A Tale of Two Cults

In a recurring newsletter published by The Atlantic writer Derek Thompson, he made an interesting point about two related stories in the news -- the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and a supposed ethos of "effective altruism" that was promoted by two of the principals involved in FTX's downfall, Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison.

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/11/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-crypto-effective-altruism/672247/

In Thompson's commentary - which is recommended reading -- he refers to both cryptocurrency and the focus on effective altruism as cults. As Thompson explains it, cryptocurrencies reflect a cult he criticized from the outside as a technology "in search of a use case" clouded with ever-changing jargon that required a leap of faith from the uninitiated to accept. Effective altruism also reflects a cult -- one Thompson says he partially bought into -- because it requires people espousing it to accept all of the following premises:

• Giving vast sums of wealth to charities is its own awesome obligation and requires unique skills
• The uber-rich have already demonstrated expertise in MAKING money which is a good indicator they are likely to also possess expertise in SPENDING large sums effectively through charity
• Given the two extremes of a) doing nothing to correct wealth inequality and b) adopting draconian tax laws to actively redistribute money from the uber-wealthy to governments or directly to populations, a concept of letting the uber-wealthy keep control of their wealth while encouraging philanthropy managed to somehow guage its "effectiveness" to steer money into "effective" charities rather than "ineffective" charities is a reasonable middle ground.

Whether Thompson's concept of analyzing these trends using concepts related to cults is appropriate or not, both of these topics are worth a more detailed analysis -- particularly when the facts for each topic are related to each other in ways that cut through the myths promoted by advocates of both.

Cryptocurrency

Thompson's description of cryptocurrency as a solution in search of a use case is a VERY appropriate description. In a nutshell, cryptocurrencies are intended to support the following needs:

• allow creation of tradeable assets in digital form to act as currency without the involvement of central banks controlled by governments -- cryptocurrency advocates believe central banks are too eager to "print money" that exceeds the natural productivity growth of the country's economy, reducing the value of the currency
• use blockchain technologies to act as a highly decentralized but indestructible / irrefutable ledger clearly establishing ownership of digital assets at any point in time to facilitate transactions and eliminate fraud

So the algorithms for creating cryptocurrencies prevent a central banker from firing up printing presses and "stealing" from the public by printing sheets of twenty dollar bills to pay off government debts. The blockchain based ledger prevents someone from suddenly rigging computer logs to say THEY own YOUR bitcoin with "serial number" 1BvBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaNVN2 that's worth $16,485 cuz in order to do that, they have to originate updates to more than half the ledger copies in the world showing that coin was transferred to them before any of the systems in the ledger cry foul and reject the bogus transaction.

That leaves two problems unsolved.

We've prevented evil central bankers from printing money but why is anyone willing to burn $179 dollars worth of electricity in a data center worthy of being given an asset supposedly worth $16,485 dollars? What if rogue actors and rogue nations are infecting millions of computers with viruses to run in the background on someone else's bill to perform mining calculations? They're not "forging" the coins per se -- they are running all of the calculations required to "mint" a coin. But is value being delivered appropriately under circumstances where the compute for minting was stolen? That's identical to someone breaking into the US Mint and running the presses for their own private benefit. And it's happening. Only three US based crypto-mining firms responded to a 2022 Senate committee request for data on their energy consumption and greenhouse gas implications but electricity usage of those three alone equated to 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases -- the equivalent of 360,000 cars. Residential electric bills are going up because increased electric demand at nearby data centers is requiring purchase of electricity across the grid at spot rates.

The ledger concept theoretically eliminates forgery of actual crypto coins and forgery of ownership -- helping to confirm the coin as a SYMBOL is valid -- but that has nothing to do with the VALUE imputed to that coin at any given point. The VALUE of the valid SYMBOL of money still requires other forces at work, none of which are provided magically by use of a crypto currency.

For a SYMBOL to effectively serve as a MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE, legal / social forces must exist that allow (require?) acceptance of one of those symbols to settle a debt. That's literally the definition of "legal tender". At the moment, cryptocurrencies are ALLOWED as mediums of exchange in many industrial economies but crypocurrencies are only treated as legal tender in about eight large countries.

For a symbol to effectively serve as a STORE OF VALUE for a wide range of economic participants, those participants must rely upon some power to be capable of ensuring currency origination isn't being cranked up (printing for paper money, "mining" for crypto) via fraudulent means unbeknownst to the masses that is actually devaluing each unit. Participants must also trust the operation of operators acting as "money changers" converting between currencies or allowing exchanges with fractions of whole currency units are not manipulating balances to create money out of thin air.

In the case of FTX, it wasn't operating as a "miner" running crypto mining processes on thousands of computers to create new coins. FTX operated as an exchange, to allow people to trade in and out of ownership of crypto coins and -- given the unwieldy valuations -- divide ownership of whole coins into fractional shares with prices more suitable for those with only tens or hundreds of dollars to "invest." Essentially, FTX was operating as a combination of traditional bank (where owners of coins deposited their assets online) and a trading firm (where owners would purchase crypto coins from each other and across other exchanges). But the trading function also included sales of options and derivatives (uh oh…) which technically have nothing to do with the original purpose of crypto-currency but bring with them the exact same types of risks as government issued currencies. And, as depositors and regulators have now discovered, FTX was also operating as an investment bank by allowing crypto coins on its books to be "borrowed" by a second firm Alameda Research, operated by CEO Caroline Ellison, on-and-off girlfriend of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

So what was so new about this crypto / FTX business model? FTX created a retail front to collect "other people's money" into retail accounts equivalent to checking and savings accounts, then allowed what was essentially a high risk hedge fund to "borrow" those retail assets without the consent or knowledge of the owners to speculate on other investments. Like countless meltdowns before, the scam worked great as long as all of the bets paid off. When bets went south, there were no funds to return to the retail accounts and when the retail account owners needed their money, they found nothing left.

Glass-Steagull anyone?

In short, all this new fangled cryptocurrency "technology" purported to eliminate incompetent central governments and central banks from jury-rigging financial markets to suit THEIR goals still required the same types of retail intermediaries like FTX to function which exposed crypto assets to the EXACT same type of fraud that was perfected in the 1920s. It was outlawed in the 1930s under Glass-Steagull, allowed back into existence with the horrendously flawed Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 1999 and destroyed trillions worldwide in the 2008 meltdown. I can't help but wonder how many FTX account holders have heard of Glass-Steagull. I wonder how many have heard of CFMA. I wonder why so many were dumb enough to buy into a parallel financial system built upon the idea that money should be free from government regulation while having no understanding of WHY such regulations were adopted in the past and WHY oversight is required.

The fact that Sam Bankman-Fried, Caroline Ellison and the dozen or so other close associates of theirs operating these firms out of apartments in Hong Kong and more recently the Bahamas not only destroyed fifteen billion dollars (and counting) of "investor" money but spent considerable time pushing their goals of giving back their paper wealth via "effective altruism" just adds a second bitter taste to the core fraud they executed.

Effective Altruism

Unlike crypto currencies, effective altruism is definitely not a solution in search of a problem. The world definitely has a problem with hyper extreme wealth inequities. The question is whether effective altruism is a viable means of correcting such inequities in ways which not only flatten the distribution of wealth but actually benefit society as a whole.

Recapping from the introduction, evaluating effective altruism starts with three key premises underpinning the concept:

• Giving vast sums of wealth to charities is its own awesome obligation and requires unique skills
• The uber-rich have already demonstrated expertise in MAKING money which is a good indicator they are likely to also possess expertise in SPENDING large sums effectively through charity
• Given the two extremes of a) doing nothing to correct wealth inequality and b) adopting draconian tax laws to actively redistribute money from the uber-wealthy to governments or directly to populations, a concept of letting the uber-wealthy keep control of their wealth while encouraging philanthropy managed to somehow guage its "effectiveness" to steer money into "effective" charities rather than "ineffective" charities is a reasonable middle ground.

There's nothing controversial about the first premise. Charitable work is like any other work and managing millions and billions of dollars worth of chartable work involves people, goals, communications and measurement of outputs, all of which are subject to incompetence and deceit and experience in detecting and managing such problems.

The second premise that billionaires ipso facto possess skills across a variety of disciplines involving an organization managing billions of dollars of charitable work is where reality begins undermining the viability of EA. On the surface, this premise sounds obviously true and arguing the opposite sounds flawed. The billionaire MADE their billions running a firm spending billions and may still be running the firm -- it would appear obvious they KNOW how to do it well. In reality, billionaires who retain control of the firm that made them a billionaire often remain siloed in their skill set -- as a finance whiz, an engineering whiz, a marketing whiz, etc. They remain in control because they may have been smart enough to control the company's structure as it evolved to ensure they retain voting control. They might have been the best person to lead the company at one phase of its growth but FEW executives have the breadth of skills and emotional intelligence to evolve their management philosophy as the company grows from tens to hundreds to thousands of employees. They may HAVE the top job but that doesn't mean they are the BEST person for that job - or a new job of effectively spending money across a wide swath of potential charitable causes.

Anecdotally, it seems obvious that many of the largest fortunes made in the last thirty years involved technology firms -- software, hardware, biotech, e-commerce. Anecdotally, it also seems true that a large proportion of charitable giving involves research into means for correcting multi-generational problems of education, basic water and sewage systems in third world countries (or Lowndes County, Alabama), development of clean energy technologies, genetics and cancer therapies, etc. It is likely that many extremely fortunate but "narrow" billionaire CEOs would not have specific affinity to a role managing efforts involving significantly different work. Even a billionaire with engineering / manufacturing expertise might not have the aptitude for managing basic scientific research -- a discipline significantly different than applied engineering.

But, come on, it's their money… Shouldn't billionaires have the right to spend their own money as they see fit? That's the core of the third premise and the premise of EA most in need of debate.

There are over seven billion people on the planet. There are three thousand three hundred eleven people on the planet worth over one billion dollars. There are one hundred and ninety two people on the planet worth over ten billion dollars. At most, billionaires amounting to 0.0000453 percent of the population control 3.5 percent of the world's wealth.

If money was only a way of keeping score on how well someone's working career went, income inequality to this extent wouldn't be a concern. This inequality IS a concern because wealth increases one's influence over one's government and the world in general. The United States included some lofty language in its founding documents professing to create a democracy where "one man, one vote" was the guiding principle. Of course, it took nearly two centuries to explicitly include ALL men and women in that goal and we have Supreme Court justices who would love to roll some of that back but that's a different topic.

Most countries already operate with a "one dollar, one vote" model in their politics already, to disastrous effects. Rather than seeing policy ideas from a wide range of perspectives, only policies benefiting the already powerful even get discussed, much less enacted. Adopting the same "one dollar, one vote" model in science, research and charity is equally likely to artificially narrow the range of ideas considered when so much funding power is concentrated in so few people. Consider some real examples. Is Bill Gates likely to have all of the best ideas on improving education? Even education about technical topics like math and computer science? There are twenty content creators on YouTube I could name in five minutes who have hundreds of videos each with millions of views PROVING they know more about how to educate kids about technology. Why should Bill Gates get a $1 million dollar "vote" on that debate and those twenty creators get no vote? Bill Gates MIGHT reach out to people in that field but if the issue is so important, wouldn't it be preferable for funding for such research to START with a wider spread across more possible contributors?

The core flaw with EA is that it may reflect a subliminal goal of "guilt washing" -- after earning a fortune by ruthlessly competing with enemies and imposing poor pay and crappy working conditions on one's own workers, maybe EA is becoming popular for encouraging the idea one can "undo" all of that damage at the end of a career by giving some or all of it back to charities aimed at correcting the problems created by the deeds that earned those billions. Think of the Sackler family donating BILLIONS to charities... After earning those billions selling needless opioids and triggering a 30 year epidemic of drug addiction and death for 760,000 people and still killing roughly 69,000 per year. Maybe the Sackler family SHOULDN'T have earned all of that money in the first place.

Or maybe EA isn't "guilt washing" at all. Maybe EA is a cynical tactic to placate a gullible public while continuing work against the public's interest. A cost of doing business. Consider David H Koch, who has generously funded science programming on PBS for decades. Over the same decades where millions of viewers heard "David H Koch" as a sponsor at the beginning and end of episodes of Nova illustrating how science was making progress for mankind, David and his brother Charles funded over 90 different astroturf-style pseudo organizations which sowed doubts about climate change science with the public, media and politicians and worked to block meaningful regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. They devoted over $145 million to this effort to TRASH science between 1997 and 2018 while claiming to SUPPORT it on public television.

In the case of FTX and Alameda Research, the theory of EA as cynical tactic to delay the recognition of malfeasance certainly seems to apply. It may take a while for the courts to determine the facts but the appearances have all the makings of a complete fraud -- both in the core businesses and the public charitable face adopted by the leaders, Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison.

WTH

Trump: The Perfect Criminal for His Time

With regular show schedules getting adjusted for staff over a holiday weekend, MSNBC used its 10pm slot on November 25 to air a program hosted by Ari Melber that aimed to outline the entire scope of the crimes committed by Trump, his senior staff, non-staff associates and selected politicians across the country in formulating and executing his ploys at remaining in office. Knowing that Melber has been commissioned by the January 6 Committee to write the forward to their final report when published in book form, the thesis put forward in this program is likely reflective of themes to be found in the final report. The program was well written and provided appropriate focus across the wide range of criminal actions initiated by Trump and team. But as I watched it -- along with probably only 20,000 others with nothing better to do on a holiday weekend -- I could not help but wonder "what's the point of this?"

First, a summary of the program.

Melber used a giant multi-pane TV screen to unite the different aspects of the story into one timeline dating from just before election day on November 3, 2020 through January 6, 2021. I've recreated that timeline here for reference.

As each key element of the story was described, that item was added to the timeline with a color code reflecting it's degree of legality at the time (green = totally legal, yellow = iffy, red = obviously illegal). Some actions begun immediately after election day STARTED green -- giving Trump the benefit of the doubt. If a candidate thinks election results were "off", they are more than welcome to file petitions to state authorities requesting investigations or recounts. That is UNTIL you gain knowledge that no anomalies ACTUALLY exist or their impact on voting margins are incapable of changing results. At that point, when you continue filing paperwork with courts "citing" illegalities that do not exist, you are in fact committing a crime. (Melber's graph left these efforts green. I would have turned them red…)

Other efforts started in suspect territory (yellow) and were based on fringe theories that had not been previously discussed by more authoritative counsel but within weeks had generated internal feedback that they in no way reflected a valid legal interpretation of current voting laws in states where efforts were being pursued. At that point, additional efforts to pressure state officials or elected leaders on those merits constituted work in support of a criminal conspiracy -- leading that timeline item to fade from yellow to red.

Other ideas put up for consideration from Trump's lunatic fringe of outsiders were reviewed in real time as they were raised by White House legal counsel and immediately flagged as illegal, yet efforts in those areas continued, making those actions "red" from start to finish.

As summarized by Melber (and likely through inference, the January 6 Committee), the timeline view of the entire effort cements the following conclusions:

1. The attack on the Capital on January 6 was not an isolated event, but only one of EIGHT different efforts undertaken to reject the vote of the American people and retain power by Trump.
2. The vast majority of schemes considered and pursued were ipso facto ILLEGAL from the outset and Trump KNEW they were considered illegal from the point he initiated them.
3. Even those actions that started with a fig leaf of legality BECAME illegal when no supporting documentation was found justifying claims of fraud while Trump's lawyers continued submitting false documents to state courts.
4. The calendar overlaps BETWEEN these efforts show that each time LEGAL obstacles to an effort were identified, new ILLEGAL efforts were conceived to go around those barriers, confirming not only ongoing criminal intent but that all such activities were being communicated to Trump and his core team to trigger alternative efforts.

All well and good. I agreed with the program 100%.

But... As they say…

That's not why I'm writing this commentary…

As I watched the program and yawned through the familiar FACTUAL summary, it occurred to me that many others who might ever watch this summary or something like it would have the same exhausted reaction.

It then occurred to me that it is possible Donald Trump could be America's perfect criminal -- a criminal tailor made to exploit all that ails America.

America has been saturated by fake news and outrage since the founding of Fox News in 1996. America has been dumbed down by twenty five years of "social media technologies" that have perfected the art of distraction with bright shiny 4k video and reduced people's attention spans to that of a gnat. Our justice system -- already understaffed, grossly inefficient and heavily biased in favor of the rich and powerful -- has become corrupted over the last thirty years by justices at every level who have more allegiance to talking points issued by the Federalist Society than clauses in the Constitution.

These conditions create the perfect environment for the types of crimes committed by Trump.

• There are LOTS of them occurring on a regular basis so listeners become fatigued listening to new reports of new crimes, assuming they are just recycled hype rather than additional crimes.
• The sheer quantity, complexity and interrelated nature of the crimes defy summarization in soundbytes, making it difficult to accurately convey the events in public media, making it difficult to rally support for appropriate actions in the political sphere
• The sheer quantity, complexity and interrelated nature of the crimes also complicates work for prosecutors who risk boring grand jury members when trying to obtain indictments and risk boring trial jury members when needing to obtain unanimous votes for convictions.
• If you have enough money, you can hire lawyers to submit lawsuits in friendly court jurisdictions who will interfere with court proceedings in other jurisdictions, further slowing down legal processes and generating more news fatigue among the public, helping to tune out news of more new crimes.

As previously opined during Trump's impeachments, the real danger to America doesn't stem from Trump escaping justice. It stems from others currently on the sidelines, studying a master at his craft and perfecting these techniques for the next time. And if Trump is not indicted and convicted, there WILL be many next times to come.

WTH

Russians or Republicans?

Who is doing more to destroy voting rights and democracy in America?

It is likely it will never be known for sure but one thing is clear... Both are doing their damndest.

On Election Eve, November 7, 2022, two different stories hit the wires. One involves comments made by a Russian businessman.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/russias-prigozhin-admits-interfering-us-elections-2022-11-07/

Not just any Russian bussinessman. This businessman is Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is a close financial / political ally of Putin and founder of Russian mercenary firm Wagner. Prigozhin bluntly stated:

We have interfered (in U.S. elections), we are interfering and we will continue to interfere. Carefully, accurately, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do.

As if anyone with sanity had any doubt. But on the same day, The Washington Post published a story regarding lawsuits filed in at least three battleground states by Republicans to reject mail-in ballots on technicalities.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/07/gop-sues-reject-mail-ballots/

What technicalities? Technicalities like failing to write the mail-in date on the outer envelope, even though the ballots were received PRIOR to election day. In these same battleground states, Republicans have urged Republican supporters to only vote on election day. The Repubicans are WINNING these lawsuits, posing a very real likelihood such exclusions of THOUSANDS of ballots will skew heavily towards ballots cast both voters voting for Democratic candidates. Such wins are subject to appeals, possibly all the way to the Supreme Court, but it is very clear a majority of Supreme Court Justices would have no problem ruling in favor of these arbitrary and fickly enforced rules as part of supporting "state's rights" and supporting the Supreme Court's view that state voting laws and processes do not require federal oversight and enforcement to avoid abuses.

WTH

Constitutional Gene Therapy

Ask the wrong questions and you will always get the wrong answers.

As a Democratic (and democratic) rout seems to grow nearer on November 8, 2022, media outlets are already ramping up opinion pieces describing how the seemingly perpetually ineffective Democratic Party has squandered what was supposed to be a certain inescapable shift to the left as the Hispanic segment of the country grew to a larger share of the entire population. Democratic electoral majorities were viewed to be inevitable as a result. In reality, many areas where Hispanic voters previously voted Democratic over Republican by forty percent margins have dropped to the five to ten percent range and continue shifting to the center or right.

Much of the analysis of this surprise trend focuses on either

1. why aren't Democrats acknowledging the desires of the Hispanic segment that has rewarded them with power by acting on their key issues of interest like immigration, wages, etc.? or
2. why are Hispanic voters migrating to Republican candidates whose party goals seem antithetical to everything they want?

The first line of analysis implies that Democratic Party leaders are CONSCIOUSLY, CONSISTENTLY taking Hispanic votes each election day then CONSCIOUSLY, CONSISTENTLY flipping them the bird for the next term and instead culling favor with both the interests of the Hollywood / Wall Street elite and far-left environmental and social interest groups. The second line of thought implies that voting blocs have become so frustrated with the lack of perceived progress by voting Democratic they are deciding to actively vote AGAINST Democratic candidates in an electoral fit of pique but might return if Democrats "get the message" and do better next time. If true, this second theory would confirm voters thinking this way have no clue whatsoever about how the American government is structured and how very narrow interests have perfected their manipulation of that structure towards very undemocratic goals.

If an attempt is made to boil down the state of politics in America right now using the public positions stated by the two dominant parties, those summaries will lead one to infer that America is being torn between two diametrically opposed interpretations of our founding document -- the United States Constitution.

On the Republican side, the argument is basically that the Founding Fathers created a nearly perfect set of principals whose effectiveness in the intervening two hundred forty six years has been sullied only by modern generations reading into the original language intents that were never there instead of legislating new intents or explicitly amending the Constitution to allow such intents if not present in these "originalist" interpretations. If only we could "get back" to the original undistorted interpretation of a document created by slaveholders that didn't provide voting rights to women, we could straighten things out.

On the Democratic side, the argument is basically that the Founding Fathers created a nearly perfect set of principals for continually evolving to a "more perfect union" and that progress towards perfection is being slowed down by special interests corrupting the systems that allow the forces defined by the Constitution to function properly. In other words, the country didn't start in a perfect place, the country is certainly not IN a perfect place, but the systems in place SHOULD be capable of working to make progress over time if used ethically in good faith.

What if both of those assumptions are wrong? What is REALLY wrong with America right now?

Is it possible the Constitution itself contains the seeds of its demise and ours?

We already know the original Constitution (US 1.0, released in 1789) codified America's original sin -- slavery -- into our DNA by crassly allocating electoral influence to OWNERS of slaves while giving zero rights (voting, civil and human) to actual slaves. Most Americans were taught to believe the Civil War excised that bug from the operating system by defeating the South which intended to expand slavery further west and by amending the Constitution to provide full citizenship to all blacks and voting rights to black men.

What if more gene therapy in the Constitution was required beyond the Thirteenth Amendment to undo the damage caused by allowing slavery in the first place?

Article I Section 3 of the Constitution specifies the structure of the Senate and staggered terms of its members. Drafting of the Constitution began in 1787 and at that time, a majority of states allowed slavery but efforts were underway in some northern states to abolish it. Both the pro-slavery and anti-slavery participants in the drafting process saw the writing on the wall for future conflict and reached a compromise to coax hard-core slave states into joining the new nation under the revised Constitution. That compromise was the structure of the Senate.

The Senate structure gave equal legislative power to a body whose membership wasn't based on population or acreage but simply membership in the union. It also staggered terms over six years so the body as a whole would never be subjected to the risk of a wholesale changeout in a single election. The staggered terms might have been explained over time as a means for making the Senate a calmer, less reactive, more deliberative body than the House but they serve equally well to protect Senators from their voters' ability to swap them out. Pro-slavery forces viewed the structure as additional leverage that could protect what was likely to become a minority interest in near perpetuity and thus an incentive to join the new union. In a country claiming to focus on equal representation ("one man, one vote"), this structure is inherently undemocratic. While the original sin of slavery that prompted this flawed structure was corrected by the Thirteenth Amendment, the original flaw itself is still present in the core of the system, still available to be leveraged for any issue characterized by wide geographic disparities -- abortion, guns, land use rights, water rights, environmental protection, etc.

Is it possible special interests have perfected strategies for leveraging an undemocratic Senate to thwart majority supported change?

That certainly seems to be the case. And two of the special interests are the two dominant political parties in the United States. Much like giant faceless corporations that are provided legal personhood, the Democratic and Republican parties have become discrete interests in the country, representing their own interest in retaining and exercising power rather than transparently acting according to the wishes of their most recent voters. An important aspect of the "electoral physics" of an undemocratic legislative process is that many things desired by minority interests protected by such a structure don't require legislative "wins" per se, they just require the ability to BLOCK wins by the majority side of the issue.

This type of governance by minority obstruction also has unique synergies with social media technologies developed in the past fifteen to twenty years. A party only focused on stopping the other guy doesn't have to explain their own position and they certainly don't have to understand or explain the opposing position. Successful obstructionism only requires sowing enough fear and doubt in the public and applying that angst to very specific gates in the system to delay or kill legislation unfavored by the minority. As an added bonus, each win with this strategy by the minority has a secondary, cumulative benefit for the minority by sowing cynicism with voters in the majority who grow frustrated after WINNING majorities in elections yet not getting anything they wanted having "won." In 2022, do voters upset with Democrats think ANY of their pet issues had a chance of meaningful legislation related to those issues passing in a 50/50 Senate with two extremely conservative Democratic Senators (Manchin of West Virginia and Sinema of Arizona)? Do they believe they will be closer to achieving their goals with both the House and Senate controlled by Republicans who will also work to thwart changes imposed by executive order? Will the orange koolaid / benzene combination taste better by adding more benzene?

The entire world now operates in an environment where the SPEED of our communication tools has vastly exceeded our ability and willingness to FILTER that communication. The result is frankly a sewer. Mark Twain once said "a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on." It takes no energy at all to post a lie on Facebook or Twitter. It takes virtually no mental effort to READ a post on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. If the lie fits existing cognitive biases, it will be processed and accepted, triggering the desired doubt / anger / fear. In SECONDS.

In contrast, honestly REFUTING a lie in a two-sentence tweet requires thought and careful wordsmithing by someone with expertise and time then requires readers of the lie to be willing to spend the time reading something they know they don't agree with at the outset. Mark Twain also once said "it is easier to fool people than convince them they have been fooled." Of course, the sarcastic irony behind all of this is that there's no proof Mark Twain said either of these things. Americans seem to have completely forgotten a key lesson from Abraham Lincoln.

WTH

You Don't Have To Be A Hero

To say Election Day 2022 will be a critical election could be the understatement of the century. Or the understatement of two hundred forty six years, to be precise.

Not every Democratic candidate has great answers for every social or economic problem facing the country. But every Democratic candidate is correct on the one issue whose outcome ensures ALL candidates and voters have the right to correct mistakes the next time. In contrast, nearly HALF of all Republican candidates running for state or federal office are WRONG on that same issue.

There are THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY FIVE Republican candidates who have publicly stated doubts about the outcome of the 2020 election when NO COUNTY OR STATE authority has corroborated material fraud in ANY result in the country. A large number of that Republican cult also favor altering election certification processes to provide special committees created by state legislatures the unilateral right to reject a state's vote and replace that result with the preference of that committee. A significant number of that Republican cult are running for Attorney General or Secretary of State positions which would have direct influence over such bastardized election processes.

It's perhaps appropriate that the calendar puts Election Day for 2022 just prior to Veterans' Day in 2022. When Veterans' Day arrives for 2022, will we be contemplating the sacrifices made by two hundred and forty six years of veterans to establish and protect our democratic processes? Or trying to forget an election that just cemented a critical mass of public officials in positions of power who are actively subverting that democracy and its underpinnings?

It's highly likely that the voters in THIS election, in November 2022, will have more influence on the eventual fate of democracy and freedom in America than all of its veterans of two hundred forty six years combined. And no one has to defer the start of a "real" career. No one has to enlist. No one has to take time off of work to attend county council meetings. No one has to parade in the street in 100 degree heat or 20 degree cold. No one has to brave machine gun fire storming an enemy beach. You don't have to be a hero, risking life and limb.

You just have to recognize which candidates are connected to reality, then spend probably 30 minutes waiting in line and vote accordingly.

WTH