The Curmudgeon Speaks

I heard that the Trump approval ratings had been improving. I thought this might just be a Fox News thing, but I trust Gallup and these survey folks say this is the case. The findings that led to the impeachment, the obviousness of all of the other character flaws, the anti-Obama rationale for deprecating the advances in health insurance, the increase in the National Debt to fund a trillion or more increase in tax forgiveness for large corporations, the horrendous treatment of desperate people trying to come to this country, etc. do not allow me a way to rationalize this trend.

In the area of research that attempts to understand this type of personal decision making, this type of thing is described as a function of personal identify. We all bend facts to our own models of the world. The gap Gallup documents between Democratic and Republican support for Trump is now at an all-time high. This is what the role of identity can do. When issues become associated with a political party – climate change makes a good example – the facts play a much diminished role. If you identify as a Republican and climate change has become associated as a democratic thing, you find yourself questioning the scientists or ignoring efforts to address climate change. Educated people should know better, but they find themselves falling in line nonetheless.

I see no other way to account for the way people can find value in Trump. There is so much that must be ignored or explained away. This is how identity politics works.

If we are going to worry about politically emotional labels, we should be more worried about the movement of our government toward a dictatorship than socialism.

This story from USA Today got me thinking about the labels applied to politicians and policies.

Sometimes a headline alone is worth a post. Hard to know whether the befuddled lawmaker or the paper bothering with such blather deserves the attention of our amusement. I think the lack of understanding people have for the meaning of words that seem to generate an emotional reaction is a problem. There is a vast difference between a socialist form of government and a government that takes action in circumstances that offer a public good. Our highway system does not make our government socialist. Our protections that are supposed to assure clean water and healthy foods do not make our government socialist. Our government that organizes a military for our collective protection and taxes us accordingly does not make our government socialist. We would do better to be concerned with a leader who seems to think he is all powerful (a dictator) than to throw the word socialist around as a slight against those who hope that the government will require certain actions for the general good. Try substituting the word empathetic when a collective action you value is described as socialistic.

It is the third party cookies that irritate me. When I use a free online service I feel some responsibility to trade information I generate when using that site for access. What I don’t think I owe that company is the information I generate when visiting other sites. Third party cookies are the reason things show up as ads in Facebook that address something you have been doing online but not something you have been doing within Facebook (good explanation of first party and third party cookies).

Facebook claims it allows you to opt out of the way it uses off-site information to target you for ads. I hope the following quick tutorial will be enough to explain how you can set up Facebook to do this. You start by opening your settings.

There are a couple of ways to turn off this activity, but I am showing a way to first check on the information about you that Facebook has accumulated off-site. You will want to select the setting showing your Facebook information and then the option showing off-Facebook activity.

You should be able to learn about Off-Facebook activity.

This is how bad it gets. My off-site activity involved information from 137 apps and web sites. Now, to manage this use select the manage option appearing under more options.

Here will find the slider to turn off or on the collection of off-Facebook information.

Bots have a bad reputation and sometimes they do bad things. The bot activity that has been in the news allowed a few individuals from a foreign government to relay content through multiple bots so that it might appear that a message was coming from many people.

I think Resist Bot is OK. Here is a Wikipedia description of the Resist Bot project. The intent of Resist bot is to make it easier for citizens to send messages to politicians and to post this same information to other outlets if desired. Let’s stick to politicians. Recent political events may have made you upset with or happy with your Representative or Senator. Resist bot allows you to send a comment.

Resist bot works with text messaging. You text “resist” to 50409 and then follow the instructions. The bot will interact with you to set up an account and to send a “letter” or “call” to the individuals you are trying to contact. Just to be clear, the service allows you to communicate with the politicians that represent you and not others you might want to reach with a message. I assume the program uses your ZIP code to make this connection. I would like to communicate with other politicians who represent the state I lived in just a few years ago, but I can understand why the developers did not want to allow blanketing of politicians with messages. The content would then lose effectiveness.

I had some concern with providing my phone number and my email address, but I pretty much ignore phone calls I don’t recognize and my email address offers a way for the politicians representing me to respond. I sent a message to my Senators after yesterday’s Senate hearing and one did respond. I am guessing most responses are fairly generic and not actually from my Senator, but I still think commenting is important.

I provide some screens below to offer you a way to anticipate what the experience looks like.

You may or may not have caught this recent news story within the haze of recent political stories. The National Archive decided to digitally degrade parts of photos containing imagery that was critical of the President and other political commentary from signs carried during the Woman’s March of 2017. As most historians would likely argue, this modification of actual history is antithetical to the goals of recording history as it is for later consideration. The National Archives later apologized for their action, but in some ways the damage was done.

My reaction immediately caused my memory to focus on images I remember when working on a history project showing drinking fountains for blacks and whites and an image of the outside of a movie theater directly blacks to use the stairs to their place in the balcony. Losing the honesty of such facts undervalues any study of the political record.

Our youngest daughter happened to be in Chicago during the Women’s March for 2020. She sent me these images when I mentioned what I had read about the National Archives.

The Grabe travel blog is active again. Our winter break this year is in Kauai. In my first entry, I offer photographs of ads for shingles shots and rip tide awareness. It should get more interesting.

I was hoping to contact the Senators from North Dakota (Hoeven & Cramer) to encourage them to allow access to impeachment witnesses and documents to give Trump an opportunity to counter the strong case developed in the House. The present approach that amounts to blocking a public consideration of the available evidence will do nothing to heal the present political divide in this country and will likely only add to the resentment.

The North Dakota Senators have a web site inviting input. See below. The designation for state offers only one option. Why bother to even add this element to the form? I could have used my old address, but I have this thing about ethical behavior.

After 37 years in North Dakota, I retired to Minnesota. I already know where my new Senators stand on the impeachment process and I assume they would like the opportunity to view the evidence and debate the appropriateness of Trump’s behavior. Evidently, once you cross the border the North Dakotans no longer care what you think. Too bad. The citizens of North Dakota should be given the opportunity to consider the facts of the case.

I have been retired now for close to five years. I worked as a professor at the University of North Dakota so my income was above average, but we were far from affluent. One of the things you try to figure out when retired and in good health is just how much you can afford to spend. If you are healthy, how much fun can you have and how much can you invest in other people and causes you believe are important. We have relaxed a lot possibly because the DOW is up 340% since 2008 and much of our retirement money was in the stock market while we were working. I remember the shock of how much we lost with the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and now must acknowledge that times have been very good since.

Politicians have the luxury of picking their facts when arguing for their performance. Trump has focused a great amount of attention on the stock market as his simple numerical way to represent the economy. Obama did a great job of ending the threat of a total collapse of the economy and the stock market turned around during his 8 years. This growth has continued during the first three years of Trump as President.

I am a Democrat and a strong believer in most Democratic goals. The issue of income equality has always been a concern. One might think that the good times we have been experiencing would contribute to improving the disparity between the wealthy and the poor, but this is not the case. My thinking on this issue has been influenced by Piketty’s work on the concentration of wealth. The disparity in wealth is partly driven by vast differences in salaries, but also by the increasing concentration of capital. I would think stock holdings would be a meaningful proxy for capital. The reality is that those making the least have experienced little increase in salaries and likely have little invested in capital such as stocks that increase in value beyond what is earned through work.

The graphics in this article from Business Insider tell the story very well. Less than 2% of those in the bottom 25% by income own an actual stock and about 30% of this group have any holdings in funds such as a 401K. The average value of the retirement account of individuals within this group is under $5000. Think a little about these numbers. When we take off an a retirement trip, I do.

So, when politicians point to the stock market as an indicator of what they have done for the economy consider just whom has benefited. Yes, it is even people like me. Consider those folks making $12 an hour without benefits when politicians try to convince you that the income inequality is not an issue the government should address.

One thing parents learn is that no matter how busy they are their children if not involved will find a way to acquire attention. Misbehavior works well.

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, I spent a lot of time trying to understand how those who voted for Trump made this decision. The data on who Trump supporters were made little sense to me. A rich, big talking, self-absorbed, anti-government, anti-science, racist, womanizer seemed a weird choice for Bible Belt folks of limited means. When it comes to policy, what seemed obvious to me at the time has been born out. A decrease in access to health care, increased income inequality, an increase in intolerance for people who are different, policies of isolationism when it comes to global issues, and lack of responsiveness to the climate crisis were perfectly predictable. Selfishness has been promoted at every level. How is it poorer individuals, those with strong religious beliefs, and those needing government support could not see this coming?

I have read several books I have found to offer excellent explanations of the logic for what to me seemed illogical – J.D. Vance – Hillbilly elegy & R. Kaplan – Earning the Rockies. Both offer a portrayal of a population that feels powerless and were available to be taken in by anyone who’s message was basically one of anger and attacking the establishment. Whether or not such aggression would be helpful to those with these needs was not carefully considered. A way to lash out seemed the limit of this thinking.

If you are not into reading books, I have found a quick way to get across this same perspective. Cindy spotted the following story in our local paper (Minneapolis Star Tribune). Minnesota’s Beltrami County has voted to not allow immigrants to settle within the county. This racist and self-centered position turns out to be completely unnecessary. No immigrant has settled in the county in the past five years. Why would folks, no matter their views, bother taking the time to take such a pointless position (the vote of county commissioners was 3-2)? I would describe it very much like the small, ignored child being purposefully naughty to gain attention. I would describe it as an act of frustration based in feeling ignored and angry.

The photos in the article tell the story. I have no idea if the photographer purposefully found a way to direct the camera to capture this interpretation, but the photos show nearly all old, white men. There must be some women and younger folks in the country, but they were either disinterested or embarrassed.

I, by age and race, am a member of this group. I spend a lot of time these days in a coffee shop in a rural area of Wisconsin and can easily imagine some of these folks meeting and sharing their take on the news of the day and recounting when America was great. This was likely a time when they felt they mattered. I, like them, personally  feel time running out. Unlike them, I don’t see this as a time for self-focus, but rather as a time devoted to encouraging those who are younger to work toward a more positive and inclusive future. The problems ahead are real, but these problems face us all and taking an approach based in assumptions that anyone is special or more deserving will not be attitudes that lead to solutions.