration’s moves against fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, or to not finalize the new rule put forth by the Obama administration against retirement advisors from giving advice that serves their own interests over those of their customers, or its lifting of the moratorium on leasing federal land for coal mining (the latter not only put in place because of climate change concerns, but because the old system allowed coal companies to pay almost nothing for their use of the land, meaning the taxpayers were being ripped off), or their lifting of the new rule requiring federal contractors to be in compliance with federal wage and safety laws. It’s hard to imagine how anyone who cared anything about the public interest, as opposed to the interests of a narrow group of private companies or individuals, could possibly support any of these things. And yet most people probably didn’t even notice that these things were done, because there has been so much else going on.

It occurs to me that I should keep a list, that whenever I see some appalling thing that these people have done or are trying to do I should write it down, but usually I only remember that idea when I’m trying with mixed success to recall some examples. I have a pretty good memory, but even I struggle to remember the details of all that has gone on, and I’m sure most people are even more unclear on it, if they are even paying close attention at all. One reason such a list would be particularly useful is that a number of the things that have been done are unlikely to meet with approval even from most Republican voters, if they could be made aware of them. Likewise, some of the examples of ethical lapses or incompetence are the sort of thing even most staunch conservatives would find disturbing. Of course, some of them might simply refuse to believe the information, though a lot of it is very easily confirmed, while others might resort to misdirection or arguments based on false equivalence. But at least a few of them, if presented with the right examples, might start to see things differently.

Unfortunately, I’m unlikely to get around to combing back through the last couple months’ worth of news to compile a truly comprehensive list, but maybe I’ll discover a satisfactory list compiled by someone else (there are bound to be some out there, though they may not include everything I’d want to see on such a list, or I may consider some of their explanations of what was done or what was wrong with inadequate). If I had infinite time, of course, I would not only make a list but write in detail what exactly is so terrible about their actions. The budget proposal alone is worth one or more long commentaries on how it is not only cruel and destructive, but idiotically counterproductive it is even with regard to much of what its proponents claim to want to accomplish (e.g., getting rid of Energy Star, cutting job training programs, making major cuts to diplomacy and foreign aid). If Congress seriously considers it, then I may really write more about it. For now, we’ll just have to hope that even congressional Republicans won’t be willing to go that far. Then there’s the ridiculous attempts to references to and steps taken to deal with climate change, as if denying its existence will somehow prevent it from continuing to happen.

How did the US get into this mess? How could a substantial minority not only vote for such a president (and his cohorts in the Republican party) but persist in supporting him –while his approval rating is lower than Obama’s ever was and worse than any recent president has ever had this early in their term, it is still far higher than it should be – despite how unsuitable he clearly is for the job? The real problem is a lack of critical thinking ability, a deficiency which is not exclusive to Americans and which affects a multitude of issues. This is something I’ve been thinking about frequently over the last few months, and I intend to eventually write a lengthy essay on the topic. For now, however, here are a couple of other writers’ ruminations on the related subject of how people get their news and how they digest it. The first deals with how people can end up believing entirely different things about the same event based on where they get their news. A second editorial explicitly talks about the importance of critical thinking, in this case focused on how it’s a necessary skill for news consumption. But there’s a lot more to be said on these topics, and I hope I’ll get around to getting some more of my own thoughts down.

The Planets of TRAPPIST-1: Multiple Potentially Habitable Earth-like Worlds in a Single System

Though there’s plenty happening on Earth to write about, considering how grim much of it is, it’s something of a relief to be able to instead comment on some fascinating astronomy news. I’m of course referring to the announcement that seven apparently Earth-like planets have been identified orbiting a single star, and one that is on a cosmic scale quite close (though on a human scale the star and its planets are still very, very far away, a point I will come back to later). To put this in perspective, prior to this discovery, the star with the greatest number of terrestrial (i.e., rocky and relatively similar to Earth in size) planets was our own Sun with four, namely Mercury, Venus, Earth itself, and Mars. There are no doubt other systems with multiple terrestrial planets, but due to the relative difficulty of spotting such planets, most discoveries to date have been of larger planets, though there are a few known systems with one or more super-Earths (planets somewhat larger than Earth which may also be rocky). What makes this newly discovered system even more fascinating is the fact that several of the worlds appear to be in the star’s habitable zone, and the relative closeness of the system and the nature of its parent star means that we will be able to study their possible atmosphere is in the near future, and maybe determine if the gases present in those atmospheres indicate the presence of life.

The star that the newly discovered planets are orbiting is called Trappist-1 (technically it should be capitalized as TRAPPIST-1, but I will use the lower case form) and it is located 39 light years away. Though most of its planets seem to be similar to Earth in mass and radius, the star itself is nothing like the Sun. It is a very cool red dwarf star, which means that it produces far less energy than the Sun. One of the charts used in some articles about Trappist-1 and its planets compared the orbits of the latter not only to those of the four terrestrial planets orbiting the Sun but also to the orbits of the four Galilean satellites of Jupiter. This makes sense when you realize that Trappist-1 is in many ways as similar to Jupiter as it is to the Sun. In fact its diameter is only slightly greater than Jupiter’s, and the orbits of its planets resemble those of the Galilean satellites more than they do those of the four terrestrial planets in our Solar System, though they are still considerably further out from the star than Jupiter’s moons are from Jupiter. The ratio of their masses in comparison to their star is also similar to that of the Galilean moons in comparison to Jupiter. Nevertheless, while Jupiter is just a planet (though a very big one), Trappist-1 is a star powered by nuclear fusion in its core, and it is still more than 80 times as massive as Jupiter, though it is only 8% as massive as the Sun. So it gives off enough energy that many of its planets, given their close orbits, could potentially have liquid water on their surfaces, unlike the moons of Jupiter, which remain frozen on their surfaces (though Europa at least almost certainly has liquid water underneath its icy crust).

The planets, designated b to h in order of their distance from the star, orbit at distances that are a fraction of Mercury’s distance from the Sun. They were discovered by the transit method, which involves observing the dimming of the star’s light as a planet passes in front of it. Trappist-1b orbits the star in just 1.5 Earth days, and even the most distant planet, Trappist-1h, takes only about 20 days to complete on orbit (though this planet is the one about which there is the greatest uncertainty). Though at this point we only have rough estimates of the planets’ masses and diameters, it appears that c and g are somewhat larger than Earth but not by very much, and the other planets are slightly smaller than Earth, though even the smallest two, d and h, are larger than Mars. The planets are likely to be tidally locked so that they always show the same face to their star, just as the Moon does toward Earth. However, if they have atmospheres the temperature contrast may not be as great as it would be otherwise.

The planets d, e and f receive similar amounts of energy from Trappist-1 as the Earth does from the Sun, putting them in what is known as the habitable zone. Some of the other planets could potentially have moderate temperatures and liquid water, depending on their particular circumstances (for instance, if g has a thick enough atmosphere it might retain enough heat to stay above water’s freezing point). However, there is a lot of uncertainty involved. If Earth didn’t have an atmosphere with a greenhouse effect, it would be frozen despite the amount of energy it receives from the Sun (of course our problem now is that we are increasing the amount of greenhouse gases, which could disrupt the climate’s equilibrium in the other direction). It is uncertain how many of these planets have atmospheres or how thick they might be. Red dwarf stars are prone to violent flares, which may strip atmospheres from close in planets. The planets closer in may also have lost all their water or have undergone a runaway greenhouse effect like that on Venus in our solar system. The ones further out may have ended up like Mars if their atmospheres are too thin.

Despite these caveats, given the number of planets, it seems likely that at least one or two have moderate, Earth-like temperatures and high potential for liquid water on their surfaces. What’s more, since these planets are much closer to us than many other exoplanets (planets orbiting stars other than the Sun) that are in their star’s habitable zones – for example, the probable super-Earth Kepler-452b, which orbits a Sun-like star, is about 1400 light years away – and they orbit close to a dim star and transit it frequently, they are much easier to study. With slightly improved telescopes such as the ones that should be coming online in the next few years, it should be possible to analyze the components of these planets’ possible atmospheres and determine whether gases commonly produced by living things are present. There are a few other potentially habitable exoplanets that are closer these ones, notably the one orbiting the closest star other than the Sun, Proxima Centauri (or Alpha Centauri C), but not all of these transit their stars from the perspective of Earth (for example, Proxima Centauri b, which was discovered by the radial velocity method which measures changes in a star’s apparent velocity due to the gravitational effects of a planet, apparently does not transit its star), and most are super-Earths, rather than being truly Earth-like. What’s more, the presence of multiple Earth-like planets in the habitable zone of the same system makes it a uniquely attractive target for study.

Of course, just because the planets are potentially habitable does not mean that they are actually inhabited by any form of life. As noted, they may be in fact either too hot or too cold, too lacking in water, or too heavily irradiated, for life to have developed. We still don’t know what conditions are required for life to appear, though from what we see on Earth we know that life is amazingly tenacious and adaptable once it does appear. Furthermore, even if one or more of the planets has some form of life, the chances that they have intelligent life are much smaller, and the chances of a technological civilization like that of humanity are even smaller. As I have argued before, I suspect that the real reason we’ve seen no signs of advanced alien civilizations all over the galaxy is that while life itself may turn out to be common, multicellular life (which only appeared on Earth billions of years after single-celled life forms) is much rarer, and intelligent life that happens to evolved the physical characteristics for building a civilization (a condition that prevents, say, dolphins from making tools or building spaceships) and lives on a planet with the right resources (a lack of iron on the planet’s surface, for instance, would make it hard for even human-like creatures to get very far towards developing advance technology) may be so rare that it only exists on a few planets out of all the billions in the entire galaxy at any given time. But even evidence of “primitive” life would be an incredibly exciting discovery, and these planets give us the best chance of discovering it outside our solar system in the near future that we have yet seen.

Perhaps inevitably, a number of articles about this discovery mentioned jokingly the possibility of escaping the growing mess created by the new US administration and the threat of right-wing populism in Europe by colonizing these potentially habitable planets, or alternately sending all the troublemakers on Earth to them and thus ridding ourselves of them. Unfortunately, direct exploration of these planets, even by robotic spacecraft, remains an extremely distant prospect. As I explained in my commentary on the discovery of Proxima Centauri b, we are a long way from being able to travel to other stars in a reasonable time frame. One article on the Trappist-1 planets noted that one of the fastest spacecraft ever launched, the New Horizons probe that explored Pluto (reaching that distant planet in a little less than 10 years after its launch from Earth), would take about 750,000 years to reach Trappist-1. It’s possible that an effort like Breakthrough Starshot might actually see miniature spacecraft traveling to the closest star systems, such as Alpha Centauri, before this century is over, but even if that ambitious project succeeds, it would still take a couple of centuries for spacecraft traveling at the speeds targeted by the project to reach Trappist-1, which is almost 10 times as distant as Alpha Centauri. Nevertheless, simply by studying the planets from Earth, we may be able to discover if any of them host life. If we do find solid evidence of life on any of them (which, it must be emphasized again, is not guaranteed), it may provide the motivation for even more intense efforts at finding better methods of starship propulsion. Even the knowledge that life exists on a planet or, even more excitingly, multiple planets orbiting a nearby star would have a dramatic effect on our view of our place in the universe.

Theme Songs for the Incoming Administration of Deplorables

As the United States prepares to inaugurate the least qualified, most heavily compromised president in its history, everyone is wondering what the future will bring. My own take on Don tRump (aka Pumpkin Hitler) is that not only is he appallingly ignorant and so detached from reality that he (and many of his voters) genuinely cannot tell fact from fiction, but for those reasons he is easily swayed by those he chooses to listen to (mostly those who stroke his massive ego or in some other way help feed his narcissistic view of his own self-importance). His opinions on many important topics seem to reflect those who he last spoke to on that topic. While in theory that would mean that if someone with progressive views managed to get his ear, he might be persuaded to actually do some good, a look at the people he has surrounded himself with so far shows that this is a forlorn hope.

How bad is it? His chief strategist and his main speech writer have white nationalist ties and his national security adviser is an Islamophobe who promotes absurd conspiracy theories. His proposed budget director has such a poor understanding of financial matters that he has suggested that the US could default on its debt without serious consequences. As for his cabinet nominees, they include a business-over-country fossil fuel CEO for Secretary of State, a sexist racist anti-gay anti-voting lock-‘em-up-and-throw-away-the-key hardliner for Secretary of Justice, the unethical and possibly criminal “foreclosure king” for Secretary of the Treasury, an anti-worker fast food CEO for Secretary of Labor, a climate change denying anti-environmentalist for director of the Environmental Protection Agency, an anti-public education billionaire extremist for Secretary of Education, a clueless ex-governor for Secretary of Energy, a clueless doctor who himself said he wasn’t capable of leading a government agency for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, an unethical profits-over-patients former doctor for Secretary of Health, and more. Where they aren’t completely lacking in any relevant experience, they are diametrically opposed to the purposes of the departments and agencies they have been nominated to lead. To say putting them in charge is like the fox guarding the henhouse is an understatement. It’s more like appointing a known pyromaniac as chief of the fire department or putting a known thief in charge of bank security. So the first order of business for not just progressives but anyone who wants to have a functioning government instead of one run by people who will destroy it and most likely take the environment, the economy, health care, voting rights, civil rights and more down with it is to speak loudly and repeatedly against these nominees in the hope that at least some of them can be blocked and replaced with people at least a little less extreme. After all, even past Republicans usually didn’t appoint people this awful (compare GW Bush’s EPA directors with Scott Pruitt, or Reagan’s budget director David Stockman with Mick Mulvaney).

In the meantime, since tRump has had such trouble finding acts willing to perform at his inauguration, I thought I’d go through my music collection and come up with some suitable music for him and his proposed cabinet of deplorables. Unfortunately, even the most ironically exaggerated of these songs could turn out to be scarily accurate if the worst tendencies of the incoming administration are left unrestrained. If they are to remain in the realm of satire rather than prophesy, it will take the collective efforts of all people of conscience and good sense.

Theme Songs for the New Administration

Political Science (Randy Newman) – Randy Newman himself commented that this song is “never out of date, unfortunately.” But this sort of ignorant, nationalistic jingoism is especially reminiscent of the attitudes of tRump and a number of those around him.

Deportee (Woody Guthrie/Martin Hoffman) – It was hearing Cisco Houston's version of this song on a Guthrie compilation I have that inspired me to put together this list. Though it’s more than half a century old, its lyrics (which Guthrie originally wrote as a poem, inspired by a news report about a plane crash that killed several Americans and more than two dozen Mexicans who were being sent back to Mexico and who were not listed by name but just referred to as “deportees”) attack the same kind of dehumanization of undocumented immigrants that characterizes tRump and his followers. Of course we should also remember that Guthrie also wrote a set of lyrics titled “Beach Haven Ain’t My Home (Old Man Trump)” about his greedy, racist landlord Fred Trump – Donnie’s father.

Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) (Marvin Gaye) – This Marvin Gaye classic will unfortunately be an even more accurate depiction of the way we’ve polluted our environment if people like Scott Pruitt, tRump’s nominee for EPA director, get their way.

Pollution (Tom Lehrer) – Another good description of what even a few years of Republican dominance of government is likely to do to our environment. The line about what comes out of the taps is eerily close to what the people of Flint have had to put up with already, and that sort of thing will just get more common in the next few years.

Send the Marines (Tom Lehrer) – This would work as a theme song for a Defense Department headed by "Mad Dog" Mattis.

Murder by Numbers (Sting/Andy Summers) – While this song is more broadly targeted at all political leaders and the ease by which many of them give orders that lead to others’ deaths, it also is a scary reminder of what such power can become if wielded by someone unrestrained by conscience or empathy (neither of which tRump or many of his top nominees seem to have much of).

It's Money That Matters (Randy Newman) – A perfect fit for tRump and his cabinet of greedy billionaires, especially people like Mnuchin, DeVos, Tillerson and Ross, not to mention all the "coddle the wealthy" Republicans in Congress.

Trigger Happy (“Weird” Al Yankovic) – While Weird Al Yankovic, unlike Tom Lehrer or Randy Newman, rarely does songs with a political slant, this original song (a “style parody” of the Beach Boys) is the perfect theme song for all the gun nuts who will run rampant if the “guns everywhere” policies supported by tRump and the Republicans actually become law.

Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) (Roger Waters) – This grim portrait of a twisted education system seems rather fitting as a theme for what we might expect of education under Betsy DeVos, with her hostility to public schools and promotion of unregulated charter schools that “advance God’s Kingdom”.

Which Way to America (Vernon Reid) – This Living Colour song contrasts the America of the wealthy (and usually white) population and that of the poor (and often minority) population, the sort of inequality that will only get worse under tRump. Their “Cult of Personality” from the same album in some ways fits tRump, though I think of him as belonging to a slightly different category than leaders like Hitler or Stalin, whose evil was more calculated.

Subcity (Tracy Chapman) – A lot of Chapman's songs are about America's neglected underclass, but this song, with its lines about not being able to get any government relief and of course "Please give the President my honest regards/For disregarding me", is particularly appropriate considering the cuts to food stamps and other programs that can be expected from the Republicans.

Hammer to Fall (Brian May) – This apocalyptic Queen song seems fitting as a description of the sword of Damocles we’ll all be living under with tRump in charge. Queen’s “White Man” (also by May) would also be appropriate in reference to Standing Rock and similar disputes.

American Idiot (Armstrong/Dirnt/Cool) – This one is an obvious one, fitting for both tRump and those who voted him into office.

Putin (Randy Newman) – I only discovered this new Newman song today, but it's the perfect theme song for the guy who helped put tRump into office.

We Will All Go Together When We Go (Tom Lehrer) – Let’s just hope this one doesn’t turn out to be prophetic.

Update:
I'm Dreaming (Randy Newman) - I just ran across this song today, and I just had to add it. As a Randy Newman fan, I'm a bit embarrassed to have missed hearing this, since it apparently dates back to 2012. He seemingly wrote it in character (as he often does), in this case the character being an Obama-hating tea party type. As such, it makes the perfect theme song for the tRump voter.

What I've Been Reading (Late 2016)...and a Brief Farewell to 2016

This year has been a strange one. Not all of it has been bad: Taiwan's elections turned out pretty well, quite a few major discoveries were made in astronomy, some progress was made in fighting climate change, and on a personal note, my music related endeavors (such as my radio show and my Taiwanese aboriginal music related activities) mostly went well. But there's been a lot of bad news as well. Personally, I suffered a broken leg (perhaps more on that another time - at any rate I am mostly recovered), climate change is becoming much more serious, and much of the international political news has been bad or downright terrible. There have also been what seems like an unusual number of deaths of famous people: aside from many people in the world of popular music, some of whom I've written about in my music blog, people ranging from King Bhumibol of Thailand and Fidel Castro of Cuba to the recent deaths of actress/writer Carrie Fisher and her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds. Of course people die every year, and it is pure coincidence that these people died in a year in which many other things have gone badly. Still, it's no surprise that many people are saying that it's been a terrible year and are in a hurry for it to end. Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that 2017 will be better. In fact, it may be worse, since we have yet to face the real consequences of at least one of the worst events of 2016, the US presidential election. But rather than dwell too much on all this, I am going to talk instead about a few of the books I've read over the latter part of this year, as promised in my last post on my reading. This doesn't quite cover everything; I wrote about Keith Richards' autobiography in my music blog, and I'm almost finished with Jared Diamond's fascinating and educational Guns, Germs and Steel, but that will have to be covered in a later post.


The Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock
Elric of Melnibone is one of the classic characters of fantasy (more precisely, its subgenre swords and sorcery). The original saga was published in bits and pieces and out of chronological order, but was later organized into six books, though most of them consist of essentially separate episodes, reflecting the way they were originally published. These books, in internal chronological order, are Elric of Melnibone, Sailor on the Seas of Fate, The Weird of the White Wolf, The Vanishing Tower, The Bane of the Black Sword and Stormbringer. Elric of Melnibone, though first by internal chronology, was published later than the other material, and was also the first full-length Elric novel, as the other books consist of novellas and short stories originally published separately. Many years later, Moorcock wrote several additional Elric books, but as I don’t have any of these, they aren’t considered here.

I had read Elric of Melnibone and The Weird of the White Wolf in the past, but it was only later that I acquired most of the other books in the series (I still don’t have The Vanishing Tower). I decided to read all five books that I had in internal chronological order. The most obvious comparisons to be made are to Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories and Fritz Leiber’s stories of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Elric is (I think deliberately) almost the polar opposite of Conan, as rather than a black-haired, muscular barbarian with a strong distrust of magic, Elric is a physically weak albino with substantial sorcerous abilities who is the last of a long line of emperors of a civilized but extremely decadent race. As such, he is certainly a more unique character, and in many ways a more interesting one. Moorcock’s stories also have the advantage of lacking some of the vaguely racist pseudoscience that Howard incorporated into his tales, such as the idea that humans or other creatures could “devolve” into less advanced species (though even Moorcock and for that matter writers like J.R.R. Tolkien rather overemphasized the idea of inherent racial characteristics). The female characters in the Elric stories are not completely helpless or incapable, though they still far too often end up needing to be rescued from villains who have kidnapped them. In this respect as well as others, Leiber’s stories are superior. One major distinction (though whether it makes one or the other better is of course subjective) is that Leiber’s tales have considerably more humor and plain fun. The Elric stories are suffused with grim melancholy, in keeping with the anti-hero who is their focus. Fafhrd and Grey Mouser are not exactly paragons of virtue – they are mercenaries and thieves – but Elric can be callous and cruel, even if he is more troubled by something resembling a conscience and has more of a sense of right and wrong than most of his people. His friend and companion Moonglum bears a bit more resemblance to the Grey Mouser in particular, but even he can’t keep up his optimism and wit in the face of some of the particularly unpleasant situations the pair encounter.

Ultimately, the Elric stories (and particularly their distinctive protagonist) are intriguing and present an interesting twist on standard fantasy fare, but while at least some of them should be read by anyone who wants to get a full grounding in classic fantasy, I wouldn’t put them at the top of my list of fantasy books to recommend to someone unfamiliar with the genre, unless I knew them to be the type of person who was likely to appreciate their dark and melancholy tone.

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man is one of several classic novels by the early science fiction writer H.G. Wells, only slightly less famous than the two I’d read in the past, War of the Worlds and The Time Machine. Nevertheless, I was completely unfamiliar with the story, and was somewhat surprised by the character of the titular invisible man and the uses he makes of his discovery. Though he sometimes seems to be a bit exaggerated, and at times the very British behavior of some of the other characters may strike modern readers as a bit odd, they are all distinct and colorful. Wells also obviously gave a lot of thought to both providing a believable explanation for the process by which the invisibility formula was discovered and its potential consequences. The story is not exactly a cheerful one, but it is an interesting one, and the story is well worth reading for anyone interested in classic science fiction.

The Bridge by Iain Banks
This Iain Banks novel is not one of his science fiction novels (which were credited to Iain M. Banks), but rather one of his mainstream, “real world” novels. In fact, he first gained critical fame through the latter, and wrote both types of novels throughout his career (he once said literary types who were dismissive of science fiction would often assume that he wrote science fiction for the money and would be taken aback when he’d tell them that if anything the reverse was true: he wrote mainstream fiction for the money, but sci-fi was what he enjoyed writing most). I’ve read several of his mainstream novels, all of which I’ve found to be quite good, but this one might be the best. It is certainly the most imaginative. This is in part because while the basic frame story is set in the real world, the majority of the novel unfolds in settings that are not part of the real world at all, but part of what might best be described as a dream world, or rather multiple dream worlds folded into each other. As I’d rather not give away too much of the story, I will simply explain this by saying that much of the story centers around a character living on a bridge that seems to go on almost forever in both directions, and is basically a city in itself, with homes, offices, restaurants, hospitals, bars and more, densely populated by apparently normal people. The protagonist suffers from amnesia and doesn’t remember where he came from or what his original name was. From time to time, he experiences vivid dreams, including a series of them featuring yet another protagonist who appears to be a powerful but amoral barbarian warrior who tells his story in some type of Scottish dialect. Interspersed among the bridge-centered story and the dreams of its protagonist is the story of the other chief protagonist, who lives in our real world.

The real world protagonist has much in common with the protagonists of most other mainstream Banks novels. He is Scottish and politically leftist, though he struggles to reconcile his principles with his lifestyle and is often self-centered in spite of his ideals. He is a recreational drug user and is in a long-term relationship, though the relationship is not without its problems. While many of these characteristics are found in other Banks protagonists, each manages to be distinct, and this novel is even further distinguished by the other strands of narrative, which have only the most tangential relationship to the real world. Like Banks’s sci-fi Culture novels (or his occasional non-Culture sci-fi novels), The Bridge shows a highly imaginative writer at work, one who manages to be in turns clever, witty, and philosophical while telling a very engaging and entertaining story.

From Thailand to Cuba: Some Comments on the Deaths of Two Very Senior Leaders

Though like a lot of other people, most of my attention over the last couple of months was largely absorbed by the election in the United States (a topic I’ll probably be addressing again soon), a number of other notable events occurred around the world in this period. Among them was the deaths of two very different individuals who nevertheless had a number of things in common. Both died at a very advanced age, both had served as head of state in their respective nations for a very, very long time, and both, as highly influential individuals, inevitably had mixed records, though one of them was considerably more controversial than the other. I am referring, of course, to King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand and Fidel Castro of Cuba.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died on October 13 two months short of his 89th birthday, was the ninth king of Thailand’s Chakri dynasty, reigning as Rama IX. At the time of his death, he was the longest-reigning monarch in the world (a title which has now passed to Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom), having reigned for an amazing 70 years, making his reigns one of the longest of all time (there are only about three dozen rulers in history whose reigns are claimed to be as long or longer; many of these were from ancient times and so the dates are of disputable accuracy, and many of the rulers with verifiable dates were monarchs of tiny states, not major kingdoms like Thailand). The vast majority of people in Thailand had never known another ruler. Bhumibol was also the only monarch born in the United States, as his father was studying there at the time.

Bhumibol became king upon the mysterious shooting death of his older brother in 1946. While he was a constitutional monarch who wielded little formal power, he was respected almost to the point of worship by most Thais, and at several key points in history he quietly intervened in politics, affecting the course of events. In 1973, he pushed the military dictator of the time to resign in the face of student protests, but just three years later, disturbed by the spread of communism in Indochina (including the overthrow of the monarchy in neighboring Laos), he gave tacit approval to a massacre of student protestors and the re-imposition of military dictatorship. In 1992, the selection of the leader of a coup from the previous year as prime minister led to mass protests which the government tried to violently suppress. The king ordered the prime minister and the chief protest leader to meet with him, a meeting that was televised. This led to the resignation of the prime minister and the restoration of democracy. It is less clear what role, if any, the king played in the 2006 coup that overthrew the popular (though somewhat authoritarian) prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. So over the years Bhumibol at different times intervened both for and against democracy. Another indication of his somewhat conservative outlook was his support for Thaksin’s “war on drugs”, despite the numerous extrajudicial killings that resulted. On the plus side, he dedicated a great deal of time to numerous development projects aimed at improving the lives of ordinary Thais.

Bhumibol was a skilled sailor and held several patents, for a waste water aerator and for rainmaking techniques. He was a writer, painter and photographer, with published works in all these fields. He was also notable for being an accomplished jazz musician and composer. He was best known for playing the saxophone but also played clarinet, trumpet, guitar and piano. He played with jazz notables such as Benny Goodman and Stan Getz and performed publically with a jazz band he had formed. He composed many songs in his youth and wrote anthems for several Thai universities. I have a couple of CDs of his compositions that I bought in Thailand, though regrettably I couldn’t find any on which he himself played. Here I might note that though of course I never saw Bhumibol in person, I went to Thailand many times in the last couple of decades of his reign. His image, naturally, appeared on all Thai money and in many places in public, including along major avenues, his portrait could be seen along with portraits of other members of the royal family, particularly of his wife and his second daughter, the most popular of his children. I also recall seeing portraits of his mother, who was still alive at the time of my first trip to Thailand (she died in 1995 at well over 94 years of age).

While much of the respect Bhumibol received from his subjects was deserved, the degree to which he and the royal family were protected from criticism were unhealthy and a violation of freedom of expression. The current military government has been particularly zealous in enforcing the overly strict lese majesty laws, with people sentenced to long prison terms for Facebook posts. People have even been prosecuted for actions such as wearing black on the king’s birthday. Academics have been arrested merely for suggesting proposing reforms of the monarchy. Ironically, in 2005 the king himself said that it should be okay to criticize him, stating that saying the king could do no wrong was akin to saying he was not human. But either he was either unable or unwilling to impel the government to stop prosecuting people for lese majesty (indeed, there were far more cases after 2005 than before). The truth is Bhumibol was correct. He was indeed human and as such not perfect, though as a stabilizing force in Thailand probably he did more good than harm over the course of his life, with regrettable exceptions at certain points.

Like Bhumibol, Fidel Castro of Cuba, who died just a few days ago, was the leader of his nation for many decades and by far the most influential figure in the country over the last half of the 20th century and into the 21st. Castro was actually older than Bhumibol, having been born a year and several months earlier, and he was a few months past his 90th birthday when he died. While he wasn’t the titular leader of his country for quite so long as Bhumibol, serving as prime minister from 1959 to 1976 and as president from 1976 to 2008 (though he was on medical leave beginning in 2006 due to illness, with his brother Raul Castro taking over as acting president and eventually as his formal successor), Castro wielded far more actual power. He also had much greater influence outside his own country, particularly in Latin America and Africa. He also was a far more controversial figure, particularly in the United States, a country which maintained a decades-long embargo against Cuba with the explicit aim of forcing Castro from power.

I’m not going to try to go over Castro’s long career in any detail, as many others have done so over the past few days. Rather, I want to repeat an observation made by some of the more sensible commentators following Castro’s death and that is if one is attempting to pass judgement on his career, neither unadulterated praise nor unadulterated condemnation is appropriate. There is no question that Castro’s rule in Cuba was very repressive. Dissent was fully suppressed and many were imprisoned or killed by his regime. Even Cuba’s vibrant culture was stifled for most of his time in power. His imposition of a totalitarian system also led to economic rigidity which left Cuba impoverished, though the US blockade also contributed to the country’s economic difficulties. On the other hand, he did greatly improve education and medical care in Cuba, to the point where its level of literacy and the quality of its health care was far superior to that of most countries in the developing world and comparable to that in much wealthier nations. Cuba even sent doctors to many other countries in Latin America and Africa to provide medical help. He also improved the lot of Afro-Cubans, greatly reducing the inequality that had existed prior to his seizure of power. He also supported the fight against apartheid in South Africa. His regime had a poor record on gay rights for most of his time in power, but towards the end of his life he urged the acceptance of homosexuality and took responsibility for earlier repression in a rare admission of error. His niece, the daughter of his brother and successor Raul, is Cuba’s most prominent activist for LGBT rights.

Basically, the good Castro did does not in any way excuse the evil he did, but neither does the evil he did negate the good. One can conclude that overall he did more harm than good, or one can conclude the opposite, but unquestionably he did plenty of both. He was intelligent and charismatic but also inflexible and ruthless. Many Cuban-Americans celebrated his death and condemned him as a bloody tyrant. He certainly was that, but it is worth remembering that the Batista regime he and his followers overthrew was just as repressive and also lacked many of the Castro regime’s virtues. Conservative Cuban-Americans and right-wingers in the US opposed US President Barack Obama’s normalization of relations with Cuba in recent years on the grounds that the government headed by the Castro brothers is still regularly violating human rights. This is definitely true, but many other governments with worse human rights records are treated with much less hostility (e.g., China) or even regarded as allies (e.g., Saudi Arabia), so the US treatment of Cuba makes little sense. On the other hand, those who in response to Castro’s death have lauded him as a great revolutionary without condemning his repression are just as wrong as those who have called him a bloody dictator without acknowledging that he did in at least a few ways improve the lives of ordinary Cubans. In the end, he was both a great revolutionary and a bloody tyrant. Like Bhumibol and virtually every other person who ever lived, he did both good and bad, though in Castro’s case he did a lot more of both than most people could even dream of doing.

Angry Rant Time: The Stupid, the Ignorant, and the Deplorable

So pretty much everyone now knows about the disastrous results of the presidential election in the US. And it was clearly a disaster: it is no coincidence that voices of reason and sense from all over the world and from all walks of life have bemoaned it, while it has been celebrated by Russia (which also admitted to both regular contact with the Pumpkin Hitler campaign and to having a hand in the Wikileaks releases aimed at harming Hillary Clinton), the KKK, white nationalists in general, rightwing extremists in Europe, authoritarian leaders like Orban in Hungary and Erdogan in Turkey, genocide-promoting Islamophobic Buddhist monks in Myanmar, and ISIS. There is a great deal that can be said about this election, from how it is yet another incentive for ditching the outdated Electoral College and instituting a direct popular vote for president (Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a substantial if not overwhelming margin) to what it means for the future (with a utterly unqualified, completely self-centered and generally unpredictable president-elect, it’s hard to tell – but it’s almost certainly going to be bad). However, I am going to focus my attention on – or to put it more bluntly, direct my rant at – those who brought about this result, starting with the millions of people who voted for this unqualified, bigoted, narcissistic, lying buffoon.

Basically, I long ago concluded that those who support Pumpkin Hitler (we’ll call him DT for short) have to be either stupid, ignorant, what Hillary Clinton rather generously called “deplorable”, or some combination of the three. My brother argues that the ignorant have to be considered a subset of the stupid, as he doesn’t see how any intelligent person could remain ignorant of either how awful DT was or how portrayals of the two major candidates as equally bad were clearly egregious examples of false equivalence, but while I also find it hard to fathom, I’m also aware that people, even otherwise intelligent people, have an amazing capacity to tune out information that they aren’t interested in listening to, whether because of a dislike of the subject in general (“I don’t like politics”) or because it contradicts their previously held beliefs and opinions (“all politicians are bad and dishonest, so it doesn’t really matter who I choose”). Of course one could argue that this sort of willful ignorance could just as easily be called willful stupidity, and I’ll admit the line is a bit fuzzy.

I should note here that when I talk about “stupidity”, it is not necessarily aimed at people with low IQs or diminished mental capacity. As the line in Forrest Gump goes, “stupid is as stupid does”. A lot of people with low IQs were perfectly capable of identifying DT as a terrible person and HRC as a good one. On the other hand, there were evidentially also lots of people of average or even above average intelligence who managed to ignore or rationalize all the signs that DT was a bully, a bigot, a racist, a pathological liar, and a complete narcissist, that he was an incompetent businessman who engaged in highly questionable business practices, that he was utterly unqualified to be president (you could hardly do worse if you picked someone at random off the street), and that there was very good reason to think he has committed sexual assault on multiple occasions, or who accepted the widely repeated but unfounded assertions that HRC was particularly dishonest or corrupt, that her handling of her emails was not only criminal but as morally questionable as DT’s behavior, or just that both were somehow equally bad. Exit polls indicate that a substantial number of people didn’t even decide who they were going to vote for until the last few weeks before the election. A majority of these, particularly those who decided a week before (in the days just after the FBI director took the unethical and possibly illegal step of releasing a letter containing vague insinuations against HRC, but just before he came out and admitted there was no new evidence of wrongdoing on her part) ended up voting for DT. How can anyone have still remained undecided so late in the campaign, and even more incredibly how can they have picked the obviously worse choice? Were they really so low information as to not know which was better, or was it a complete lack of critical thinking ability that made them incapable of determining who was better even with all the information that was available? In either case, it is appalling that so many people, when faced with such a huge disparity in options, could pick the terrible one. Exit polls indicated that a small majority of voters thought Clinton was qualified, while about 60% (including, evidentially, many who voted for him) thought DT was unqualified. When asked what candidate quality mattered most, voters answered “can bring change” (39%), “right experience” (21%), “good judgment” (20%) and “cares about me” (15%). Voters who picked the latter three qualities voted heavily for Clinton, particularly those who picked “good judgment” (66% for HRC) and “right experience” (an overwhelming 90% for HRC). But those who picked the first option voted overwhelmingly for DT (83%). Certainly he was the candidate most likely to bring drastic change. But why on earth would these people think that the change he was likely to bring was going to be good? It is astonishing that people could be so…well, so stupid. Unless, of course, we are talking about those people who belonged to the third (or second, if we lump the stupid and ignorant together) category of DT voters.

It was clear throughout the campaign that DT was attracting unprecedented levels of support from the people that Hillary Clinton somewhat charitably referred to as “deplorables”. These included white supremacists, extreme xenophobes, virulent Islamophobes, misogynists, anti-Semites and more. But even among supporters who were not outspoken in their hate for one or more groups of “others”, there was clearly an undercurrent of racism, even if it was couched in less blatant language (“make America great again”, with the implication that it was last great back when men were men, women stayed at home, and minorities knew their place or simply weren’t around). It was no coincidence that after a campaign in which he blamed all of the US’s problems on outsiders and minority groups (e.g., the “certain groups” that he claimed would engage in vote fraud in order to steal the election), white people voted heavily in his favor. He won almost two thirds of the white male vote, a fact that makes me ashamed to be in the same demographic. He even won a more narrow majority of white women, despite all the sexist remarks he made and the credible accusations of sexual assault (supported by his own taped remarks). While among these voters it’s impossible to be sure where the stupidity and ignorance (see above) ends and the racism and bigotry begins, the latter surely played a role for a substantial number of voters, just as has been the case for right wing parties in Europe and elsewhere. An interesting side note: some time back I saw a poll of British citizens regarding their preferences in the US election. A large majority picked HRC, men by almost as much as women. The poll was also broken down by UK party, and majorities of Labour voters, Liberal Democrat voters and even Conservative voters preferred Clinton. The one group that preferred DT? Supporters of the right-wing, xenophobic, anti-Europe UKIP. It’s also surely no coincidence that DT is the preferred candidate of nearly all of the most foul-mouthed of the Internet trolls. In fact, he is practically the king of the Internet trolls. What does it say about the US that it would elect an Internet troll to lead the country?

But aside from the outright racists, white supremacists and trolls on the one hand and the subconscious or semi-conscious racism and xenophobia of many others who voted for DT, there is one other group of voters who supported him even though they were by no means ignorant of his flaws. This group was the fairly large contingent of Republicans and conservatives who claimed to strongly disapprove of DT’s character and at least some of his remarks and actions. A number of these people no doubt retained sufficient principle to follow through with their claims that they couldn’t support him and either voted for someone else, left the top of their ballots blank or didn’t vote at all. But exit polls indicate the vast majority of self-described Republicans did vote for him in the end. In fact, some who condemned him still openly declared they’d vote for him. I saw one rightwing evangelical make the argument that because DT was running on a platform of policies he supported, he’d vote for him even though he thought he was morally speaking highly flawed. In essence, these people voted for a candidate that they knew was both extremely unqualified and morally unsound just because he (mostly) supported the policies they supported. Even leaving aside the problem of whether the policies they want are good or bad, this begs the question: exactly how morally depraved would a person have to be to lose their vote? If Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot rose from the grave to run on the Republican platform, would they vote for them? Perhaps they figure that since DT appears to be rather uninterested in the actual work of governing, he will just run around making self-aggrandizing statements and grabbing the crotches of any women who aren’t able successfully avoid him and will leave it up to Pence, Gingrich, Priebus, McConnell, Ryan, Giuliani et al to run the country. Perhaps, but that still amounts to condoning both his personal flaws and his outrageous rhetoric. By voting for him despite knowing what he was, they said that they didn’t care if minorities and women were going to suffer under his administration, or that seeing a person who bullies, insults and even sexually assaults others could still get elected president set a horrible example for children. Either you condemn a character like DT or you are condoning him, and by voting for him, they picked the latter. In other words, those who voted open-eyed for a candidate they knew was terrible because he’d cut taxes, reduce regulations, ban abortion, end gay marriage, or whatever else it is they support are just as deplorable as the outright racists and bigots.

Of course, if we’re apportioning blame, there are plenty of other people who should get some share, even if they didn’t go so far as to vote for him. While we can’t blame the conspiracy theory pandering, “HRC would be worse than DT” nonsense peddling Jill Stein and her voters for the final result, we can blame them at least in part for DT’s victories in Michigan and to a lesser extent Wisconsin, as his margin of victory was less than the number of votes Stein received. Whether it was Stein voters or self-proclaimed progressives who left the top of the ballot blank, they also are responsible for DT’s election. As I noted above and many times in the past, only the frankly stupid or ignorant could possibly think that HRC was even close to as bad as DT or that a HRC presidency would be nearly the disaster for minorities, marginalized groups, or the entire country (and even the world) that a DT presidency is likely to be. As one left-wing writer obviously leery of HRC noted, sometimes the lesser of two evils is a lot less evil. This was clearly the case here, and anyone living in a swing state (or even one where the polls were within single digits) who claims to be a progressive but did not vote for HRC shares the blame for the disaster that occurred. This also applies to anyone who was registered to vote, didn’t want DT to win, and yet didn’t bother to help make sure he didn’t. Unfortunately, the left wing also has its share of stubborn-to-the-point-of-idiocy idealists and even conspiracy theorists, such as those who were constantly claiming the DNC or even Hillary herself had “rigged” the primaries (for example, the comments on articles on The Nation are often full such claims). This claim was as nonsensical as the various conspiracy theories fomented by the right, and yet it’s possible that enough left-leaning voters bought into it (through ignorance, extreme bias or lack of critical thinking skills) to refuse to vote for HRC, despite the risks – though of course the risks most of these voters face pale in comparison with the groups who will be the first targets of this administration of extremists. Incidentally, while it is possible that another Democrat would have done better, especially given the absurd slant in media coverage (see below), there is no way to be sure. Bernie Sanders would not have been able to keep his high approval ratings in a long general election campaign, and even if Michael Bloomberg had not followed through on his threat to enter the race if Sanders was the Democratic nominee, there’s no guarantee Sanders would have won, and the same is true of other possibilities, such as Joe Biden. Ironically, even when it was clear that Clinton was going to win the primary, you’d see a few Sanders supporting calling on the party to ignore the primary results and pick Sanders as the stronger candidate, which would have been a far more serious case of the DNC interfering in the process than actually occurred. Now, of course, some are back to insisting that Sanders would have won. But when the other option was someone like DT, it shouldn’t have mattered whether the Democratic nominee was Clinton, Sanders or Biden – for any progressive, Democratic-leaning, or just intelligent centrist voter the choice should have been a no-brainer. And yet here we are.

Then there was the media. There were certainly some journalists out there doing their jobs and investigating DT’s deeds and misdeeds, and even the major media entities showed flashes of real journalism. But overall the media as an institution was a colossal failure and bears a very large share of the responsibility for the results of the election. Much has already been said about all the free coverage they gave him early in the race, completely ignoring other candidates in order to cover his rallies. While you’d think that all that exposure should have helped people see how inane and lacking in substance (not to mention occasionally offensive) everything he said was, apparently not. But the media is too attached to spectacle to pay any attention to substance. And though in the general election the media did start to give him some negative attention, all sorts of incredibly scandalous things in his record were virtually ignored or at best talked about for a day or two and then forgotten. But just as big a problem was their coverage of Hillary Clinton. The media spent a vast amount of time talking about her emails and almost none talking about her proposed policies. This in spite of the fact that the emails were a complete non-issue that were hardly worth a day of coverage. But by repeating ad nauseam vague insinuations that there was something scandalous about her emails and spending relatively little time on things in DT’s record that were a hundred times worse, they created an image of false equivalence in many people’s minds, such that they really thought the two were equally bad. To be sure, it still seems that just a bit of critical thinking ability would allow voters to tell that there was a vast difference, but if the media had done its job properly it wouldn’t even have been an issue.

All this is not to ignore other factors that amounted to cheating by the other side. Voter suppression by the Republicans may well have made the difference in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Florida. FBI director James Comey’s interference, already mentioned above, may have swung enough last minute undecideds away from HRC to make a difference. The Russia-Wikileaks alliance helped to damage HRC as well. But none of these things, especially the latter two, should have mattered if enough voters had the basic analytical skills to distinguish between black and white, which is really what the choice amounted to. Even before the election, I said that it was disgraceful that the electoral vote wasn’t going to be 538 to 0 in HRC’s favor, and I might have added that it was a disgrace the popular vote wasn’t going to be something like 75% to 25%. Surely the number of racists, unrepentant misogynists, xenophobes and other deplorables isn’t more than a quarter of the population. But if so, what’s wrong with all those other people? In any case, this election (despite good results in some local and state-level votes) didn’t do much for my already shaky faith in humanity. Yes, I know I should be looking forward and starting to think about how to win over – or more accurately educate – some of these people, but at this point I’m not in the mood.

2016 US Elections (Texas Edition)

So here we are, finally. After months of interminable campaigning and media sensationalism, Election Day in the United States has finally arrived. I am reasonably confident that the only decent candidate will win the presidential election [Late Update: to everyone's great misfortune, I was wrong, but then I was hardly the only one], but it is frankly disgraceful that the Republican candidate will win any support at all. Anything other than a complete electoral shutout, which of course won't happen, reflects poorly on Americans (though having said that, many other countries have elected or come close to electing some pretty awful people). The outcome for Congress is less certain. I think the Democrats will probably win the Senate, though maybe not by more than a seat or two, which is all the more unfortunate because even some of the Democrats are not all I might want them to be (for example, several of the candidates running this year took the morally indefensible position of supporting a temporary halt on bringing Syrian refugees into the US in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, even though, one, the Paris attacks were not perpetrated by refugees, and, two, refugees are already very well vetted and there has not been a single terrorist attack launched in the US by a refugee since 2001). Nevertheless, even Democrats like that will be an improvement over the Republicans. Unfortunately, the House probably will remain in Republican hands thanks to gerrymandering, absent a late surge by the Democrats, but at least their majority should be reduced. Of course, if the majority of American voters were well-informed, rational, and at least somewhat empathetic to others, the vast majority of the current crop of Republicans wouldn't stand a chance and even some of the more conservative Democrats would be in danger of being replaced. But I digress.... On to my overview of the major races on my ballot for this year. Unfortunately, I'm registered in Texas, which still leans heavily to the Republicans, though that is changing slowly but surely. While the Republicans will probably still win even with such an appalling nominee on the top of the ticket, it'd be nice if it was close, and even better if the Democrats actually managed to pull off a win or two in the statewide races (not likely, but not totally impossible).

I only received my ballot only a week prior to the election (by email), so my time for both researching the candidates and writing about the results of my research was quite limited (though my ballot should get counted even if it arrives after Election Day, as long as I’ve mailed it before polls close in Texas, I’d prefer to get it there sooner). Fortunately, in most races the choices are fairly obvious. Of course I’ve already written many times about the presidential race. I didn’t know much about the local candidates, but as with the previous election and the one before that, I used the candidate questionnaires prepared by the Dallas News and Vote 411 as my main sources (though the latter is rather short). Also, many of the minor party candidates (the Greens and Libertarians) are the same as in the last race. Due to time constraints, I didn’t always take time to search for additional information on candidates who failed to respond to the questionnaires, though I did in some cases. As I noted last time, if you’re a third party candidate with no money (or even a major party candidate who wants to let voters know where you stand), you should be trying to fill out all the questionnaires you can to get your message out. While someone might have an legitimate excuse for failing to fill out one (e.g., if they simply didn’t receive it on time), it’s a bit harder to accept missing out on two, and a few of the candidates didn’t even have any blogs or Facebook pages with any information about their campaigns in the last race, though in cases where one of them was running again I didn’t always bother to check if they’ve rectified that this time around.

More generally, while in theory a lot of my own political opinions align most closely with the Green Party’s theoretical positions, I was less inclined than in the past to seriously consider their candidates, except in races where the Democrat seemed particularly weak. As noted below, Jill Stein has looked worse and worse as this year’s race has gone on (I now regret doing a vote swap with one of her supporters in 2012, even if it won Obama a vote in a swing state), and a lot of the Green candidates in Texas are weak or just odd. I still think there’s a place in the US for a serious Green Party, if only to push the Democrats to wholeheartedly embrace all the steps we need to be taking to protect our environment, but if they simply play the role of spoilers who throw the election to the anti-environmental Republicans, they are doing absolutely nothing for the cause of the environment; in fact they are hurting it (and if, like Stein, they can’t or won’t recognize this, then they are not even worthy of consideration). If they run in local races in Democratic areas where the local Democrats are weak on the environment (whether due to ties to fossil fuel interests or for other reasons), then they might accomplish something. But in most Texan races, or for that matter in a presidential race like the one this year, they are worse than useless. So while I did look at the Green candidates, if the Democrat looked halfway decent I chose them. Only in races where the Democrat looked pretty bad and the Green pretty good did I seriously consider a Green. As for the other parties, even the best possible Republican can be dismissed from consideration simply because they are still members of that party, which has come to represent the absolute worst in every way (perhaps 30 years ago it would have been different, though they were going downhill even then) – after all, not only is it the party of their current awful presidential candidate, but also of Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Mike Pence, Scott Walker, Jeff Sessions, Steve King, Mitch McConnell and a whole lot of other awful people. As for the Libertarians, while a few of them have good positions on a few issues, all share to some degree the basic selfish, me first, anti-government outlook of their party and many are even more extreme on some issues than the Republicans, so I couldn’t vote for any of them either.

President
Hillary Clinton (D)
Pumpkin Hitler/aka Hair Furor/aka Cheeto Mussolini/aka Donnie Drumpf (R)
Jill Stein (G)
Gary Johnson (L)

My Vote – Hillary Clinton

I’ve discussed the presidential race extensively on this blog, most recently in my previous post, but to summarize: the Republican is a terrible candidate in every way, as he is a narcissist, a bigot, a xenophobe, a pathological liar, a cheapskate, a tax dodger, an admirer of authoritarians, and a probable sexual predator, and he clearly has none of the knowledge needed for the job and shows a complete inability to learn or even listen to anyone who does anything other than flatter his absurdly overinflated ego. Another point that anyone with a brain should care about is that he doesn't even have coherent policy ideas. It should be no surprise that newspaper and magazine endorsements in this race have been unprecedentedly lopsided, with almost none of them (even the conservative ones) endorsing Hair Drumpf. As for the main third party candidates, as I noted at length in my previous post, Stein shows little real grasp of the mechanics of governing, she (like the GOP con man) is overly friendly with Russia, she panders to conspiracy theorists (she even appeared on InfoWars, which sensible people avoid like the plague), she picked a running mate who has claimed the bloodthirsty Assad regime is a democratic government, and contrary to all reason she claimed that a Clinton presidency would be worse than one under the orange menace. Johnson is an idiot and would be terrible on issues like climate change, economic inequality, and getting money out of politics. And even if the other candidates weren’t so awful, Hillary Clinton is extremely well qualified, intelligent, experienced, and articulate, and she has an excellent grasp of the issues and detailed plans for governing. Her policies aren’t perfect, but she can usually be pushed to do the right thing even where she isn’t initially so inclined. She will make at worst a decent president, and possibly an excellent one.

US Representative, District 24
Jan McDowell (D)
Kenny Marchant (R)
Kevin McCormick (G)
Mike Kolls (L)

My Vote – Jan McDowell

This was another easy choice. The incumbent Marchant is terrible on virtually every issue (this time he avoids outright climate denial, but his position amounts to the same thing), and Kolls is even worse than the average Libertarian, as he is a climate change denier, a pro-gun extremist, and only moderate on immigration, where a true libertarian would be against restrictions on migration. His only virtue is being in favor of relaxing restrictions on marijuana (despite his supposed “small government” philosophy, the hypocritical Marchant is not), but McDowell and McCormick are too, and they are superior to Kolls on everything else. McDowell’s answers to the questionnaires were impressive all around. She supports admitting refugees, immigration reform with a path to citizenship, raising the minimum wage, reforming tax policies that favor the rich, addressing climate change, background checks for gun purchases, and other eminently sensible policies. McCormick sounds good on most issues, but shows flashes of ideological rigidity, and rather bizarrely punted on the gun question, so even independent of my current reservations about the Greens, McDowell would be my choice. It’s unfortunate she has little chance of winning, but perhaps if we can get rid of the pro-Republican gerrymandering after 2020, she’ll have a real shot.


Railroad Commissioner
Grady Yarbrough (D)
Wayne Christian (R)
Martina Salinas (G)
Mark A. Miller (L)

My Vote – Grady Yarbrough

This one was a slightly more difficult one than most of the others. Yarbrough’s answers didn’t really impress me – at the very least he needs an editor to polish his writing. Salinas failed to respond to the Dallas News questionnaire, but she did answer the other one, and in the last election I was favorably impressed by her responses to both questionnaires. The Democratic candidate in that race also impressed me favorably, though since two years ago I was less turned off by the Greens (despite the obvious weakness of some of their candidates), I had a hard time deciding, though I believe I went with the Democrat in the end. If the Democrat was as good this time, it would be an easy choice, even though Salinas is one of the Greens’ better candidates. As it is, I finally went with Yarborough, because as a Democrat he stands at least a slight chance of winning, and despite his somewhat unclear writing he managed to convey basically pro-environmental positions, such as cooperating with the federal government on climate issues, opposition to fossil fuel subsidies and opposition to fracking. The misnamed Railroad Commission is in charge of managing the state’s oil and gas industry, so it is important to take it out of the hands of idiotic anti-environmental, pro-fossil fuel nuts like Christian (or Miller, though at least he has reservations about fracking).

Justice, Supreme Court, Place 3
Mike Westergren (D)
Debra Lehrmann (R)
Rodolfo Rivera Munoz (G)
Kathie Glass (L)

My Vote – Mike Westergren

The questions for judicial candidates were rather general, so they weren’t as revealing about the candidates’ stances on specific issues, but Westergren had mostly good answers (with the exception of his response on arbitration, which failed to mention its many problems). Munoz would be better off working as an activist on Native American issues: all his responses revolved around the idea that US rule in Texas is illegitimate because the land was stolen from his people. While there is something to this argument, Munoz’s obsession with it is more appropriate to an advocate than a judge (and in any case, as noted above, I’d only consider even a good Green candidate if the Democrat were particularly weak). Glass ran as the Libertarian candidate for governor in the last election, and though these questions don’t make it apparent, she espoused some crazy things in that race, and I have no reason to believe she’s changed. Interestingly, Lehrmann was accused by her primary opponent of being the court’s most “liberal” justice because she frequently dissented from majority opinions. But even if the accusation is true, she would only be the most liberal in a relative sense; after all, she’s still a Republican. So in the interest of ending the Republican lock on the court, I went with Westergren.


Justice, Supreme Court, Place 5
Dori Contreras Garza (D)
Paul Green (R)
Charles E. Waterbury (G)
Tom Oxford (L)

My Vote – Dori Contreras Garza

This was a relatively easy choice. Though as noted above the questions for judicial candidates were pretty general, Garza’s answers were good as well as articulate. She seems to be far the strongest Democratic candidate for Supreme Court this year. Waterbury had some decent answers (though many seemed overly brief), but his references to the “Democrat party” were off-putting, and anyway, as discussed above, I’d only pick a Green if the Democrat were particularly weak. Oxford might be okay for a Libertarian, but he’s still a Libertarian, and Green, aside from being a Republican, didn’t even respond to the questionnaires.

Justice, Supreme Court, Place 9
Savannah Robinson (D)
Eva Guzman (R)
Jim Chisholm (G)
Don Fulton (L)

My Vote – None

I would really have preferred to vote in this race, but none of the candidates seemed worth voting for. I wasn’t about to vote for a Republican or a Libertarian for the reasons mentioned above. Chisolm has run before, and like before he didn’t even bother to respond to the questionnaires. Robinson would normally have been my choice, but her answers to the questions were very unimpressive. I don’t have any problem with concise, simple English – in fact I consider it far superior to the verbose jargon-ridden nonsense that some lawyers spew – but Robinson didn’t even seem to be taking the questions seriously, and her frequent typos and misspellings didn’t look good (also, while there may be many good reasons for admiring retired judge James Klager, “Has a Glock at his bench” doesn’t sound like a good one to me). Furthermore, in her case I did look for a campaign site, and her official Facebook page didn’t have any entries after January, so it doesn’t look like she’s a serious candidate. While I hate the idea of leaving this seat on the court in Republican hands, I couldn’t quite bring myself to vote for Robinson, so I just left this one blank.


Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 2
Lawrence "Larry" Meyers (D)
Mary Lou Keel (R)
Adam "Bulletproof" King Blackwell Reposa (G)
Mark Ash (L)

My Vote – Larry Meyers

Reposa, who calls himself a “pizza lawyer” (as he’s a “criminal defense attorney and pizza restauranteur”, seems like as much of a character as that and his name itself suggest, but that doesn’t mean he’d be a good judge. He admits that he’s running as a Green just because they asked him to (his reasons for saying yes are even more candidly self-interested). His answers on the Vote411 site are more serious, but then there’s the attached video… (I didn’t actually look up the unscrambled version, but just the thumbnail looked pretty out there). Meyers is the incumbent, and currently the only Democrat holding statewide office, though this is because after many years on the bench as a Republican, Meyers switched parties a few years ago. Unfortunately, he didn’t bother to respond to either questionnaire, but I did find a report which mentioned how he and several other candidates agree that people with drug and mental issues don’t belong in the court system (in the same article, Keel expressed little sympathy for this view, even though Republicans in other races did). In another article, one which mentioned his opposition to overly harsh sentences, he gave some good reasons for his 2013 switch in party affiliation, and in a third article focusing on him personally, he called himself a progressive and said the Republicans have become too conservative. Keel and Ash are a Republican and a Libertarian, which is enough to rule them out. If they were running for prom king, Reposa might well get my vote, but in this case Meyers seemed like the obvious choice.


Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 5
Betsy Johnson (D)
Judith Sanders-Castro (G)
William Bryan Strange III (L)
Scott Walker (R)

My Vote – Judith Sanders-Castro

Sanders-Castro gave decent responses to the questionnaires (though oddly where last time she sometimes used all caps in her Dallas News, this time she hardly capitalized at all; she could also use more proofreading). Johnson, Strange and Walker (who shares a name and party affiliation with the governor of Wisconsin, though that’s hardly a recommendation) didn’t respond at all. Oddly, I came across an article about the Republican primary for this race, and it stated that Walker didn’t have a campaign site or respond to requests for comment (all three other candidates did). It’s strange that Republican primary voters seemed to have picked the least serious of the Republican candidates; maybe they actually thought he was the Wisconsin governor. Walker did respond to a more recent article on the race, one which noted that Johnson was not actively campaigning. So, despite my issues with the Green Party in general, I decided to vote for Sanders-Castro in this race, mainly to send a message to the Democratic Party to run serious candidates.


Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 6
Robert Burns (D)
Michael E. Keasler (R)
Mark W. Bennett (L)

My Vote – Robert Burns

Keasler’s responses to the somewhat general questions aren’t too bad for a Republican, but he still is one. Burns isn’t obviously much better (though in one of the news articles mentioned above, he also spoke out on the problems drug addicts face in the legal system), but he seems okay, so I gave him my vote.


Fifth Court of Appeals, Place 4
Gena Slaughter (D)
Lana Myers (R)

My Vote – Gena Slaughter

Though most of the questions reveal little about the two candidates’ thinking except in vague terms, Slaughter’s given reasons for running as a Democrat were a point in her favor and the fact that Myers is a Republican was a strike against her, so Slaughter was my choice.


Fifth Court of Appeals, Place 7
Dennise Garcia (D)
David John Schenck (R)

My Vote – Dennise Garcia

Not a lot of obvious difference here, so since both seemed to have the basic qualifications, it came down to party affiliation.


State Representative, District 103
Rafael Anchia (D)

My Vote – Rafael Anchia

Though Anchia, the incumbent, was unopposed, I decided to vote for him, as he got a 100% grade (and an endorsement) from the Texas League of Conservation Voters.


Dallas County Sheriff
Lupe Valdez (D)
Kirk Launius (R)
J.C. Osborne (G)
David Geoffrey Morris (L)

My Vote – Lupe Valdez

I originally intended to skip the local races, as I don’t feel I know about the sort of local matters the candidates might be expected to address. However, I decided to make an exception for this race. Not only are the Republican and Libertarian unacceptable for the usual reasons, but Osbourne, the Green candidate, seems more than a little wacky, and among a number of over-the-top remarks in his responses there were some that were homophobic and xenophobic, so he also is not by any means an acceptable choice. I admittedly don’t know much about the incumbent Valdez’s record, including on controversial policing issues, but I read part of her speech to the Democratic National Convention, and it sounded pretty good, especially since she noted that members of her own family had had run-ins with bad police officers, and that she’s taken specific steps to encourage her officers to improve community relations. The fact that she has had disputes with the governor over treatment of undocumented people is a point in her favor as well. As for the local judgeships, I did cast votes in a few of them, voting for the Democrat in races where the Republican revealed from their responses that they were a right-wing ideologue (for instance, two named Scalia as the judge they most admired, and another emphasized his support for the Second Amendment).