Apparently I live on a different planet than a lot of people

A Washington Post article said yesterday that "Some of the emerging [Trump administration] policies have been driven by backlash to the covid-19 response, after Trump made clear his disdain for the nation’s public health infrastructure. He and allies have said the U.S. approach to the virus, including mask and vaccine mandates and school shutdowns, was heavy-handed, a position that some Democrats now share too."

Although that sentiment is nothing new, I continue be dumbfounded by the notion that the country's response to Covid, a once-in-a-century (we hope) pandemic, was "heavy-handed." There were almost 900,000 daily reported cases in January of 2022. There were 1.35 million cases reported on January 10 of that year. Daily hospitalizations peaked at around 163,000 that same month. Daily deaths were around 2,600. In January 2021, daily deaths were well over 3,000. A 9/11's worth of deaths. Every. Single. Day. The highest daily death count that month was 4,197.

In the U.S., more than 1.1 million people have died of Covid. During its rampage it became the third leading cause of death, behind heart disease and cancer. Life expectancy in the U.S. declined by 2.7 years between 2019 and 2021.

So I remain flabbergasted by claims of over-reaction. By my lights, protecting the public from such catastrophic events is a vital role of the public health infrastructure, and of government. Many who disparage that role are apparently too stupid to realize they are likely alive today as a consequence of the government's "heavy-handedness."

But set that aside. The article also said "the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was told Friday to lay off an estimated 10 percent of its staff, including nearly an entire class of “disease detectives” — the infectious-disease experts charged with helping spot the next epidemic." [Update: More recent reporting by the New York Times says the "disease detectives" are apparently being spared, but vast numbers of other public heath researchers and scientists are being summarily fired.]

Current serious public health concerns include the rising incidence of avian influenza, which some fear could become the world's next deadly pandemic. The disease has ravished egg laying flocks (it's why egg prices are so high), has been working its way through dairy cattle herds, and is increasingly infecting humans (one has died) that come into contact with those herds. Should the virus acquire the mutations needed to spread easily from person to person, it's off to the pandemic races.

There's more. "Global health leaders have warned about a new outbreak of Ebola virus in Uganda and other emerging outbreaks overseas," said the Post article.

And Trump's move to pull the U.S. out of the World Health Organization will hamper our ability to coordinate with other countries as diseases spread.

As an aside, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now confirmed as HHS secretary, has said the U.S. should pause infectious disease research for 10 years. Kennedy wants to concentrate instead of chronic diseases. Because of course we can't do both.

Also worth noting is that USAID, the world's largest foreign aid organization, has a large and crucial role in strengthening disease surveillance systems globally, particularly in developing countries. USAID, which Trump is in the process of shutting down, is vitally involved in detecting the emergence of the next pandemic.

Trump has also gratuitously announced he'll withhold federal aid from schools that have Covid mandates, which the Post notes is largely moot, since most such mandates were removed almost two years ago.

This is what passes for leadership now. But what right do I have to complain? We knew this was what we were getting, and chose it anyway.

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

 

And don't drink bleach, either

In a press conference the day after the the DC plane crash that killed 67, Donald Trump riffed about its cause. His conclusion: DEI. "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" was the probable culprit.

Trump offered that opinion on no evidence at all. He just made it up, inflaming ongoing DEI discourse, falsely blaming his predecessors, lying about his own record, and generally doing all the despicable things we expect him to do. One reporter challenged him: "Mr. President, you have today blamed the diversity elements, but then told us that you weren’t sure that the controllers made any mistake…. I’m trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash."

"Because I have common sense,” Trump said, "and, unfortunately, a lot of people don’t."

The very first thing that occurred to me, as Trump uttered those words, was: Is that the same "common sense" that caused him to wonder, before a live national television audience in 2020, whether ingesting strong sanitizers (like bleach, or perhaps Lysol), or somehow getting ultraviolet light inside the body, might be useful in combating Covid? Was Trump now displaying the same keen insight and shrewd intuition that he did back then, while treating us all to the amazing workings of his perspicacious mind?

And what a mind. Just ask him. Back then he acknowledged that although he's "not a doctor," he's "like a person who has a good you-know-what." He said this while twirling his finger in the vicinity of his head. His White House coronavirus adviser, Deborah Birx, who is a doctor, sat there stone faced on the stage, in seeming disbelief, as Trump suggested she look into his brilliant ideas.

Watching at home, I groaned in dismay.

Trump is so full of himself that he has neither the self-awareness nor the discipline to not say stupid things out loud before the American people and the world. (Stupid things are best kept to oneself, and perhaps examined in private with trusted, expert confidants, until one achieves a basic measure of mental clarity. For a variety of excellent reasons and the good of everybody, a president, when speaking publicly, should avoid utterances that would subject him to mockery.)

Anyway, some things never change. At a press conference with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump proposed that the approximately two million Palestinian inhabits of Gaza not be allowed to rebuild in their own sovereign territory but, rather, should be re-settled in various other countries (Egypt and Jordan, for example). As for Gaza, which Israel has bombed to rubble over the past 15 months, the United States would take possession and indeed ownership of it, and develop it into what Reuters called "an international beach resort" that Trump said could be "the Riviera of the Middle East." (All the particulars—the what and why and how and for whom and indeed WTF remained unspecified.)

There is much to be said about this hare-brained idea. Such as that Trump is, quite incredibly, advocating ethnic cleansing. Removing Palestinians from their land and dispersing them around the region would destroy them as a unified people and be a criminal monstrosity, recorded for all time as such by history.

Also extraordinary was that, like ingesting bleach, this outlandish proposal was clearly vetted only in the screwball mind of Trump himself, before being barfed out onto the world. This is not how serious countries and serious presidents conduct their affairs, especially when such grave humanitarian and geopolitical considerations are involved. A state press conference is not a whiteboard on which previously unconsidered brainstorming takes place.

Obviously, for right-wing Israelis depopulating Gaza would be a dream come true. For everybody else, the idea was crackpot lunacy. Jordan and Egypt want nothing to do with a flood of Palestinian refugees who would have to be permanently assimilated. King Abdullah II of Jordan rejected any attempt to displace Palestinians and annex their land. Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said he would back Gaza's reconstruction but not mass displacement. Saudi Arabia expressed its “unequivocal rejection” of attempts to displace Palestinians and reiterated that it would not establish diplomatic ties with Israel in the absence of an independent Palestinian state.

France reiterated its opposition to any forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, calling it a violation of international law, as did Germany. The UK emphasized that Palestinian civilians must be able to return to their homes and rebuild their lives. Spain and Ireland echoed calls for a two-state solution. And so forth.

Experts noted the obvious: Such a plan would be a severe violation of international law. "Forced deportation or transfer of a civilian population is a violation of international humanitarian law, a war crime and a crime against humanity," wrote The New York Times. "The prohibition against forced deportations of civilians has been a part of the law of war since the Lieber Code, a set of rules on the conduct of hostilities, was promulgated by Union forces during the U.S. Civil War. It is prohibited by multiple provisions of the Geneva Conventions, and the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II defined it as a war crime."

"The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court lists forcible population transfers as both a war crime and a crime against humanity," the Times continued. "And if the displacement is focused on a particular group based on their ethnic, religious or national identity, then it is also persecution — an additional crime."

Unsurprisingly, the administration is now walking it all back. [Update 2025-02-10: Or maybe not. Trump is now returning to the idea, and suggesting he could cut aid to Jordan and Egypt if they don't take displaced Gazans. Trump told Fox's Bret Baier that Gazans would never be allowed to return, and that the U.S. would develop Gaza. "It would be a beautiful piece of land," Trump said.] It was just a lot of talk, said some Republican politicians. (But why must we endure such ignorant "talk" from our president?) Secretary of State Marco Rubio twice suggested that Trump was only proposing to clear out and rebuild Gaza, not claim indefinite possession of the territory. (False. I listened to Trump's press conference. He stressed that the U.S. would own and develop Gaza.)

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said "the president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza," but she did not say how the United States could take control of the territory without using military force, not least because Hamas has not been destroyed, and indeed has substantially reconstituted itself with fresh recruits.

Of course, the problem of what to do about a decimated Gaza is starkly real. "Trump’s proposal for Gaza is met with disbelief, opposition and sarcasm, but as he often does, in his brutal and clumsy way, he raises a real question: What to do when two million civilians find themselves in a field of ruins, full of explosives and corpses?" said former French ambassador to Washington, Gérard Araud.

But it isn't as if the "question" wasn't already obvious, needing but for Trump to raise it even if in a "brutal and clumsy" way. A serious and urgent international discussion of what's next is clearly required. But what nobody needs is a U.S. president throwing half-baked cockamamie at the wall in public.

And just to be clear, don't drink bleach.

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

"Records are immutable" and "Recorded for posterity"

In an executive order on Monday pardoning or commuting the sentences of all 1,500 January 6 defendants, Donald Trump said he was ending "a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years" to begin a "process of national reconciliation."

Trump also ordered the Justice Department to drop in-progress prosecutions against accused January 6 perpetrators, resulting in orders written by several U.S. district court judges. Here is what they wrote in reaction to the dismissal of charges, and the pardons.

 

Judge Beryl A. Howell

No “national injustice” occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election. No “process of national reconciliation” can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity. That merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law. Yet, this presidential pronouncement of a “national injustice” is the sole justification provided in the government’s motion to dismiss the pending indictment.

Having presided over scores of criminal cases charging defendants for their criminal conduct both outside and inside the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, which charges were fully supported by evidence in the form of extensive videotapes and photographs, admissions by defendants in the course of plea hearings and in testimony at trials, and the testimony of law enforcement officers and congressional staff present at the Capitol on that day, this Court cannot let stand the revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement. The prosecutions in this case and others charging defendants for their criminal conduct at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, present no injustice, but instead reflect the diligent work of conscientious public servants, including prosecutors and law enforcement officials, and dedicated defense attorneys, to defend our democracy and rights and preserve our long tradition of peaceful transfers of power—which, until January 6, 2021, served as a model to the world—all while affording those charged every protection guaranteed by our Constitution and the criminal justice system. As to these two defendants specifically, both admitted their criminal conduct under oath, after consultation with their attorneys, and pursuant to plea agreements to which they agreed. Bluntly put, the assertion offered in the presidential pronouncement for the pending motion to dismiss is flatly wrong.

 

Judge Tanya S. Chutkan

More broadly, no pardon can change the tragic truth of what happened on January 6, 2021. On that day,“a mob professing support for then-President Trump violently attacked the United States Capitol” to stop the electoral college certification. The dismissal of this case cannot undo the “rampage [that] left multiple people dead, injured more than 140 people, and inflicted millions of dollars in damage.” It cannot diminish the heroism of law enforcement officers who “struggled, facing serious injury and even death, to control the mob that overwhelmed them.” It cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake.  And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power. 

In hundreds of cases like this one over the past four years, judges in this district have administered justice without fear or favor. The historical record established by those proceedings must stand, unmoved by political winds, as a testament and as a warning.

Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions, and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021. What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens. Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly

What role law enforcement played that day and the heroism of each officer who responded also cannot be altered or ignored. Present that day were police officers from the U.S. Capitol Police and those who came to their aid when called: the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, Montgomery County Police Department, Prince George's County Police Department, Arlington County Police Department, and Fairfax County Police Department. Grossly outnumbered, those law enforcement officers acted valiantly to protect the Members of Congress, their staff, the Vice President and his family, the integrity of the Capitol grounds, and the Capitol Building-our symbol of liberty and a symbol of democratic rule around the world. For hours, those officers were aggressively confronted and violently assaulted. More than 140 officers were injured. Others tragically passed away as a result of the events of that day. But law enforcement did not falter. Standing with bear spray streaming down their faces, those officers carried out their duty to protect.

All of what I have described has been recorded for posterity, ensuring that what transpired  on January 6, 2021 can be judged accurately in the future.

 

 Judge Amy Berman Jackson

Moreover, a dismissal with prejudice would dishonor the hundreds of law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line against impossible odds to protect not only the U.S. Capitol building and the people who worked there – who were huddled inside in terror as windows and doors were shattered – but to protect the very essence of democracy: the peaceful transfer of power. It would dishonor those valiant officers who fulfilled their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” They are the patriots. Patriotism is loyalty to country and loyalty to the Constitution – not loyalty to a single head of state.

No stroke of a pen and no proclamation can alter the facts of what took place on January 6, 2021. When others in the public eye are not willing to risk their own power or popularity by calling out lies when they hear them, the record of the proceedings in this courthouse will be available to those who seek the truth.

 

Judge Paul L. Friedman

In this case, the government has not provided a factual basis for dismissal. The only justification is a citation to the presidential proclamation. The Proclamation itself ... attempts to justify dismissal by asserting that it is needed to "end[] a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begin[] a process of national reconciliation."

The Proclamation's assertion is factually incorrect. There has been no "grave national injustice." And just because the Proclamation was signed by the president does not transform up into down or down into up as if peering through the looking glass of Alice in Wonderland. Mr. Warnagiris was charged with serious crimes and the abandonment of his case by the government does not justify or erase his criminal actions on January 6, 2021. 

...

The undersigned has presided over a great many of the January 6 cases, and other judges of this Court have done the same. In each of the cases, law enforcement diligently investigated the facts. The prosecutors from the Department o Justice and the United States Attorney's Office conscientiously presented the evidence to support the convictions — including powerful testimony from law enforcement officers and witnesses, as well as hundreds of hours of shocking videos of assaults on the Capitol and those trying to protect it. In each case, either a judge or a jury evaluated the evidence presented through the crucible of direct and cross-examination. Judges methodically applied the law to the facts or instructed juries to do so. The voluminous records created in these cases and the thoughtfully considered sentences imposed by judges of this Court will forever reflect that in the tumultuous time following the events of January 6, 2021, this Court was at all times a place of law and fact.

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

There are always reasons

On Planet Earth, the Panama Canal is part of Panama, and managed by the Panamanian government under strict neutrality treaties that ensure equal treatment for all nations' vessels.

On Planet Trump, "American ships are being severely overcharged," and "China is operating the Panama Canal."

"We didn't give it to China, we gave it to Panama," Trump proclaimed in his inaugural address, "and we're taking it back."

No, China isn't operating the canal, and there's no legal way to take it back. At least Trump admits that we did indeed give it to Panama, which underscores the illegality of his concomitant threat.

Autocrats always find made-up reasons to exercise brute power, which is why the truth always matters, and why Trump's endless lying is endlessly dangerous.

For example, Vladimir Putin had his own made-up reasons for his illegal invasion of Ukraine. Historically, Ukraine was never an independent entity with its own identity, he said, but always a part of Russia. False. And Ukraine's leaders are "Nazis," he insisted. Ludicrous. In launching his war of conquest, Putin reneged on the 1994 Budapest Memorandum signed by Russia, under which Ukraine gave up its Soviet era nuclear weapons in return for respect for Ukraine's independence, sovereignty, and existing borders, and for refraining from the threat or use of force against Ukraine's territorial integrity or political independence. So much for all that.

Now Putin says we're taking it back.

Even the most lawless thugs assert justifications for their lawlessness. Trump's false reasons include: "Panama's promise to us has been broken."

But no, American ships aren't being "overcharged," at least not in the sense that they pay higher fees than other nations' ships. All shipping is subject to the same fee structure, which varies based on vessel size. These rates are determined in public meetings by the Panama Canal Authority, ostensibly reflecting market conditions and operational costs. (There can admittedly be disagreements about whether the fees, which apply to everybody, are set at appropriate levels.) Recent increases have been attributed to severe drought conditions since 2023, which have led to historically low water levels in Gatun Lake, the canal's primary water source.

Ricaurte Vásquez Morales, the Panama Canal Authority chief, has emphasized that there are no exceptions to the rules, and giving preferential treatment to one country's ships would violate international law and "lead to chaos."

A Trump spokesperson pointed out that the U.S. is the largest user of the canal and thus disproportionately affected by fee hikes. But in what sense is the largest user paying the most fees unfair?

Crucially, Trump's claim that China is "operating" the Panama Canal is categorically false, so false as to properly be called a lie—particularly in the context of his threat that "we're taking it back." It is certainly true that there has been significant Chinese investment and commercial activity adjacent to the canal. Chinese companies operate ports on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides. But there are also ports operated by Taiwanese and Singaporean companies, and by an American-Panamanian joint venture. And ships transiting the canal need not use the ports at all.

Lest there be any misunderstanding here, my point doesn't involve any opinion about whether or not the current transit fees are set at appropriate levels. What I condemn is the thuggish threat of taking the canal back (even by force, as Trump has suggested), which would mean the seizing of sovereign Panamanian territory, and predicating that action on an outright lie, told to the American people and to the world. The lie thus becomes the "reason" for a lawless act. We should expect better of the United States (or maybe not), but obviously not of Trump.

Asserting lies to construct false realities is what autocrats necessarily do. Lying continually about almost everything is what Trump does. It's a noxious combination that's toxic to all our highest intellectual and ethical values. As a country, it seems we increasingly have neither.

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Landslide? Mandate?

            Electoral

                votes   Popular vote margin

                -----   -------------------

2024  Trump       312    2.5 million   1.6%

2020  Biden       306    7.1 million   4.5%

2016  Trump       304   -2.9 million  -2.1%

2012  Obama       332    5.0 million   3.9%

2008  Obama       365    9.6 million   7.2%

2004  G.W.Bush    286    3.0 million   2.4%

2000  G.W.Bush    261   -0.5 million  -0.5%

1996* Clinton     379    8.2 million   8.5%

1992+ Clinton     370    5.8 million   5.6%

1988  G.H.W.Bush  426    7.1 million   7.8%

1984  Reagan      525   16.9 million  18.2%

*Ross Perot got 8.1 million votes (8.4%)

+Ross Perot got 19.7 million votes (18.9%)

Margins could change slightly as count proceeds. The latest is here.

 

Trump did not win a majority of the popular vote in 2024, despite there being no significant third party candidates. As of this writing, he won 49.86% of all votes cast. Although Trump won 6 more electoral votes (the number for Kansas or Utah, for example) in 2024 than Biden did in 2020, Biden won 51.3% of all votes cast.

 

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

The inherent fragility of democracy

In the first chapter of one of the most difficult books I've ever read, Martin Hägglund (2008) describes the philosopher Jacques Derrida's insight that democracy has the inherent property of autoimmunity. Analogously to how with autoimmune disease a living body can attack itself, democracy can likewise attack itself, and contains, paradoxically, the means of its own destruction. "Democracy is autoimmune because it is threatened not only by external enemies, but also by internal forces that can corrupt its principles," Hägglund writes.

One way this autoimmunity manifests is that "it is always possible that a democratic election will give power to a nondemocratic regime." Hägglund highlights Derrida's reminder that "fascist and Nazi totalitarianisms came into power or ascended to power through formally normal and formally democratic electoral processes."

There are more recent examples. Harvard professors of government Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt wrote today that "leaders like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Kais Saied in Tunisia and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador have won decisive electoral majorities — and then used their elected offices to undermine fair competition, making it nearly impossible to remove them from office democratically."

Derrida's book Rogues describes how in 1992 the Algerian state suspended elections because "the elections were projected to give power to a majority that wanted to change the constitution and undercut the process of democratization." Thus democracy itself was thwarted in an attempt to protect it, demonstrating an autoimmune response where the system attacks itself.

Hägglund: "The immune-system of democracy—the strategies it employs to defend itself—may thus be forced to attack itself in order to survive. The effects of such autoimmunity may be positive or negative, but in either case they reinforce that democracy is necessarily divided within itself. The principles of democracy may protect those who attack the principles of democracy. Inversely, the attack on the principles of democracy may be a way of protecting the principles of democracy. There is no way to finally decide whether it is legitimate for democracy to attack or to refrain from attacking itself, since either one of these strategies may turn against it at any moment." [my italics -mb]

Hägglund says "Derrida emphasizes that there can be no democratic ideal that is exempt from autoimmunity, since the very concept of democracy is autoimmune. In order to be democratic, democracy must be open to critique and to the outcome of unpredictable elections. But for the same reason, democracy is essentially open to what may alter or destroy it. There is thus a double bind at the core of democracy. It must both protect itself against its own threat and be threatened by its own protection."

Which is sobering to contemplate as a democratic presidential election nears, in which one candidate has promised to govern in ways that are antithetical to the Constitution, and his former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has called him "fascist to the core."

That might be the cause of the churn in your gut. Our only recourse now is to vote in defense of both democracy and the Constitution.

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Inexplicable. Seriously?

Lordy, the stupid things that come out of mouths attached to religion-addled brains.

Too hash? Consider. The Trump-supporting Dallas pastor, Robert Jeffress, preached this to his congregation the day after the failed assassination attempt: "What happened yesterday is also a demonstration of the power of almighty God. I mean, what happened was inexplicable apart from God. God spared him for the purpose of calling our nation back to its Judeo-Christian foundation."

Seriously, inexplicable? As in, can't be explained?

That's just dumb. The kid missed the shot. It happens. Perhaps he wasn't a good marksman. Or maybe he felt rushed. He'd just chased a police officer off the roof, so he knew he'd been discovered, and had to work fast. Or the steeply pitched roof affected his aim.

Or this. Trump turned his head at an opportune moment. Trump himself acknowledged that he was turning to look at a chart that he was using in his speech.

Did God make him turn? Don't be absurd. Do you think that, but for God, he'd not have turned to look at that chart?

Trump's movement is completely explicable in terms not just of what he was doing in that moment, but, in a broader existential sense, of the stochastic happenings that carom off each other continually as reality plays out at each point of space and time. Existence is a dice roll. A shooter's intention and a speaker's movement line up, or they don't, without apparent reason. Because of how our brains are wired, we typically only notice when some seemingly momentous coincidence occurs. But make no mistake: coincidences occur constantly.

Which presents a golden opportunity for mush-minded thinking. Because coincidences are happening continually, there are always some available to take the believer wherever he wants to go. Constructing meaning from randomness is utterly commonplace in the belief buffet. It's a trademark feature of religious practice by denizens of pews and pulpits to align notable coincidence with divine providence—at least when when events conform to some desired narrative that the believer wants to advance. With religion, the stupidity (sorry, that word again) never ends.

Sometimes it gushes forth. "If you didn't believe in miracles before Saturday, you better be believing right now!" bellowed Republican Senator Tim Scott at the Republican National Convention. "Thank God Almighty that we live in a country that still believes in the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega. Our God still saves."

Tim Scott's standard for what qualifies as miraculous is clearly quite low, but it's entirely consistent with what I've observed in a lifetime of watching persons captive to religion. Heck, I used to be one myself. But I must admit I always had a hard time with miracles and other bizarre claims. I made the best of it, but was often secretly embarrassed by the stuff I heard in church. Even as a kid I knew deep down that a lot of it was crazy. What's fascinating to me is that the Tim Scotts and Robert Jeffresses are never embarrassed as they spew nonsense. Nor are many other grownups I observe with dismay.

Genuine miracles don't happen, because the only things that ever do happen are things that can possibly happen. Occurrences that are rare but possible and thus explicable don't count as miracles. Sorry, they don't.

Rare outcomes happen in nature. Rarity means uncommon, not impossible. Everything unfolds on a probability curve. Such rarities include the vast majority of miracles recognized by the Catholic Church, which overwhelmingly tend to be unexplained recoveries from dire disease processes that ought (probabilistically speaking) to be fatal. But we know that in principle such recoveries can occur as a result of entirely natural processes, such as the body's sudden spectacular marshaling of its immune system, for reasons that aren't presently understood.

Just because the doctors you consult don't know why someone got better doesn't make it a miracle that they did. There are monumental examples of this, and utterly banal ones. I got better. Did the antibiotic help or hurt? Don't know. Doctors don't understand the placebo effect, either, but it's undeniably real, and has to be accounted for in medical studies of drugs and procedures. And so on.

For many decades, certain authors and medical practitioners have been exploring the body's own innate capacity for self-healing. Bernie Siegel, for example. Or Andrew Weil.

Interestingly, none of the Catholic miracles involve outcomes that we know in principle can't happen in nature, such as the spontaneous regeneration of an amputated limb. Because humans absolutely can't regrow missing limbs, such regeneration would qualify as a genuine miracle if it ever happened. It never has, and never will. Maybe that should tell you something.

Long ago, some Catholic friends were having a hard time understanding why I claim their "miracles" don't count. What would? they asked. I pointed out the window at the municipal water tower across the field. Having that tower suddenly move several hundred feet would be a miracle, I said. At least once we ruled out David Copperfield-type illusions operating from our perspective in the living room where we were sitting. We could walk over to the tower's new location and kick at its base. Yup, a miracle.

A lot of miracle claims are mush-minded motivated reasoning, as with the Jeffress and Scott quotes above. It's a game religious types seemingly don't realize they're playing, but they do it all the time. The failed assassination attempt lets them tell themselves that Trump has been chosen by God, which is exactly what they wanted to believe anyway. Indeed, there's even been a messianic aspect to this among some Christians, which is bizarre and disturbing.

Thus religious practice often involves exercises in motivated tea leaf reading. Maybe God is trying to tell us this. Or that. Maybe. God never speaks clearly, so the possibilities are endless. The maybes slot effortlessly into worldviews. We get to play out scenarios in our head and choose the ones we like, and then incorporate them into our personal realities. God communicates through "signs," suggested Marjorie Taylor Green, with her really dumb mention of earthquakes and eclipses. Christians thus find themselves in the business of interpreting what earthquakes and eclipses mean. (Apparently they don't mean fault slippage or orbital mechanics.) Robert Jeffress said the failed assassination attempt was God's way of  "calling our nation back to its Judeo-Christian foundation." Sure it was.

But as I wrote elsewhere, there is only one reality, and it's our job to discern it. Not only will religion not help, but it will rot the thinking brains we need to discover and act upon what's real. It will train us how to not think. It will cause us to eschew empirical processes in favor of deeply irrational ones. We can do better than that. And if we're to survive as a civilization, we must.

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Way to go Joe

A good pun, huh?

Making Trump a martyr

Senator J.D. Vance, a Republican from Ohio, wrote this on social media about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump: "Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination."

That is false: three essential words that need to be repeated continually in this age of unreality in which we live.

The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at the ballot box.

You save democracy by voting.

Expect a tsunami of MAGA Republicans to echo Vance's despicable slur and blame Biden. This horrible moment is too good a political opportunity, especially for a movement that, taking its guidance from the top, has never had much decency to begin with.

Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana said: "Clearly we’ve seen far left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop."

Incendiary rhetoric? Violent rhetoric? What a stupendous feat of projection—itself an enduring hallmark of the deranged right. There is only one side—only one candidate—with an actual record of incendiary and even violent rhetoric, over and over and over, and it isn't Biden.

Let's be clear. The searing magnitude of Trump's manifest unfitness for office, and threat to democracy and the Constitution, is the greatest danger our national polity has faced since the Civil War. That reality needs to be hammered continually. Doing so isn't an incitement to violence; it's an incitement for the American electorate to rise up and ensure by voting that such an unfit human being never gets close to the Oval Office again.

This tragic incident makes the job even harder, but we mustn't let up. Not for a moment. Every time you hear a MAGA apologist blame Biden for violence, use it as a reminder of what we're up against.

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

The Perplexity dialogues: Dielectric grease

This is my second installment of "dialogues" I've had with Perplexity, an AI based search engine. If you didn't see my previous introductory post, you might want to read it first.

Dielectric grease is a (usually) silicone grease that's applied to certain electrical fittings where you want to seal out water or prevent corrosion, such as under a spark plug boot. Because the grease is itself an insulator, I've always wondered why having it on the contacting surfaces doesn't interfere with the flow of electricity. I decided to ask Perplexity. As you can see, it took a few tries to get the answer I was after. The fact that you can proceed iteratively, with followups, is a powerful feature.

Perplexity's initial responses were quite unsatisfying. For example, it said: "The key is that dielectric grease acts as an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it." Which is exactly what I was confused about in the first place; the thing that needed to be explained. How can putting an insulating substance on both parts of connection not impede the flow of electricity?

I tried a third time: "You're not answering my question," I said. "In fact, you're making my point. You say that 'dielectric grease acts as an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it.' Since it's an insulator, why can electricity nevertheless flow between contacts that both have a film of dielectric grease?"

Perplexity responded with "You're absolutely right, I should have explained this more clearly," and then it proceeded to do so. Which makes this an interesting dialogue. I reproduce it below.

There's been a lot of discussion lately about the stunningly rapid expansion of artificial intelligence in search and much else that's underway right now. Enormous new data centers are being built at a furious pace by all the big players, and many you haven't heard of, to support the mad rush into AI. They all use enormous amounts of electricity. It's been reported that an AI search uses many times more electrical power compared to a regular Google search. So my Perplexity dialogues are burning copious amounts of electricity. Way to go, Mike.

Another big offender is cryptocurrency mining, which is a batshit crazy waste of electricity.

The impact of AI on a rapidly warming climate is no small concern. Already we have a stressed electrical grid and power generation that's struggling to keep up. We badly need to retire old fossil fuel electrical generation facilities and replace them with carbon-free renewables such as solar and wind. We need clean electrical generation to power our new electric vehicles, heat pumps, and much else.

A striking example of how things have suddenly careened off track is Google itself, which is failing miserably in its previous commitment to be "net zero" on carbon emissions by 2030. Far from reducing its carbon footprint, Google is now growing it rapidly. "Google cited artificial intelligence and the demand it puts on data centers, which require massive amounts of electricity, for last year’s growth," said an AP article.

In addition to the energy problem, there are huge questions about the societal implications of this brave new AI world we're rushing into headlong. Will the good outweigh the bad? Ever the pessimist, I have my doubts.

Be that as it all may, here is my latest Perplexity dialogue. As before, the largest bold headings are my actual questions; all the rest is Perplexity's answers. And as before, if you want you can view the actual Perplexity session from which this dialogue was constructed by downloading the session's html, here. Ignore all the gobbledygook that appears, and click on the Download button in the upper right part of the page. Then open the downloaded file with your browser.

---

Why doesn't dielectric grease interfere with electrical connections?

Answer

Dielectric grease does not interfere with electrical connections because it is a non-conductive lubricant that is designed to protect electrical components from moisture, corrosion, and contamination without disrupting the flow of electricity. The key points are:

• Dielectric grease is an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it.
• When applied properly to tight, well-fitting electrical connections, dielectric grease seals out moisture and contaminants that could otherwise cause corrosion and deterioration of the connection.
• While dielectric grease should not be used to fill loose or poorly fitting connectors, as that could impede the electrical connection, a thin coating on the connection helps protect it without interfering.
• Dielectric grease has its own drawbacks, such as attracting dust and potentially melting in high heat, so it is not recommended for all electrical connections, only those that need protection from harsh environments.

In summary, dielectric grease is specifically formulated to protect electrical components without compromising conductivity when used properly on tight, well-sealed connections.

But why doesn't the thin layer on the fittings impede electrical conductivity?

Answer

The thin layer of dielectric grease on electrical connections does not impede electrical conductivity because:  

 

Dielectric grease is a non-conductive lubricant. It is specifically formulated to protect electrical components without disrupting the flow of electricity through the connection.

 

When applied properly to tight, well-fitting electrical connections, the dielectric grease seals out moisture and contaminants that could otherwise cause corrosion and deterioration of the connection.This helps maintain the conductivity of the connection. 

 

However, dielectric grease should not be used to fill loose or poorly fitting connectors, as that could impede the electrical connection. A thin coating on the connection helps protect it without interfering. 

 

The key is that dielectric grease acts as an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it. When used correctly on well-sealed connections, it enhances conductivity by preventing corrosion, without disrupting the flow of current.

You're not answering my question. In fact, you're making my point. You say that "dielectric grease acts as an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it." Since it's an insulator, why can electricity nevertheless flow between contacts that both have a film of dielectric grease?

Answer

You're absolutely right, I should have explained this more clearly. The reason why a thin layer of dielectric grease does not impede electrical conductivity is due to the concept of electrical tunneling.

Electrical Tunneling

Even though dielectric grease is an insulator, when applied in a very thin layer between two conductive surfaces, it allows electrons to "tunnel" through the insulating layer, enabling electrical current to flow.

How Electrical Tunneling Works:

• When the conductive surfaces are in very close proximity (on the order of nanometers), the electrons can quantum mechanically "tunnel" through the thin insulating layer of dielectric grease.
• This occurs because the insulating layer is so thin that the electron wave functions can overlap between the two conductive surfaces, allowing the electrons to pass through.
• As long as the dielectric grease layer is sufficiently thin (typically less than 10 nanometers), the tunneling effect dominates, and the grease does not significantly impede the electrical conductivity.

So in summary, the thin layer of dielectric grease acts as an insulator, but the electrical tunneling phenomenon allows current to flow between the conductive surfaces it separates, without being impeded. This is why dielectric grease can protect electrical connections without disrupting conductivity.

That helps. Quantum mechanics to the rescue.

Answer

Based on the search results provided, here is the key information to answer your question: The reason a thin layer of dielectric grease does not impede electrical conductivity is due to the quantum mechanical phenomenon of electrical tunneling.

Electrical Tunneling Explanation

• Even though dielectric grease is an insulator, when applied in a very thin layer between two conductive surfaces, it allows electrons to "tunnel" through the insulating layer.
• This occurs because the insulating layer is so thin (typically less than 10 nanometers) that the electron wave functions can overlap between the two conductive surfaces, allowing the electrons to pass through.
• The tunneling effect dominates when the dielectric grease layer is sufficiently thin, enabling current to flow between the conductive surfaces without being significantly impeded by the insulating properties of the grease.

So in summary, the thin layer of dielectric grease acts as an insulator, but the quantum mechanical tunneling phenomenon allows electrons to pass through without disrupting the electrical conductivity of the connection. This is why dielectric grease can protect electrical connections without interfering with the flow of current.

Yes, you already told me that. I was making a humorous quip about "quantum mechanics to the rescue."

Answer

Ah I see, my apologies. I should have picked up on your humorous quip about quantum mechanics coming to the rescue in explaining why dielectric grease doesn't interfere with electrical connections.

 

You're absolutely right, I had already explained the concept of electrical tunneling through the thin dielectric grease layer, and your comment about quantum mechanics solving the puzzle was a clever and insightful remark on my previous explanation. 

 

Thank you for the feedback - it will help me better recognize and respond appropriately to subtle humor and wit in future conversations. I appreciate you taking the time to engage with me and help improve my conversational abilities.

 

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

The Perplexity dialogues

Are you familiar with Perplexity? It's one of the new AI-based search engines.

What's remarkable is that you can ask it very detailed questions, which it parses, understands, and responds to with striking specificity. If the answer isn't clear, or you want more information, you can ask follow-up questions, which it will respond to in the context of what's already been said. In this manner you can, if you wish, engage in long-running "dialogues" on a topic, poking and prodding, following tangents, going deeper. It's actually quite amazing.

I've been increasingly using Perplexity to quickly zero in on information I'm looking for, where I wouldn't have bothered with the tedium of a Google search. I still catch myself wondering about some obscure thing or another, and it dawns on me: Just ask Perplexity.

The contrast with Google is stark. For one thing, Perplexity understands your question, even a complicated one, in considerable detail. (I've heard that Google is working to increase the amount of AI in its own query processing.)

For another, it constructs a detailed response that, if all goes well, gets exactly to what you asked. Google responses, by comparison, are still largely a collection of links. It's your job to plow through those links, process the source documents, and (hopefully) find what you're looking for. By contrast, Perplexity pulls the relevant information out of the source documents and constructs a customized response, and that response is very well organized.

Of course, Perplexity isn't infallible. As with all things you encounter on the internet, it's still your job to ascertain your confidence in its answers. I've had situations where I wasn't happy with how it formulated an answer or explained a concept, so I drilled in with follow-ups until it seemed to be making sense. I'll share some of those in later posts. Perplexity does show you its sources, and you might want to consult them on subjects that are very important, or at least verify that they're sufficiently authoritative for your particular needs.

I said you can ask Perplexity complicated questions. Here's an example:

"Suppose I discharge a fully charged battery by n Amp-hours at a very high rate relative to the battery's capacity. The very high discharge rate will reduce the battery's capacity. Can we say anything about how many Amp-hours of charge will be required to bring the battery back to full charge?"

I thought Perplexity's answer to this one was more convoluted than it needed to be, with extraneous detail. After a couple of iterations of follow-up we both agreed that the discharge rate doesn't matter: Amp-hours in equals Amp-hours out. That, too, for another post.

What follows below is one of my first Perplexity dialogues. I've reproduced the questions and answers, but it would have been too tedious to include the linked sources and all the rest that were part of the original session. If you want to see and read it in its original form, which I recommend, click on this. Ignore all the gobbledygook that appears, and click on the Download button in the upper right part of the page. This downloads the source html file. You will then need to open it using whatever mechanism your browser provides for viewing downloaded files. (Firefox, Edge, and Chrome all pop up download dialogues. You'll need to click on the appropriate document when the download completes.)

Here then, the dialogue. And yes, I changed the subject after two questions. I was doing some initial experimentation with Perplexity. The largest bold headings are my actual questions; all the rest is Perplexity's answers:

---

Is conjecture a verb?

Answer

Yes, "conjecture" can be used as a verb. It means to form an opinion or reach a conclusion on the basis of information that is not certain or complete. For example, "He conjectured that the population might double in ten years" or "She conjectured the existence of a completely new species".

 

Yes, but you changed it to "conjectured." Can I say: "If we were to conjecture..." ?

Answer

Yes, you can say "If we were to conjecture..." The word "conjecture" can be used in conditional sentences to express hypothetical situations, as in "If we were to conjecture the outcome, it might lead to a..."

 

Was the author of the Gospel of Matthew the apostle of the same name?

Answer

The authorship of the Gospel of Matthew is a topic of scholarly debate. While the gospel is traditionally attributed to the Apostle Matthew, most modern scholars hold that it was written anonymously in the last quarter of the first century by an anonymous Jew familiar with technical legal aspects of Judaism. The claim of his gospel authorship is rejected by most biblical scholars, and the author is not named within the text. The attribution "according to Matthew" was added possibly as early as the second century, but the actual authorship remains uncertain. Therefore, it is not definitively established that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was the apostle of the same name.

 

You say "most modern scholars." Can you characterize "most"?

Answer

The term "most modern scholars" generally refers to the majority or a significant number of scholars in a particular field. In the case of the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew, the majority of modern scholars, including biblical experts, hold that the gospel was written anonymously by an unknown Jewish author in the late first century. While the gospel is traditionally attributed to the Apostle Matthew, this attribution is not supported by the majority of modern scholars, and the actual authorship remains uncertain. Therefore, "most modern scholars" indicates a prevailing consensus among experts in the field.

 

How strong is that consensus?

Answer

The consensus among scholars regarding the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew is generally strong in favor of it being written by an anonymous Jewish author in the late first century, rather than the apostle of the same name. This consensus is based on a variety of evidence, including the lack of direct attribution within the text and the presence of technical legal aspects of Judaism in the gospel, which suggests that the author was a Jewish individual familiar with such matters. While there may be some minority views or debates on this issue, the prevailing scholarly opinion supports the conclusion that the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew is not attributed to the apostle of the same name.

 

You didn't mention that much of Matthew's gospel comes from Mark.

Answer

The Gospel of Matthew is believed to have been composed in Greek, probably sometime after 70 CE, with evident dependence on the earlier Gospel According to Mark. The relationship between the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel According to Mark is a topic of scholarly discussion. It is widely recognized that much of the content in Matthew's gospel comes from Mark, with Matthew incorporating about 600 of Mark’s 649 verses into his Gospel, and Luke retaining about 360 verses of Markan material. All told, 97% of Mark is reproduced in Matthew and/or Luke. This dependence on Mark's Gospel is one of the factors that contribute to the scholarly consensus that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was not the apostle of the same name, but rather an anonymous Jewish Christian writing for Christians of a similar background. Therefore, the strong consensus among scholars regarding the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew is based on various textual and historical evidence, including its relationship to the Gospel According to Mark.

 

Matthew's gospel also doesn't seem to be an eye witness account, does it?

Answer

The Gospel of Matthew is not generally considered an eyewitness account of the life of Jesus. While some early church tradition holds that the Apostle Matthew wrote the book, modern scholars question this attribution. The gospel itself does not explicitly claim to have been written by the apostle, and it is widely believed to have been composed in Greek, possibly by an anonymous Jewish Christian, with evident dependence on the earlier Gospel According to Mark. The relationship between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as the lack of direct attribution within the text, has led to the majority of scholars believing that the Gospel of Matthew was not written by the apostle of the same name and does not represent an eyewitness account. Therefore, the prevailing scholarly opinion is that the Gospel of Matthew is not an eyewitness account of the life of Jesus.

 

You also didn't mention that Matthew also used Q.

Answer

Yes, you are correct. The Gospel of Matthew is also believed to have used Q, which is a hypothetical written collection of primarily Jesus' sayings, and is part of the common material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke but not in the Gospel of Mark. According to the Q source hypothesis, both Matthew and Luke used the Q document as a source for the sayings of Jesus, and this is one of the factors that contribute to the scholarly consensus that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was not the apostle of the same name, but rather an anonymous Jewish Christian writing for Christians of a similar background.

 

And the apostle Matthew wouldn't have written in Greek, correct?

Answer

The language in which the Gospel of Matthew was originally written is a topic of scholarly debate. While some early church tradition and certain scholars have suggested that the gospel was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, the prevailing view among most modern scholars is that it was composed in Greek, probably sometime after 70 CE, with evident dependence on the earlier Gospel According to Mark. The claim that the apostle Matthew wrote the gospel in Aramaic and later translated it into Greek is not supported by the majority of modern scholars, and there is no extant manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew in Aramaic or Hebrew that predates the Greek manuscripts. Therefore, while the issue is not definitively settled, the consensus among most modern scholars is that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek, and its original language remains a topic of ongoing scholarly discussion.

 

But if the apostle did write it, he would have written in a Semitic language, right?

Answer

The question of whether the apostle Matthew would have written in a Semitic language is a matter of scholarly debate. While some early church tradition and certain scholars have suggested that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, the prevailing view among most modern scholars is that it was composed in Greek, probably sometime after 70 CE, with evident dependence on the earlier Gospel According to Mark. The claim that the apostle Matthew wrote the gospel in Aramaic or Hebrew and later translated it into Greek is not supported by the majority of modern scholars, and there is no extant manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew in Aramaic or Hebrew that predates the Greek manuscripts. Therefore, while the issue is not definitively settled, the consensus among most modern scholars is that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek, and its original language remains a topic of ongoing scholarly discussion.

 

So Brant Pitre's contention that the Gospel of Matthew was written by the apostle is outside the mainstream of scholarly opinion.

Answer

Yes, the contention that the Gospel of Matthew was written by the apostle Matthew is outside the mainstream of scholarly opinion. Most modern scholars hold that the gospel was written anonymously in the last quarter of the first century by an anonymous Jew familiar with technical legal aspects of Judaism. The claim of his gospel authorship is rejected by most biblical scholars, and the author is not named within the text. Therefore, the view that the apostle Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew is not supported by the prevailing scholarly consensus.

 

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.