The Curmudgeon Speaks

I have been working on the book by Representative Jamie Raskin (Unthinkable). Raskin weaves together two themes – his experiences related to the suicide of his adult son and the Jan. 6 insurrection. He buried his son on Jan. 5 and experienced the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.  I have been waiting for library access to this book for at least 6 months and now am experiencing the book at the same time I am watching the Jan. 6 Committee hearings.

The book and the hearings compliment each other to a remarkable degree and lead me to believe most of what has been presented to the public in the hearings has been common knowledge in Washington for some time. 

One episode from the book offers an example I found exemplary of the problem of Republic indifference to the fraudulent behavior of the denial of the Biden victory and acceptance of Trump behavior. The incident I relay seems to replicated with variations many times.

Raskin describes the final deliberations before the reassembled politicians certify the results of the election. The politicians are going through any state challenges to the election results and are considering the final challenge related to the acceptance of Pennsylvania delegates. Raskin had been speaking and was followed by Republican Max Gaetz. After offering sympathetic comments to Raskin, Gaetz launches into comments irrelevant to the issue associated with Pennsylvania. Gaetz starts talking about the Jan. 6 insurrection claiming that facial recognition software had identified ANTIFA operatives among those attacking Capitol. Of course because of recent events, this claim is picked up by most news services.

Raskin offers this story to make a point. First, the claim was a complete fabrication. Second, within 24 hours, the claim also appeared online more than 400,000 times as determined by NPR. Raskin describes the frustration of dealing with such frequently shared conspiracies and the challenge of convincing the public that so much of what they have heard was false but is out there circulating among true believers who tend to engage little with real news sources and want to believe what they encounter elsewhere. 

Perhaps little has changed. I have long been baffled by the staunch Republicans who embraced Trump despite the obvious character flaws and atrocious and self-aggrandizing behavior. Disinformation is accepted and embraced and refutations are ignored. False claims linger in the minds of true believers supported by those who they rely on for acceptance and information sharing.

The book I describe is well written and a good summary of the events we all have experienced and continue to deal with. Like I said, it is a reminder of what happened and correlates amazingly well with the review described by the Jan. 6 Committee hearings.

As a side note – the hearings today revealed that Gaetz was one of the Republican politicians who had sought a pardon from Trump. Just in case – I guess.

I have decided to explore Truth Social. Yes, I am looking to get into “discussions” with people who take positions I find wrong as a result of being poorly informed. I understand that some may see my behavior as looking for a fight or trolling. Not so. I don’t think any perspective should control a social media platform for the purpose of indoctrination. Having public statements challenged in a civil manner is what you sign up for when you comment to an audience on a social media site.

When you join Truth Social, you are presented with some existing members to follow to get you started. The first individual on the list is Donald Trump. Why not? He does truth a lot. I followed Donald. Most and maybe all of the individuals on the list seemed to be Republican. Strange, not strange. I did hear from my wife that Gavin Newsome has joined and with a search I was able to find and follow him as well. There was also a F__Gavin individual. I ignored this social opportunity. 

BTW – if you join, know that you will be asked to provide lots of personal information – name, phone number, email address. You are encouraged to “have fun” with your photo and screen name. Not sure what “have fun” means so I went with Grabe and the picture of an oriole (only photo I had available). I don’t know if this is fun enough. I can’t pose with a weapon and my army fatigues are no longer close to fitting. When you post something, you click the “Truth” button. You can also retruth in responding to the posts of others. I can stipulate that the “truth” standard is not rigorously or even lightly enforced. The site is as bad as you may have heard. Give me a little time.

Here are my personal rules.

1. Don’t be inappropriate. No personal attacks. No foul language. No name calling.
2. When someone makes a vague claim that strikes you as inaccurate, nicely indicate that the claim would benefit from an example. Suggest that the statement made strikes you as wrong, but you would like a specific example so that you can better understand the claim.
3. Ask for evidence. Promote the goal that is the core objective of the social site (truth). I suggest that I disagree with a position taken, offer my evidence, and ask for some factual basis the original commenter can offer to counter the evidence I provide.
4. Be persistent. Some folks respond to my comments by calling me names, questioning my intelligence, suggesting I must consume a great deal of kool aid, or by redirecting the focus of their original post to a what about …. alternative. I patiently suggest that their comment was irrelevant and ask again just what about my position they can refute. I know it may be juvenile to expect to have the final word, but what else do I have to do and I am perfectly willing to accept valid arguments and acceptable evidence. After all, truth should prevail. 

I invite you to join me. Contrary to early reports Truth Social functions without technological issues. Be prepared for what you might experience. You do need a thick skin and be able to ignore personal attacks. I am also saving my “truths” as I may use them as examples in future posts. I will post again if I get kicked off.

Every voter and anyone interested in the history of the United States should watch the Jan. 6 hearings. This goes double for the FOX News crowd who can safely watch their channel as a convenient way to avoid truth and its consequences.

We drove to Chicago today to watch a soccer tournament so we had plenty of time to listen to the Jan. 6 hearings. Here is my summary. A delusional and dangerous Trump tried to bully Mike Pence to act in opposition to the Constitution and delay the count certifying President Biden. This strategy was designed to throw the election process into chaos. Obviously, Pence refused and acted as the Constitution requires. Trump had an interesting way of finding crack pot scientists or lawyers to propose opinions Trump found helpful. In this case, lawyer was John Eastman. Eastman knew the course of action he proposed for Trump was illegal and went along with misleading Trump supporters. Trump always seemed to search out someone he could dupe or threaten into doing his dirty work.

It’s time to hear from Mike Pence. Today he ends up the hero for what most middle schoolers would know was the right thing.

BTW – lawyer Eastman asked to be included on the Trump pardon list. Perhaps he was not that confident in his guidance.

Reuters summary of today’s presentation.

Writing about the topics I usually address seems insensitive and trivial in light of recent events. Mass shootings are bad enough, but we have been here so many times before that it is so difficult to listen to the excuses and the partial, always unrealized solutions, and conclude that this will be the last one. The values of the Republican Party have always puzzled me, but this is about as extreme as it gets. There is no place in an advanced society for assault weapons in the hands of anyone but the police and the military. From time to time, these folks need weapons designed to kill people efficiently. There are no such circumstances that justify the same power in the hands of the rest of us.

I looked through my past posts and found the following. I believe it is the first that I wrote about – 2012 Sandy Hook. The situation has not changed so why change the message?

Sometimes I just feel the need to turn off the realities of the world and escape. I cannot watch any more CNN. More information will not bring understanding to events that cannot be understood from a sane perspective. I am closer to understanding the actions of a mad man than of those willing to put weapons in his hands.

The position of the NRA is not rationale nor is it patriotic – surely elementary school teachers or children could not be expected to pack fire arms. The delusion that citizens have a right to offensive weapons has not been an argument of substance for more than a century. Guns do not kill people, people do? Perhaps, but assault rifles certainly increase the speed of the process.

Time for lawmakers to act based on conscience rather than on concern for their re-election coffers. Two years now to take some meaningful action on this and other matters.

Me – I have had enough for a few weeks.

The recent change in the control of Twitter has generated interest among users in exploring a different, but comparable platform. From time to time you hear the same threats from users of other social media platforms and services (Facebook, Instagram, Google Search). Many are upset with these large tech companies and are attempting to get Congress to require changes. Opportunities for change or at least experimentation with alternatives.

I use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram myself and was an early adopter of each service. However, I have also explored what I consider alternatives to these services. The major issue with the alternatives have little to do with technology and far more to do with the users reluctance to move even if they could enroll in alternatives. This problem, usually called the network effect, means that a service that has comparable power is less useful if it has fewer users. These are social media companies.

Here are the alternatives I suggest you try.

Twitter – Try Mastodon. Mastodon is what is called a federated service. This means there are multiple instances of the service that are linked. Different instances may or may not focus on a topic. If you are technologically inclined you set up your Mastodon instance. You can belong to multiple instances if you want. For example, I belong to mastodon.social (the original instance) and twit.social. Mastodon has grown substantially since the change in leadership at Twitter. This has not been as obvious with the other alternatives I will mention.

Facebook – I have tried several alternatives for Facebook. MeWe and wt.social. My strategy for the content I might post to Facebook is to distribute this content across multiple services. I post only comments on political issues to Facebook. I post content on other issues on my personal blogs with pointers to wt.social.

Instagram – I have no issues with Instagram with the exception of this service being owned by Facebook and sharing data on my activity across services. My alternate photo sharing site is pixelfed.social.

Google Search – I have different search services associated with different devices I use. In addition to Google I use DuckDuckGo and Brave search.

All of these services can be tried without cost. I have spent a little money supporting two of these services, but this was not required.

This is a complaint. I think I know who I blame, but my concern seems legitimate and explaining my concern may inform others.

My wife goes through our credit card charges and asked me about a charge for a little more than $100. I did not remember making a purchase in this amount recently and asked her to identify the company. The charge came from Paymentus and the cryptic description of the purchase roughly translated as “technology related”.

There was a phone number. The payment included a long transaction number. I thought I would call and ask about the charge. This turned out not to be helpful. Paymentus said they handle credit card payments for many different companies including many companies selling technology goods and services. Even with the transaction number, the call service employee said it would be difficult to identify the specific company seeking payment and suggested I call my credit card company. I responded that this advice made no sense to me because the credit card company was paying Paymentus and not the company selling the product. I said Paymentus must know the identity of the company they were collecting for or they would be unable to forward the money received to them. The employee seemed unable to understand these arguments and offered no solution.

We called our credit card company. As I expected, they did not know what I had supposedly purchased. They then canceled our credit card assuming this was a fraudulent charge and issued us new cards. This was not what I wanted. I assume the bill was probably legit. I just wanted to know what the charge was for. Since I could not convince Paymentus to determine who had forwarded the request for payment, I thought that the credit card company would likely have more luck getting this information. All I wanted was to know was the identity of company asking for the money.

This seems a very strange way of doing business and a strange solution. I now must register my new credit card with many companies that I pay via a subscription model and I must wait for some angry company to contact me or worse shut off some service I use.

Remember the “no spin zone”?

Read this Fox News story. It makes Google sound like it is attempting to limit Republican candidates reaching voters by email because much more email from Republican candidates ends up in spam folders. The spam folder seldom receives any attention making the email less likely to be read.

Now – read the actual research study (link appears in the Fox article). The description of Gmail is accurate. What is not reported are the other results. The study covered Gmail, yahoo, and outlook. The data show the opposite results with yahoo and outlook with more email from Democratic candidates treated as spam. Fox story is factually accurate, but misrepresents what anyone who read the actual study would know. It would have been easy to report the summary of the study (see below).

[Summary. Our observations in §4.1 to answer Q1 revealed that all SFAs exhibited political biases in the months leading upto the 2020 US elections. Gmail leaned towards the left (Democrats) whereas Outlook and Yahoo leaned towards the right (Republicans). Gmail marked 59.3% more emails from the right candidates as spam compared to the left candidates, whereas Outlook and Yahoo marked 20.4% and 14.2% more emails from left candidates as spam compared to the right candidates, respectively.]

I thought I would check my own Gmail spam folder. I did not do a precise count, but there are plenty of emails from both parties Gmail hid as spam. Check your own spam folder if you have one. To be fair, we are not in the time leading up to a Presidential election. I also explore a lot of political stories and this may influence how the trackers have me labeled.

If you are concerned, take some time with the content of your spam folder. This could be quite informative. It is easy to inform Google that you want to see items similar to any item you think should have not been sent to the spam folder. Open an item in the folder and you should find the following message.

Barbara Walter studies how civil wars start. This interest covers a wide swath of history with a particular focus on what we would consider recent examples. She and colleagues identify factors in specific international cases and they weight as most predictive those factors that appear in most situations. She argues that the U.S. democracy has shown a decline since 2010 and focuses on the variables that appear in her research on the predictors of civil wars.

A couple of indicators:

1. Ethnic decline – situations in which a once dominant faction finds itself in decline
2. Anocracy – government that mixes democracy and autocracy

Yes, these indicators may sound similar

I am working on the book, but after becoming interested by listening to a couple of interviews. These interviews offer a framework that is expanded in the book.

1. Minnesota Public Radio
2. Your Undivided Attention

We returned from our winter break in Kauai about a week ago. You can follow the day-to-day experiences of this trip on my travel blog. While I was there I decided to listen to Mitchner’s Hawaii which is historical fiction and I thought it would provide a little background to the present culture in which I have spent several months a year since retirement. I am a bit slow in commenting on the book as it relates to our trip because the audiobook version of the book requires more than 50 hours to complete and I had not quite finished it when we left. I purchase the book through Amazon, but I am guessing anyone could easily borrow the book/audiobook from a local library.

Hawaii was written in 1959 and like several of the Mitchner books I have read (Centennial, Chesapeake, Alaska) Hawaii traces history over multiple generations tied together in some way. The book begins with the geological formation of Hawaii, then in order the arrival of the Polynesians, the haole (white) missionaries, the Chinese, and then the Japanese. The thread throughout is the generations of the missionaries and their efforts to control/manipulate the native people and the others who followed them. The story is complex with “good guys and bad guys” within each group, but there is an underlying theme of exploitation based on perceptions of knowing what is best for others. The book ends with more equal footing for all groups but the native Hawaiians as Hawaii approaches statehood.

Present day Hawaii (at least Kauaii) no longer relies on sugar and pineapple as an economic engine. In fact, these groups are pretty much gone for the island where we stay. I am just guessing but tourism/real estate is the big economic driver. Coffee is the big crop.

I felt a certain tension related to native rights that reminded me of the time I have spent on Native American reservations. The fate of the whites, Chinese, Japanese, and others who came to work in Hawaii eventually all seemed to be more positive. The expression of native Hawaiian frustration centers on having your lands stolen by intruders generations ago and exclusion from opportunities since. This is kind of true, but stolen and being taken advantage of mean somewhat different things and depending on specific historical circumstances both can apply. In either case, present circumstances reflect differences in opportunities and economic reality. How to best address these circumstances is the issue. Compensation to people of the present for poor treatment of their ancestors in ways that involve taking from people of the present who had nothing to do with the past or any relationship beyond being from a given race with the historical oppressors has obvious limitations. Equal opportunities for education and employment in the present seem a reasonable position to take fo everyone whatever their race or culture. Achieving equal opportunities for people who as a group have fewer resources and poorer preparation for the benefits of education is very challenging to achieve.

This Ars Technica article provides an interesting history of Russian disinformation specifically addressing the online efforts of the Russian government. The article also explains why the Russians have had difficulty controlling the pushback when it comes to their invasion of Ukraine. Multiple examples of the ways in which the internet has allowed truth to reach the Russian people are included in the analysis.