Obama Takes On "Trumpism" In His State of The Union

Obama educated Trumpsters on the nature of government, democracy, the limits of power and citizenship in his SOTU speech.

Lord knows Trumpsters need a clue. Unable to reason their way out of anything, they more or less follow their insane, splenetic blowhard no matter what he says. As one Trump follower put it in a recent TIME article on the Trump phenomenon, "It's time to get insane and shake things up!"  So given just "shaking things up" not a  useful prescription for much of anything it was superb to see Obama giving his best trying to educate these knuckle draggers to the role of citizenship in the United States.

As one UK Guardian lead article put it:

"Obama’s rhetoric reflects his study of the nation’s founding documents – the US constitution and Declaration of Independence – as well as basic texts of our civic culture, from the Bible to the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D Roosevelt, John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr."

Which is more than needed, given most Trumpsters  in their hostile and arrogant anti-intellectualism, are proud not to be familiar with the basic texts of our civic culture. But then, this is the profile for those who can't even see that reducing the members of one the world's largest religions to "ragheads" plays into ISIS' hands. Or yapping that anyone who supports respect for the vast majority of this religion is "bending over for ragheads" - when in fact they are unwilling to take the vile path into dehumanization - which almost always precedes genocide and "ethnic cleansing".

Obama was no less severe in taking these knotheads to task for sabre rattling when the U.S. is clearly - bar none -the world's 'hammer' not anyone's 'nail'. As the Prez put it:

"The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It's not even close,"

Hence, to idiotically proclaim "World War Three" or "the world is on fire" (as Paul Ryan did in one op-ed) actually confers on these vermin what they want: the equal power of a nation state - when they are merely parasites occupying a failed state. Obama's words:

"Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages pose an enormous danger to civilians and must be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence.  That's the story ISIL wants to tell; that's the kind of propaganda they use to recruit. We don't need to build them up to show that we're serious, nor do we need to push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is representative of one of the world's largest religions,"

But again, his words likely were missed by the pseudo-macho Trumpsters.

Ahead of State of the Union speech, Obama has regrets over US political divisions

Obama's final foray into our toxic politics was a tour-de-force of intellectual power but which was likely lost on most of the audience.  As Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC put it, "the (TV) audience was dumbed down by Trumpism".  So when Obama said "the people should pick their representatives instead of the politicians picking their voters" it likely sailed over their heads.

Why this anti-intellectual strain? Where did it originate? Let's first agree that Trump isn’t the cause, just the symptom. In fact, a pervasive anti-intellectualism  runs through the roots of American culture and has for decades. Richard Hofstadter in his terrific book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life puts his finger (p. 133) on:

"such a thing as the generically-prejudiced mind. Studies of political tolerance and ethnic prejudice have shown that zealous church-going and rigid religious faith are among the most important correlates of political and ethnic animosity."

But it has to go beyond religious aspects, in order to account for the teeming millions who hate intellectuals but aren't necessarily religious. One possible insight  raised by Hofstadter was an engrained tendency by the undereducated to tie the exercise of intellect to being "effeminate". He presented the example of Adlai Stevenson and how he was mercilessly criticized by the media for his speeches and choice of words in the 1950s.

Hofstadter noted that especially during the 1952 presidential campaign,  Stevenson's wit was detested even more than his intellect. Of course, wit functions in the service of intellect, to amplify intellect's intent and render its goals more efficacious. Or to smooth the delivery of information related to weighty issues. For this Adlai was repeatedly slandered and referred to as a "comedian" or "clown" and portrayed in cartoons with a jester's cap and bells, e.g.



The New York Daily News (cf. p. 227) once referred to him as "Adelaide" and charged that he "trilled his speeches in a fruity voice."

Thereby rendering an additional slur - one that directly tied intellectual display or wit with homosexuality. Reinforced by the description of his followers as "typical Harvard lace-cuff liberals." In certain sectors of society today, this pernicious virus can still be seen - in many of our public high schools. There, day in and day out "geeks", "dweebs" and "dorks" are relentlessly assaulted by feeble-minded "jocks" for openly displaying any intellect. Many are also accused of being "gay" simply because they prefer the life of the mind and books- to football, gang hijinks, mailbox 'baseball' or cow-tipping.

Obama's confronting of the Trumpsters in his speech, was therefore somewhat like the class valedictorian confronting the high school football team and trying to teach them nuanced approaches - as in national security (forming a coalition instead of acting like the world's cop) - and respecting others even if their skin, religion or whatever is different. In other words a nearly impossible task given the jocks would likely take any such would-be educator and stuff him into a locker.

And so we have the basis for what now approaches nearly a civil war, given the partisan divide. Another element feeding the rampant anti-intellectualism (which also denies man-made climate change)  has to be the media - and here we come to FOX News. Incredibly, Fox News is currently the most trusted news network in the country. The problem is that “Fox News” is a misnomer. The network,  to quote Jon Stewart, is more of a “relentlessly activist” organization for conservative causes than an intellectually honest conveyor of information.

Don't take my word! There are to date at least seven academic studies that have found that Fox News’ viewership constitutes the most misinformed audience .  From climate change to healthcare, the Iraq War, to Obama's allegedly Muslim faith,  the zombies mesmerized by Fox News are more confident about falsehoods than viewers of any other news network. Several studies even found a positive correlation between how often one watches Fox News and the degree to which one’s worldview is misinformed.

Hence, one can regard FOX News as a breeding factory for anti-intellectuals, and given Obama's SOTU speech, the number one source of anti-citizens undermining the Republic. In this sense, Obama was far too generous when he insisted our citizen bonds "must be based on trust",  because well, how can you have a faithful discussion of facts with a purblind idiot who only accepts falsehoods from a propaganda factory? It's a non-starter. Citizen mutual trust must depend on all citizens having the same access to genuine facts, history and objective truth. If one side is co-opted by bullshit and anti-facts then all bets are off. 

But look, what’s most dangerous about Fox News isn’t its repeated failure to accurately report the facts, but its discouraging that all important form of rigorous curiosity called critical thinking. If people want a single cause to blame for the gradual decline of the American empire, direct your wagging finger at the devaluation of critical thinking skills.

Because make no mistake, any appreciation of Obama's State of the Union speech, whether his comparison of climate denialism to denial of Sputnik, e.g.

"Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didn't deny Sputnik was up there. We didn't argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight, and twelve years later, we were walking on the moon."

Or to his nuanced argument for confronting ISIL but not doing it alone and half-assed, requires at least a modicum of critical thinking. It cannot be appreciated by a brain stewed in endless propaganda so that its medial pre-frontal cortex sees Obama only as 'Obummer' or "Obozo'. In other words, as the "enemy" or  "the other" despite his having fought to prevent cuts to veterans' and other benefits - which their weak memories forget all the Reepos wanted.

Obama sounded a definite note of hope and optimism but that was predicated on all of us taking the citizenship seriously. Alas, that cannot happen when one half the population doesn't know which end is up and is prepared to follows so-called "news" networks - that are really propaganda factories - blindly.

As Thomas Jefferson put it in his 'Notes on Virginia':

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. AND TO RENDER THEM SAFE, THEIR MINDS MUST BE IMPROVED."

Jefferson understood that a citizen "depository" of false beliefs and misinformation would ultimately destroy the Republic on account of the regression of citizens' minds. He understood that citizens, as part of their duty, had to strive to attain mental improvement including being able to read in a focused fashion and not believe everything they read. Another Founder, John Adams, wrote:

“Facts are stubborn things,”

But epitomizing the blind stupidity of the Right, their favorite President,  Ronald Reagan,  famously misquoted him:

“Facts are stupid things,”

 Which could be the motto of all those who get their "values" regularly confirmed  via a reality filtered through FOX News or Limbaugh

Sadly, Obama's lofty goals to eradicate our toxic politics cannot be achieved until the source of that  toxicity is removed. As people learned after the Rwanda genocide, there is free speech and then there is hate speech. NO civil society can long tolerate the latter without facing destruction from within. The U.S. may well be able to put down every 'bully' around the world, but it cannot sustain division from within. United we stand, divided we fall - and it will be a long, hard fall.

One final note: Gov. Nikki Haley, who delivered the GOP response, even called out Trump and his angry bandwagon by admonishing followers to "resist the siren call of angry voices".  But, of course, anyone who's ever had to deal with a bunch of two years olds pitching tantrums knows that probably won't get very far before she's skewered by some of those angry voices. Most likely from right wing propaganda radio.

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/65527/of-obamas-superb-sotu-and-supreme-fatheads

Excerpt:

"Pathologically playing today at your local Bund rally is the selfsame debauchery that sickens American politics from time to time — what with its "voices urging us to fall back into tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background"; and always, in some rhetorical version, warning us of "existential threats" being slighted by the commander in chief."

Dissecting An Anti-Global Warming Crackpot: Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK)

Satellite image of Arctic at point of maximal Arctic melting. Increasing warmth in the Arctic is destabilizing the polar vortex causing cold to  intermittently spill southward into North America

Let’s admit that considering all the morons who know little or nothing about climate change,  the potential for education (or re-education) is minimal - given most have likely never even taken a high school physics course.  This is important because if they had taken such a course, they’d at least know the differences between heat and temperature, radiation and conduction, as well as between weather and climate.  At the very least, we’d expect them to be familiar with fundamental physical principles such as entropy (2nd law of thermodynamics),  and not to be running their gums off making criticisms they can’t support and which problems at root they have little insight into.

Even granted all this, it still leaves a ‘grade A’ asshole like Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) as a standout among the morons inhabiting the country – given this joker is actually a so- called “leader”.    How stupid is this asshole? Inhofe is probably the most vocal global warming denier in the US Congress, and has virtually declared War on Science in the process. According to Inhofe, anthropogenic global warming is "the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state."  Is he serious? Evidently! Also evidently – they teach history as poorly in Okieland as they do science.

If not they’d have been cognizant that the “wall of separation of church and state” – while not explicitly in the Constitution, was formulated by Jefferson in his (1802) letter to Danbury Baptists:

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."

It thereby became an unspoken, unwritten principle that has been practiced on many judicial levels since.

Why am I picking on this cornpone,  cornball fool? Well, because he’s once more stepped into a mammoth clump of cowshit regarding global warming (which I will get to) and likely is too dumb to even know it. Recall, Inhofe is one of the leading global warming deniers in Congress, and is well known for having called global warming  "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."  Which makes one wonder if this Okie yokel even knows the definition of “hoax”. Sure, it’s a one syllable word but even those can give a dimwit fits and Inhofe fits the bill.   He is also one of the Republican Party's leaders in the culture wars and is why many of those with similar IQ love to jump on his bandwagon.

Even before he became one of the biggest, proudest global warming deniers Inhofe already made a name for himself as noted by “Rational Wiki”. Thus, “in the hours following the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Inhofe made a statement on TV that pissed off a lot of federal employees. When asked about casualties, he said that he doubted that there would be many because, since the federal offices opened at 9 a.m., most of the employees would probably still be somewhere else drinking coffee” (The bombing occurred at 9:02 a.m.)

This was after a building had been blown up by a domestic terrorist named Timothy McVeigh  in April, 1995 killing 168 innocent people and injuring 680 others. It shows clearly the level of assholinity at work in this troll’s brain – making you wonder how a state could  be so clueless (i.e. have so many clueless, lamo voters) as to catapult him into any position above dog catcher.

Back to global warming!

“Reading things he’s said about global warming  is like  perusing a denier’s playbook of nonsense” according to one Slate piece on him. Readers can check them out to see if they agree.

This brings us to his more recent anti-global warming nonsense. His most recent exhibition occurred barely days ago (July 30) and some readers may recall the context. That is, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) had submitted a resolution simply acknowledging that global warming exists and poses a threat to the interests of the United States—which it does, on both counts.

But it was all too much for Inhofe who saw to it the resolution was scrapped – since as usual it didn’t get the absurd 60-vote filibuster proof majority- thanks to the Repukes siding with Inhofe’s denial. After the Dem’s failed effort, Inhofe  came unhinged with his usual claptrap against global warming and calling it a “hoax” and a “waste of money”.

Inhofe’s action was so egregious, that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) took to the floor and magnificently schooled him on reality.

But Inhofe’s shenanigans echoed his stance from back in January this year, when – after the polar vortex had made itself known (bringing sub-freezing temperatures to much of the nation) he promptly jumped onto the bandwagon of the ignorant dolts by proclaiming global warming was “therefore laughable” because no predictions based on it squared with the extreme cold temperatures.

He must have forgotten or never processed that-  as originally proposed by Prof. Gunther Weller (of the Geophysical Institute)  more than 25 years ago, a polar vortex  (Weller called it  a stable polar cyclone)   existed and was subject to instability as the Arctic warmed. Weller was one of the first to predict back in 1986, when I was also at the Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks, AK, that the Arctic would warm up to 7F faster than the rest of North America. His predictions have since been borne out.

Also, with increased warming in the Arctic we’ve seen the circulation in the vortex weakened and the vortex’s cold spill southward – discharging energy and creating the record breaking cold observed by much of the nation last winter. We’ve seen some of the same dynamic at work this summer when much lower than average temperatures penetrated far south (with the jet stream) into the Midwest – sending lows into the 30s. A typhoon that struck Japan also was partly to blame, but the general Arctic instability contributed to the Jet stream’s extraordinary downflow.

It’s become a Republican mantra to say, “I’m not a scientist”  as if that gives them license to sputter any idiotic bollocks  they want. But the proper response to a statement like that is what Charlie Crist, gubernatorial candidate for Florida, said: “I'm not a scientist either, but I can use my brain and I can talk to one.”  DOH!

And the most aggravating nonsense is the repeated claim, as from the likes of Inhofe and his denier lackeys,  that “there’s no evidence for global warming” Really?  Then how account for the scores of receding, melting glaciers? Images and videos not long ago made available as in this  PBS program, see:

http://video.pbs.org/video/1108763899

But these knuckleheads would likely merely assert that “PBS is in on it” , i.e. gaming us with fake footage created in a CGI lab, and are part of the "global warming conspiracy” that Inhofe and his lot believe in. What this conspiracy is all about I have no idea, but it seems to be something along the lines of spending lots of money on more science and less on energy (i.e. allowing the oil drillers to take over the whole country and turn it into a shit pile between the natural gas and oil shale fracking)

How does Inhofe get away with this? Easy! Because like most rabid deniers and anti-science buffoons in congress he’s hugely funded by the oil industry.  In this way the idea of unjustified doubt is sown among a public that largely lacks a science background. We call this agnotology. Derived from the Greek 'agnosis' - the study of culturally constructed ignorance- it is achieved primarily by deliberately sowing doubt for political or economic ends. The agnotologist and his ilk succeed once the following trope is emitted and embraced by the power structure, as well as ill-informed citizens:

‘There is still so much uncertainty, we shouldn’t invest money to solve the climate problem,’

 As "evidence" that global warming is a hoax Inhofe has cited the Oregon Petition, and he persists in saying that there is a scientific consensus that climate is getting cooler. In 2010, he said that “I don’t think that anyone disagrees with the fact that we actually are in a cold period that started about nine years ago.”

However, I have skewered this BS multiple times, e.g.

^{http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/06/george-will-no-warming-for-last-16.html}

The media often talk blithely and disparagingly of “conspiracy theorists” – but there is perhaps no bigger one than Jim Inhofe. (And we are talking nutso conspiracy theories here, not valid ones like the JFK conspiracy!) For example, in an address to The Washington Briefing: 2006 Values Voter Summit Inhofe asserted that global warming is a conspiracy cooked up by the UN to destroy America and in his own words climate science "kind of reminds ... I could use the Third Reich, the Big Lie ...”


Forget for the moment if his analogies were correct, and the EPA really was the “Gestapo” Inhofe would be sitting in a concentration camp about now. It shows he knows about as much of the Third Reich as he does solar magnetohydrodynamics.

Who’s involved in this massive conspiracy of Inhofe’s? It seems to vary almost with each time he yaps about it.  On one occasion the fool blamed it on George Soros,  but later he appears to have added Michael Moore and MoveOn.org to the list of people who are really behind the alleged climate change hoax. At least he’s consistent in picking out ‘small fry’ to be behind such an enterprise, given that 96.2 percent of all climate scientists support its reality!

What we can conclude based on Inhofe's illustrious history and connection with the most retrogressive elements of society, is that the man is a waste of space. We can only hope that eventually Oklahomans come to their senses and dispatch this cracker crackpot to the retirement he so justly merits.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/margaret-kimberley/57452/climate-change-point-of-no-return

and:

http://www.salon.com/2014/08/04/this_is_climate_change_ohios_water_crisis_was_a_manmade_disaster/

Does This Guy Really Know Who the Climate Deniers Are?

In a letter to Physics Today (June, p. 10), John W. Cooper  argues that we in the scientific community, must refrain from being "bellicose and resorting to militant tones in our rhetoric when attacking deniers". He goes on to state: "These are the deniers' tactics- and they are much better at it"

Errr....says WHO?

He adds:

"We scientists are meant to be calm, rational, fair, and level -headed. If we aren't we lose to the detractors."

Where has this bozo been? We are already losing to the detractors! An increasing proportion of Americans (now 60% to 49% from ten yrs. ago) dispute that climate change is human engendered. So where has the Milquetoast pose gotten us?  And does he really expect us to be "calm" as the knuckledraggers on the other side keep obfuscating issues and we are poised on the precipice of the runaway greenhouse effect from which there will be no return? Too much is at stake!

I suppose, if Cooper were a Jew in Nazi Germany during the Third Reich he'd have also advised his fellow Jews to remain calm, stay levelheaded when the guards prod you along and don't make a fuss as the Nazi storm troopers lead you off to the gas chambers! Too much exaggeration? Hyperbole? Not by much, no way. Our planet is now at the cusp of a series of nightmare climatic convulsions that has most security forces and militaries on Earth on alert.(Google 'Tuvalu or just go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/world/asia/03iht-pacific.2.5548184.html?pagewanted=all") 

It is only a matter of time before all hell breaks lose, and Cooper beseeches us to stay "calm" and engage the other side via 'Marquis of Queensbury' rules .

Already, we've farted away the better part of a decade trying to "reason" with these flat Earthers, while trying to be eminently sensible (as we bite our tongues). But see, the problem is they're no more invested in sweet reason, or sense or objective discussion than the Nazi Storm troopers. Their full agenda is simply to quash the idea that anthropogenic greenhouse warming is in any way validated, despite over 3,800 peer -reviewed papers published over the past 15 years.

An even bigger joke is when Cooper tries to break down the deniers into "three groups":

1) Fossil fuel interests and those who oppose government regulations

2) People with spiritual and religious understandings that conflict with the reality around them and

3) Those who simply don't understand climate change and are fearful

Is he joking or what? Neither (2) nor (3) comprise serious opponents, nor are they able to marshall or sustain any serious or comprehensive arguments. So let us get real for once and admit that Cooper's last two groups are  more red herrings than genuine opponents.

At the top also he conflates "fossil fuel interests" and anti -regulationists when in principle both are subsumed by what I refer to as the economic agnotologists. Their shtick is abundantly evident in this earlier blog:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/as-i-noted-in-earlier-blog-httpbrane.html

As noted above, and as I have many times previously, agnotology (derived from the Greek 'agnosis' - the study of culturally constructed ignorance)  is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made (and as we know NO scientific theory is free of uncertainty).
Moreover, Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor has correctly tied it to the trend of skeptic science sown deliberately and for political or economic ends . In other words, the supporters of agnotology - whoever they may be- are all committed to one end: destroying the science to enable economic profit and hence planetary ruin.
 
One can surmise then that it is largely Cooper's Milquetoast misperceptions of who exactly our antagonists are, that leads him to advocate for the namby-pamby palsied path. Being nicey nicey, "level headed" as these intellectual pipsqueaks try to gain ground by attempting to drive us into hiding. No can do!
 
As long as I am blogging I intend to pound these fools and expose them for what they are, the same as I'd do with any anti-science purveyors.
 
People who don't appreciate it are welcome to frequent the blogs of the denier side. Only be sure you know what you're getting.