Will "POTUS" Have A Trumper Tantrum Tonight - Or Act Quasi-Presidential?

You guys forced me to lose it! I demand you pay attention and not look at your phones when I can't tweet!

As Trump stands before congress tonight, the major question that must be asked is: Will he finally be composed, rational and presidential in bearing - or, will he once again come unglued and lose it like he's done in assorted press blabbings? Inquiring minds want to know!   All Trump's keepers and handlers are insisting he knows what's on the line and is prepared to turn the page to come over as a real president for a change. They ask everyone to give him a break.

All right, but I don't think it will matter. Trump can't help what he is. It's just that basic character, like a tiger's stripes, can't change at will. So the only way I'd be surprised tonight is if he doesn't lose it at some point and pitch a Trumper tantrum. That is, characteristic harangue laden with bombast and BS (with at least 5 referenced to "fake news" and five to Hillary) while lambasting the press as "the enemy of the people". Look, I can't predict at what junctures these neural embolisms will erupt  - only that they will.  Main reason? Trump is still wedded to campaign mode and hasn't yet made the transition to actually governing as a President.

Even in such a humble setting as the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump was unable to contain himself. This occasion - as described by Garrison Keillor (Denver Post, Feb. 9) as "one of those deadly official pieties, like sand burrs that you can’t get rid of", Trump was unable to stay fixed in the moment and occasion. No, as Keillor notes "he went on to gas about his agent and his TV show" and even complained about Arnold Schwarzenegger not getting the ratings for The Apprentice that he used to.  This at a National Prayer Breakfast, for god's sake!

So he's unable to stay appropriate for even a short, more or less informal speech. Why expect he'd be able to do it on the big stage?  I predict he can't because this autocrat narcissist is unable to rein in his ginormous ego.

Even in the context of simply delivering a relatively humble,  informal speech at an important but small venue, he's unable to pull it together. I speak here of his appearance at the CIA Memorial Wall last month - where dozens gave their life often in anonymity. As Keillor put it (Jan. 26, Denver Post):

"He stood before the memorial wall honoring the heroes who gave their lives in anonymity and he bitched about his newspaper coverage. ....Everyone knows that the man is a fabulator, oblivious, trapped in his own terrible needs."

In other words, Keillor knows as well as anyone else that Trump is essentially incapable of staying in a proper state of decorum for even five minutes. His "terrible needs" - in this case to stoke and satiate his ego - get the better of him.

But conservative WaPo columnist Charles Krauthammer probably delivered the most spot on reason why Trump is unlikely to remain in presidential mode tonight:

"it’s his chronic indiscipline, his jumping randomly from one subject to another without rhyme, reason or larger strategy. "

In other words, he lacks the mental discipline and forbearance to stay "on script" for any extended time. So I would be amazed if I actually saw him do it tonight. Oh, I'm not saying he might not be able to do it for five, ten minutes, even a half hour. But ultimately, like his first debate with Hillary at Hofstra University - he can't hold strain. As I wrote after that debate:

"Even long time Republican strategist Steve Schmidt noted how Trump had descended into "babbling and complete incoherence" by the end of the trade and tax segments.  Before that, Trump barely held his own ."

Of course, tonight's occasion is a speech before congress, not a debate. But as psychiatric Prof. Lance Dodes pointed out two weeks ago in an 'All In' appearance, the key attribute of a "psychopathic paranoid narcissist" is that he will often see enemies in a group where there aren't any.  Thus, the mere spectacle of Democrats from House and Senate seated before him will likely set him off if he spots even a single smile, or smirk - far less a hint of laughter. His lack of impulse control will then leave him unable to contain himself and he'll respond in his template Trumper tantrum default mode that we have all come to recognize. Heck, he ought to brand it and sell it to his groupies - via CDs. (At least they may back off from their current knuckle-headed boycotts of malls selling anti-Trump wares.)

Which closely resembles all the hallmarks of two year old who just crapped in his diapers and can't get mommy to change them, e.g.

Will we see this reversion to full infancy again tonight in a guy that's supposed to be of presidential timbre? I predict we will.  Okay, I predict there is at least a solid  (60%?)  chance given Trump plans to propose a $54 billion increase in military spending while cutting other agencies'  (e.g. EPA) support.  This will at the very least be likely to prompt Dem boos, refusals to clap at key junctures, and no standing for applause. Particularly when it is grasped that cutting EPA funds for climate science research IS defense!

In my Nov. 16, 2015 post, I cited the April 24 'Defense, National Security And Climate Change Symposium' held in Washington, D.C.  At the Symposium Brigadier General Stephen Cheney stepped up to the podium to discuss 'Conflict and Climate Change'. Cheney, like some other speakers- zeroed in on climate-driven migration, asserting:

"We know for a fact that climate change is already driving internal and cross border migration"

Cheney's presentation tagged a number of conflict climate triggers, including the desertification in the borderlands between Chad and Nigeria which "has caused a lot of migration". He also indicated that the terror organization Boko Haram "is simply taking advantage of that".

Other aspects of Cheney's talk cited beefing up military infrastructure at home and abroad to be resistant to harsher climate. The army, in fact, has adopted a 'Net Zero' initiative to make its U.S. bases water and energy independent.

The point missed by the deranged fool Trump is that climate change is intermeshed with national security. Cut the resources to research the impacts of the former (as conducted by the EPA) and you then reduce the latter. If anything, Trump ought to be increasing EPA spending. These EPA cuts, therefore, are something I trust will draw energetic Dem boos.

The main thing for the Democrats to bear in mind is that this is a pretender President, who isn't even up to disentangling himself from his businesses, far less doing the job of running a country. This guy has never really worked at a real job outside of owning his family branding business and being a real estate weasel who used bankruptcy (of multiple casinos) to make more $$$.  He's even bawled that the presidency had  turned out to be too much for him to deal with. Too many details, too much stuff to master for an extensive government bureaucracy.  Hence, his penchant for becoming a cable TV and tweet addict. See e.g.

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/donald-trump-stunned-to-learn-presidency-is-an-actual-j-1792215349

A doofus who can't handle the pressures of BEING President is not worthy of occupying the office - or demanding respect for his office-  no matter what his delusional followers and voters (many actually "registered Democrats") believe.   The Dems would do well to remember that tonight. Keep a measure of decorum with civil opposition when appropriate. I am sure the Donald will eventually pitch his Trumper tantrum and show everyone - even the Repuke toady gallery - how unqualified he really is.

The Difficulty Of Communicating Absolute Truth Statements

Barely gagging on my egg sandwich as I watched Trump at a National Prayer Breakfast this morning, I had to smirk when he babbled "And freedom is a gift from God".   This from an imbecile who likely wouldn't be able to find chapter and verse of a biblical quote from his bible - assuming he even has one. 

But it interjects the question of how much of what he said is true, and how much is BS.  Or was it all just made up crap - like in his exec orders (actually written by Steve Bannon) to get applause from the dopey peanut gallery?  Can there even be an absolute truth statement in religion (or science) and if so what attributes must it have?  What are the criteria, or are we limited to only relatively true statements?

Philosopher Herman Philipse has noted we may legitimately show respect for religions (or religious statements)  because they reflect deep human longings. However, we are not obliged to show any respect when they put forward claims of knowledge  (Philipse.: Free Inquiry (Feb./Mar. 2007, 37). In this sense, Trump's claim that freedom "is a gift from God" is meaningless. He could as well be blabbering about flying monkeys taking over the world.

Given the above, one may inquire into the inherent problems in articulating any alleged true statement. Scott Soames (1) clarifies the issue by appeal to more and less general schema to arrive at truth in a convergent way. Soames defines what is materially adequate.

He does this by referencing “Level 1” or L1 statements, depicted as partial definitions.¹ The task of communicating truth in language then reduces to consistently generalizing partial definitions to cover every type of sentence and condition. This also assumes the subjects, objects included in the statement have specific meanings - or "operational definitions", in the case of scientific statements.

He goes on to note that Tarski’s definition, i.e. that if an earlier iterate allows for additions without contradiction to the original proposition (truth statement), then we can arrive at materially adequate sentences. In this sense, most scientific explanations – while admittedly partial – are nevertheless materially adequate. But do they amount to true statements?

Consider the following sequence of L1 statements for solar flares and note the ascending hierarchy of information presented:

1) A class X-7 solar flare occurred last Tuesday.

2) A class X-7 solar flare occurred at 22h 33m GMT Tuesday.

3) A class X-7, optical class 2B solar flare occurred at 22h 33m Tuesday.

4) A class X-7, optical class 2B solar flare occurred at 22h 33m GMT last Tuesday, and lasted 1440 seconds.

5) A class X-7, optical class 2B solar flare occurred at 22h 33m GMT last Tuesday, peaked 543 seconds after inception, and lasted a total of 1440 seconds.

Are all of the above statements, referencing the same event, true? Are they all equally true? If not, why not? Can one therefore have true statements which do not express the entire truth but rather only a partial truth? If a partial truth is expressed can it be said to be the truth without reservation?

Obviously, the statements given are successively more materially adequate by degrees, but none of the statements are wholly materially adequate unto themselves. For example, using any of the statements (1) - (3) one would not be able to obtain an estimate of the power or energy released which requires knowing the flare’s duration. As one moves in ascending order each statement contains more material adequacy, hence arguably more truth than its predecessor, simply because one can obtain more from the information. Thus (5) is more true than (4), (4) more so than (3) and so forth. Is (5) the last word? Consider this description of the event:

A class X-7, optical class 2B solar flare, occupying an area 1800 millionths of a solar hemisphere and located at heliographic longitude 90 degrees, and latitude 22 degrees, occurred at 22h 33m GMT last Tuesday, peaked 543 seconds after inception, and lasted a total duration of 1440 seconds.

Thus, one is unlikely to deliver all the material and relevant truth on the solar flare at once since data generally aren’t processed simultaneously, certainly about a complex physical event. Even in the course of normal human interactions, and particularly teaching, total conveyance of information is unlikely. Is this a lie by omission? Hardly! In the case of physics teaching, even attempting to convey the full basis of Newton’s laws of motion would take one hundred times longer than the standard classical mechanics course if all details and exceptions were included. In the interest of time and convenience, therefore, one must often omit the whole truth, assumed to be a complete description of a phenomenon or the principle that governs it.

“The whole truth and nothing but the truth” may well be a fine courtroom bromide but it doesn’t make the practicality cut. Can one have true statements which do not express the entire truth but rather only a partial truth? Yes, and these are none other than the L1 statements by Soames’ definition. As Soames puts it²:

If such instances (e.g. L1 statements) are thought of as partial definitions, then the task of defining truth for an entire language may be seen as finding a way of generalizing the partial definitions so as to cover every sentence of the language.

Carrying this further, there is no way any practical expression of language can encompass more than limited truth. What does all of this say about any truth claim?  It says that in general truth claims must be treated with great skepticism, and in the case of scientific claims, confidence levels for them must be demanded.. At any rate, one must always assume the initial claim for truth is partial, or at the L1 level. The claimant must be then pushed as far as possible to disclose the maximum content of the truth as he understands it, especially if the truth claim is made dogmatically.

In terms of scientific publications and the formulations of scientific methods - as I will show in a later blog post- it implies one must treat them carefully. For example, one must be aware the different scientific methods exist, not one frozen in stone. These will therefore differ depending on whether the object of inquiry is a stochastic one, say like climate change, or a deterministic one - say like computing the orbit of Enceladus.

By contrast,, Trump's statement that "freedom is a gift from God" is totally devoid of even a limited truth aspect. For example, he hasn't even defined what he means by 'God" and we can't assume ab initio that he knows or that it comports with any traditional versions. 

Indeed, most people are unaware that when they use the word G-o-d they’re not talking or writing about an actual entity  (i.s. that they know like I do a solar flare) but a limited construct or ideation configured as a noun, which is really a God concept. Further, because it’s limited by content and comprehension, i.e. by finite minds with finite intelligence which can’t grasp all aspects, then all such concepts must be relative and subjective. This means that the Jewish concept of Yahweh, the Muslim concept of Allah, the Hindu concept of Brahmin and the Christian concept of the Trinity all stand in the same epistemological relation.  From an informational point of view, none can be selected as “true” to the exclusion of the others.

What this means is that neither Trump, Pence or any of their other cohort can show in an absolute sense that what they mean by "God" is distinct from what the Muslim means - and hence that their version is superior.  In science, at least, we have the advantages of future observations and experiments which ultimately will be able to isolate verified hypotheses or theories from failures - say like the basis for the downfall of the steady state theory because the 2.7 K background cosmic radiation was discovered that supported the Big Bang - not the steady state.

In religion, no similar observational or experimental measures apply, hence the religionist is compelled to fall back on faith, nothing more. In other words, Trump and those he was talking to can believe freedom is "a gift from God", but there is no substance behind it for the rationalist or scientist. We instead accept that humans crafted the concept of freedom with their brains - honed by evolution- and that they also defined the markers, criteria for human freedom. This enabled it to be referenced in documents that underlie our governance.  The Founders themselves who may have referenced a deity, were actually not Christians - but Deists - with their own limited God concept at variance with that of the orthodox Christian version.

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1 Soames: Understanding Truth, 69.

2 Ibid.