Strong and Wrong

"Better to be strong and wrong than right and weak," 
--attributed to Bill Clinton

Donald Trump has apparently taken this advice to heart.

Last night I saw the culminating episode in the seventh season of the "West Wing" toward which all the previous seasons and episodes have been moving: "The Debate."

In this episode the Republican candidate, a decent, liberal Republican, Arnold Vinnick (Alan Alda) turns to his Democratic rival, Matt Santos (Jimmy Smitts) after hearing the moderator lay out the rules--one minute answer, thirty second reply, yellow light goes on and you wrap up--and he says, "Let's skip these rules. Let's have a real debate."

This is, of course, what Aaron Sorkin and I and so many others would like to see--a Lincoln/Douglass debate where the candidates challenge each other and allow each other to reply at length. 

What ensues is a riveting, detailed examination of the souls of each ideology, Democrat and Republican.  Even as a lifelong left wing Democrat, I found myself agreeing with the Republican on education.  I do not believe the federal government ought to be pushing people toward college. I agree we need welders and mechanics and skilled laborers as much or more than we need philosophy and English majors.  But I agreed with the Democrat we cannot give up on public schools--it's just that we cannot expect public schools to heal all the ills of deprived youth. 
When Vinnick says "Headstart doesn't work" the audience gasps, but he points out test scores by the 6th grade are no better among kids who went to Headstart programs to which Santos replies, but those test scores were far better in 3rd grade; it's just that we gave up on those kids and allowed them to flounder after that. Headstart does what it is designed to do--it gets kids set up to learn in grades 1-3. 

When Santos attacks American pharmaceutical companies for pricing AIDS drugs out of the reach of Africans who need them, Vinnick replies that's not what's killing Africans; the lack of clean water is killing them. And why do they not have clean water?  High taxes. And  the audience laughs. But Vinnick says, (who knows how true this is) African countries tax their citizens who make $3,000 a year almost 30% in an effort to pay back national debt and at that level no economy can survive. So Vinnick, the Republican is making the argument Paul Krugman has been making about austerity in Europe and in Greece--you can't expect a nation to emerge from debt if you crush the economy with taxes. 

So the Republican scores some punches, but Santos gets in his licks. When Vinnick derides him as a liberal Santos points out it was liberals who ended slavery, got the Voting Rights Act passed to allow Blacks to vote, created Social Security and Medicare, ended the war in Vietnam, got women the vote. Throw that label at my feet and I'll pick it up and wear it as a badge of honor Santos says with a look of I'll spit in your eye. 

Santos scores well when he says the history of every Republican administration since Reagan is to cut taxes for the rich, promising to cut federal spending, but never cutting spending so deficits explode. And Vinnick is unwilling to specify where exactly he is willing to make cuts, because every cut loses votes among some group. This was the nub of the problem for Republicans in 2005 when the show aired and that has not changed. 

And on health care--and this show aired way before Ombamacare--Santos, the Democrat has to admit he doesn't much like his own program which will insure 15 million currently uninsured Americans, but it's all he can expect to get past Congress. He'd really like to make Medicare an option for everyone. "Just strike out that 65 and over" clause.  To which Vinnick erupts, "You'd force a government program on everyone?" To which Santos says, "Not force. Give them the option. And you know it is the best health insurance out there and a whole lot of people would chose it." Vinnick scoffs--embracing the Republican denial of Medicare. But Santos points out how much more efficient Medicare is than any private insurer--only a 2% administrative cost as opposed the 20% commercial insurance companies run.

What Santos does not say is Medicare is also the only health insurance where the company actually has the incentive to keep it's customers healthy as opposed to the mission to increase profit. What this means is Medicare pays for a good pair of shoes for diabetics every two years because avoiding foot abscesses is way cheaper than a single hospitalization.

What was so wonderful about the debate is it got past all the stupidity and got to the intelligent basis for disagreement. And when one candidate said something as if it was undeniable, the other was able to marshal facts and figures to blow it out of the water.  

Donald Trump would have vanished beneath the waves in a debate like this in less than a minute. Santos would have killed him not simply by challenging his baseless, blase assertions which are detached from reality but he would have vanquished Trump and any Republican on the grand ideology: You attack universal health care, and public schools, and any public program at all, but it's easy to just say no, no, no. Eventually, you have to say "yes."

Vinnick has appeared with border patrol officers on the Texas border saying he'd triple the number of patrolmen--how sad this was an issue then and we've not moved beyond it. Of course, Santos points out the number of patrolmen have already been tripled and made no difference. It's only 2005 and nobody's talking about building a wall. You know if Vinnick had proposed that Santos would point to the Maignot Line the French built to keep out the Germans after WWI.  Of course, the German's simply drove around it and flew over it--just as the Mexicans will do.

Just before the debate Santos meets with a pro choice women's group leader who is threatening to endorse the Republican because Santos is actually more conservative and believes in more restrictions than his Republican rival.  "Would you approve of abortion to chose the sex of a child?" Santos asks her. "Of course not." Santos smiles, "Well, then you are for limiting the reasons for abortion, just like me. The whole difference is where you draw the lines." The woman is left tongue tied, and it's a wonderful scene, one you would never see in real life. This is a world  where people dissect the lines along which choices about abortion may split party and religious lines, where possibilities for some accommodation on abortion might occur. But not in today's real world, where the Republicans have simply cut off all debate and are only interested in using abortion for votes.

"West Wing" creates  a world we'd like to see, where the Republican is actually mostly pro choice and really wants to engage in the actual issues which separate the two parties rather than these pseudo "values" arguments.  When Vinnick  assails Santos for wanting to control guns, Santos shrugs it off: "There are over 200 million guns in this country--I own 3 of them--there's no way to control guns. I'd control the bullets."

There is no good answer to gun deaths and violence in America, but there are possibilities for fresh approaches and watching this imaginary debate you see the power of good fiction--the power to imagine a better world, toward which we might move, if only the venality and weakness of real people did not stand in the way.

The Unaccountable Appeal of Donald Trump

Another day on the basement treadmill, listening to the Donald, this time coming from a rally in Manassas, Virginia.  
You cannot say it was a typical  stump speech, although it was, such as there is stump speech from Trump, beyond that rambling, free association string of stories about how he made his announcement of his Presidential campaign, coming down the elevator in Trump Tower, with his wife. And he reminds everyone the TV executives wanted to renew his contract for "The Apprentice" because it was making so much money, but he gave up all that so he could become President--such is the magnitude of his own patriotism, giving up a TV gig to serve as President. Such sacrifice. Makes you tear up. Makes you proud.

And there is the string of aspersions--Hillary Clinton's whole life has just been so corrupt--the unabashed hyperbole that just leaks out, sails free and is gone before you have time to really react:   Hillary is just so tired, she goes home and goes to sleep after a big rally like this one, whereas Trump, all pumped up, goes out to build another building, or maybe he goes out for a run around the battlefield. You'd be so proud. 

And there are jibes at the hateful Media, and the promise to build a thousand mile wall along the Mexican border, which he will make the Mexicans pay for, and it will be made  out of reinforced concrete and Rebar steel.  A thousand miles of concrete and Rebar. If we had a thousand miles of concrete and Rebar in New Hampshire, we could repair all the bridges. 

And the Chinese built a 30,000 mile wall without tractors or big trucks.  And that comment, too, sails past. Wait!  They built that wall, over how many years? And would that wall have prevented the peasant looking for a job from crossing into China or was it designed to prevent the Mongol hordes from launching a cavalry attack? And exactly how much good did it do?  And if the border with Mexico is 2000 miles and if the illegal immigrants can simply slide around the edges and come in from the Gulf of Mexico, how much good will Mr. Trump's wall  do? I really need to know more about the Mexican border. I need to know more about the great wall of China. And Rebar and concrete, I'm going to Google that, too.

I do know what Matt Santos, the Democratic candidate for President from West Wing, who  I wish was running against Mr. Trump said. He said if you built a wall and doubled or tripled the border guard you might cut the number of illegals getting past the defenses  from 90% to 80%, but the problem is not law enforcement; it's economic. 

But of course, for Mr. Trump it's all about law enforcement because he's heard of at least two cases of illegal immigrants committing murder or rape or both, and if that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about Mexican illegals, well, how stupid can you be?


A friend of mine from New Hampshire, a rock solid liberal Democrat, remarked how guilty she felt, listening to Trump, even though she disagrees with almost everything he says and hates some of it, but she finds herself smiling and enjoying the show. And he addresses this on stage. He says the media says he draws big crowds because he is entertaining, but, he insists to the crowd: "You're not here to be entertained. You're here to vote for me." And the crowd roars.

Which brings me to  the crowd.  The camera pans over them. These are scary people. What makes them scary is they don't look all that vulgar. It's not like "The Shoppers of Walmart" or anything. They look pretty ordinary, like normal folks, just like in the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." But they are not normal. They are smiling and nodding their heads and loving the Donald.  The Donald drags a few of them up on stage if they ask a question he particularly likes and he takes care to like a question from a Black person and from a serviceman. 
African Americans love me! Who else gets so much love from Black pastors? They say if I get 25% of the Black vote, it's all over. Well, I'm going to do better than that, because I'm a winner. I've been a winner all my life.

Hispanics love me! They love me because I give them jobs and I'll give them more jobs once I'm elected and we'll all be rich!

My mind starts to spin. I need to slow down and replay. But most of all I need to go through the transcript, if I could ever get one, to see what it is he says and how he gets his effects. 

How does a person like Hillary Clinton, who the Donald assures the crowd he will crush in the general election, ever respond? Part of what happens in an education is you learn to avoid doing what the Donald is doing--making generalizations without data to support your assertions. Making general statements--"Hillary: Her whole life has been just so corrupt"--which allow for a single exception to deflate. If there is one part of her life which is not corrupt, then you are wrong.  

And so forth. 

I can hardly imagine President Obama on the same stage as the Donald. How does an educated person deal with someone who does not value what we have been trained to value, like coherence in speech?

Obama is just an utter disaster. We all hate him. He's the worst President ever, and that goes back a thousand years.  Obama's kind of a wimp, you know?  It brings to mind the wonderful riposte of the Virginian Congressman, John Randolph,  who was belittled on the floor of the House by another Congressman who observed Randolph appeared hardly post pubertal, with no beard, child like skin, high voice and slight musculature. Randolph responded:

"You pride yourself on an animal faculty, in respect to which the negro is your equal and the jackass infinitely your superior."
.

Of course, this is the ante bellum, racist Congress, but it was the perfect response to the Frat boy of the era.

What can you say of Trump?

That he is possessed of that special self adoration of the boy who is rich enough to replace any mirror which reflects poorly on him.

Mr. Trump says he is  a born winner. Well, he was born rich, which in his mind is the same thing.

Mr. Trump basks in the love of Hispanics and Blacks; the Hispanics love him because he signs their paychecks. The Blacks love him because they are always entertained by a very stupid white boy.

Mr. Trump expects the Mexicans to pay for the wall he says he will build across the Mexican border. And Sam Houston and Davy Crockett thought Santa Anna would rebuild the Alamo for them. 

There is a fascinating character in the TV series, "Game of Thrones." His name is Joffrey and he is the beloved blonde son who inherits a throne and thinks he's earned it. While he has no sympathy for the downtrodden masses of his kingdom, he believes he deserves their adoration: Donald Trump might want to watch this. Every man needs a role model.

The Problem with Polls: Jill Lepore Strikes Again

Professor Lepore

In an era of identify theft (when people are reluctant to reveal any personal information), with cell phones replacing landlines, with caller ID, the task of people trying to do political polling is daunting. If you want to know how the affluent white female over 50 crowd sees Donald Trump, you have to ask a lot of personal questions, that is, if you can get her to pick up her home landline which has caller ID and you can't use robo calling for her cell phone, because that's illegal, so just getting people to talk to you and once you have, getting them to divulge their demographics is met with suspicion.

As Jill Lepore notes in her wonderful New Yorker piece on polling, in the 1930's the response rate to polls was over 90%--people who were asked to participate in opinion polls said yes over 90% of the time. Today that rate of response is in the single digits. One might ask, can you really get a representative sample of what people are thinking and how they are likely to behave--i.e, will they go to the polls and vote--when 95% of people won't talk to you. 

What does it say about those people who do respond? Are they not "atypical" to begin with, as witnessed by their very willingness to be interviewed and are you not basing your idea of "public opinion" on a cohort which is, ipso facto, atypical?

There are basically two types of polls:  1. Opinion polls which aim to tell what the public thinks about issues  2. Election polls which hope to predict the outcome of elections. 

Watching on Election night, I have often been stunned by how well the numbers models seem to work:  If Obama gets more than 30% in this particular part of this particular county in Pennsylvania, you can call the state for him when less than 20% of voting centers have finished their count in Pennsylvania.  Magic. Big numbers. How do they do that?  Of course, that sort of analysis is pretty distinct and different from polls, but still, it suggests social and political scientists might actually know what they are talking about.

On the other hand,  I always wince when I hear some politico say, "Well, Romney is not doing well with white women," or "Obama has a problem with white men."   The fact is, there are likely other fellow travelers with that demographic designation, "white men": like Southern, high school educated, gun owning, church going white men might not be fertile ground for Obama. But you didn't need a poll to tell you that.

On the other hand, canvassing in Hampton, New Hampshire, I met as many blue collar white gun-owning men who contradicted that conventional wisdom, who voiced support for Obama,  as I met those who fulfilled it. 

And talking to gun owners and gun enthusiasts, I find a great range of belief about the place of guns in a free society--Hillary Clinton may have tapped into that by saying gun owners should leave the NRA which does not represent them. She understands there are nuances in opinions beyond the "you will have to pry my gun from my cold dead fingers" crowd.

Watching West Wing and every morning show, polls are loosely quoted by people who haven't the faintest idea how those polls were conducted--by phone, by land line, by internet, by door to door? They don't even know exactly what question was asked.

People who take a poll by landline phone own landline phones which many young people do not.  The landliners tend to be older, and more conservative. 

People who respond to a poll voluntarily on the internet are not, by definition, randomly selected; they are self selected and tend to be more extreme.

Professor Lepore notes that in 1947 Herbert Blumer said public opinion simply does not exist, absent its measurement. "Pollsters proceed from the assumption that "public opinion" is an aggregation of individual opinions, each given equal weight." And this is something of an absurdity, because you are trying to make a single white woman with an income over $100K stand for all single affluent white women and she will depart from that cohort in all sorts of ways.

This is an old argument, really, not just in sociology, but in anthropology, where Ruth Bennedict and Margaret Mead once argued you could know all about an individual's values and beliefs if you simply knew the values of the culture in which he was raised, but it turned out each individual differed significantly from the norm for that group, when you actually got down to individual cases.

I see this all the time in my office, as people voice support for Mr. Obama's desire to keep our armies off Middle Eastern soil, support for unfettered gun rights, animosity toward shooters who kill patients at Planned Parenthood while expressing a horror of abortion.  An individual is often all over the map. How does a poll capture that?
People quote Rush Limbaugh without even knowing the source of their opinion.  How fluid that opinion may be, how it might affect the way they vote, if they vote, is an unknown.




In my world, I look at studies every week in the medical journals and the hard part of analysis of the study is the Methods section:   figuring out the details of what they did and how the approach they used may produce a false results. We are not given that sort of detail in most polls and certainly, Donald Trump doesn't want to know any of that, only that he won.

The problem for our political system is not there are polls; the problem is everyone from the candidates to the candidates' staffs, to the pundits, (even David Brooks and Mark Shields) read the conclusions rather than the Methods sections, so they don't really understand how limited the information they are holding up really is.

Greetings From Trumpland

"Those who do not remember the past

Japanese Americans on the way to concentration camps 

Are condemned

To repeat it."

--George Santayana

 "The Washington Post says it was a tail-gate style celebration!

Tail gate. That's like at a Michigan state football game. Thousands of people!"
--Donald Trump [alluding to  a Washington Post article which described a gathering of Muslims on a New Jersey roof top in a "tail gate like" fashion after the 9/11 attacks]

The first casualty of war

Is truth.
--variously attributed



A smile can hide

Good Times at Auschwitz

an ugly truth.

Rounding Them Up From the Database

No Sympathy

We are a nation of laws. And what we did to these people was legal.

God save America.

Vulgarians at the Gates: Turning Blue States Red

Finally, the central problem for the Democratic party has finally been addressed openly, that 800 pound gorilla is finally getting his due.

Not since Thomas Frank wrote "What's the Matter with Kansas?" in 2004 has any prominent voice really addressed the mystery of why people from states most dependent on government assistance programs (welfare, Food stamps, Medicaid) vote against the very Democrats who support these programs. 

How did she vote?

It's come to the point where Democrats drive around with bumper stickers saying, "Got Medicare? Thanks Democrats," and "Got Social Security? Thank Democrats."

But today in the New York Times, Alec MacGillis addresses the issue head on in "Who Turned My Blue State Red?"  And he reports what I've seen in my own clinic for years:  People who live in economically depressed areas, who have struggled to get one rung up the economic ladder, deeply resent those below them, who do not appear to be trying at all. They loathe the undeserving poor and do not want to help them.

It is the forty year old woman who comes from a family of eight, who got pregnant at 16, divorced her hard drinking none-too-constant husband at 17, got government money to make it through community college and got some sort of nursing degree, maybe a LPN, then kept working to get a diploma RN, who sees people on welfare "waltz" into the dialysis center where she works making no effort to go to work themselves. 
(Of course, dialysis patients need to be dialyzed three times a week, usually all morning so their job opportunities may be limited. But I've heard the same from nurses in other sorts of clinics where the patients are not as ill.)

What do these two think of Obamacare?

Living among people at the bottom of the ladder, shopping at Walmart, seeing the losers in this rigged capitalist economy, makes people think two thoughts: 1. I'm so much better than these people. I struggled to get up to a better life. 2. But here I am with them: Am I really so much better? Have I really escaped? If I throw in my lot with Democrats, am I not going to be wind up in the same room with these dregs?

Is she voting for Trump?  Watches Fox News.

Joining the Republican party is like joining the country club. It's like getting your kid admitted to Harvard, when you still live in some down trodden slum. You are rubbing shoulders with the rich now. You are in the club.

A prime example Mr. MacGillis raises is  Paul  LePage who was elected governor in a state which was third in the nation for food stamp use, running on an anti welfare platform, refusing to expand Medicaid under Obamacare which would have covered 60,00 people, re-instituting a work requirement for food stamp recipients, barring anyone with more than $5000 in assets from receiving food stamps, attempting to drug test welfare recipients to prove they are not using their money to buy drugs, cigarettes or alcohol.  Mr. LePage, who trumpets his own story of rising from desperate poverty has no sympathy for those who do not work as hard as he did. "I'm not going to help anybody just for the sake of helping. I'm not that compassionate."

Did he vote Democratic?

His appeal is to the people who live pay check to pay check, feel financially threatened and precarious and feel burdened by taxes they think are being given away to people who they hate.

Gov. LePage says he abuses Food Stamps. 

 These are the voters who are the gas station owner, "the sheriff's deputy, the teacher, the highway worker, the motel clerk" in other words, the people who have to deal daily with the public, and often a public at the bottom of the economic scale. They see the "shoppers of Walmart" daily and they do not like what they see. They have lost all sympathy and do not want to be associated with them any more than they have to be and they do not want to give them money.

Does she read to this kid at night?

Dorothea Lange Poor

These people hate the "welfare queen" that fictional creation of Ronald Reagan who lives like a queen on the backs of hard working people. 

Then there is the other group, the really destitute Mr. MacGillis saw in Kentucky, the rural poor who get Obamacare but don't vote for Democrats because they simply don't vote, and they do not know who in government is giving this gift to them. They are so disconnected from information, they just don't know who their friends are or who their enemies are. Even CARE packages dropped into Afghanistan, Pakistan after an earthquake have big letters stamped on them: "From the USA," but in Kentucky these people don't know who is helping them, don't care, don't vote. 

Insured by Obamacare. Hates Obama.

A Democrat in Kentucky was asked "whether or not Republicans were afraid of displacing 400,000-500,000 people who have insurance" and he replied "No: people on Medicaid don't vote."  He discovered that when he lost re-election. Representing the truly destitute doesn't pay. You won't be in office for long.

None of this augers well for Bernie Sanders. 

Maybe the core psychology, the true appeal of Donald Trump, is that the deputy, the motel clerk, the nurse, the gas station owner love to think they can be in the same club as this very rich man, and just as important by joining the Republican party, by going to their rallies, they can leave behind the "trailer trash" they so ardently despise. 

Owns assault rifle. Listens to Rush daily.

It's the upward mobility thing. 

Republicans have made no apologies for wanting to limit the number of people who can vote. Even my own father, a life long Democrat, was dubious about making voter registration too easy, registering people automatically when they get their driver's licenses or registering them outside Walmart.  Do you really want people voting who never read a newspaper, who don't listen to the news, who are uninformed? People like the "shoppers of Walmart" electing our President, our senators and congressmen?

Should we not establish, as a basic test for voting the requirement you make at least some effort to register and then to vote?

If the people of destitute Eastern Kentucky are so ignorant, so apathetic, they do not even care to ask who gave them their health care, why should we help them? If you give people health care, food, shelter and they simply take it but show no gratitude, act as if they are entitled to it, do not respond by going out and finding a job, by working hard, why should we make the effort in their behalf?

Not going to the local Democrats meeting tonight.

I certainly am not immune to the Paul LePage reaction when I see patients in my own clinic who are "disabled" by physical problems which do not strike me as in any way close to disabling, who have much better drug coverage on Mass Health than my patient who works three jobs (one of them at Walmart) and spends $300 a month for insulin. Some of the patients I see who draw from Medicaid and from Medicare disability appear to be not suffering but whining. Of course, I remind myself, would I ever want to live their lives, to be sitting at home watching TV, trapped in a public housing apartment, having no hope for a better future, just existing, taking up space and not feeling useful?

The answer, of course, is yes, there are slackers for whom we have little sympathy, but for every slacker there are ten hard working people, working two or three jobs who have no shot at health insurance without Obamacare, who have kids who have not yet had a chance and who, given some day care, some pre school programs and good public schools may make us all proud some day.

During the Depression, Dorothea Lange took photos of America's poor which evoked deep sympathy for those struggling. One might ask whether the poor have changed, from decent folks who were simply ruined by a corrupt capitalism into reprobates who deserve their wretched lives or whether it is simply  the images of what it is to be poor have changed. 

The basic question is whether the people in the bottom 10% are worth working for.  Or actually, we might ask, looking at that famous pie graph, are the people in the bottom 90% worth working for?

Christiane Amanpour Asks Exactly the Right Question

Reporting from Paris this morning, CNN's Christiane Amanpour said she had asked the Iman of the main  mosque in Paris why he had hadn't organized a large march with thousands of Muslims to protest the terrorist attacks. Why not fight the fear and the foolish reaction of the far Right who are calling for anti immigrant measures with an affirmation of French Muslim love of France and rejection of terrorism?  

March down the Champs-Elysees with banners to proclaim Muslims in France are as horrified by ISIS's violence and psychopathy as non Muslim French. Wrap yourself in the French flag and get out front about it.

The Iman, apparently sheepishly, reported he had, in fact, made just that suggestion but he was told:  "You do not represent the feelings of  the members of your congregation, most especially the younger members."

All the Islam bashing by Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, the entire staff of Fox News cannot approach the damage this report might do.This is the first time I've heard anything--and it is second hand--which supports the notion that we really do have a clash of cultures, that we may not be dealing with simply a few deviants who do not speak for anyone other than themselves and their own twisted, criminal psychopathy.  Apparently, among a certain element, a cohort of Muslims, the murderous attacks against "Westerners" resonates.

Of note, the 9/11 attackers attacked symbols of American imperialism and power: The World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the White House, the Capitol.  The terrorists on those airplanes killed men and women who bore them no animus, who had never done anything directly to harm Islam, or Muslims, beyond going to work in an American capitalist system.  But somehow, mowing down people sitting at a sidewalk cafe on a Friday night seemed different. They were not occupying territory which could in any way be seen as iconic of capitalism, imperialism, Christianity, oppressive government, military--they were out enjoying the night, or going to a concert. It seemed closer to killing people for playing music or simply being in the company of members of the opposite sex--real Taliban, Sharia law stuff. Those guys with the guns were killing out hatred of people for their values.

Bernie Sanders was tone deaf to suggest murderers blowing up theater goers in Paris should be seen as simply symptoms of disaffection of displaced persons resulting from the depredations  of climate change on the economies of the Middle East.  But he might have been closer to the truth than those who say we should not use terms like "Radical Islam," because so few Islamic people, really only a mentally deranged few, would ever embrace random, wholesale murder.

Attacks in Paris were against people who were in no way connected to Western military or political institutions--just men and women at a café or a theater, doing those decadent Western things like listening to music, drinking wine and flirting.

If this is true, then we have a real problem.

The Donald: The Devil is in the No Details

This morning, I spent 45 minutes with the Donald, who was speaking at a rally  Worcester last night.
I surfed to CNN after watching a depressing 15 minute BBC Planet Earth piece about a polar bear, who had to swim 60 miles through the artic sea, losing 50% of his body weight, only to find a colony of walruses, where, desperate for food, he attacked a fairly large walrus who got him with his tusks and the polar bear died of his wounds.  It was one of those no win, there can be no good outcome stories--either the bear (with whom I had begun to sympathesize) dies or a walrus (who, in his blubbery way is pretty cute) dies.

So, on to CNN, where an equally disturbing show was running: The Donald holding forth in that  chirpy, free associating, stream of consciousness thing he does, sounding like a Jewish Grandmother, a sort of Edith Bunker meets Tony Soprano all rolled into one.

Trying to analyze exactly what it is he is doing and why he appeals to that crowd, who clearly enjoy him--you can see them laughing and nodding heads-- I'd love to hear Jill Lepore or George Packer or even a whole New Yorker symposium on Mr. Trump, deconstructing how he achieves his effect.

Here's what I've go so far:

1/ INVOKING "THEM"
He is a master of the "They" demonization technique. 
"They" is the bogeyman, the thing with sulfurous smell and talons we do not like,  which lives among us.  He introduces a few specific anecdotes about murder/rape cases perpetrated by unnamed illegal immigrants--a 60 year old female Army veteran "murdered, raped and sodomized" by an illegal immigrant who had crossed over our border at least 5 times, who stands for all those murderous, illegal immigrants who come to our country and rape and pillage and take your jobs.  Now that he has brought "them" down to a specific example, he leaps to the "they" who are simply multiples of that guy who raped the Vet. All of "them" guys. 

What the Donald will do is he will send these guys back to Mexico where the Mexicans will  throw  them into jail. We will not jail them here, because then we would have to support these scum for 40 years in jail and incur all that cost and the Donald knows the art of the deal,  so he'll make Mexico pay for these miscreants, not us. Donald will make Mexico do this.

He'll also make Mexico pay for the very tall, beautiful (as beautiful as a wall can be) wall he will build across the 1000 mile border to keep those rapists out. And once we build the wall, they will not come back or simply slip around the sides of the wall into Louisiana or California because...well,  because we will be winning. 

Exactly HOW the Donald will accomplish all this is left to the imagination of  the crowd. Don't ask. Oy. 

He will also "bomb the shit" out of ISIS.
He will scare the hell out of "the terrorists"
All of "them." 

How exactly he will find ISIS and how he will scare the terrorists, he does not detail. He will simply do it. He will be sure we win this fight with the "them." There will be so much winning we will all be proud of the Donald and we will all be proud of having voted for the Donald, as opposed to being ashamed of having voted for that disaster, Obama.

With me so far?

He will make our military so fearsome "they" will not dare attack us.

Of course, our military is already pretty fearsome, so fearsome in fact terrorists typically do not come out in the open in the streets of Paris or New York in long armored columns and attempt to fight us in the open, but they seem to prefer drive by shootings, concealed suicide vest bombs or taking over airplanes by stealth and surprise and then, when we are least expecting it, attacking using the element of surprise. They also like sneaking bombs into airplanes but they will be too afraid of the Donald and all his winning to try that, once he is President.

All this will end when the Donald is President. Terrorists will not be allowed these sneak attacks, but will have to wear uniforms, announce their intention to attack with sufficient notice and wear orange blaze vests for easy identification and high visibility and we will be winning so much we are all going to get bored with winning.

2/ THE INSULT

Today the Donald  alludes to a New York Times article, that scum newspaper, which reported about the trouble Ben Carson's aides have reported, trying to teach Dr. Carson about foreign policy, trying to "make him smart," but he simply has failed to learn this stuff. When I read this story, it did make me wonder if Dr. Carson had retired from surgery because of early Alzheimer's and it apparent caught the Donald's attention, because the Donald hates the media, except when it brings him glad tidings.
He then progressed through most of his rivals, being careful to add "He's a nice guy" or "I like him" or "We get along fine," then slipping in the knife. Rubio has nice hair, but not as good as the Donald's, and  he's got the worst voting record in the Senate (not clear if this is worst in quality or worst in quantity or both); Jeb is a loser  ("He's done" with a dismissive wave); Hillary doesn't have the energy or the endurance to be President; 
Bernie Sanders blamed the Paris killings on global warming (have to Google that one!) and President Obama is simply "a disaster."

He also deals with audience members: When objections are raised, Mr. Trump allows his audience to lift the protesters off the ground and bodily eject them from the auditorium.  It looked like scenes from old newsreels where the brownshirts beat and bludgeoned people in the crowd as their hero exhorted the masses from the platform above them. This happened 3 times while I was watching, and the last eruption occurred when Mr. Trump criticized Food Stamps and then, which apparently provoked someone in the audience, and  watching the protester carried off he observed, "Isn't it significant that this guy objects to Food Stamps and he is, himself, seriously overweight."
Not sure, but I guess the connection was food and obesity, or something.

Given the number of seriously overweight supporters in the crowd, I thought this was risky ground on which to tread for the Donald, who, it must be admitted, has some serious overweight issues of his own, but he is fearless--that much we must admit.
The media will report Trump interrupted by protesters, the Donald says, when it was only 3 people out of 12,000 but that's the way the scum media will report it.

3/ THE BRAG

More than half his time is devoted to extolling his own success and status. I think the point is, I've done so well in business, you know I'm a superior human being who is a winner and I'll be just as good at being a President and we will win together. Or something. We were treated to tales about his financial statements for the Election Commission which showed he was worth even more than people thought, to his fabulous success on Saturday Night Live, to the worth of various buildings he owns and property from the West Coast to the Potomac to New York City, to the $240 million dollars he made from the TV show, "The Apprentice" which they all begged him to continue but he declined saying he wanted to run for President. Then he segued into a riff about how he could have made more money on TV but he sacrificed all that because he knew he had to run for President, and it just about killed all his partners from the TV show, but the Donald had to be bigger than that, bigger than money, and rescue the country.

4/ THE JEREMIAD

And Oy! The world is going to Hell in a Handbasket. We've got to do something, like elect me, for instance. Obamacare is a disaster. The premiums have gone sky high and the deductibles are so high nobody ever even gets the insurance to pay for anything and it's going to bankrupt the nation, and bankruptcy is something the Donald knows about because his companies file for bankruptcy frequently, which is just business, you know, not failure. And the Middle East: they are chopping off heads and we've never seen anything like this in the whole history of the world except maybe the Middle Ages, but never anything like this. Oh, we got trouble in River City! 

Whew! It's really fun to watch. I know it may not sound that way, but he is enjoying himself so immensely, it's infectious. Very similar vibe as Rush Limbaugh. 

I particularly liked his riff on the Democratic debate. "Well, they call it the Democratic debate, but it's the Democrat debate."  Which reminded me of what Howard Cossell once said about Muhammad Ali, who many people persisted in calling Cassius Clay, which Ali referred to as his "slave name."  Cossell, whose birth name was Cohen, said, "In America, one of the things we respect is a person's name. We call a person by the name he wants to be called by, not by another."  And so the Democrats prefer "Democratic" but the Republicans insist on "Democrat debate" because it sounds somehow worse, especially when you accent the "rat" part.

There is virtually no content here, or as Dorothy Parker would say, "There is no there, there."  It's all value ladened words:  It's despicable. They are scum. They are not masterminds but low life. The guy says he's pathologic! I've heard they are just disasters. The worst thing that ever happened! It's awful. 

One hallmark of an educated person is he generally tries to enhance the credibility of what he says by citing some numbers--which, admittedly are often bogus and lifted from studies which did not actually prove that there has been a 10 year increase in the lifespan of Americans since 1950 or that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has rise by 35% over the last century, but at least it's a reference point which can be fact checked. How do you fact check "disaster" or "stupid" or "Oy" ?